Executive Golfers: A Fitness ROI

By: Alan Smith

Executives often can’t find time to “get golf fit” thinking they don't have time to get to a gym. The reality is you don’t need to. If you are familiar with the Pareto principle (the 80-20 rule) it can be applied to golf fitness as well as finance or other areas of business. You can actually get 80% of all golf fitness benefits by doing a few select exercises all in your own office. This is valuable information since currently one would be getting 0% of the benefits by doing 0% of the exercises.

Here are the exercises that give you the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak: Desktop Pushups, Single-leg Squats, Hip Flexor Stretches and Office Seat Power Pivots.

Desktop Pushups
Place both hands on the corner of a sturdy desk or countertop. Move your feet back to a comfortable angle for your body to do pushups. Do your pushup with your elbows out and you will strengthen your chest muscles; do them with your elbows rubbing your sides and you will work your triceps.

Do as many as you can up to 20 pushups, once a day.

Golf Benefit: Both muscle groups are used during your downswing. This will improve drive distance.

Single-leg Squats
Get in your address position and lift one foot off the ground, bring your arms up and lean over more as if to be running in place on one leg. Go up and down on that one leg as far as you can. If you need to, hold onto your chair or desk for support.

Work up to 20 squats on each leg.

Golf Benefit: Improves your balance, entire leg strength (from ankle to hip). Better weight shift control during swing and helps maintain proper swing plane on all surface types.

Hip Flexor Stretches
Tight hip flexors are the root cause of a number of muscle imbalances that not only affect golf but everyday life and posture for so many of us.

a. Place your left foot about four feet in front of your chair, place the top of your right foot on the chair behind you. Now drop your pelvis to your left heel and feel the stretch in the pocket area of your right leg. Switch feet to get the other leg.

Perform 3 times on each side, once every day.

Golf Benefit: Improves posture, reduces back pressure, allows abdominals to tighten, allows back and gluts (your buttocks) to strengthen and hamstrings to release. Improves your setup, golf posture, back endurance, range of motion for your legs and hips during backswing and your ability to stay in the proper swing plane.

b. Always follow any back extension (bending backwards like in the hip flexor stretch) with a forward bend or flexion. Stand and roll down so that your palms are on the floor with your knees bent, much like you would bend over to tie your shoes while standing. Keeping your palms on the floor, try to straighten up your legs. This will stretch your back and hamstrings.

Perform 3 times, once every day.

Golf Benefit: Same as listed for the Hip Flexor Stretch.

Office Seat Power Pivots
Powerful drives are performed by a powerful un-twisting from the backswing. It’s predominately done by strong obliques capable of ballistic rotations. As important as this fact is no one ever has exercises for this movement. The easiest way to do this is to pivot in your office chair.

Sit in your chair with both arms extended and holding on to the edge of your desk with hands one on top of the other (switch top and bottom hands every so often). Pick your feet up off the floor. Now simply rotate in your chair clockwise then couter-clockwise. Progressively increase your range of motion and your speed.

Perform a twist in each direction working up to 20 times and do this every other day.

Golf Benefit: Power, Power and Power Endurance. Did I mention it will increase your rotational power and endurance?

The effort is minimal, the payoff is great. For your best ROI in golf fitness do these four movements and you’ll drastically improve your game.

Article Source: http://www.bettergolfarticles.com

Alan Smith is co-author of the 2nd edition of Golf and Pilates for Pilates Professionals sold through The Pilates Physical Mind Institute . A Golf Conditioning Specialist and Pilates instructor located in North Carolina. He provides one-on-one training, group workshops and is available for speaking engagements. USA phone: 704-877-9556, Email: pilates289@yahoo.com and international website.

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