What is wellness for golf?
Let’s answer that question with another question. If this were one of our personality quizzes and you were asked to fill in the blank, what answer would you choose?
“A well tuned car” is to “long distance road rally” as ” ____________” is to a “golf tournament”.
If you said “a well tuned golfer” or “wellness” , you of course know where I am headed! And you have just defined wellness for golf!
Golf wellness is not quite the same as golf fitness. Wellness as we are referring to it here involves your pursuit of a healthy, balanced lifestyle. One that will maximize your ability to play your best golf now, and reduce your chances of loosing ground to burnout, or things like colds, allergies, injuries, illnesses and even a variety of diseases later in your life.
Wellness for Golf is Often Overlooked
Often going un-noticed by even the best of golfers, you too might be overlooking wellness as a possible cause for some of the challenges in golf that you may be facing right now, such as:
- inconsistencies
- poor finishes
- difficulties focusing or managing tension
- impatience or fatigue
- and more
Even if you recently passed a physical or a medical check-up, you can still be experiencing compromised wellness. This is largely because most medical doctors are still looking primarily for “disease” and are trained to treat” illness” and “symptoms”, leaving only a few truly motivated and open minded doctors who are prepared to also address issues of wellness.
And because wellness is probably not something you have been trained to naturally check when you are not playing to your potential–either physically or mentally– you will likely turn, like most players do, to the most obvious methods of problem-solving like:
- scheduling more practice
- making more swing changes
- finding a new teacher(s)
- getting new clubs
- working on each of the latest tips offered on the Golf Channel or the latest golf magazine
- or even using medication that a well intentioned doctor might have prescribed for your symptoms headaches, skin irritations, indigestion, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, arthritis, constipation, anger, poor focus and concentration, anxiety, etc.
[Please note. Some golfers truly need and benefit from these med’s but too often they are used by players without considering issues of wellness as well.]
Components of Wellness
Wellness has many different definitions and parts, but in an effort to keep this simple, we will describe the components of wellness that seem to be the most important for peak performance in golf. They include key aspects of:
- Biochemical Balance
This includes many aspects of your body chemistry and the things you can do to keep it in balance, including choice of foods, sleep, rest, exercise, supplements, etc.
- Lifestyle Balance
This includes how you organize and manage your time and energy relative to the important areas of your life including career, personal, family, relationship and friends.
These two very broad areas are inter-related. Balancing and managing them–both individually and together–is essential for you to attain maximum wellness.
By striving for this kind of wellness, you keep within your reach not only your very best golf, but also your very best health.
Ideas for Attaining Wellness
We will be posting links to a variety of articles that provide you information we have found to be most helpful to our clients over the years.
The biochemical and lifestyle components of wellness are further defined and a variety of articles will be posted to you ideas for manage and strengthen them for optimum wellness for golf.
May you be inspired to make wellness for golf one of your priorities for being and playing your best.
