It’s the start of the golf season, and most of us are trying to find both the time to work on our golf swings and the time to do a little spring cleaning around the house as well.
When it’s time to sweep out the garage of all the winter sand and dust and you’re forced to grab your broom, you can now practice your golf, too. Improve your sweeping motion and improve your golf swing through this great resistance training exercise.
Resistance training is where you move your body against resistance. It is designed to increase strength and endurance and, in this case, give you the correct feel for the sequence of the golf swing.
When sweeping, you are dragging the broom across the floor. If you sweep while simulating a golf swing, it can help train your muscles and improve your legwork while giving you a better feel of the golf club during the downswing.
First, grab a broom and hold it close enough like a golf club. Then press the broom into the ground outside your trail foot (the right foot for the right-handed golfer). The more you press the broom bristles into the ground, the more resistance you will create.
The goal here is to move the broom across the floor and in front of your body using the same movements of your feet and the lower-body pivot of the golf swing.
Once the broom has traveled past your lead foot, you may lift the broom and hold the position. The finish position will mimic the position you should be in the moment after impact with a golf ball, where your weight is completely on your lead foot, your hips are rotated and your arms are extended through impact.
Remember, the more pressure you create with the broom and the floor and the harder you have to simulate the correct movements of the golf swing to move the broom, the better you will train these correct movements.
What this exercise will teach you is when you shift foot pressure from trail foot and lead foot and rotate around your lead leg as the golf club is traveling in front of you on the downswing, you will feel the club head accelerate through the impact zone and to the finish.
Repeat this sweeping motion several times and hold the just-past-impact position in balance. Finally, grab a golf club and position yourself from that point, where you are positioned with your weight on your lead leg, arms extended and hips open.
From this starting position make a few golf swings that go all the back through your backswing, then all the way through the downswing to a balanced finish.
As you swing the club through the impact zone, you will have a greater feel and awareness of how shifting pressure between your feet while rotating around your lead leg increases the momentum of the golf club and improves the timing the strike the ball better.
So, who would have thought? Sweeping the garage out in the spring will really help your golf swing. Not only will it get rid of all the dust in your swing, but you’ll get all your spring sweeping done, too.
Peter Harris is the director of Golf at the Fore-U Golf Center in West Lebanon. His column appears weekly in the Recreation page during the golf season.