Warm Up Like a Tour Pro?

Dee had such a great post about pain that we took a few days off to celebrate, but I am back to point out one last cause of pain that we (Dee) forgot.  You could have a perfect golf swing, you could have a perfect body, and you could have the perfect diet, but if you don’t warm up, then you are at a great risk for injury – well, unless you are one of the rare hypermobile people in the world, but lets not talk about them.  What we are going to talk about today is a story I heard at my last trip to TPI-land from one of my fellow trainers.

He had a client who was an avid athlete and a newish golfer who started taking lessons at a high end club.  This athlete was used to getting a real warm up before playing so he pulled out his jump rope and started skipping on the driving range.  Within a few minutes of pulling out the rope, the general manager came by and told him that he was offending the members and had to stop…..I was speechless.  Kai Fusser, Annika Sorenstam’s trainer, said that Annika does 20 minutes of skipping rope before playing why can’t this trainer’s client?  Maybe he should have told the GM how it helps players deal with adrenalin and gets them in the right state of mind…I doubt that would have helped.

Dee brought up a great point about golf being a sport.  I wonder if I will ever see the general acceptance of golf being treated like other sports and seeing dynamic stretching, skipping rope or other useful means of getting warmed up as common place.  Until then, I will continue to do lunges, squats, step overs, and half of the Tom House shoulder routine every time I go to the golf course. Every time.  As one of our Clubgolf member’s saw this Friday when I was going to practice at Blue Mash Golf Course, I even do some form of warm up to putt.  I might get some pain for a variety of reasons, but failing to warm up is not usually one of them.

I’m off to skip rope.