Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Program for the Ungifted

I am not athletically gifted. Anyone who has known me and spent time with me athletically knows that although I do have an aptitude for activity, I was not born with natural athletic ability. That is probably why I excelled the most in my high school years at cross country and track, sports where perseverance can generally (but not completely) make up for lack of natural ability.

I believe golf is in the same category, some hard work and the right training can make up for lack of talent. There could probably be a bibliography for this post, including Tiger Woods' How I play Golf, Golf For Dummies - 2nd Edition (still on loan from Aaron), and a variety of websites including fitforgolfusa.com, all of which contributed to my next thoughts.

From what I can gather, there are four areas that can be addressed in the off season to help anyones golf game:
  1. Balance
  2. Flexibility
  3. Posture
  4. Strength
The majority of the exercises I found are structured such that all golfers can be participants. In other words, my grandmother could probably do most of them. Therefore, keeping in mind I am also training for a triathlon in the spring and my recent fascination with core strength and flexibility, I have weeded through dozens of exercises and stretches to come up with an off season improvement program. I will not clutter this post with the details but it is available at this link along with some instructions for those that are interested.

What I have found that may be of immediate interest is that although my balance, flexibility and strength seem to be OK, my posture is terrible. Oddly, I am excited at this revelation and have included a number of stretches and exercises geared toward fixing it. Tiger Woods swears by physical fitness in improving a golf game. Let's hope he's right. It can't hurt right?

1 comment:

Andrew said...

Ah yes, the days of cross country. I remember them well. And true, it was more a test of endurance than sheer athleticism.

Keep up the posts. I wish I could play golf, but for the time being I will live vicariously through you.