Why Athletes Should Try Golf

Whether you’re a performance athlete or someone who just loves working out, you live an active lifestyle. While some consider golf more of a relaxing hobby than a sport, elite athletes have been using golf to be social as well as improve their fitness and performance for years, and you should, too!

Although BodCraft creates high-end athletic gear, made to perform, you can also find high-performance golf wear for men that keeps you comfortable and looking good while on the course. Made by athletes for athletes, the same quality and thoughtful tailoring put into BodCraft’s athletic gear is incorporated into BodCraft’s casual golf attire for men.

If you’ve been looking for an active social activity that also benefits your athletic performance, this post gives you all the details you need to understand how golf may be just what you’re looking for and how BodCraft can ensure you’re dressed perfectly to perform.

How Golf Improves Your Sport Performance

Professional athletes don’t just play golf to be social. They play golf to get better at their specific sport. When you play golf you reap physical and mental benefits that help to improve your overall performance whether you’re a full-time athlete or just regularly hit the gym and want to see some improvements.

Consider these physical benefits when you golf:

• Practice dynamic movement in different planes: When you use gym athletic wear made for movement, you can practice Pilates and other flexibility workouts to help you develop a greater range of motion and improve mobility. However, golf takes mobility into different planes. Most athletes train heavily with movements like squats and deadlifts, but golf requires you to move laterally and rotationally. These dynamic movements that you make in different planes while playing golf can be converted into your regular training regimen. To best perform these movements, you need to be sure you’re wearing appropriate golf wear for men. BodCraft creates signature men’s golfing clothes, made to support your game and the dynamic movements associated with golf.
• Develop more coordination and body awareness: Playing golf with its varied dynamic movements in different planes also forces you to further develop body awareness—understanding how you move and how your movements affect your play. Whether you’re controlling your ball’s trajectory, aiming to sink a putt, or directing force and energy into an object, you begin to see how even minute movements or changes to your position can affect your goals. As you play more golf, you begin to further your body awareness, which impacts your coordination, and both of these skills translate to any sport or training program.
• Enhance your explosive power: When you watch professional athletes sink a shot, whether it’s a three-pointer or a hole-in-one, you may be awed by how smooth and finessed they look, but if you work out regularly or compete in sports, you understand that those seemingly simple movements get fueled by explosive power. All sports use explosive power—power plus speed—but you often need it in everyday settings. Whether you’re breaking out into a sprint to catch the bus or dart after your dog or child running off, you’re using explosive power. To be successful at golf you need your muscle groups to fire quickly, to contract powerfully and quickly. Explosive power is used extensively in sports, and you can further refine it by adding golf to your weekly routine.

Golf also provides mental benefits that can enhance your overall sports performance. You may find that golf helps:

• Work through frustrations: Everyone gets frustrated when training. Whether you can’t manage to get your form quite right or you can’t seem to run a play perfectly, you get frustrated. Moving your mindset away from your sport or training and into a whole new realm can offer a new perspective on dealing with frustrations. While fine-tuning your golf game, you’re bound to get frustrated, but because golf isn’t your main sport or method of training, you may find it easier to work through the frustrations and find better ways to cope with those feelings. Just like the physical benefits, you can transfer what you’ve learned to your sport or training, so the next time you get frustrated, you can visualize how you dealt with the same feeling when honing a skill in your golf game.
• Build focus and concentration: Much like working through frustrations, golf offers an intense opportunity to practice focus and concentration. Many athletes practice visualization or have mental rituals that help them focus, and golf is no different. If you want to improve your concentration and focus, taking yourself out of the gym and onto the golf course can give you a different perspective that allows you to exercise these skills in a new and different way that may help you break through your training.
• Avoid burnout: Maybe you’re tired of the same workout routine or striving toward a specific goal in your sport but feel like you’ve hit a plateau. Often a reboot outside the confines of your gym or sport can help you avoid burnout. Varying your training gives you opportunities to enhance your skills in new ways that you can bring back to your sport, giving you a new perspective. By incorporating into your training all the lessons you learn playing golf, both mentally and physically, you can keep your training feeling fresh and gain insight into how your body moves, how your mind works, and how you can use those more effectively in your sport.

Blending Golf into Your Workout Routine

Because golf offers physical activity, you may wonder how it will impact your training. So keep these points in mind when trying to fit golf into your schedule:

• You can limit the physical workout. If you just finished your distance day for running or swim training, you may not feel like walking the course, but you can either consider going on foot as an extra warm-down or take a cart to give your legs the break they deserve. You can still get the physical and mental benefits even if you take a cart.
• You can make it social. Unlike running drills or squeezing in an intense workout before you head out for the day, golf can be social. You can focus on your shot and individual skills, but you have time between each putt and each hole to socialize. So add golf into your schedule as a fun, relaxing way to keep pushing your mental and physical goals.
• You can do it often. Golf gives you a sport you can practice often without risking your current training schedule. Because it is a sport, just be sure to warm up properly each time you hit the course.

Golf is a fun sport that can enhance your current training. You should try to play it often and see how it changes your performance. If you’re not sure you can hit the course, with the men’s casual golf attire from BodCraft, you’ll feel comfortable wearing your golf gear all day in hopes of fitting a few rounds in.