Strength and Power Training for Senior Golfers

Problem

The number of men and women over the age of 65 is growing. Since golf is a lifetime sport that can and should be played well into the later decades of life, the proportion of golfers in this age category is growing as well. As a physical therapist, I often hear senior golfers complain that they are losing distance or that they battle frequent injuries that prevent them from playing altogether.

The bad news first: The effects of advancing age are real.

Aging, even healthy aging, is associated with a variety of biological changes that can contribute to decreases in muscle mass, strength, and function, leading to a decrease in physiological resilience and an increase in vulnerability. Age related loss of muscle mass is called sarcopenia. Sarcopenia begins to occur around age 30 at rate of about 1.0-1.4% per year and begins to accelerate after age 60. Declining strength can be difficult to notice for 2 reasons: First, its very gradual. You will not just wake up one day and be drastically weaker than you were the day before. Years can go by and you may never notice any material losses until later in life. Second, muscle strength and muscle mass are not precisely the same thing. In fact, literal strength capacity decreases 2-5 times faster than muscle mass so physical appearance (muscle mass) may change very little but strength is declining nevertheless. Evidence links muscular weakness to a host of negative age-related health outcomes including poor balance, diabetes, general disability, cognitive decline and early mortality.

It’s no wonder that senior golfers frequently complain of declining distance and injury. In golf, a player is required to exert large amounts of force in the short time period of a golf swing, exposing their bodies to rapid changes in velocity. If golfers continue to attempt to swing a club at high velocity but their foundation of underlying strength is in decline, not only will their performance suffer, but they expose themselves to an ever increasing injury risk.

On that sour note, I think were ready for the good news: There is something that can be done about it.

Solution

Although many of the changes outlined above are the inevitable result of aging, many of these negative changes are closely associated with physical inactivity. More specifically, many changes are linked to a lack of appropriate strength and power training. My observation is that most people think that once you get older, lifting weights is somehow no longer an option or that it is ineffective because they will never be as strong as they were when they were younger. This could not be more false. A clear argument could be made that resistance training is most important for seniors who are losing strength at an accelerated rate. Evidence clearly shows that a properly designed training program that incorporates both strength and power can dramatically counteract the age related changes in muscle tissue. The table below summarizes these effects:

Despite the known benefits of resistance training, only 8.7% of older adults in the United States participate in muscle strengthening activities. Reported barriers to participation in resistance exercise for older adults include safety, fear, health concerns, pain, fatigue and lack of social support. The low participation rates contrasted with the enormous health benefits underscore the need to consult with a professional that can help seniors safely implement a properly designed program.

I want to emphasize properly designed.

Activities such as walking, gardening, hiking, cycling, swimming, yoga, or jogging are not a strengthening program. I don’t mean to say that these activities are wrong or somehow bad for you. All exercise is good for the body in some way. However they are not a strengthening stimulus to the body in the same way that purposeful resistance training is. The scientific literature is absolutely clear. If you want to maintain strength and power, at any age, there is no other way except through a properly designed resistance training program.

This brings us back to golf, which is most accurately described as a power sport. The power requirements of golf are best met by doing resisted strength and power exercises. Therefore, as you train for golf, you will be providing your body with the correct stimulus to improve your health more generally. Training for golf is training for life.

To design a proper program, it is crucial to understand the relationship between strength and power. In regular conversation, the terms strength and power are sometimes used interchangeably and although they are related, they are distinct properties of fitness. Let’s take the time to define these terms:

STRENGTH: The magnitude of force a muscle can exert.

POWER: The ability of a muscle to exert force rapidly.

The two are mathematically related as follows:

Power = Strength x Velocity

Power development should be the ultimate goal for golfers. Since power is the product of strength and velocity then you could say that a golfer with a power problem has either a strength problem, or a velocity problem, or both. Strength is the more fundamental ability for a very important reason. Strength generally represents tissue durability. In golf, the body is moving at high velocity which implies rapid acceleration and deceleration. If you expose a weak muscle to these changes in velocity, you expose the tissue to injury risk. If you are trying to develop power, the first thing you must establish is a foundation of strength, then work on velocity. In other words, it is unwise to layer speed on top of weakness.

This leads us to our program design. The first step for golfers of any age is a thorough assessment of your current fitness level. If you don’t know where you stand, then you don’t know where to begin. What is your current strength level in your upper body, core and lower body? Do you have a left/right asymmetry in your strength? What should your strength level be anyway? How efficiently do you generate power? Is your problem strength or speed? Or both? These questions and more are answered with a quality assessment. If you don’t have specific and measurable answers to these questions, you’re just guessing. After establishing your baseline strength and power levels, you can begin to hone in on areas of need.

If you have a strength problem:

You will need a program focused on high intensity resistance exercises. The strategy is to build toward asking your muscles to generate near maximum levels of force with each repetition. This is an appropriate stimulus to illicit a strengthening adaptation. All of this is done with slow tempo to emphasize absolute strength, not speed. This alone should help to improve power output.

If you have a velocity problem:

You will need a program focused on activities that use both medium and low resistance but high velocity movements. The goal should be to improve absolute velocity of the movement.

If you have both a strength problem and a velocity problem:

Work on building a foundation of strength, then layer on the speed.

Conclusion

An interesting observation is that strength and power development programs in senior golfers are largely the same as they would be for a younger golfer. Of course each person must be assessed individually and have a program that takes their unique needs and experience into consideration, but basic principles are the same. Senior golfers should not be afraid to train with resistance. If you want to hit the ball further and have the best chance to stay injury free, you simply cannot afford to overlook strength and power training as non negotiable elements in your plan.

If you are interested in having an evaluation performed and developing a golf fitness program that is customized to your specific needs, Iconic Motion is here to help. Schedule your free phone consultation or book your initial evaluation here to get started.