Hi, I’m Annalise, and today I’m going to convince you of why taking up golf is one of the best things you can do for your health.
I’ll start with the physical benefits of the sport. The average golf course is approximately 6600 yards long, is equal to around 20,000 feet. It takes around 8000 steps to walk this distance, and when you factor in the lateral distance that you will walk along the way, you will effortlessly hit the 10,000 steps that you’re recommended to take daily. This low-intensity aerobic exercise has numerous benefits, including reduced fatigue and pain, better overall mood, and higher quality sleep. Statistics show that golfers live approximately 5 years longer on average.
Taking up this sport is also an excellent motivator to introduce mobility work into your exercise routine. Most of us begin feeling aches and pains after the age of 25, and lack of flexibility plays an enormous role in the pain that people have. When you take up golf, you will have a great reason to implement stretching and mobility work into your exercise routine, or your daily life. Increased flexibility means an increased range of motion in your swing, so the benefits of that will inspire you to be disciplined with your stretching routine.. Personally, taking up golf inspired me to integrate yoga into my life, and I now practice yoga three times a week.
You can find exercises all over the internet that will help you with your golf swing and will also benefit you immensely in the rest of your life.
Move Better, Golf Better
We use this drill a lot because it checks a lot of the boxes we care about for our golfers/
✅Upper back mobility
✅Hip mobility
✅Upper body and core strength #golf #golfmobility #golfrehab pic.twitter.com/PL0Z6BzdE5— Wagner PT & Performance (@Wagner_PTP) May 5, 2023
The other benefit of golf, which cannot be understated, is the positive impact it has on your mental health. The stereotype of golf is that it’s endlessly frustrating and that by the end of your round you’ll be nothing more than a ball of rage and regret, which admittedly, is true. But any golfer will tell you that there’s a reason they keep coming back for more, and that’s because it just makes you feel so good.
To start, golf is associated with a significantly lower rate of anxiety and depression, due to the endorphins that are released during low-to-moderate intensity exercise. It also lowers cortisol levels, which in turn reduces stress.
Another significant mental health benefit of this sport is that it encourages connection. You normally golf in groups of 3-4, and these people can either be friends or total strangers that you get paired up with. And even though the idea of playing with strangers seems intimidating, everyone on a golf course is in high spirits because they’re just happy to be there.
The benefits of golf go beyond just being outside and exercising.https://t.co/LfKEZwKPep
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) May 10, 2023
And if you’re not very confident in your skills, don’t worry, nobody is. That’s the beautiful thing about golf; you never know what’s gonna happen. We’re all just happily struggling together.