GolfPunk's Fitness Friday

Welcome to GolfPunk’s latest regular feature - Fitness Friday - where we detail the exercises the team are doing in an effort to get both golf fit and ready for the looming summer golf tour where, god forbid, shorts maybe the order of the day!

Firstly, the disclaimer. 

GolfPunk is not packed full of sylph like natural athletes and we are definitely more clubhouse veterans than ultra-marathon runners.  As a result, GP’s lawyers insisted we add this so, here goes! 

All of Fitness Friday’s articles are written with the very best intentions and include links to demonstrations of the exercises.  Before launching into any exercise routine, including GolfPunk's recommendations, please consider the need for professional assistance (or a pacemaker) and/or approval of a medical professional.  Or, to put it another way, on your own head be it as we accept no responsibility whatsoever.

Now we have the legals out of the way, here are the first must do exercise to get golf fit.

THE SQUAT

We love to hate and hate to love the squat but it’s a pretty crucial exercise.  In fact, many fitness experts recommend it as the exercise that everyone should do more than anything else.

The most obvious benefit of the squat is the improvement in leg strength, particularly quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves but it is also a great exercise for the whole body and assists in burning fat.

BENEFITS FOR GOLFERS

Improves posture, helps maintain form and builds those glutes and quad muscles which create so much power when swinging that stick.

The options:

THE BODY WEIGHT SQUAT

Favoured quck routine is 5 x sets of 20 body weight squats with either 30 seconds (if you're fit) or a minute (if a mere mortal) in between each set.

GOBLET SQUATS

Be careful with chosing a sensible weight that you can hold and for this we like 5 sets of 10 to 15 reps with a minute (or less for you fit people) in between.

BACK SQUATS

Our favourite of the squats because, well we like the look of the bar when we have lots of metal on it.  Current preferred option of the team is (on a relatively low weight) 4 sets of 10 reps as a warm up then we are additcted to 5,3,1's. 

Essentially the easiest programme ever.  After the warm up sets you do 5 reps at 60% of your 1 rep maximum (estimated or actual), 3 reps at 70% and 1 plus (or as many as you can) at 80-85%.  Its not nice but were very into it at the moment.

And Another Thing...

Dont Be a Golf Plank