Rotational exercises for golfers: the mistake you don't want to make.

Golfers need to earn the right to rotate.

But coach:

'The swing is all about rotation so shouldn’t I spend all my gym time doing so?'

Nope.

And I don’t mean that rotational exercises are bad or can’t be beneficial. At one point they can serve as a super smart addition to optimise performance that makes you improve kinematic sequencing, hit the ball further, increase clubheadspeed, have more torque in the body, experience steady consistency, have more stability and greater overall athletic capacity.

There’s just a time and place to implement them.

First and foremost, there are a number of strategies to improve all of these athletic golf components. The most successful ones start with an assessment. When you know where an athlete is limited, you know where they need to work.

And let’s be clear here:

the kind of rotational exercises I’m referring to are NOT yoga-mobility type twists, such as the yoga poses below. In this example we MUST create rotation in the thoracic spine and tap into optimizing mobility.

Golfers Magazine Instructions 2016

The ones I'm referring to are called ANTI-ROTATIONAL exercises.

They are categorised instead as high impact-full body-strength, stability & speed movements.

Some examples are:

Chops, lifts, pallof presses, unilateral farmer carries, plank transitions, one arm one weight squats or deadlifts, bent arm tornadoes. Usually with resistance, either in split stance or high knees position. Many of those done with FMT bands, kettlebells, indian clubs, mini resistance bands..

For those of you who are TPI fitness certified, think of:

Demonstrate, Capacity with Feedback and Capacity in the 4:4 functional exercise matrix and

Split, square and single leg stance with one hand one weight or one hand in the 3:3 strength matrix. (extra options for single leg stance: Doing a motor pattern against resistance or by adding capacity to the movement, but providing feedback to help assist the exercise, Capacity, Performing the motion without any feedback with resistance.

Here are a couple of my favourite ANTI ROTATIONAL exercises:

Looking to the above POSITIONS.

And moving through the TRANSITIONS of these positions:

Golfers need to be in control all the time.

'Well, but that's easy coach!'

However, if you are not familiar with this training method; all of these trigger some kind of motion or rotation and instability in the core. I guarantee you, they look simple and easy but they are hard work. Better so, they are SMART work!!

So you've got one job:

resist the motion to rotate.

So only train more of mobility and yoga type exercises, ONCE you can also fully control your body in all anti-rotational exercises.

A strong stable core is able to resist any motion.

It's like the brake system in a car. We can only accelerate as much as we can decelerate. The same principle applies here: We can only rotate as much as we can resist the rotation.

What happens if golfers only focus on mobility rotational exercises (think of many yoga poses) but don't train anti-rotational exercises?

It's a precedent for overuse injuries. The body will compensate. The body mechanics will brake down at one time sooner or later. Results won't last. Hence: golfers need to earn the right to rotate.

I hear you:

'but all that mobility is crucial for the golf swing!?'

Although it might seem like any flexibility of mobility is better than no mobility exercises, focusing on mobility without addressing specific needs for stability could lead to imbalances, instability, power loss, and increased risk of injury that impedes sport performance. This is especially true for golf because it requires an enormous range of dynamic rotational motion, as well as the ability to execute precise, controlled movement within a much shorter range.

Consequently, spending time opening hips and hamstrings, and only doing yoga twists or rotations, isn’t going to help your handicap. That said, when yoga based exercises and mobility is paired with stability and specific routines for the physical and physiological demands of the game AND applying the right strategy based on an individual assessment, it can become a high performance training tool.

And it’s completely okay if you are already an experienced golfer or even have been into fitness training for a while and still find yourself seeking that missing link.

It’s just not smart to then invest all of your training time just doing yoga or flexibility training without doing an assessment first.

Go all in on mastering stability too. It will provide more return on investment in the long run.

Of course, this is all easier said then done, which is why I’ve covered this training element in my online training course Fundamental Routines. I've mastered how to coach this, on how to integrate both stability and mobility, so you can also experience the benefits. I explain more in detail about the importance of the mobility-stability kinetic chain for golfers and have the appropriate training sessions along with it.

Photography: Corné van der Stelt for Golfers Magazine and Ralph Reniers Media