If you’re looking to improve your golf game, you need to start by stretching. Stretching can help increase your flexibility and range of motion, both of which are important in golf. In this blog post, we will discuss the best stretches for golfers.

We’ll review each stretch and explain how it can help improve your game. So, if you’re ready to start improving your swing, keep reading!

How Stretching and Mobility Help a Golf Swing

There are a few critical ways that stretching and mobility can help improve your golf swing.

1. They can help increase your range of motion. This is important because the more significant your range of motion, the more power you can generate in your swing.
2. Stretching can help improve your flexibility. This is important because the more flexible you are, the easier it is to make a smooth, fluid swing.
3. Stretching can help reduce your risk of injury. This is important because golf is a high-impact sport, and injuries are common.

So now that we know how stretching can help improve your golf swing let’s take a look at some of the best stretches for golfers.

Keep the Big Picture in Mind

The most important thing is to keep the big picture in mind and focus on exercises that will improve your overall flexibility and range of motion. There are three critical areas of focus for golf exercises:

Rotation Through Shoulders and Upper Back

The back swing and follow-through are the two areas that require mobility through the upper back and shoulders. Strength is also essential to provide power and stability in the swing; however, loss of mobility as we get older is common and is a great place to start golf exercises. Stretching and mobility work will allow a full stretch through the shoulders and help to prevent injury.

Strength and Stability Through the Core

A solid and stable core is a must for any senior as it protects the back and provides a strong foundation for movement. In golf, it is crucial to create distance on longer shots and control the upper body during shorter shots and putts.

Rotation, Flexion, and Extension Through the Hips

The hips are the center of power in the golf swing and require trunk rotation and trunk mobility for a proper swing. Unfortunately, as we age, this range of motion can diminish, losing distance and accuracy in our shots. These exercises focus on improving hip mobility, including through the hip flexors, so you can make a fuller turn in your golf swing.

Let’s look at the most effective stretching and mobility exercises for golf.

Best Stretches for Golf

Shoulder Stretch with a Towel

Goal: The goal of the stretch is to improve the shoulder range of motion by targeting a commonly tight area – the posterior capsule.

• Start by standing comfortably and grab a towel.
• Place the towel over your right shoulder and hold the front end with your right hand.
• Reach around your back with your left arm to grab the opposite (hanging) end of the towel.
• With your left hand pull the towel towards the floor, keeping your elbow close to your side.
• You should feel a gentle stretch in the back of your right shoulder.
• Hold the stretch for 30 seconds.
• Repeat five to seven times, gently moving deeper into the stretch.
• Switch arms and repeat.

Wall Slides with Bands for Upper Body

Goal: To improve shoulder range of motion and reduce pain while strengthening the stabilizing muscles.

• Start by standing facing the wall with a band looped around both wrists.
• Slowly move your hands away until you feel the tension between your shoulder blades.
• Place the edge of your hands on the wall at about a 90-degree angle.
• Slowly squeeze your shoulder blades together while you slide your hands up the wall.
• Slowly and in a controlled manner, slide your hands back down the wall until they are 90 degrees to the floor.
• Repeat 10-12 times for three sets.

Hamstring Stretch on the Wall

This hamstring stretch is a great addition to any stretching routine to help relieve tension through the posterior and inner thigh and stretch the hamstring, a major muscle group.

• For a starting position, face the wall and sit with your hips as close to a wall as possible, shoulders flat on the floor, and your feet hip-width apart.
• Lie back and swing your legs up the wall.
• Rest your heels on the wall.
• If you feel increased tension in your hamstrings or behind your knees, soften your knees until the stretch is more comfortable.
• If they’re not, straighten your legs. Let your arms rest by your sides, palms up.
• Stay in this pose for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
• Repeat three to five times.

Piriformis Stretch

• Start by lying on your back with both knees bent, feet flat on the floor, and upper body relaxed.
• Cross your left ankle over your right knee.
• Use your left hand to grab hold behind your right thigh, just below the knee.
• Pull your right leg toward you while keeping your left ankle crossed over the right knee.
• You should feel a stretch in your left buttock.
• Hold for 30 seconds to two minutes, and then repeat on the other side.
• If you don’t feel a stretch, try moving your crossed ankle further away from your right knee.
• You can also place a pillow under your right knee for additional comfort.

Thoracic Mobilization Exercise

Mobilization through the thoracic spine is key to alleviating tension through the rhomboids and shoulder blades. You will need a physioball or a chair for this exercise.

• Start kneeling on the floor with your arms in front of you on the chair or the physioball.
• Slowly open your hands and drop your mid-back towards the floor. Think of the area between your shoulder blades as “sagging” towards the floor. Keep your neck neutral with little strain.
• Lift the area in between your shoulder blades towards the ceiling.
• Slowly, allow the space between your shoulder blades to fall toward the floor.
• Repeat 10-15 times.

Starting with these stretching exercises you can improve your flexibility, decrease your risk of injury, and improve your golf game simultaneously!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How often do you play golf? Do you train for golf with stretching exercises? What are your favorite activities that help improve your golf game?

Naomie Olindo’s Beige Floral Ruffle Dress on Instagram

Southern Charm Instagram Fashion 2022

Naomie Olindo was recently in Capri, Italy with her mom for Madison Simon’s wedding where she stunned in this amazing beige floral ruffle dress. And if you too have any fancy events coming up on the agenda, we highly recommend that you go ahead and scoop it up now before it officially goes ciao bellllaaaa. 

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her Bronx and Banco Dress

Photo: @Naomie_Olindo

Originally posted at: Naomie Olindo’s Beige Floral Ruffle Dress

Tracy Tutor’s Coral Running Shoes on Instastories

Million Dollar Listing LA Instagram Fashion 2022

Forget On (well just for now lol), Tracy Tutor’s coral running shoes on Instastories are definitely in the running to becoming the “It” sneaker of the moment. I mean, we saw Dolores Catania wearing a pair by the same brand and now Tracy (I’ve also been eyeing them lately in stores!), so needless to say their popularity is definitely picking up speed.

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her HOKA Running Shoes in 6 Colours

Photo: @TracyTutor

Originally posted at: Tracy Tutor’s Coral Running Shoes

As summer turns to fall, many of us are reminded of our youth, when September meant going back to classes and setting goals for the new school year. Even though our classroom days are mostly in the past, developing new ambitions every few months is a great idea.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything momentous either. You can plan to read a new set of books, learn to cook a few new recipes or even organize a trip for next summer. The key is to have an overall plan, break it into smaller steps, and figure out when you can accomplish them.

The results of this simple process, regardless of the goal, can be very powerful. It can help clarify your direction, give you a consistent sense of accomplishment, provide a feeling of control, add to your intellectual and emotional resources and keep you active and engaged in the world.

You Know Where You’re Headed

Having a clear goal, whether it’s losing 10 pounds, running a half-marathon or learning to bake the perfect piecrust, has multiple benefits. One of the most important is that it gives you your own sense of direction.

No matter what else is going on in your life, how many people are asking for your time or how few hours you have to yourself, having a goal means you know where you’re going and what it takes to get there. It helps provide a personally developed routine to your life.

Even small goals can sometimes seem onerous, but breaking them down into manageable steps or pieces can add a little structure to every day. Each time you reach one of those steps, you’ll feel as if you’ve done something significant.

A Periodic Sense of Accomplishment

When I was in graduate school more than 40 years ago, I felt overwhelmed by the idea of researching and writing my master’s thesis. Every day I would look at all the work that needed to be done and my head would spin.

Once I broke down the bigger goal of finishing my thesis into smaller pieces – research, interviews, resources, draft, editing and final version – it not only felt doable, but I could pat myself on the back each time one of those steps was accomplished.

I didn’t feel as if I had to work on it all day every day because it was now in a form I could handle with a regular schedule. I was suddenly in charge of it, rather than the other way around.

You Will Feel More in Control of Your Life

As life’s demands pull at you, it’s easy to feel as if you’re not doing anything you enjoy or anything just for yourself. You can counter this feeling if you always have at least one goal that is just yours.

No matter what else you have to do for other people, your job or just the responsibilities of your home, if you’ve broken your goal into daily or weekly steps, it will give you a consistent task.

It won’t completely eliminate the feeling that others need you, but knowing you have something important to do toward your own goals can help you feel grounded and confident in yourself. Accomplishing your daily and/or weekly goals will also enhance your feelings of self-worth.

Add to Your Resources

Every time we achieve something, we get the feeling of accomplishment, tenacity and success. Getting to appreciate our talents on a regular basis can add to our confidence in every area of our lives.

This way, if you feel that you are slacking in some area, you can always remember how well you did with a particular goal. It also gives you the chance to figure out what works best for you in terms of accomplishment.

Some people learn that they do best working on their goals a little bit each day, while others do better if they work on it all in one day.

This kind of self-knowledge is important to put to use in other areas of your life as well. No matter what works for you, having an achievable goal keeps you participating actively in life.

Remaining Active and Engaged

Goal setting is one of the most important steps to staying active and engaged in life. If you don’t have a personal goal, it’s easy to feel bored or overwhelmed by other people’s demands. Having two or three consecutive goals can also soften feelings of let-down when your first goal is completed.

Having a goal is like having a map. You know where you’re headed and you know which stops you want to make along the way.

As Pablo Picasso once said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What have you always dreamed of doing? What are three goals that can lead to that dream that you’d like to achieve in the next year? How can you break down those goals into manageable steps? Please join the discussion below!

When an acquaintance, Michael, shared with me that he had lost his job at a small law firm, it opened a new level of communication between us. We talked about his new situation and he told me he was very appreciative of having my ear. I’d see him most mornings at the dog park where our dogs played together.

For the next several days our conversation focused on his plans, but gradually the conversation switched to other topics, mostly the latest news, but occasionally something more substantive.

In one of those talks he shared with me that he lived alone and had not fully come to grips with not having people around to share the little things. He said, “Not the big, ‘I lost my job’ kinds of announcements, like I shared with you. It’s more like the small projects around the house that couples do side-by-side.” He explained that it was those little, insignificant things he missed sharing with someone.

Michael isn’t lonely. In fact, he, and the others I’ve spoken with about living alone, told me they are quite happy with their situation. They’re not necessarily looking for a partner, and they’re not missing that in their lives.

Their lament, one woman told me, is the feeling of being overwhelmed – it’s just me all the time. “When I’m not feeling well, I’m the one who has to drag myself over to the drugstore, stand in line, and get my prescription. It’s the last thing I want to do when I feel lousy.”

Or, as another single person told me, “It’s like when I have to walk the dog, even though I’m feeling rotten.”

They have little choice. Sure, as they all chimed in, when they’re really not well, they can and do call a friend to run to the store or help with a household task. And when there’s a big event or issue, or a significant task they have to take care of, they do go to their close friends and family members.

But the major concerns many single people seem to have are the lack of back-up, their meager savings accounts, and the limited amount of support. “It’s all on me,” Michael lamented. He didn’t mean just financially, although that weighed heavily too. He really meant that he had very few people he could turn to for the kind of everyday, insignificant sharing that a partner or spouse usually provides.

A key aspect in the lives of single people is the lack of anyone who really cares about the little things in your life that you wouldn’t share with just anyone. I’m talking about some very personal things: your sex life, for example. Or your digestive ailments.

These are not exactly things you’d talk about even with good friends. There’s even a commercial on radio urging you to share information about your poop with your doctor since you are not very likely to talk about it with anyone else.

So with the help of several single or unattached friends, I’ve put together three suggested ways to deal with the “It’s All on Me” phenomenon.

Don’t Assume You’re the Only One Feeling Like It’s All on You

We all do, to some extent, even those with partners. As the great actor Orson Wells said, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”

Initiate the Conversations You Need

It’s not easy to walk up to acquaintances and begin talking about some of the little things you miss talking about. But unless you do, you’ll resign yourself to the outcome you dread. You may literally have to force yourself. But the next time it’ll be a little easier.

Create Backups for Yourself

Have a handy list of people who are ready and able to slip in and help you out at the last minute. At the same time, offer to be that person’s backup too. Think of it as exchanging house keys with someone just in case either of you needs access.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you often feel that “it’s all on you”? What do you do as a single person when life gets a little overwhelming? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the lack of a backup person in your life? Please join the conversation.