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Golf conditioning: a swing that lasts
The golf swing is the fastest rotational movement most bodies will ever produce — and most golfers train for it by golfing more. Your body is the only club you swing every shot. It deserves at least as much attention as the driver.
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Workouts and stretches to help your golf game, from my 9NEWS years — the quick version of what this article unpacks.
Play video: Workouts and stretches to help your golf game — 9NEWS Where golf games actually leak
Rotation is stored in the hips and mid-back — or it is not stored at all. A full turn needs the trail hip to accept rotation and the thoracic spine to coil over it. Desk years quietly remove both. The swing then either shortens (there goes distance) or borrows rotation from the lower back (there goes Monday). This is the same lesson running through every sport in this series: rotation is trainable, and almost nobody trains it.
Three directions that repay golfers fastest. Hip and mid-back mobility: half-kneeling rotations, open-books, deep hip work — range first, because you cannot swing through range you do not own. Rotational strength: band and cable chops in both directions, because the follow-through decelerates everything the backswing stored — and deceleration strength is injury protection you can measure. Ground force: the swing starts from the floor; split-stance and single-leg strength turn leg drive into clubhead speed.
For golfers past 50, one reframe matters more than any exercise: stiffness is not a life sentence, and "my back means I only play nine" is a pattern I unwind in the studio regularly. Range returns when it is asked for properly.
Common questions
Can exercise really add distance to my drives?
Often, yes — but usually not the way people expect. Distance leaks less from weak arms than from a body that cannot coil: limited hip and mid-back rotation caps how much energy you can store in the backswing, no matter how hard you swing. Restore that rotation and add ground-force strength, and speed frequently shows up without a single swing change.
Why does my back hurt after golf?
The swing concentrates ferocious rotation somewhere, and the body spends it where it has range. When hips and mid-back are stiff, the lumbar spine — designed for stability more than rotation — gets handed the job, eighty-plus times a round including practice swings. The usual fix is not swinging less; it is restoring rotation where it belongs and building the trunk control to transfer it.
What should golfers stretch before a round?
Move, rather than hold: hip circles, torso rotations with a club across the shoulders, arm swings, a few half-speed swings building to full. Ninety seconds of that beats ten static stretches on the first tee. Save longer holds — hip flexors, glutes, the mid-back over a foam roller — for after the round or evenings, where they do their real work.
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