Feeding Your Golf Addiction In The Winter Part 13: Get Golf Fit

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the off season:

Get Golf Fit

In spite of all the misgivings, golf is a physical game. Greater strength, flexibility and endurance will undoubtedly improve your game. The pros recognize this; so should we. Thus, you can feed your golf addiction and improve your summer game in the winter by taking the time to get golf fit.

This winter, I’m approaching golf fitness from several directions.

First, I’m determined to drop at least fifteen pounds. Less padding around the middle will increase my ability to turn quickly, boosting clubhead speed and distance. I’m cutting back on the calories and keeping track of them with an app on my BlackBerry. My overall goals are to cut out those sugary sodas, simple white carbohydrates (while keeping complex carbs, whole grains and the like), and other low-nutrient, high-calorie foods, while replacing them with high nutrient ones. So, no more cereal, toast or bagels for breakfast; now it’s an apple and cheese.

In conjunction with that, I’ve been getting up earlier than usual to ride the stationary bike in the basement for half an hour before work. That should speed up the weight loss and improve aerobic conditioning (so I’m not winded after a long climb up a fairway hill).

I’m also trying to increase my golf strength. My primary tools are a set of resistance cords called the GolfGym PowerSwing Trainer .To use it, you put a foot in the loop at the bottom, take address with your hands on the grip and go through the swinging motion. You can also wedge the bottom loop into a door jamb and pull down in a golf motion.

For core strength I’m going to try one of those core balls. A fitness-crazed golfing buddy of mine has long told me that these are highly effective ways to improve core strength (and get back to that flat-belly look I had in my twenties). A company called G2 Fit (whose golf stretching mat I use daily) has a core exercise ball that has illustrations of the exercises printed right on the sides. Like their self-guiding mat, the self-guiding ball would make it easier to keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing.

And finally, I’m continuing to work on my flexibility with my G2 Fit Self-Guiding Golf Stretch Fitness Mat . It’s a brilliantly simple idea: a high quality exercise mat with the stretching exercises printed right on the mat. No watching DVDs or flipping pages in a book. It’s all right there.