The Beginner’s Guide to Injury-Free Golf
As is true for so many sports, the beginner or novice golfer may experience some of the same physical issues a more advanced and seasoned golfer might. The difference is that a veteran learns to temper and regulate their output, and often finds ways to cut down on the issues that plague the newbies.
This article is for the newbies and maybe even more intermediate golfers who find themselves struggling with some of the more physical, and less technical, aspects of their game.
I tell this story and illustrate these points as a strength and conditioning coach of over 12 years, as well as a novice golfer.
My Own Story
I started playing golf when I was around 10 years old. A youth hockey player at the time, my dad was able to convince me rather easily to get on the course. It was, after all, what my favorite hockey players, like Mario Lemieux, did on the weekends. I continued playing with him on the weekends in the warm months through much of my teenage years. Unfortunately, things came to a halt when I got to college, and from the ages of 18 to 36 I probably played fewer than a dozen times. I got back into the game in the summer of 2024, and found myself to be a funny beginner: someone who had the memory of the swing, the amnesia of good fundamentals coming back every few range visits, but with all the de-conditioning to golf as a newcomer.
For those reasons, we’ll call me a beginner (and my handicap would agree).
The Nuts and Bolts of Golf from an Strength and Conditioning Perspective
Breaking it down as a strength and conditioning coach, we treat golf like any other sport. The assessment below accurately reflects the most macro-level demands of playing a round of golf.
Golf is a tricky game physically. When actually playing on the course, it’s deceptively tiring with its long stretches of walking and jogging to balls. An 18 hole round can exceed 20,000 steps easily, even with a cart. Golf also requires not only repeat power and precision, but also the mobility to execute a perfect swing. None of that even accounts for the mental gaming of a round with friends or strangers.
Golf is also interesting because it’s a pastime of many athletes, particularly hockey players. There are plenty of instances where strength and conditioning coaches have been frustrated with their athletes for playing too much golf, as it’s hardly a truly restful activity if the goal is to have them chill out.
Physical Truths for the Novice Golfer
There are four things I’ve noticed that distinctly stand out to me each time I either go to the simulator, range, or course. Of this short list, two did not surprise me at all from my professional vantage point, but the final point below came as a real surprise to me.
1. Hip internal rotation and oblique strength are extremely important
This is probably the most obvious to any informed athlete, golfer or coach: the strength of your obliques and your rotational ability will directly lead and sustain your overall torso and lower back health. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how not sore or hindered I’ve been since returning to the links, and that’s distinctly because so many of our programs here at the gym focus on rotational strength. It doesn’t hurt that my own involvement in combat sports for over a decade requires you to have the ability to display power in the transverse plane (or horizontal plane, involving twisting and rotational movements).
Similarly, both hip internal and external rotation are essential to have in order to complete an effective (and nice looking!) swing. The health of rotating your hips both ways is also directly linked to how healthy your lower back stays.
The following drills have been helpful warm-ups for me, and have gotten me ready to swing for a few hours:
Standing Airplanes
90/90 Internal Rotation Raises
2. Grip strength
I can remember my father teaching me how to grip different golf clubs, why you may favor one over the other, and when to use each. As many reading this will know, sometimes during your swing you’ll need to alter your wrist angle or rotate it for various reasons. In sports with sticks or implements like golf, hockey, or baseball, there is a common a tendency to over-grip when fatigue sets in.
Who do you think has more grip stamina and is able to make adjustments easier? Someone whose training consists of walking and jogging on the treadmill or someone who regularly deadlifts, carries heavy things, hangs their bodyweight from a bar, or is forced to grip hard when they train? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
The greatest benefit to a strong grip is not your ability to white knuckle and squeeze the crap out of something. It’s the ability to temper and regulate your tension in order to achieve the right grip. This is true of grip strength and skill in any sport, and is no different in golf.
3. Wrist health
I expected wrist aches and soft tissue to be a potential issue for myself and the new golfer, only because I had so many clients over the years come in with wrist tenderness or former golf injuries, usually on their non dominant hand. Tendon, ligament, and joint health are tricky. We know from weightlifting textbooks and studies that adaptations for tendons and ligaments happen much more slowly than muscles, and that certainly applies to golf.
How can you work around this? Acknowledge that getting your body acclimated to the physical demands of a golf swing takes time like anything else. You’ll get sore, and that’s okay. But what’s not okay is to beat down on the same motion for many days in a row, at the same frequency, and not expect things to get worse.
Instead, consider periodizing how you practice, especially if you have time 4 or more days per week to hit balls. Consider using certain clubs on one day, hitting more or fewer balls on each day throughout the week, or even practicing your putting and short game only one day. All of these practice strategies have the effect of helping you preserve your joints from repeated use injuries.
Is hammering the same iron and shot every day productive? I don’t know, ask your pro, but if you’re a beginner you will likely benefit from a schedule that is sustainable and won’t lead to premature pain as the joints and tendons adapt.
The weekenders of the world probably won’t have this issue, but with the number of available simulators and indoor facilities, it makes weekday golf outings and increased numbers of swings that much more common.
4. Don’t just assume your strength and size will translate to a high swing speed…
This is the one that came as a surprise to me. As a kid, I always hit from the red tees and found myself never getting the most out of my clubs. Even as an athletic teenager who was an athlete and avid gym-goer, I couldn’t ever get the most out of each club from a distance and swing speed perspective.
I thought for sure that now as a strength coach in my physical prime that my swing speeds would find themselves up naturally.
Instead, it was quite the opposite: yes, I am faster and stronger in my swing now. However, the Trackman Golf Simulator has shown me that I am very much on the medium range of swing speed. When I’m most loose and in control of my shots, I actually am on the lower range of swing speeds.
It goes to show you that technique must also improve relative to your strength. There’s no amount of tertiary training that will directly improve your golf game. You need to actually go and golf to do that. I don’t think many golfers actually think otherwise, but I do sense a feeling that people think the gym alone can save their swings. Maybe for some, but as a beginner…I very much doubt it.
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In my first full season back in many, many years, these were things that stood out to me most from my professional lens. I play with a number of individuals of varying skill levels, and of the beginners, they all report something from the list above as issues with their game and overall performance.
Stay tuned - we’ll be covering more golf related training and content on the website soon.
About the Author: Mark DiSalvo, CSCS
Mark is the founder and owner of DiSalvo Performance Training. He brings over a decade of experience training clients and athletes of all backgrounds and is the strength and conditioning coach to grapplers of all levels and disciplines: from youth to professional and Olympic-level. He is currently a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu himself, with 10 years of experience in the sport. You can read more about him here.
A graduate of Northeastern University, he’s an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Sports Performance Expert with a specialty in combat sports. He’s also a Steve Maxwell Certified Kettlebell Instructor (Levels 1 & 2).