Golf power reigns supreme in the modern game. Making the ball go far is a coveted skill in golf. Few need to be convinced of the value of the ability to send the ball a long way and its potential to lower your scores. Never mind the impact on your scores, it’s just damn fun to hit it past your buddies too.
But how? Sound technique in your swing is certainly critically important, but as the saying goes, you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe. Your body must be capable of producing some golf power, and certain muscles in particular are responsible for it. Train them and add serious distance to your game.
Golf Power Comes from Your Butt
Our apologies if you prefer a more refined term like gluteus maximus. Whatever term you prefer, your backside is incredibly important to your golf swing, most notably as the main lower body muscle responsible for generating power. Your glutes are responsible for your ability to externally and internally rotate your hips on the backswing and downswing. That means strong powerful glutes create a strong and powerful rotation of the hips, and as Chubbs said, “It’s all in the hips.”
You can build your glute strength with hip thrusts, squats and lunges. When squatting, you can target your glutes more than your thighs by incorporating machine-based variations of squats that allow you to safely position your feet more forward. This will typically also allow for a deeper range of motion which will also hit the glutes harder.
To build real golf power, jump, jump, and jump some more. Counter Movement Jumps, also known as Jump Squats, are a great staple exercise for building explosiveness. Start in your golf posture, quickly drop into a half squat and quickly change direction, jumping as high as possible. Make these a regular part of your workout and you’re guaranteed to build lower body power.
Golf Power from Your Pecs and Lats
Your chest and back muscles play a critical role in creating golf power. Among other roles, the lead lat (latissimus dorsi if you must) is the primary muscle pulling the club down and accelerating the lead arm in the downswing. The pectorals work to create speed in bringing the arms across the body in the downswing into the follow-through. Both are essential to shoulder function and stability, providing a solid platform to allow this speed to occur.
You don’t need to train for bulging pecs and wide-sweeping lats to create golf power. (Excessive size in these muscles might even be detrimental.) But you do need to train for strength and power. In the offseason, that means a steady diet of bench presses, rows and pullups to build that foundational strength.
Come power development time, give plyometric push-ups or one of its many variations a try. They’re performed nearly the same as a standard push-up, except the upward push is done as forcefully as possible. As in, your hands should be leaving the ground forcefully. For your lats, perform rows and pull downs with bands in the same forceful manner to build explosiveness.
Build Those Forearms
Building strong forearms for golf power seems almost counterintuitive, right? Chances are you’ve been told to hold the club as if you were holding a baby bird, which is nonsensical device that somehow still seems to live on. Obviously, you don’t need a powerful grip to keep Tweety alive, so what’s the point of building your forearms?
Because they’re the last major muscle group between you and the club. If you’ve successfully built power from the ground up, from your glutes through your core to your pecs and lats, you still haven’t completed the task of getting that power out to the club. Strong forearms mean a strong grip, and that means more speed getting out to the club head, and improved control of the club face in all playing conditions.
You can find all sorts of hand and grip strength trainers to help build your forearms. Most of them are effective, but the real gains in grip strength are found in something rather simple: lift heavy things. Deadlifts, rows, and even pull-ups (without the aid of lifting straps) are an excellent way to build your grip. The real money exercise is a farmers carry. Pick up heavy dumbbells or kettlebells and go for a walk for a set distance or time. Rest, then do it again. It’s that simple, and the exercise will work your core while simultaneously building your grip strength too.
The Core
It seems rather obvious, but all that power you generate from the lower body must go somewhere. It’s your core that transmits that power to the upper body, which will in turn go nowhere if you can’t rotate your torso effectively.
We’ve already described our favorite core exercises here. Put simply, a steady diet of planks, Pallof Presses, and the farmers carry will go a long way towards building a super-strong core. Add them to your workouts and you’ll likely see big gains in speed and stability.
Golf is a power game. If you want to add power to your game, you need to train the muscles that provide it. Get after your glutes, lats, pecs, forearms and core to seriously ramp up your golf power.