In the world of golf fitness for seniors, most of the attention tends to be paid on mobility and flexibility. In my opinion, that is the wrong priority.
As is the case with most people over 50, senior golfers tend to be weak, and this is particularly the case for golfers 60 and over.
This is due to the age related loss of muscle mass known as sarcopenia, and the lack of strength training to offset that condition.
This condition begins around age 40, and for the first ten years, the loss of muscle mass is relatively slow. Unfortunately, the process accelerates with age and really becomes noticeable past age 60.
At the same time, we are also losing flexibility due to our connective tissues becoming stiffer.
It’s the stiffness in the joints that most golfers become concerned about.
However, what they don’t understand is that strength training can help with both of these issues.
Senior lifter learning to squat
Legitimate strength training involves training with compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, presses and pulling exercises such as chin ups or lat pulldowns.
Because these movements involve multiple joints and long ranges of motion, training them will also help to strengthen your muscles and joints.
This will also allow you to achieve a greater range of motion over time.
If you are new to strength training, the best way to start is with a simple program that has you train three days per week with these movements… squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead press.
If you are unable to train one or more of these exercises, there are plenty of alternatives. These simply provide the biggest bang for your buck.
Starting out, you would train with two similar, but slightly different workouts, as follows:
Workout A – Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift
Workout B – Squat, Overhead Press, Deadlift
These workouts are then alternated so that you will train the bench press and overhead press three times every two weeks.
For the squat and the two pressing movements, we then perform three working sets of five repetitions.
For the deadlift, we only need one working set of five repetitions.
You start with very conservative weights and then add a little bit of weight for each workout.
The first time you head into the gym, you will learn how to perform the lifts with little weight, and slowly add weight to the bar, while doing five reps.
Eventually during this first workout, adding weight and performing five good reps will get noticeably more difficult.
Let’s say that occurs at 100 pounds. The next time you go in to workout you would drop the weight to 80 or 90 pounds, and then do three working sets of five reps (after you warm up sets).
After about a month, it is a good idea to swap out the deadlift every other workout for a different pulling exercise such as lat pulldowns.
This is because ultimately you will lift the most weight with the deadlift, and it places more stress on the body. As a result, the increased weight on the bar with this lift requires more recovery time.
As a result, you can get strong with this lift fairly quickly, and then you don’t need to train it as often to slowly increase your strength.
Eventually, adjustments will be needed with the programming for each of the lifts as it becomes too difficult to add weight to the bar every workout and continue to perform three sets of five reps.
Those adjustments are beyond the scope of this particularly post, but what this means is that you’ve become quite strong and it requires a bit more effort to get stronger.
And that’s a good thing!
Now in addition to this strength training routine, you will want to work on your flexibility.
It’s a good idea to always do some light stretching ahead of your strength training sessions.
Aside from that then, I recommend going through a full body stretching routine at least twice each week.
The bottom line is this…
If you want to play golf close to your best abilities when you were younger, you will need to train for BOTH strength and mobility.
The core of that program should be legitimate strength training, not any of those silly programs where you train with little orange dumbbells and other devices.
Legitimate strength training will not only help you build strength, but it will also improve your balance and range of motion.
The key will be consistent training if you want to achieve the results you desire.
I provide all the details you need in my Strength and Fitness Training Program, so check it out!
Now, get to work!
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