Warm Up To The Tee

By: Alan Smith

You are about to stress all your major muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints along with putting a load of nearly 8 times your body on your spine as you swing your club nearly 100 miles per hour, don’t you think you should consider preparing your body just a little. Every other sports player performs a pre-game warm-up and golfers should too.

Warming up your body gets the blood flowing to all your muscles, tendons, etc., gets you stretched out so you don’t shock you body with your first swing and potentially injure yourself, gets your neuromuscular system up and running, and finally gets you mentally focused on fluidic body movement.

Warm-ups should be done just before your game and many doctors recommend performing stretches during your game as you are able. Greg Norman has a great set of stretches you can perform during your game found on his website http://www.shark.com/sharkwatch/fitness/fitness16.php titled “On Course Warm Up.”

Regarding game improvement, a study conducted by Dr. A J Fradkin of Monash University in Melbourne Australia found that a well-designed warm-up program followed for only 5 weeks greatly improved the club head speed of the studied group. The tested group consisted of golfers between the ages of 23 and 64 with handicaps between 12 and 27. (1)

The tested warm-up program consisted of three parts.

1) Four moving exercises for only 15 seconds each. The exercises were performed quickly to increase body temperature and included windmills and trunk twists.
2) Nine static stretches performed twice for each side of the body and held for 5 seconds for the major golf muscles; three for the shoulder area, one for the truck are, one for hamstring and lower back, one for the chest, two for the wrist and one for the forearm.
3) 30 seconds are swinging a golf club in the air with a gradual increase in range of motion and force.

Now that doesn’t sound too hard to do, does it?

Add a simple warm-up routine the next time you start your game and you’ll feel much better and play better. Fore!

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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