Strengthening Your Golf Swing Muscles with 5 Key Exercises

Stronger, more flexible golfers can swing harder. The harder and faster you can swing - holding all else equal, and assuming good form - the farther you can hit the ball.

Sure, your club and shaft matter here, as equipment does in literally any sport. But let’s not forget who’s swinging those clubs in the first place - you.

Therefore, here are 5 exercises that we’ve specifically chosen to help you swing harder and faster, adding yards to your carry distance and extending your range.

Squats

Squats aren’t just great for golf (though they are); they engage some of the strongest muscles in your body and burn serious calories.

Those muscles in your lower body and core that you’ll engage with squats won’t just make you a stronger golfer, they’ll make you stronger overall.  

Muscles worked include your glutes, primarily, along with your quads, the muscles in your calves, as well as your hamstrings and adductors. Other muscles will be engaged secondarily as stabilizers.

You might swing a golf club with your arms, but you’d also be surprised how much of the strength of your swing comes from your core and lower body - it’s most of it, actually.

Strong glutes and a strong core will also improve your overall stability, helping you to avoid errors and bad habits through your golf swing.

All in all, squats are among the best workouts for golfers. Some other good ones that engage the same muscle groups are split squats (a variation on squats) along with lunges and glute bridges.

Dead Lifts

Dead lifts are the counterpart of squats that help strengthen other muscles in your core and lower body. Your legs, including your glutes, will benefit from dead lifts, as will your erector spinae, a powerful group of muscles in your lower back that stabilize and provide a great deal of core strength.  

Your back, at the center of your core, establishes not only stability through the swing sequence, but is also responsible for a great deal of power, through your lat muscles. Like your glutes, your back is one of the most important focus areas for developing a strong, fast swing.

All in all, the target here is the back, and there are other great exercises you can use to strengthen your back, which will provide a good foundation of stability. Other great exercises include lat pull downs and rows.

Pull Ups

Pull ups, which strengthen not just your back, but also your arms and shoulders, provide not just stability but also strength through the swing. Key muscle groups targeted include your biceps and lats. Pull ups will also strengthen your forearm muscles, which are the key to a strong golf grip - not necessarily an indicator of a strong, fast swing, but necessary to execute one.

Another great thing about pull ups is that, unlike all of the other exercises mentioned here, you will not need any weights or any equipment at all. You can do pull-ups on the go anywhere you can find a ledge or bar to support your weight.

Bench

Benchpressing is an outlier here, since it is a “push” workout whereas most of the others here are more of pull workouts - but it is a good workout for golfers nonetheless.

The two key groups targeted here are your pectoral muscles and your triceps, and it is the latter which are most important to a strong golf swing.

For a right-handed golfer, the strength of the left triceps is critical to stabilizing the leading arm and adding speed to the swing.  

Other great workouts include incline and decline press, along with push-ups, which like pull-ups, don’t require weights or equipment.

Oblique Twists

We saved oblique twists for last, which are an excellent golf exercise and one of the best ones on this list.

It should be obvious why this is a great golf workout; your whole body twists during the golf swing sequence, and your obliques provide both strength and stability.

At the gym, you can use a cable machine set up for twists, but when you’re on the road, you can do twists or use resistance bands, both of which will strengthen this vital core muscle group.

One More Note Before Buying Golf Shafts Online

One last thing we want to cover before letting you get started with some sets to strengthen your golf swing is that, if you buy golf shafts online, work with a fitter first.

A golf shaft, like a stronger swing, can help improve your game. But not just any golf shaft. You should always work with a fitter to make sure you get a shaft that’s appropriately sized and weighted, as well as with a shaft flex profile that will work with your mechanics and abilities rather than against them.

This step is vital before you buy golf shafts online - otherwise you are buying them sight unseen and hoping for the best.