Last week we began the process of developing an off-season golf fitness program for the improvement of your golf game. We started the process with setting goals and then moved onto the physical assessment of your body. Our first step in this process was to assess your flexibility. We utilized the Rotational Hamstring Stretch Exercise. During the execution of the exercise I wanted you to pay attention to certain points within the stretch. The reason for this request was to pinpoint areas within the body that are “inflexible” and that we need to address with flexibility exercises.

During the exercise if you found it difficult to extend your arms straight overhead this is an indicator of “tightness” in the shoulders. This indicates that we need to implement some shoulder capsule stretches into your program. Secondly, if you found it difficult to extend your hands down towards the floor without bending the knees, this tells me there may be some flexibility issues in your lower back and hamstrings, thus is an indication that we need to address these two areas of the body in your flexibility exercises. Finally, if you found it difficult to rotate during this exercise, this tells me we must add some flexibility exercises to improve the rotation within your core region.

Outside of flexibility I find it beneficial to assess both the muscular strength and power outputs of the golfer. In order to assess both of these areas we are again going to utilize some golf-specific exercises. To assess your muscular strength levels I would like you to perform the Elbow Hold exercise we covered in a previous article. Perform the exercise as described in the article and use a stop watch to time how long you can “hold” the position of the exercise and write this number down.

Once you have completed the elbow hold let’s move on to assessing your muscular power. To determine this muscular power we are going to utilize the Seated Russian Twist exercise described previously. I would like you to perform the exercise as described in the article, but perform the rotation within the exercise as fast as you can back and forth in a controlled manner. Record the number of rotations back and forth that you can complete before becoming fatigued.

Next week we will go over the results of both your Elbow Hold and Seated Russian Twist and begin the process of outlining your individualized off-season golf fitness program.