Why fitness matters for your golf game even more than you think

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Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers is on a one-year mission to see how good he can get at golf through daily training, practice and playing. Read more from his “Late Scratch?” series here.

If tracking your stats is an important step for anyone looking to make meaningful improvements in their golf games, some numbers are easier to recognize than others. It was already apparent I needed more distance.

An eye-opening study by Arccos Golf lead statistician Lou Stagner a few years ago came to the conclusion that adding 10 yards of length equates to lowering your scoring average by one shot per round. So as I embarked on this journey, the most obvious—and easiest—way to get better was to try to gain 10 yards. After all, I’d attribute most of my improvements in recent years due to hitting it longer off the tee (thanks in large part to speed training with the Stack System) and through the bag. So why not keep it going? Why stop at 10 yards? Could an extra 30 yards get me down to scratch without doing anything else? Possibly, but here comes the hard part.

You probably need to get in the gym

A conversation with colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen at the Ryder Cup confirmed this to me. Luke has gotten, well, heavy into weightlifting over the past year and his results are impressive—both with lifting weights and swinging the golf club faster. After seeing Luke’s numbers I was convinced I needed to do something similar and he put me in touch with a trainer, Mike Carroll, who helped get him started. That’s Mike above doing a split squat and not me because it looks a lot better when he does one.

Carroll has worked with more than a dozen PGA Tour and DP World Tour players—and, now, at least two golf writers—and he writes extensively about strength training for golf on his website.

“Strength is important for golfers because it plays a huge role in how much club head speed we can produce,” Carroll writes in his informative strength training for golf guide. “Muscles are what create force, and the stronger our muscles are, the more potential we have to gain club head speed.”

If the biggest benefit to more speed is more distance, I learned from tracking my stats I also struggled with approach shots out of the rough, so I was hoping this would help as well. (Think: Tiger Woods’ famed second shot on No. 6 at Pebble Beach during the second round of the 2000 U.S. Open.)

Carroll knows speed training for golf can reap big benefits. In fact, he’s an ambassador for the Stack System—which Matt Fitzpatrick credits with improving his distance enough to win the 2022 U.S. Open—and he can generate 125-mph-plus clubhead speed from his 5-foot-10, 170-pound frame. But he says the best way to make distance gains is through a combination of speed AND strength training. Considering I had never mixed the two and had done very little of the latter ever, he was confident that I could make a “complete transformation” if I really stuck with it for 12 months. I had never been one for working out, but that potential had me excited to get started.

Find a workout program you can stick to

I marvel at Luke’s weightlifting progression, but he tries to downplay it by saying it’s all about being consistent. To get me into a routine, Carroll put me on his Fit For Golf app and I started with a 12-week home-based bands and dumbbells program. Each workout included a warmup that’s also good for range of motion and mobility, some explosive work exercises (Carroll says most golfers don’t do enough of that) and strength building, alternating between using resistance bands and weights.

I liked Mike’s app because it uses a similar interface as The Stack that keeps your schedule and serves as motivation by tracking your progress. And here’s proof that I actually stuck with it!

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The app also allows you to record speed-training sessions (More on that next time!), which is a nice feature. The plan was to do speed training sessions on the same days as the workouts, preferably before to have my muscles as fresh as possible. And to have these speed and strength sessions every other day (This schedule will change during the season where Carroll suggests doing different programs or bringing workout volume down to avoid muscle fatigue and soreness that can affect your play on the course).

On the in-between days, Mike told me to do more cardio work so that’s when I ride my Peloton. The only tweak is that he wanted me to mix in longer bike rides instead of the 15-minute HIIT classes I usually take. Of course, there are plenty of golf training programs out there, but Mike’s stands out for its emphasis on strength training. Which is important, because . . .

Strength training is not just about distance

As much as I’m focused on this next year, Carroll has gotten me to think about the status of my golf game farther down the road. Much farther.

“Strength matters in the short term for performance, but also long term, for golf longevity,” Carroll says. “One of the main reasons golf performance declines with age is the steady loss of distance that happens as we lose muscle mass, strength, and power. While many aspects of skill may stay sharp, or even improve, the decline in physical capability changes the type of golf we can play, how our body feels during and after a round, and potentially, how much we enjoy it.”

As I approach my (gulp) 44th birthday, I need to come to the realization that I’ve reached the back nine of my golf career. But that doesn’t mean I have to start winding down. Shortly after starting with Fit For Golf, Mike tweeted these videos of a 79-year-old Paul Brumley, who has been using Carroll’s app for a few years.

“The offseason isn’t just about adding distance for next year,” Carroll writes on his site. “It’s about investing in your body so you can keep playing, practicing, and living actively for decades. Physical training is the best ‘anti-aging’ tool we have.”

Paul Brumley wasn’t just living proof of that. He was an inspiration.

But won’t you get hurt again by lifting weights?

I certainly had that same question as someone who had suffered pretty major injuries each of the past two winters, which had derailed my speed training. In February of 2024, I tore my meniscus taking a swing in my living room, requiring my first-ever surgery. And almost exactly a year later, I tore the labrum in my left shoulder picking up one of my girls. I avoided surgery (for now) with the second one, but it had my wife wondering if I was getting injured because I had a lack of muscle. And my PT Brian Dombal said she had a point. Ouch. So, it made sense for me to try to do something about that to stop my streak of getting hurt.

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“When strength training is done with an appropriate build-up, controlled technique, and sensible programming, the injury risk is extremely low, even in older adults,” writes Carroll, who believes there’s an unfair stigma around lifting weights. “Data on injury rates shows strength training to be one of the safest forms of exercise available.”

And, in my case, it could help prevent me from getting hurt doing other activities. Carroll’s advice to me was clear, though: “Ease yourself into it. Pace yourself. Trying to do too much too fast is how people get hurt.”

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Three months into using the Fit For Golf app, I’m feeling good (knock on wood) and nearing the end of completing a second program focusing on building mass with dumbbells. I’m seeing gains both in the app and in the simulator with increased distance so the plan is working. And when you see those kinds of numbers, it’s a lot easier to stick with something.

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com