When the days grow longer and the weather gets better, avid golfers and tennis players hit the greens and courts to enjoy their hobbies and passions.
Yet, many golfers and tennis players do so without the many benefits of strength training. This is unfortunate as strength training offers many advantages, including more power, better form, improved stability and increased stamina. It also helps with injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Below, you’ll discover some of the key benefits of strength training for golf and tennis. Plus, you’ll learn how Loyalty Fitness specifically supports injury prevention and rehabilitation.
The Foundation for Improved Performance: Core Strength
Do you wish your golf or tennis skills could be better?
You want to drive the golf ball further. You want your second match of tennis to be as good as your first one. You’re tired of feeling rusty after not playing all winter.
Strength training can help with all of these concerns.
How?
By focusing on core strength- the foundation for improved performance, technique, stability, flexibility and stamina.
The Importance of Core Strength For Golf & Tennis
Swinging a golf club or tennis racquet requires a combination of power, stability, flexibility and endurance. Although it seems like all of those driving factors come solely from your upper body, they don’t.
All of those essential elements generate from your core. Strengthening your core muscles, especially your “posterior chain” (abdominal, gluteal, hip, upper leg, and lower back muscles ) helps keep your upper and lower body in sync. When you concentrate on your core strength, you’ll improve your overall performance and protect your body from golf- or tennis-related injuries.
Core Strength Gives You Power
If your goal is to drive a golf ball further or hit that tennis ball past your opponent before they see it coming, core strength is key.
Exercises such as planks and rotational movements combined with full body weight training not only strengthen your core muscles, they also help improve core stability and your mind muscle connection. This in turn can improve your overall coordination as well.
When your muscle strength and coordination are in sync, your body better (and more safely) performs rotational movements, such as swinging a golf club or tennis racquet, that require a lot of power and coordination.
Core Strength Improves Your Technique
“I’m rusty!”
That’s a common phrase overheard on the greens and courts. Muscles lose their strength and power when they’re dormant. If you don’t use it, you lose it!
Not playing golf or tennis all winter combined with a lack of exercise altogether can result in the deterioration of your muscles. As some muscles weaken, other larger and stronger muscles begin to overcompensate to restore a sense of balance. That combination of muscle weakness and imbalance is detrimental to your technique.
Starting a regular core and full body strengthening program builds up those under trained muscles which gives your overworked muscles a break and restores balance between both. Once all of your muscles are performing optimally, your technique then improves.
Core Strength Increases Stamina
Stamina is necessary if you want to finish all 18 holes or play back-to-back matches. But if your muscles fatigue easily, they’re unable to withstand the demands of a full round of golf or more than one tennis match.
If each hole gets more challenging as the day progresses or you’re exhausted after one tennis match, your body is telling you that certain areas need improvement. Developing a strength training program focused on resistance exercises builds up your core muscles and overall strength and stamina so you can play all 18 holes or finish consecutive matches.
Not only does strength training help build your stamina, it also helps with consistency. After developing an effective strength program, your technique on the 18th hole is as smooth and solid as it was on the first. For tennis players, it means your third match of the day is just as fluid and natural as the first one.
Strength Training For Injury Prevention & Rehab
While untrained muscles negatively impact golf and tennis performance, they can do something even more detrimental: cause injury.
Participating in a strength training program supports muscle strength, restores balance, and improves flexibility to prevent common injuries associated with golf and tennis, including lower back pain, tendonitis or inflammation of wrists, elbows and shoulders, and muscle and/or joint sprains or strains (especially in the rotator cuffs and knees).
Strength training allows your body to better tolerate the rotational movements and intensities of playing golf and tennis so that your game is stronger and injuries are avoided. A functional training program is key to injury prevention and to make sure your muscles are firing properly on all cylinders.
However, there are times when, despite optimal muscle conditions, injuries do occur. While this is unfortunate, strength training can help minimize the downtime and speed up the rehabilitation process. But it’s important to keep in mind that it is much easier for your muscles to recover from injury if they’re in optimal condition beforehand.
Loyalty Fitness
Strength training is incredibly beneficial for golfers and tennis players. Not only can it improve your overall performance and technique, it’s also crucial to injury prevention and rehabilitation.
If the idea of strength training appeals to you, contact Loyalty Fitness to get the process started! We’ll work with you to develop a custom plan that’s geared to your sport-specific goals.
Our team has years of experience training clients to strengthen their game and successfully rehab their sports-related injuries. We also partner with a professional acupuncturist and stretch lab for injury prevention and rehab.
Contact us today to take the first steps toward improving your golf or tennis game!