Yoga for Golfers of All Levels

By Rachel Holmes

Yoga for golfers has a proven track record for improving your posture, which controls your swing because flexibility and stance can dramatically affect your game. When yoga techniques are demonstrated, most golfers don’t really see a yoga/golf connection. However, yoga techniques can help prevent golf injuries and even help the golfer recover from injuries sooner. Yoga for golfers can be practiced year-round to help you keep your edge.

Exercises for Golfers

Yoga exercises can be beneficial for golfers. Yoga focuses on achieving a balance in your body, which helps you improve your mental health and your golf swings. A quick yoga session at the start of the day refreshes you and prepares your body for movement. Yoga can also help take some tension out of the back muscles that are often tense due to the repetitive movements of golf swings. Poses like Lunge Position, Downward-Facing Dog, and Cat/Cow should be practiced before getting ready to play.

Tools for Golf and Life

Yoga for golfers provides athletes with knowledge about calming down under pressure. Additionally, golfers learn how to handle pressure and how to recover at home in a relaxed position after a game. Yoga is a great way to exercise your whole body, so it can definitely improve your game. Many yoga poses will disrupt your balance and require you to pay attention to where you’re standing. Practicing these types of movements before a round of golf can help significantly improve your focus and keep you from making mistakes.

Preventing or Recovering

Yoga also helps promote healthy posture, which is one of the key components of a successful game. Additionally, yoga offers a series of physical moves that can help improve a golfer’s health in relation to back pain, stress, and joint pain. At the same time, yoga also helps prepare your body for the repetitive nature of golf by strengthening your shoulders and arms while improving posture. These benefits will undoubtedly help a golfer in the day-to-day game and feel more confident with his or her swing on the course.

Ujjayi Pranayama

There are various techniques that improve breath control, which is essential for improving your game. One such technique is the Ujjayi Breath or Ocean Breath. This technique requires you to breathe in and out through the nose to make a steady and gentle sound like the waves washing up onshore. In fact, you could practice Ujjayi before, during, and while finishing your swing motion.

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Another exercise would be Alternate Nostril Breathing. To do this think need to put your index finger on one nostril while breathing in and out of only the other nostril (but don’t mix them). Then switch, so you have a finger blocking one nostril while exhaling from only the other. This method allows you to change your natural temperature with each breath.

Pranayama (Breathing) Exercises

Pranayama has many benefits and can be a great way to supplement more traditional golf training practices. Yoga that focuses on breathing and exercise is a great way to strengthen muscles and overall body stamina. Some yoga-based moves will help build agility, which is crucial for hitting the ball with precision. Along with improved skills, your golf swing also benefits from yoga as breathing exercises increase lung capacity. Engaging in breath-awareness meditation lowers levels of cortisol. Ultimately, relaxed breathing leads to an easier time relaxing at the end of the day and sleeping through the night.

Meditation for Golfers

What if your mental game was sabotaging your physical game? Golf is a sport where not only do you need to eat right and exercise, but you also need to clear your mind before playing. The reality of today’s game is that it is mentally taxing. At the end of the day, after practicing and playing all day, we’re still swiping overloads emails and corresponding on various social media forums, which results in poor sleep and leaves our minds contributing to poor swings come morning.

Mental Game

To get a better grip on our mental state, we can start meditating for about 10-15 minutes with deep breaths and focus on nothing but framing thoughts positively. A few things happen when we meditate–we decrease stress levels, we improve sequencing and internal coordination of thoughts (meaning it will take less effort to maintain focus) as well as increase our proportion of REM sleep (thus replenishing energy). This all translates into a better mood throughout the round, more focused concentration, and consequently greater performance.

Leveraging Meditation

If you are struggling to play the game of golf, try meditation to find a way to improve your game. Yoga and meditation can be used to help eliminate distractions when you are at the course. They can also help you stay calm during a game when shots don’t go as planned and need reassessments. The breathing techniques used in yoga and meditation can also help reduce tension in a golfer’s body when they are overthinking their move.

Food for Thought

Teaming meditation with physical activity can help athletes in many ways. It could improve self-awareness, fitness, and performance. It’s difficult for a golfer to properly focus on a shot if they are mentally drained from dealing with the outside world. The ability of the body changes how the brain works which improves your game from a mental standpoint. Research has also shown that meditation reduces anxiety and stress, which work against making good decisions under pressure.

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