Beyond your physical and mental skills on the golf course, a lot more goes into creating the ideal golf game. Having golf fitness and maintaining personal balance in your life are additional factors that play a large role in your success on the course. If you’re looking to improve your golf fitness and maintain a balanced lifestyle alongside competitive golf, there are number of things you need to know.
Keep Your Balance
Not just your golf and golf fitness will benefit from keeping a healthy balance. You will be amazed at what it can also do for your:
- Peace of mind
- Mental health
- Physical health
- Productivity
- Relationships
- Spirituality
- And more!
Start by Taking inventory of These Five Important Areas
Reflect for a moment about these 5 important areas of your life. Then take inventory of how you are currently dividing your time between them.
Career
This represents all the time you direct toward work. Career can include golf, school, job, running a household, the “job” aspects of parenting, etc.
It encompasses all the time you spend doing, thinking about and preparing for your work.
Personal/Spiritual
This is your time for fun, recreation, relaxation, personal growth, rehabilitation, education, spiritual growth, etc.
Relationship
Separate from family or friends or career, this is time you spend sharing, growing and just enjoying your relationship with your significant other if you have one.
It can be time for calls, e-mails, outings, sharing, planning or just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company.
Family
Separate from relationship, this is time you set aside for communicating, helping, sharing, teaching, and enjoying your immediate and/or extended family.
Friends
This is time you make for individual or groups of friends.
It can be sharing confidences, mutually supporting, or simply enjoying each others company.
Golf Fitness and Balance: Important Note!
How you define golf and how important it is in your life will determine just where it fits in this line-up.
Some examples:
– If you are a pro it will largely be in the area of “career” but a percentage may also go to playing with” friends “and “family” for fun. But it could also be part of your personal, recharge time.
– If you are a weekend player, golf could be strictly “personal”, or be time with “friends”. Or it can be an activity you share in “relationship” and “family” time.
– If you are an avid junior and you aspire to play college or pro, or you are a college player and golf is paying your tuition, you may feel golf fits best in the area of “career”. But if golf is secondary to your studies you may consider that you are playing golf for “personal” reasons, or for the camaraderie of shared time with “friends”.
However you define it, the bottom line is…All time spent on golf counts for golf.
The time you think about it, study it, practice it, travel for it, play it, compete, talk about it with family and friends all goes into the collective of golf time.
So ask yourself the question, “does the quantity and quality of time I am putting into golf line up with my goals for being the best golfer I can be?” Or, is your imbalance getting in the way of your golf fitness?
Tip:
-If you are a serious golfer and all this time adds up to more than 80% you are likely out of balance.
-If you are a serious golfer and all this time adds up to less than 20%, you are likely out of balance.
Now that you have an estimate of your time that goes to golf, see if you need to shift time to or away from any of the 5 areas. Remember, golf fitness requires a balanced lifestyle, and more golf isn’t always better.
Questions to Ask Yourself:
- Am I spending too much or too little time or thought in any one area?
- Can I improve the quality of time in any area?
- What healthy changes can I make to improve the quantity or the quality of time spent in any one of these areas?
Jot Down the Things You Would Most Want to Change
What you learn from this little exercise can be ideal fodder for laying out some really meaningful goals that can dramatically improve your golf fitness and your life. Write them down!
Get Specific With Your Goal Fitness Goals
Your goals should be personalized, considering things like your age, priorities, interests and personality–and where you want to go in golf.
Here are some examples:
- call family more often, or spend more quality time with them
- better organize practice, practice with a purpose
- learn to leave golf at the golf course
- clean your room or help more around the house
- improve your diet or make more time to work out
- pay more attention to hydration
- become a better listener
- get better sleep
- spend less time watching golf, or non golf shows on t.v.
- adopt better study habits
- develop better golf practice habits
- spend more–or less–time with your friend(s) depending on which you need for better balance
- less time on the computer
- learn a new hobby or skill
- schedule lessons if needed for your game
- improve your golf mental game
- set up a long range plan for better golf
- attend a mental game workshop
Now Daydream a Little
Take a few moments daily to visualize how and when you will take action until you finally do. If you are not sure where to start, find somebody who can help.
Every week take a moment to see how you are doing with your balance goals. You can be sure that will always need a little tweaking and improving in order to maximize your golf fitness and enjoyment.
If you are serious about golf fitness and being the best you can be, sign up for our Online Coaching System. It has this Balance Goals exercise and lots of other helpful tools! You will not only learn how to maintain a balanced life style and improve your golf fitness, you’ll also become a master of the mental game!
