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Originally Posted by cbwheeler Great exercises 300yds. All golfers can benefit by strengthing their golf muscles. Not only does this give us more distance, but it also increases our potential for longevity as well as making the golf swing much easier to execute.
I'd like to clarify one thing so people aren't confused. The reasons strongs wrists are important to achieving more distance is not so much how fast you can snap your wrists, but how long you can hold the lag in your swing, which is the angle on the downswing between the hands and the clubs, generated by holding your wrists from firing through. The stronger your wrists are, the longer you can hold this angle and the more clubhead speed your release will generate through the impact zone.
I'll add a couple of exercises. Hand strength is also vital to creating this type of lag.
Grab a tennis ball in one hand. Squeeze it as hard as you can for 3-5 seconds, relax your hand for a few seconds, then do it again. Do 5 reps with each hand at first, then more as your hand gets stronger.
Grab a newspaper and lay out a page you're finished with. Put your hand in the middle and without moving your hand in any direction, crumple up the page using your fingers only. Do this with a few pages in each hand. Wash your hands immediately thereafter. You'll get a lot of ink on your hands doing this.
Remember, while strength is important, golf isn't all about brute force. It's also largely about flexibility, so make sure, along with strengthening these muscles, you are also stretching them as well. I know plenty of guys that are twice as strong as me in the terms of raw muscle, but can't move worth beans. What happens? I outdrive them by 30 yards on average. They get mad because they hit the gym 5x a week. But see, they never stretch these muscles to get any elasticity in them, so their effectiveness is much less than someone who has less muscle, but more elasticity.
Now just imagine if you can get both strength and flexibility, like Tiger, Sergio, Howell III, Ernie, Camilo, and all of these long bombers on the Tour.
Hit the weights, but more importantly, hit the stretches. |
Nice add on..thanks for the clarification on the wrists..I knew it helped, but not really how, so thanks for explaining that more in depth..I'll have to give some of your workouts a go some time. Being able to flex definently is the key here. You'll notice how I never said to go to the gym..that's because I know that bulk is not the answer. The trick is, you want to able to be strong enough to acheive your target distance, but you don't want to bulk up to the point that you lose some of that extension. If you ever saw me, you would wonder how I flex so much..because I am a short, stocky, round shouldered guy, but I still keep that flexibility because I always work those muscles. Thats the reason I said to go slow on those exercizes..that away, you stretch the muscles slowly, therfore getting a much better workout on that particular muscle.
A stretch I like to do,(thanks to CB for reminding me of this aspect)
is stretch my arm out front, and then bend it towards my body. I can actually lay my arm down flat against my chest. I do that primarily on my left side.
Another one you can do is to grasp a short club, like a 9 iron, hold it with one hand on each end,(one on the head, and one on the grip) so that is horizontal in front of you. Slowly lower it down, til it hits your hips, then work your way back up, til the club is directly over your head, then go behind your back, all the way to your butt. Hold each position for 10 seconds. Gets your arms nice and loose.
Standing up, with your legs apart, and leaning to one side, so that the opposite leg is straight is snother great exercize to do. If your flexible enough to touch the ground, then your good to go.
Doing the splits is another good one to do.(Don't overdo it guys!!)If your like most, you won't be able to go down all the way, but you'll still feel it. Don't go down so far that it hurts, just far enough to stretch.
If anyone else has any more exercizes, here is the place to post it. Even if it's small, I'd still ike to see it.