Top Five Ways to Protect Yourself From Injury on Your Next Golf Vacation

If you're planning a nice golf vacation in the near future, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that you aren’t planning to sustain an injury in the near future! The sad reality is that many golfing injuries are sustained while on vacation, for the simple fact that people are doing things that they're bodies haven’t been conditioned for by their daily life. If you’re planning a golf trip, here are some tips for getting into shape for it, and preventing injury while you’re away.

1. Do medium intensity cardio three times a week, high intensity twice a week

Aside from the encyclopedia of information that is available on how cardiovascular exercise improves our health, it also helps you make sure that you won’t keel over from exhaustion after your first 18 holes! A mix of moderate intensity (where you work at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate) and high intensity (where you work at 80% of your maximum heart rate) cardio programs is best.

2. Do core strengthening exercises

Few games depend as much on having strong core muscles as golf does. Get in the gym and do some lateral pull downs or other back strengthening exercises, and blend these with stomach strengtheners. Pay attention to perfect form in these exercises to ensure that you don’t do yourself injury. Both women and men should focus on keeping a tight pelvic floor through these exercises, also. Maintain the form on yourgolf vacation.

3. Eat plenty of oily fish or take an omega-3 supplement

Omega 3 is essential to the health of many parts of our body, and our joints are one of those. Especially for those of us getting on in years, golf can be hard on the joints -- support them nutritionally

4. Pick up your balls by bending your knees

This is one to watch out for while you are on your golf vacation. If you constantly bend at your spine to pick up your balls, you'll end up sore quickly and with an injury soon after. Bend at the knees when you’re getting your balls out of the hole and tees out of the ground.

5. Have a professional trainer put together a stretching program

That professional could be a golf instructor, or it could be a physical trainer. Either way, have someone create a stretching program tailored to your body (this can be done relatively inexpensively at your local gym), and use it every morning of your golf vacation, after a brisk walk.