The 2024 Golf Performance Guide: 30-Minute Golf Workout

THE 2024 GOLF PERFORMANCE GUIDE

GOLF’S MENTAL GAME | GOLF & ALCOHOL

Tune up for golf with a lunchtime workout

By Neil Wolkodoff, Medical Program Director for the Colorado Center for Health & Sports Science

If you are stronger, have more endurance and have better movement mobility, you will golf better. If you struggle to find golf training time, just 30 minutes a day can improve your golf.

The key is focusing on the most beneficial exercises and elevating effort level/intensity to compensate for the shorter training time. Realistically, you will achieve less benefit than you can in 60 minutes, but substantial improvement will happen. To make this work, the pace must be up a notch from a more extended session.

Improving golf strength is a primary goal, and the first significant component is resistance or weight training. Another focus of a resistance training program is to develop functional movement abilities, enhancing your ability to move through space and time with additional body awareness. If you use exercises that utilize all three planes of motion, especially standing, you will activate every core muscle. You can always do additional core work, yet these functional movements use all the core muscles. In applied terms, this part of a 30-minute program combines common exercises with functional variations.

Sets, repetitions, and pace: Each set should take 20 to 30 seconds, with a 40-second rest/recovery or change period before the next set— about one exercise per minute. Critical exercises get three or more sets.

It would help if you had the endurance to play 18 holes; this modified circuit program will aid that. An additional kick will be a six-minute interval program at the end of the upper body days, enough to kick up your sprint fitness for going up hills to the green or the tee box.

Use a treadmill or total body elliptical, 20 seconds of high-intensity effort, with 40 seconds as slow as you can go to recover. Six cycles of this format will improve your energy and boost your resting metabolism after the session. Recovery and aerobic or general endurance will need more training focus. For most golfers, Wednesday’s middle day is just energy system training. Using an upright or recumbent bike, pedal for 30 minutes at a moderate pace—something just below the “burn” level in the legs.

MONDAY

• Warm up, bike or elliptical for two minutes

• Standing cable chest press, single-arm, with torso rotation, 3 x 15 R/L

• Incline press with dumbbells, bench 3 x 10

• Shoulder press, dumbbells, bench, 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8

• Chest flys, 3 x 15

• Triceps Press down, 4 x 12

• Power intervals, 20 seconds interval/work, 40-second recovery, repeat 6 cycles

 

TUESDAY

• Warm-up

• Squats with dumbbells, 2 x 15

• Squats with dumbbells, 2 x 15, one foot on a foam pad or balance disc, change pad for the second set

• Leg extension, seated, 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 3 x 15

• Walking forward lunge, a single dumbbell in both hands, close to the chest, torso twist around forward leg in the down position, 3 x 10

• Reverse calf raises, standing on the edge of stairs, holding the rail, 4 x 20

• Leg curl machine, 4 x 15

 

WEDNESDAY

• 30-minute aerobic session

This is important! You should be in good health with no orthopedic issues to perform a program like this. If there is any question about physical readiness or a condition, consult your physician. If there is a question about a specific exercise, execution, or equipment, consult a healthcare professional. Always start with a lighter weight or resistance so you can understand both the apparatus and your physical ability before moving to a heavier load/weight.

 

THURSDAY

• Warm Up

• Lat pull down to chest, wide grip, 4 x 12

• Standing bicep curl, dumbbells, twisting, 3 x 15

• Standing single arm cable row, parallel to flow, with torso rotation at the end of the motion, 4 x 15 R/L

• Shoulder shrug, dumbbells, 2 x 12

• Crossover, single arm trap row with minor rotation and back extension, 3 x 10 R/L

• Power intervals, 20 seconds interval/work, 40-second recovery, repeat 6 cycles

 

FRIDAY

• Warm Up

• Leg Press, high leg position, 3 x 10

• Crab walks, band at knee, 3 x 10 left to right and back again

• Alternative: Abductor/adductor machine, 3 x 10

• Hamstring deadlift motion, dumbbells, 4 x 12

• Body weight squats, one leg using toe down to enhance balance, 4 x 8, two sets with each toe down. During the last 1/3 of the up motion, turn the shoulders/torso outward over the fully contracted foot/leg

 

---

Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram