Do you play golf? Pilates courses can be helpful for golfers…

We can offer individually tailored Pilates for golf. If you wonder how Pilates might help you, then perhaps you should know that it is often extremely beneficial for golf players. In fact of all the professional athletes who have discovered Pilates, golfers have taken to it fastest and in greatest numbers. Devotees include: Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam, David Duval, Kelli Kuehne, Andrew McGee, Grace Park and Carin Koch, among many others.

And maybe this should not surprise us. There are many similarities!

Golf and Pilates – The Similarities:

• They are both about stability. Essentially the ability, in the case of golf, to hold a position long enough to play through a shot without the body buckling or twisting.
• Both golf and Pilates are about focus and ‘getting in the groove’. That is repeating similar movements efficiently, effectively and precisely. In the case of golf – no matter the distractions: weather, terrain or opponent.
• Golf, like Pilates, is about: core strength and movement from the centre of the body. Both are about flexibility, precise movements and tiny margins. A small improvement in a golfer’s shoulder flexibility, for example, can be the difference between a drive from the tee veering into the rough or going straight onto the green.

Golf is often thought of as a game requiring little more than hand-eye coordination to hit the ball and stamina for a long walk round the course. In reality, it is actually a whole-body sport in which the key movements – particularly when driving or chipping – come from the core.

Pilates addresses the need for excellent rotation around the spine while maintaining stability through the transverse abdominal muscles. The shoulders and arms also need to be stable in order to control a shot. Yet they must also be sufficiently strong and elastic to deliver power. After all, we are aiming to send the ball 150 metres and more down the fairway.

Top golfers nowadays work on their fitness as much as their putting – a feature that is becoming more common among club-level players, too.