The Golf Warm-Up Made Practical

If there was a new golf club that had irrefutable evidence showing that it would increase your distance, consistency, and decrease the risk of injury for every golfer, they wouldn’t be able to keep it on the shelves. If you tell someone that a quick warm-up will do the same, the likelihood of buy-in will decrease greatly. I think there are two main reasons for this 1) People think it will take a lot more time and effort than it actually needs to and 2) Those that have bought in do the wrong thing or an inefficient version of what needs be done and end up stopping because it’s taking too much time or is ineffective.

To solve the first reason, a good warm up needs to be quick, easy, require no equipment, and to be done on the range.

To make the warm-up effective, it will have to create the following changes in the body:

Increased blood flow to golf specific muscles
Increased tissue elasticity, flexibility, contractility
Prepare and prime the nervous system for coordinated movements.

There are many variables of exercises that will work great, but I like to break them into three categories that make up three distinct parts of the warm-up.

1) Increase body temperature; Simple exercises that bring blood to muscles, increase your heart rate and make start to breathe deeper.

2) Improve movement; This where we do some stretching and mobility work.

3) Movement preparation; This component of the warm up starts with small simple movements to activate individual muscles then becomes more complex to get your body parts moving in the correct sequence.

The beauty is that you can interchange exercises based on what you need, how much time you have, and what equipment you have at your disposal.

Here is an example that will take about 7-10 minutes and accomplish everything that is needed. Make sure you are able to do them correctly and if you have trouble, substitute with an easier variation, or consult a professional to give you specific advise.