Warm-Up & Mobility • 5 minutes • Veronica Paddy
Walk past any range on a Saturday morning and you will see the same thing: golfers grabbing a driver and hammering balls at full speed within two minutes of arriving. This is not a warm-up. It is a stress test on a cold body, and it is one of the fastest ways to start your round flushed, tight, or already injured.
A proper warm-up does three things. It raises your core temperature, it wakes up the joints and muscles your swing depends on, and it primes your nervous system to move quickly and accurately. You can do all three in ten minutes without setting foot on the range.
Minutes 1 to 2: Get the heart rate up
Walk briskly from the car park to the clubhouse and back, or do 60 seconds of marching on the spot with high knees. The goal is light sweat, not exhaustion. A warm muscle is roughly 20 percent more elastic than a cold one.
Minutes 3 to 5: Mobilise the spine and hips
- World’s greatest stretch: 5 reps each side
- Standing trunk rotations with a club across the shoulders: 10 reps each side
- Hip 90/90 switches on the ground: 8 reps each side
These three movements unlock the rotational chain that powers your swing. The trunk rotations in particular act as a dress rehearsal for the motion you are about to repeat 70 to 90 times.
Minutes 6 to 8: Activate
Mobility opens the door; activation tells the right muscles to walk through it.
- Glute bridges: 10 reps
- Band pull-aparts or air rows: 15 reps
- Half-kneeling chops with a club: 8 reps each side
Minutes 9 to 10: Rehearse the swing
Take your wedge. Make 5 slow, half-speed swings, then 5 three-quarter swings, then 3 full swings. Only now should you reach for a longer club. The rehearsal sequence trains your nervous system to fire in the right order before you load it with maximum effort.
A note on stretching
Long static stretches before a round are not your friend. Research consistently shows that holding a stretch for more than 30 seconds reduces power output for up to an hour afterwards. Save the long holds for after the round, when they help recovery.
Ten minutes. No equipment. Better first three holes.