The weather is cooling down in Arizona, which means golf season is upon us! Follow along with this article to give yourself the upper hand and prepare to hit the course in optimal shape with the fundamentals of golf training. Fitness has exploded in the world of golf and people are seeing the bountiful benefits working out has in their game. From the pros to the average joes, everyone playing golf needs to continually work on their bodies in order to keep playing the amazing, frustrating, simple yet complex sport–golf.

Golf is a summation of mobility, stability, coordination, power and strength produced one swing at a time. If one of these is off, your swing suffers and your score card increases! We need mobility in our ankles, hips and shoulders, stability in our knees, back and core, strength in our legs and power throughout our whole-body system. This mobility allows us to put our body in the proper positions throughout the swing. Stability allows us to stay lined up, on track and on time. Strength allows our body to produce force and finally power is our ability to transfer that force from the ground through the body and out of the club connecting it to the ball.

As you can see, each piece of our fitness is important and has a responsibility to serve a purpose for us. Therefore, we need to treat and train each of these fundamentals, mobility, stability, coordination, strength and power. Now onto the exercise that help break down the fundamentals of golf training.

Mobility: Bretzel

• Lay on your side with your top knee making a 90 degree angle in front of your hips
• Reach behind you, bending your bottom knee to grab the foot
• Pull your foot towards your glutes with your top arm, twisting your shoulders to the ground
• Look at the ceiling and continue to actively pull your bottom foot towards the glutes and top shoulder to the ground

Stability: Wall T-Hip Rotations

• Grab a wall or box slightly above hip height
• Rotate your hips, opening your body to look like a “T”
• Then tuck your hips, rotating your pockets under each other

Coordination: Deadbugs

• Laying flat on your back, tighten your abdominals, pushing your lower back into the ground
• Have your hands above your shoulders, knees bent above your hips
• Moving your opposite hand and opposite leg away from each other, extending them outward
• Return to the start position and repeat on other side

Strength: Bulgarian Goblet Squat

• Holding a weight near the center of your chest, put your foot behind you on a bench/couch
• Have your shoe laces on top of the bench and the other foot few feet in front of you

• Balancing on the front leg, lower your hips straight down, maintaining a nearly vertical front shin

Power: MB Golf Groove Swings

• Set up into your normal golf stance, head down and knees bent about shoulder width apart
• With nice tempo, bring the ball into the back swing, then the forward swing NOT RELEASING it
• Now the movement Is grooved, repeat, bringing the ball back with nice tempo and this time releasing the ball like you do with your club

Implement these exercises into your current fitness routine or seek a FAST trainer to complete your fundamentals of golf training! These exercises will help prime your body for golf but are encouraged to see a golf professional for specific instruction! Golf uses your entire body so make sure you train your entire body.