Golf Fitness Program

A Complete Golf Fitness Program…

…how to improve and maintain your body to ensure peak performance on the golf course.

Dear Golfer,

If you are reading this, chances are you you’ve probably noticed that the pros have turned to fitness in order to try and compete at the highest level.

As a result, you have concluded that it is a good idea for you to work on your fitness as well.

The problem is that there is so much information on golf fitness, you really don’t know where to start.

Quite honestly, much of the information is also pretty bad.

The golf fitness industry loves to focus on complexity, because complexity sells.

The fact is, simplicity works best, and you will reach your potential as a golfer far more quickly with a simple fitness program.

This article is broken down into the following sections:

The Two Factor Approach to Golf Performance
Golf Fitness Priorities
The Benefits of Basic Strength Training
The Best Exercises for Building Strength
A Basic Strength Training Program
Conditioning and Mobility
Final Thoughts and What to Do Next

Just scroll down to find each section highlighted in big green text.

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The Two Factor Approach To Golf Performance

Mark Rippetoe

Before I get to the outline of our golf fitness program, let me provide you with some insight into its development.

The 2 factor approach for sports performance has been written about in great detail by Mark Rippetoe of Starting Strength.

This model is completely relevant to golf as well.

Rippetoe states:

“There are two components to the effective preparation for improved performance in the vast majority of athletic events – a “performance” being defined as a specific point in time when an athletic event will occur and for which an athlete prepares to demonstrate the best effort possible under the scrutiny of judges or against direct competition. Regardless of whether the sport is endurance-based, strength-based, or a combination of the two, two separate forms of preparation are required for winning performances: Training and Practice.

Training is the process of accumulating a specific physiological adaptation or adaptations necessary for improved performance in an athletic event.

Practice is the repetitive execution of movements that depend on accuracy and precision under the conditions in which they will be displayed during the performance.

The effectiveness of practice is dependent on the athlete’s ability to accumulate experience with the movement patterns to be displayed in the performance, in order to embed the motor pathways that generate these movement patterns.

The ability to execute movement patterns with accuracy and precision is skill. The development of skill is the purpose of practice. Together with training, these two quite separate preparatory mechanisms are used by athletes to improve their performances.”

Ok, that was a mouthful, but it was critical to your understanding of our approach to golf fitness.

In summary, our approach is described this way… improving your body will help you reach your POTENTIAL as a golfer, but it will NOT improve your golf skills.

Improving fitness is a separate endeavor altogether. To get better as a golfer, you have to practice golf.

Improved fitness gives you the potential to hit the ball further, practice longer, and play golf without getting fatigued.

Unfortunately, the golf fitness world will have you believe the opposite. This is why many of the exercises these trainers have you perform will mimic the golf swing in some way.

Improved fitness does NOT automatically improve your golf swing. No exercise will do that.

Golf Fitness Priorities

golf fitness program In my experience, most golfers are weak and this is particularly true of golfers over the age of 70.

The average age of golfers in the US is reported as 46, while the median age is 54.

Starting at about age 40 (give or take a few years), the process of sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass begins.

With each passing decade, we lose 3% to 5% our muscle mass, and this process accelerates over time.

Furthermore, some people are susceptible to osteoporosis, or loss of bone density. Osteoporosis is quite prevalent among women post-menopause, but it also affects some men.

However, the golf fitness industry has an intense focus on mobility, even for senior golfers.

As a result, most golfers are given exercises to help them improve their ability to get more rotation in their golf swings. This is usually done with a variety of stretching exercises and strengthening exercises that target small muscles.

The trouble is, improved mobility is far more difficult to achieve than improved physical strength.

With this in mind, for the vast majority of golfers, strength training should be their number one golf fitness priority.

The Benefits of Basic Strength Training

Waste of time

As I mentioned, the golf fitness world likes to make things complex.

The belief among many personal trainers is that complexity sells. Simple is boring to many people, so they tend to be drawn to complex exercises.

One such exercise I see often is seen to the right.

Unfortunately, all you are doing there is performing. You are demonstrating a skill, rather than training.

Sure, if you practice this exercise, you will get better at it over time.

However, it does not translate into better golf.

Why?

We never swing a golf club on one leg when the ground is moving.

So, that brings me to the first benefit of strength training, among others… improved balance.

If you are able to squat with 200 pounds on your back, deadlift 300 pounds, or press 125 pounds over your head without falling over, you have good balance.

Why would you perform an exercise to improve balance that doesn’t make you strong, and doesn’t actually translate into greater golf potential?

Here are some more benefits of strength training.

Increased Metabolism

One of the most important benefits of lifting weights is that you will turn your body into a fat burning machine through building muscle.

Lean muscle mass burns more calories throughout the day. Therefore, while you burn calories during your workout itself, you’ll continue to burn more calories throughout the day since muscle requires more energy to maintain.

What is particularly beneficial is that you’ll lose more deep belly fat, the fat that surrounds your organs around your belly, than you would if you just did cardio.

As a result, you’ll gain a significant health benefit, as those fatty deposits around your organs can impede their function.

Improved Strength

Naturally, if you lift weights regularly, you are going to gain strength. Increased strength will benefit you in your everyday activities, such as carrying groceries, moving furniture, doing yard work, etc.

If you participate in any type of sport, improved strength will also be of benefit.

A recent example is PGA Tour pro Bryson DeChambeau. DeChambeau added over 40 pounds of muscle mass from 2019 to 2021.

As a result of his strength training, he was able to increase his maximum swing speed from about 119 mph to over 140 mph. This enabled him to become the longest driver on tour and even in the world.

Improved Mobility

Lifting weights, particularly with movements involving compound exercises, will also improve your overall mobility.

Compound movements such as the squat and dead lift incorporate a number of muscle groups, along with the tendons and ligaments that provide support to those muscle groups.

As a result, you gain improved mobility as a result of these lifts, which is clearly beneficial as we age.

This improved mobility will help us get around the house and yard, and in public, and this helps us lead a more healthy lifestyle.

Improved Bone Density

Lifting weights will help improve or at least maintain your bone density.

As we age, we tend to lose bone density and this is what leads to easy fractures due to falls. Women in particular are at risk.

At an advanced age, a fall that breaks a hip is often a sign that significant issues will be coming down the road. It’s not uncommon for life expectancy to be reduced significantly after such an injury.

Strongman Brian Shaw is an extreme example of the improved bone density resulting from lifting weights. He lifts very heavy things for a living. As a result, when he went in for a Dexascan in 2021, the technicians told him his bone density was the highest they had ever measured.

Improved heart health

Cardio exercise is not the only form of exercise that will improve your heart condition. Another one of the important benefits of strength training is improved heart health.

In one study performed at Appalachian State University, people who performed 45 minutes of moderate strength training lowered their blood pressure by 20 points.

That’s better than most blood pressure medications!

I can tell you from experience that at points during my strength training sessions, my heart rate is right up there with any cardio exercise I do!

You’ll look and feel better

Who do you think looks more attractive… the marathon runner who does nothing but run long distance, or the sprinter, who incorporates lifting weights into their training program?

Opinions vary, but I would venture to guess that most people would find that the sprinter has a more appealing physique due to the muscle mass and tone.

Trust me when I also say you’ll feel a lot more healthy when you regularly lift weights (aside from the normal muscle soreness associated with training hard) than if you don’t!

Improved confidence

Lifting weights improves your confidence in a couple of ways.

First, after consistent training for a bit, your physique will improve. Looking better in the mirror is a natural confidence boost.

The improved strength and mobility that comes along with lifting weights will also boost your confidence.

When you are able to perform everyday activities and your favorite activities (such as golf) at a higher level, you’ll naturally feel better about yourself, and that improved confidence will show up in your relationships and at work.

Now that you have an understanding of the benefits of strength training, let’s discuss the best exercises for building strength.

The Best Exercises For Building Strength

Typical golf fitness exercise

If you do a Google search, or a search on Youtube for strength training for golfers, you’ll be hard pressed to find content where a barbell is used.

What you find instead are numerous exercises performed with dumbbells, kettlebells and resistance bands. The exercise to the left is a common example.

Have a look at that image above. The title of the video from which that image was taken is literally “strength training for golfers.”

That is the kind of stuff you typically see in the golf fitness world.

Yet, the barbell is the single best training tool we have for building strength.

Power = Force x Velocity

Bryson DeChambeau figured this out a few years ago.

In 2019, his average swing speed with the driver was about 119 mph… pretty good.

He then indulged in a strength training and weight gaining program that took his weight up to 240 pounds, and turned himself into one of the longest hitters in the world.

Strength is your ability to produce force.

As we age, we lose the ability to move our body fast. This is why you don’t see any Olympic sprinters past the age of 40.

To help offset that, we can get stronger.

Low Bar Squat

Golf Strength Exercise #1 – The Squat

The squat incorporates the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, lower back and core. In fact, the squat incorporates more muscle mass than any other exercise.

As a result, it is THE foundational exercise of any legitimate strength training program.

The squat done properly is more of a hip exercise, than just a quad exercise. Thus, it is of particular benefit to golfers, given how the hips are so involved in the golf swing.

Also, the golf instruction and golf fitness worlds are focusing on using the ground to generate a higher golf swing speed.

So now you see a variety of exercises being touted to help golfers use the ground.

However, what better exercise is there for learning how to generate power from the ground than the squat?

No other exercise can be trained with as much weight as the squat, and you literally have to push up from the ground to move the weight on your back up.

Also, when properly trained, the squat can actually drive the performance of the other lifts.

A heavy squat sends a strong signal to the central nervous system that the body needs to adapt in order to handle the stress placed on the body.

If you want to get strong, and hit the ball further, then you train your legs. And the best exercise for training them is the squat.

Golf Strength Exercise #2 – The Deadlift

Strength Exercises for golf Many golf workout programs will target “the core” since it is so important to the golf swing.

The core is that area just below the hips on up to the sternum.

You will see all manner of exercises to strengthen the core.

However, the one exercise that most golfers and people avoid is the Deadlift.

Yet, the deadlift is the absolute best exercise for developing a strong core.

Why?

Because there is no other exercise that you can train with more weight than the deadlift.

And, the deadlift trains more muscle groups than any other exercise… the hamstrings, thighs, glutes, lower back, abdominals, lats, traps and forearms.

Unfortunately, the fitness and medical communities at large, because they don’t know any better, tell you to avoid the deadlift because it will hurt your back.

That’s absolute garbage. It is the best exercise for training your back to AVOID injury. However, like any exercise where you are dealing with significant weight, proper form is critical.

Golf Strength Exercise #3 – Bench Press

While we typically don’t see many golfers with massive pects, at one time Tiger Woods could bench press 300 pounds. And, it’s clear that many long drive competitors can bench heavy weight as well.

The bench press is another compound exercise that works multiple muscle groups.

It is also the upper body exercise that allows you to move the most weight.

The bench press works the muscles of the chest, front of shoulder, upper back, triceps, and forearms.

And yes, all of these muscles are employed in the golf swing!

Golf Strength Exercise #4 – Overhead Press

The shoulders are clearly engaged in the golf swing, and nothing works the shoulders better than the overhead barbell press.

Do you think Tiger Woods got those shoulders from doing lateral raises with 20 pound dumbbells?

Not only does it work the shoulders, it hits the upper and lower back along with the triceps. You also get some work in the core, glutes, hamstrings and calves to provide stability.

This may be the most difficult exercise of the four barbell exercises listed here, due to the length of the kinetic chain involved… you are standing upright and pressing the bar overhead, so the entire body is involved.

Golf Strength Exercise #5 – Pull-up

Golf fitness program Last, but not least, is the bodyweight pull-up.

Unfortunately, most people can’t do one pull-up, so they may have to progress to the pull-up up through other exercises such as lat pulldowns or bodyweight rows.

Ultimately, you’ll want to be able to do pull-ups, as they are another great compound exercise that hits the lats, upper back, biceps, forearms and core.

Again, these are all key muscle groups used in the golf swing.

As you can see, basic and simple exercises based upon natural human movement is all you really need to become a much stronger human and golfer.

Conditioning and Mobility

Fitness program for golfers As I suggested earlier, Mobility training tends to be the focus of most golf fitness programs.

Most instructors and golf fitness professionals will first put a client through a physical assessment.

Most of this assessment is focused on identifying mobility issues in the hips, back and shoulders.

The entire idea here is that by improving mobility in these areas, you can improve your range of motion, and that will allow you to make improvements to your golf swing.

I view this as a crutch, particularly among instructors. An inability to get a golfer to improve their skills must be a result of their lack of mobility.

As a result, many instructors are getting certified as golf fitness professionals.

Again, this goes to the idea that complexity works best.

To improve mobility, the client is given a barrage of stretches and exercises.

However, it is far more difficult to improve mobility over time, because that requires lengthening and loosening muscles and tendons.

That is far more difficult to do than it is to strengthen bone, muscle and tendons.

Also, it is far more difficult to measure progress, and if you stop training for a period of time, you go right back to where you started.

On the other hand, you can retain strength, or regain strength much more quickly if you are laid up by illness or injury.

best golf fitness exercises I would argue that, after strength training, conditioning is more important than mobility.

Many injuries occur due to fatigue, because form breaks down as we get tired.

Therefore, once they’ve built a solid foundation of strength (this takes about six months of consistent training for the average person), the golfer should turn some of their attention toward muscle endurance.

Muscle endurance to the untrained eye can look like strength training.

The major difference is in the number of reps performed when you exercise.

Once you get past about 15 reps on most exercises, you are tapping into a different energy system, and you are starting to work on muscle endurance.

Push-ups are a great example. Once you get beyond 15 to 20 push-ups, you then start to work on endurance. The ability to perform 50 push-ups does not translated into substantial strength gains.

However, if you are completely untrained, you will get stronger by doing push-ups, just nowhere near as strong as you can get by training the bench press.

Many exercises that use kettlebells and dumbbells are also geared more toward muscle endurance rather than actual strength training.

Unfortunately, they are mislabeled as strength training exercises for golfers by many trainers.

With that said, some of these exercises are excellent for developing muscle endurance and overall conditioning.

For golfers, the most important muscle endurance exercises are those that focus on the core.

Examples include kettlebell swings and exercises such as Turkish get-ups, some compound exercises with dumbbells, some resistance band exercises, and exercises used in yoga and Pilates.

Cardio Exercise

golf fitness Is cardio exercise important to a golfer?

Well, Tiger Woods has always incorporated cardio into his routine.

In his younger days, he would run 4 miles in the morning, and sometimes another 4 miles in the evening, after a full day of practice.

One thing is for sure is that he never seemed to get tired out on the golf course.

Of course, for the average golfer, it is not necessary to go to this extreme.

However, incorporating cardiovascular exercise into your golf fitness program will improve your ability to practice longer and avoid fatigue on the golf course.

Final Thoughts About Golf Fitness

The number 1 priority for any golfer, but especially for golfers over 50, should be strength training.

I described the basic exercises that make up the most effective strength training programs.

Now, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the Train Like A Golf Athlete ebook.

This ebook goes into more detail about our recommended strength training and conditioning programs for golfers who have limited experience in the gym.

Just follow the instructions below.