Strength for Golf and Life

This is the start of a new series of articles looking at several components of fitness and how they impact both golf and life. Specifically looking at strength, power (yes, they are different), endurance and mobility.

This first piece will explore how having a higher base of strength is beneficial, along with how strength work is incorporated into our programming.

What is Strength?

Strength is Your Ability to Create Force

In relation to the human body, strength is the ability to create force against a resistance.

In simple terms, it’s your ability to move stuff. Whether that’s a golf bag, some paving slabs, carrying the shopping in from the car without help from your wife, or brining a pint of the finest lager to your lips. All those things provide a resistance (because of gravity pulling it down) and for your muscles to be able to move that thing, they must overcome that resistance by generating force.

And, of course, the heavier something is, the more force (strength) is required to move it.

Why the Body Adapts to Strength Training

When you pick up something heavy, and put it down again, multiple times, say like… you would in the gym when strength training, your body adapts to that. It adapts because you have placed a physical stress upon it and it needs to make itself stronger just in case it has to deal with that stress again, so next time it becomes less of a struggle. The human body doesn’t like struggle. It likes things to be easy. So, it begins to build bigger muscles to prevent that struggle, because a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle.

How is Strength Good for Golf?

Strength and Distance

As we have just discussed, the stronger you are, the more force your body produces. The more force you produce, the easier it is to move objects, like a golf club. When you are able to generate more force with your golf club (swing it harder), you have more force to transfer to the golf ball, hitting it harder, and hitting it further.

Strength is Not Just About Muscle

Along with bigger muscles, strength also comes from your brains ability to communicate with those muscles. This is a concept which is often termed ‘neural efficiency’. Your brain and nervous system become better at controlling muscles, making them work more effectively and efficiently. Regular strength training leads to increases in neural efficiency, as you are using your body more and using it in different ways. Now, while this leads to an increase in strength, it also leads to better movement control and a more consistent swing.

Avoiding Weak Links in the Swing

A stronger ‘foundation’ also allows for better force transfer ‘through’ the body. Think of how a golf swing works; transfer of weight from one foot to the other, pushing off to rotate the hips and initiate the downswing. This transfer of force from the legs to the club goes through the upper body and core muscles – beginning with the hips, then up to the abs and back muscles, further up through the shoulders, along the arms and to the club. Having a stronger body all-round allows for more force to be transferred to the club more efficiently, again transferring more force to the ball. It’s no good being able to generate more force, if that force is lost through weak links in the chain. Regular strength training will make sure that everything you need is strong to both generate and transfer that force through the body.

Why Hitting it Further Lowers Scores

All these things will result in a longer drive off the tee. Research suggests being able to hit longer can lower scores up to 2.2 less shots per round. That is a pretty significant improvement just with a little bit of targeted strength training. No new clubs. No coaching lessons. Just straight up increase in performance. More distance off the tee, shorter approaches, shorter putts more, lower scoring.

Moreover, strength training not just builds that distance but helps you keep it time goes on, so there is a possibility that you could be outdriving your children as you move forward!

Golf is Harder on Your Body Than You Think

There is also the injury aspect - strength builds resilience. During the golf swing the body can experience forces up to eight times body weight! If you consider the number of possible swings in a round, both practice and proper, it soon adds up. That could be anything between 200-300 swings in a single round. Couple that with the force exerted during a swing, that’s a lot of force, a lot of times!

As mentioned above, as all that force is going through the core musculature, it’s no wonder that back injuries are the most common in recreational golfers (and in the general population). Having a good foundation of strength gives the muscles, tendons, connective tissues (all the bits that hold you together) better tolerance to the rigours of the game, resulting in less fatigue later in a round and allows for quicker recovery in between sessions meaning you can play more often!

Strength Without Becoming ‘Huge’

Now, strength training doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get huge, looking like prime Arnie back in the 70’s. That is not the goal here, it’s just to get stronger to both improve your game and improve your tolerance to the game.

That’s not to say you won’t look better, it’s a nice byproduct of the process.

How is Strength Good for Life?

Strength and Ageing

Unfortunately, humans lose strength as we age. The reasons why this happens are many; muscle building mechanisms in the body begin to slow down meaning it becomes harder for us to keep the muscle we have, we become less active in our daily lives, often because of time constraints, because of work (sitting at a desk too much), because of aches and pains and fear of moving will make things worse, the list goes on.

It’s reported that we lose strength at a rate of 10% per decade after the age of 30, and with this loss of strength, the likelihood of incidents, injury, illness and mortality go up. There is a very strong relationship between strength, health and quality of life. Having a good foundation of strength means you can carry on doing the things you would normally be able to do without concern whether you’ll either; actually be able to do the thing or hurt yourself in the process.

Remaining Capable as You Get Older

That doesn’t mean you’ll be re-laying your patio slabs in your 70’s (though it’s a possibility), but it does mean you won’t be having difficulty getting up off the sofa, trouble putting the bins out, or worrying about moving a bag of mulch from the car to the garden. Having good strength allows you to keep independence and fight of vulnerability and frailty. Essentially, frailty is a physical disability which is measured and classified by a lack of strength. Strength training prevents this, along with both age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) and bone loss (osteopenia, osteoporosis). Moreover, strength training has the ability to reverse these conditions where they are already apparent.

There is research to suggest that an 80-year-old person who lifts weights is just as strong and a 30-year-old who does not lift weights. With strength and strength training, you are moving your body, helping to maintain mobility and flexibility.

The human body is an amazingly crafted machine which is designed to move, and it needs to be moved. It’s only when we stop moving that the problems start.

Keep moving everything and everything will keep moving.

Strength and Longevity

Going a little further than this, there is a very strong relationship between strength and mortality.

If I could sum this concept up in one single phrase: Be stronger, live longer.

Now, I appreciate that phrase pushes the idea stronger you are the longer you are going to live, which may not necessarily be the best way to frame it – the best way of thinking is, the stronger you are, the less likely you are to die, of any cause, injury or illness. This is something which research has consistently shown. But it’s difficult to come up with a snappy and hard-hitting phrase for that.

Strength, Stability and Falls

Along with strength keeping you alive, we already strength also keep you functioning and independent though keeping you on your feet and keeping you moving. As people lose strength, they tend to avoid activities and tasks, because things ‘feel’ harder and more difficult, not just losing that independence but also losing that strength which they would maintain from generally doing things. When this loss of strength, muscular control and co-ordination happens, people are at increased risk of falls. Statistically, 1 in 3 people over the age of 65 will have a fall each year, and that likelihood increases as we age further. Its also becoming more common for younger people to have falls also.

Falls, Injury and Health Consequences

With that increased risk in falls, comes an increased risk of injury. With reduced muscle mass, there is less meat on the bone, offering less protection. Hip injuries are common injuries after falls, which carries a significant, protracted recovery and increase of mortality after fall and fracture – another 1 in 3 people will die within a year of a fall related hip fracture.

Given this rate of strength loss in adults and potential issues arising from this, it is imperative that strength and muscular control is maintained as much as possible, as it will not only increase lifespan by preventing these health related issues highlighted above (and many others), but also improve your quality of life, allowing you to continue doing the things you both need to do and the things you love doing – like playing golf!

How Does the Programme Address This?

Build Strength Safely and Progressively

We work with you to design a strength programme around you to support both increasing your golf performance whilst increasing your overall health to keep your energy high and scores low.

We will conduct a performance assessment before the start of the programme to assess how you are today with your strength and fitness.

This assessment will help to guide the first phase of your programme address any concerns you may have and any areas we feel could be improved to help you in daily life. We will reevaluate at the end of the programme to measure the improvements you have made and to agree what you want to work on in your next phase.

What next?

So, hopefully now you have a better understanding why strength is important in helping you achieve lowers scores in golf and lower chance of problems in life.

Following this, you can make yourself a cuppa whilst I get onto writing the next article in the series, addressing power, how it relates to strength and how it translates to golf and life.

Education and Research

Below is a list of resources used to gather the information presented in this article.

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Sale, D. G. (n.d.). Neural adaptation to resistance training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 20(Sup 1), S135–S145. https://doi.org/10.1249/00005768-198810001-00009

Kibler, W. B., Press, J., & Sciascia, A. (2006). The role of core stability in athletic function. Sports Medicine, 36(3), 189–198. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200636030-00001

Torres-Ronda, L., Sánchez-Medina, L., & González-Badillo, J. J. (2011). Muscle strength and golf performance: a critical review. PubMed, 10(1), 9–18. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24149290

Lindsay, D. M., & Vandervoort, A. A. (2014). Golf-Related Low Back Pain: A Review of Causative factors and Prevention Strategies. Asian Journal of Sports Medicine, 5(4), e24289. https://doi.org/10.5812/asjsm.24289

Keller, K., & Engelhardt, M. (2019). Strength and muscle mass loss with aging process. Age and strength loss. Muscles Ligaments and Tendons Journal, 03(04), 346. https://doi.org/10.32098/mltj.04.2013.17

Rodrigues, F., Domingos, C., Monteiro, D., & Morouço, P. (2022). A review on Aging, Sarcopenia, falls, and Resistance Training in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(2), 874. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020874

Cai, Y., Liu, L., Wang, J., Gao, Y., Guo, Z., & Ping, Z. (2020). Linear association between grip strength and all-cause mortality among the elderly: results from the SHARE study. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 33(4), 933–941. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-020-01614-z

Rantanen, T., Masaki, K., He, Q., Ross, G. W., Willcox, B. J., & White, L. (2011). Midlife muscle strength and human longevity up to age 100 years: a 44-year prospective study among a decedent cohort. AGE, 34(3), 563–570. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-011-9256-y

Marín-Jiménez, N., Bizzozero-Peroni, B., Molina-Garcia, P., Ortega, F. B., Chaput, J., Zhang, K., Lang, J. J., McGrath, R., Tomkinson, G. R., Martínez-Vizcaíno, V., Cuenca-García, M., & Castro-Piñero, J. (2026). Clinical importance of simple muscular fitness tests to predict long-term health conditions: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 94 cohort studies. British Journal of Sports Medicine, bjsports-2024. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-109173

Falls: applying All Our Health. Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/falls-applying-all-our-health/falls-applying-all-our-health (accessed 24/02/26).

Schnell, S., Friedman, S. M., Mendelson, D. A., Bingham, K. W., & Kates, S. L. (2010). The 1-Year mortality of patients treated in a hip fracture program for elders. Geriatric Orthopaedic Surgery & Rehabilitation, 1(1), 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2151458510378105

Shaw, S. C., Dennison, E. M., & Cooper, C. (2017). Epidemiology of Sarcopenia: Determinants throughout the lifecourse. Calcified Tissue International, 101(3), 229–247. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00223-017-0277-0