Exercises Golfers Might Want to Avoid

Okay, a slightly different approach today. I've done some posts in the last few days about exercises you might want to try to improve your golf game.

Today I've got some exercises you might want to AVOID. The chart below comes from an older post at the Golf Digest site and -- like some of the other ones I've linked to this week -- it comes from their fitness advisor Ben Shear. It shows some bad choices and some good alternatives -- at least, according to Shear. Different instructors might give different advice, of course, and I'm not going to say that Shear's advice is better than anybody else's.

However, I see a couple of things the exercises on this chart have in common.



First, in exercises 1, 3, 4 and 5 his 'good' examples use your legs to PUSH your upper body AWAY from your lower body while his 'bad' examples tend to make you CRUNCH your upper body TOWARD your lower body. That's true even in #5 -- in addition to what he says, I've done upright rows before and your tendency is to either lean forward or jerk up and back. Neither is particularly good for your back.

Note also that his 'good' exercises tend to use less weight or just body weight. Numbers 1, 2 and 5 are good examples. (Trust me, that kettleball in the bottom's up press is definitely lighter than the barbell in the upright row.)

In other words, Shear is recommending exercises that cause you to relax and stretch your body, rather than tighten and crunch it. Those seem to be good recommendations to me.

Besides, I hate crunches. That push-back plank looks like something I might be interested in myself!