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Five Exercises To Lower Your Golf Handicap

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Published: 20Jan2008
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Swinging a club powerfully and efficiently is based on what our bodies can do. As we get older, what we can do changes. Without maintaining strength and flexibility, we lose our ability to swing a club powerfully and efficiently. If you want to maintain a low golf handicap, you must maintain your strength and flexibility.

Exercising helps. We're not talking about lifting weights or running 5K races. While resistance training and running are good, you don't have to become a body builder to maintain your golf handicap. Stretching is just as effective. It's just a matter of pinpointing weak areas and using the right exercises to improve those areas.

Some strength and conditioning experts believe that the body's a series of mobility and stability joints. When a mobility joint is weak and malfunctioning, a stability joint compensates. This causes instability, dysfunction, and pain. If your hip—a mobility joint—malfunctions, then your lower back—a stability joint—compensates and you experience lower back pain.

Do two sets of each exercise (8 repetitions). Repeat in the opposite direction if the movement is to one side.

Over the Top
Coming over the top with your swing is one of a weekend golfer's most common mistakes. Weekend players attend thousands of golf lessons every year trying to cure this problem, created by the inability to turn your upper and lower bodies independently of each other, to no avail. The swing flaw causes you to come straight down with your swing, resulting in slices and pulls.

Supported Stork Turns:
Hold onto a club and stand on one leg, using the club as a support. Keep your shoulders square and rotate your pelvis back and forth.

Chicken Wing
If your shoulders are inflexible, you'll have difficulty rotating. Shoulder problems can cause the front arm to jut away from the body at the elbow during the through swing and look like a chicken wing. This flaw can cause elbow tendonitis and sliced shots.

Windshield Wipers:
This exercise uses lightweight dumbbells. Holding the dumbbells in front of you while in your golf posture, rotate your arms away from each other as far as you can.

Body Sway
I've discussed this flaw in my golf tips a few times. If your hips are inflexible, your body can't turn properly. Instead of rotating, your hips turn away from the target in the backswing and your body weight shifts outside your feet. You end up hitting thin or fat shots.

Kneeling Long Turns:
Line your feet behind each other and kneel while holding a club overhead. Turn your body as far as you can each way when in the kneeling position.

Flat Shoulder Pain:
If you have back problems and your shoulders are tight, then you will have a tendency to lose your posture during your swing and make a poor body turn. The club will be off plane. This flaw makes it difficult to produce solid contact.

Reach, roll, and lift:
From a crouching position with your head resting on your fist on one hand, slide your other arm along the ground as far as you can and then lift it as you roll your palm upward toward the sky. Hold this position for 15 seconds, and then switch arms.

Getting Stuck:
If you have issues with your lower body, especially your ankles, your pelvis will thrust forward on the downswing and then move forward into the space where the club was supposed to travel. The club gets stuck behind the body, leading to blocked and hooked shots.

Ankle Wipers:
Sit on a physio ball and lift your toes to the right and left, like a windshield wiper, keeping your heal on the ground and your knees still.

The exercises described above help you maintain strength and flexibility in your mobility joints. They address five key mobility areas that weaken as golfers age. The exercises—if done correctly and faithfully—improve your flexibility and strength in these areas and help you swing a club more powerfully and efficiently. That in turn helps you maintain your golf handicap.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book "How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros." He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction. http://www.howtobreak80.com .

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