4 Reasons Golf is Great Exercise

| 3 min read

Why golf is such great exercise
It’s a clear, blue, sunny day. The grass is a brilliant green color, and the smell of freshly cut grass surrounds you. Laughter rings in the background, you hear the distinct ping of a club hitting a golf ball as your buddy calls your name; pulling you out of your reverie. You broke out your brand-new golf shoes and visor for your first day out on the course. All your stress dissipates as you focus on driving your club to get that hole in one.
You may play golf just to get out of the house, catch up with your friends, de-stress or because you truly enjoy the sport. However, how many of you play golf with the intent to sculpt / tone your body? Truth is, playing golf for a few hours can be an effective work out.
An article by Fit Day shares four reasons that golf is a great sport that can do more than de-stress you:
  1. It incorporates cardiovascular exercise: Think about how many miles you might walk if you played the full game: an 18-hole golf game is approximately 3.7 miles. Even if you use a cart and don’t walk the entire way, you are still getting similar cardiovascular exercise as you would if you were swimming, biking or even jogging.
  1. It’s great strength training: While golfing, you tend to use a lot of big muscles groups to drive your club, bend over to pick up a ball or position your body accordingly. You are also walking down long fairways, trekking around hilly roughs and hiking up steep sand pits. Your lower body muscles, which include quads and hamstrings, are impacted the most when playing golf. Not to mention you’re also handling a golf bag that can weigh up to 35 pounds, which gets in a nice upper body workout.
  1. It helps improve your balance: Balance is an important aspect to play a successful game of golf. Balance goes hand-in-hand with a strong core, which includes your abdominal muscles, lower back muscles and buttocks. As your balance improves you’ll begin to see the formation of the coveted six or four pack.
golf hole
  1. It makes you mentally strong: Golfing improves your mental focus. You must concentrate on a multitude of different tasks while golfing. Advanced golfers focus on stance and swing, the number of strokes, techniques for different courses, the types of clubs and more.
So, do you golf? Leave a comment below to share your golf experiences. If you liked this post, you may also like:
Photo credit: Katja Hasselkus via Flickr (feature and inset)

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