By Krista Kurvits

Every golfer wants to play better golf. If you’re competitive, to lower your handicap and improve your score is a common goal.

In golf the body is told to move through the transverse plane (rotation) at speeds that can create a torque equal to baseball pitching. If you haven’t prepared your body to do this type of movement 30 to 40 times per game, you could be creating physical problems in your lower back, hip or shoulder, to name a few.

A golfer’s conditioning program must therefore be designed to incorporate the entire body, keeping in mind three important factors:

  1. Balance
  2. Good posture
  3. Optimal rotation

Another challenge is the complexity of the golf swing. This challenge dominates the need for stability, flexibility and balance in the body’s core. When mechanically insufficient because of poor posture, the golfer has less control of the factors that control ball flight. Those factors are:

  1. The clubface alignment
  2. The path your swing takes
  3. The angle of attack and impact
  4. Your swing speed
  5. Hitting the sweet spot

Functional core training is ideal for golf’s purposes. Unlike exercise programs designed with a bodybuilding format (muscle hypertrophy through isolation), functional training is designed to restore, balance and strengthen the body using coordinated movement patterns specific to golf.

To be a good golfer you must have good rotation. To have optimal rotation you must you must have good posture. If your conditioning program doesn’t emphasize these points but resembles something a bodybuilder might use, your time and effort spent working out may not benefit your golf game.

For more information on training for your specific activities, please call (540) 330-3936 for Krista or 580-9939 for Hayward.