Make the most of the coming months on and off the golf course and you’ll be in a great place to start next season says fitness expert and personal trainer Shawn O’Neil
The main golf season in the UK has drawn to a close and many of you will be looking to plan how you’ll improve this winter and hit the ground running in spring 2026.
One of the areas where you can get the most bang for your buck – or the biggest improvement for time invested – is your body. In previous columns I’ve discussed how improving mobility and stability can have a big impact on being able to implement swing changes, and how becoming stronger and building power can increase your clubhead speed and directly influence scoring. Both can also reduce injury risk and reduce any pain you feel while playing and practising.
While I’ve covered what to do, let’s talk about three things to not do this off-season.
First, we can’t just do a bit of general stretching and expect results. Proper mobility work should be intense enough make you sweat. Doing some stretching in the morning or evening might help you feel a bit better and alleviate some aches, but it won’t improve your range of motion. The body is very effective at not allowing motion which can lead to injury due to weakness – so when you’ve done some good mobility work and opened up new range, isometrics and creating force in the opposite motion from that new range allows you to access it moving forward.
Second, we can’t increase physical capability and have it instantly appear in the golf swing. For example, if you’re aiming to combat excessive lateral sway and have developed increased internal hip rotation and stability, you still need to drill the correct motion into your swing. Alternatively, if you’ve gained some strength and done some power work to access that new strength quickly, it’s not automatically going to translate into ball speed – you need to learn how use it correctly.
Third, neglecting your golf completely to focus on mobility, stability and/or strength work then swapping back to neglecting those completely to play golf will not yield long-term success. Research shows that in as little as a couple of weeks, strength increases begin to wane significantly with no training, which means that by the time the season is halfway through you’ll have almost nothing to show for your months of hard work. The good news is maintenance requires a lot less volume than building, so it’s not going to eat into your golf time a great deal.
If you require assistance identifying what you need to improve on physically and how to go about it, reach out to a TPI-certified trainer to get started.
