Golfers of all ages can benefit significantly from weight training. It’s become pretty obvious that weight training is becoming more and more accepted among professional golfers as well. With this article, I’ll focus on weight training for golfers over 50.
Before I move on, let me clarify that I equate weight training with strength training.
Golfers who are interested in weight training are going to lift weights with the goal of getting stronger, rather than just to build huge muscles.
With that in mind, the terms weight training and strength training are interchangeable.
When I refer to weight training and strength training, I am focused on legitimate strength training, and that involves training with barbells.
In the golf fitness world, there is considerable confusion in regard to weight training.
Many of the exercises offered by golf fitness trainers involve the use of dumbbells, kettlebells and resistance bands.
While those exercises will help you get a little bit stronger if you are untrained, legitimate weight training involves barbells.
Weight training for golfers over 50
Golfers over 50 years old are in particular need of weight training.
By age 50, the process of sarcopenia, or age related loss of muscle mass, has been ongoing for ten years or more in people who have not trained.
Classic golf body… big belly and skinny legs
This is why people past age 50 are going to be significantly weaker than they were at 30 if they have not trained.
The problem in the fitness community, and the medical community, is that people over 50 are effectively discouraged from legitimate strength training.
We are told that it is too dangerous to do squats and deadlifts with heavy weight.
I’m here to tell you that is all garbage.
Golfers over 50 should embrace legitimate strength training as a means of prolonging their ability to play golf at a decent level into their 80s and beyond.
The best strength exercises for golfers over 50
The best way to build strength over the shortest period of time, even if you are over 50, 60 or even 70 years old, is with compound movements involving barbells.
These movements include the squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead press. I like to round out this group with pull-ups and chin-ups, or lat pulldowns for people who can’t do those exercises.
These are the best exercises for building strength because they involve natural human movement patterns, and they can be loaded with the most weight.
Consider that the world records for the squat and deadlift are both over 1,000 pounds. You can’t lift that much weight doing kettlebell swings!
A basic weight training program for golfers over 50
Barbell Squat
While the aforementioned exercises are the best for building strength over a short period of time, it is necessary to employ certain programming principles in order to allow this to work.
First, you don’t start training with heavy weight right away. That is how people get injured.
It is necessary to learn the movements while using conservative weights.
We then employ the principle of progressive overload in order to build strength.
With every workout, for as long as possible, we add a little bit of weight to the bar.
To build strength, we want to exploit the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle.
Training one day, appropriate rest until your next workout, and then loading the bar with more weight for the next workout exemplifies the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle in its simplest form.
A linear progression occurs when a trainee is capable of sustaining consistent increases in workload in successive training sessions for a period of time.
For many trainees, this period of time typically lasts from four to six months.
The basic weight training program for golfers over 50 looks like this…
Workout A
Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift
Workout B
Squat, Overhead Press, Deadlift
These workouts are alternated, so that over a two week cycle, each workout is performed three times.
In week 1, you do Workout A on Monday, Workout B on Wednesday and Workout A again on Friday.
In week 2, you do Workout B on Monday, Workout A on Wednesday and Workout B again on Friday.
After a period of time, we then swap out the deadlift with a different pulling exercise, such as pull-ups. A trainee who can’t do pull-ups will do lat pulldowns.
Sets and Reps
To build strength, we need to expose our body to intensity, or heavy weight. As a result, we tend to train with fewer reps.
Starting out, our focus is on five reps.
Here’s why…
Consider the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to training.
At the low end is 1 rep, and at the high end, we’ll use 20 reps. 20 reps is often employed by the bodybuilding community, which is focused on muscle hypertrophy.
Powerlifters train to have the ability to lift a maximum weight for a single rep. This is effectively just a performance.
A true one rep maximum weight will likely require so much effort, that the rep may take 5 to 7 seconds to complete.
After completing that rep, it will be impossible to immediately complete a second rep at that weight.
At the other end of the spectrum is the 20 reps.
Now, after you’ve completed 20 reps, chances are, if you take a couple deep breaths, you can squeeze out another rep or two.
At this point, it is no longer maximum force production at work, but muscle endurance.
In between this rep range is a number that will result in the following training adaptations:
- Increased strength
- Increased muscle mass
- Improved conditioning
That rep range is right around five reps.
After you’ve been training for a couple months and the weight on the bar has increased quite a bit, you will find that pushing out the fifth rep will be quite difficult.
It may take you a few seconds to complete the rep, and once done, you will be huffing and puffing, particularly after a heavy set of squats or deadlifts.
This is me, deadlifting in my garage
In general, novice lifters will make significant gains in strength over the span of a few months simply by performing THREE working sets of FIVE reps.
The lone exception is that we initially only train one working set of five reps on the deadlift, since it puts more stress on the nervous system than the other lifts, due to the weight on the bar and the number of muscle groups involved in the lift.
Before the working sets, we do several warm-up sets.
Here is an example workout for the bench press…
Set 1 – Empty Bar – 10 reps with focus on form
Set 2 – 100 pounds – 5 reps
Set 3 – 115 pounds – 3 reps
Set 4 – 135 pounds – 1 rep
Set 5 – 145 pounds – 1 rep
Set 6 – 155 pounds – 1 rep
Sets 7-9 – 175 pounds – 5 reps
For the warm up sets, you only rest for the time it takes to change the weight on the bar.
For the three working sets, you will rest for about 2 to 3 minutes.
Over time, as the weight on the bar gets much heavier, you’ll need upwards of five minutes between sets.
This is particularly true for the squat, since it employs so much muscle mass.
Eventually, performing three working sets of five reps will prove to be too difficult because we’ve added considerable weight to the bar over a fairly short period of time.
That is when adjustments to the training will occur.
This typically begins with the overhead press first, since it is the most difficult lift and the lift in which you will eventually lift the least amount of weight.
Final Thoughts
Weight training for golfers over 50 is no different than how weight training should be for the general public.
Golfers need general strength as much as anyone, and it really makes no sense to focus on “golf specific” exercises that won’t help achieve that goal.
This is why I recommend any golfer who wants to improve their performance on the golf course to follow the two factor model of performance… train for strength, practice golf.
Once you’ve gotten through the Novice Linear Progression, you can then focus on building speed with some different training.
However, you should always continue to train for strength going forward, even if on a reduced schedule.
Want to learn more? Check out my Strength and Fitness training program.
If your goal is to train from home, be sure to check out the Necessities for a Home Golf Gym.
