When it comes to mastering your golf game, there is one indisputable truth: If you don’t use it, you lose it. Which is why winter may be the most important season of all—if you take a few months off, you’re likely to lose your fined-tuned touch and have to start from scratch come April.
Aside from jetting to warmer climates for a quick 18 once a week, there are other ways you can save your game this winter. Our editors consulted golf pros at the helm of Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star golf resorts to glean their best off-season tips so this spring you can hit the fairway in fine form:
- Improve your mental game with Coach Conner’s Brain conditioning book GOOD BRAIN BAD BRAIN YOUR BRAIN
- Learn to like PILATES for Golfers with TPI Golf Coach Mike Conner
- Swing weighted clubs
- Practice in the mirror
- Visit the driving range
- Chip and putt on carpet
- Sign up for Coach Conner’s TPI Classes in January and February
Winter Conditioning Ideas
As we move into January, and February, the
focus will shift to strength and power. Practice should resume according to
your normal golfer routines, and begin participation in competitive events. You
should have a reassessment of flexibility to ensure that the loaded joints and
muscles are prepared for the increased weights. You can visit with TPI Coach
Mike Conner and learn how you can be evaluated and get a more customized
conditioning program. During this conditioning period, you will want to add
explosive activities to their workouts. Explosive activities are more functional
and dynamic while include plyometrics. Plyometrics uses the stretch-shortening
cycle within your joint-muscle complex to help you effectively generate more
speed and power. There are numerous TPI functional movement patterns that the
average golfer can participate in during Coach Conner’s TPI classes or a
customized training session. Cable machines and functional movement tubing
(FMT) are best ways to challenge the golfer’s body through normal movement
patterns, and these patterns will equate to a more efficient and stable golf
swing. Another consideration in this phase is circuit training. You can vary
your workout from upper body exercises to lower body exercises within the same
workout to get cardiovascular benefit as you increase muscle strength and
power. Regardless of your choices keep moving, right size your nutrition, and
get sleep.
Plyometrics, also known as jump training or plyos, are exercises in which muscles exert maximum force in short intervals of time, with the goal of increasing power (speed-strength).