Swimming Pool Practice Can Be Magic for Your Golf Game

Believe it or not, practicing your golf swing in a swimming pool—along with other pertinent exercises—is one of the best things you can do for your golf game, flexibility and healthy life in general.

I naturally developed a medium-height, medium-strength fade with my left-handed swing.  It was always hard for me to understand why I would maintain this ball flight with my driver/woods but started to develop an almost straight-right “draw” with my irons and wedges.  Believe it or not, this is actually one of the main exercises that I utilized to engineer a high, soft draw with ALL of my clubs.

Here are a few exercises that I utilize on a continual basis to shave both strokes off my score and stiffness in my body:

The Full Swing Mimic (Vice Versa for Lefties)

1. Warm-up by swimming down and back (the length of the pool twice).
2. Perform a second warm-up exercise by mimicking the chest workout “flies” in the pool.  Retract slowly and burst inward on your reps.  Repeat 20 times.
3. Stand in the shallow end of the pool (approximately 3-4 feet if you are 6-ish feet in height).
4. Assume your stance like you would with addressing a 7 iron.
5. Commence your backswing by engraining the thought of the “club” touching the bottom of your left lat (latissimus dorsi) muscle.
6. Once completed, execute your downswing by focusing on two things:
   • Slowly push the head of the club away from you in a uniform fashion.
   • Rotate your dominant hand (right for righties) until it has fully crossed you’re your other hand – approximately 70% through the downswing.
7. Perform 20 repetitions of this simple, yet constructive exercise.

Next time you take your game to the course, integrate this into your actual swing by closing your eyes and performing the exact same reps – this time with a club.

Cheers to improving your shot shaping.

Cover Photo via Flickr