How I approach the shift to fewer rounds
I love golf, and I also love fitness. One of the things I look forward to in the off-season is having one less variable to plan around. During the season, I might have my workouts figured out at the beginning of the week, then get a text from a buddy on Thursday asking if I want to play that weekend. I already have a workout planned, but I really want to play.
As those impromptu rounds become less frequent, it gets easier to follow the routine I set out for myself. I enjoy lifting heavy, and this is a chance to give that more attention. Your priorities might be different. The useful part of the off-season is having some room to decide what you want to work on and build a routine around it.
What changes when scoring matters less
I still want to move well. What changes for me in winter is how concerned I am about scoring and improving my handicap. With the weather and course conditions, I am more accepting that a round in December or January might not look like one in May. If I feel a little sore from a workout the day before, I am less concerned about how that affects that particular round.
Living in Washington, D.C., there is an interesting local wrinkle. Maryland and D.C. have an inactive handicap season from December 1 through March 14, while Virginia is active year-round. It depends on where you play, not where you live. An otherwise acceptable winter round in Virginia still needs to be posted, even if your home course is across the river.
For my training, the point is that my priorities shift. I am more willing to accept some temporary soreness, but I am not trying to lose mobility. If you have a winter golf trip or a round you really care about, you may want to plan around it differently.
Look back at your own season
You might not share my enthusiasm for heavy lifting, and that is fine. I would start with a personal audit of the season you just played. Were you getting tired toward the end of a walking round? Were your knees or lower back bothering you? Did everything feel pretty good, but you would like more distance off the tee?
Those are different starting points. They give us something to investigate before deciding what your winter training should look like. Persistent or worsening pain needs assessment by an appropriate healthcare professional rather than an assumption that more exercise will fix it. Wanting more distance can be a reason to work on physical capacity, but stronger muscles do not come with a guaranteed number of extra yards.
Even “I feel worn out over the last few holes” needs a follow-up question. Are you generally exhausted from walking the course, or do you feel reasonably comfortable walking but struggle to produce the swings you could make earlier? I would want to understand that difference and look at your current conditioning, strength and range of motion. One description by itself does not tell us the cause.
From there, we can establish a baseline. For a suitable strength exercise, that might include looking at a load you can control for 10 to 15 repetitions, then deciding what to progress. For someone else, building manageable cardiovascular exercise into the week may deserve more attention. The starting point should help us choose the work, rather than having everyone follow the same winter plan.
Build From What You’re Already Doing
The mistake I most want people to avoid is going from zero to sixty. You decide that next season will be different, so suddenly the plan is running four days a week or lifting heavy four or five days a week. That is a big jump if you were barely exercising outside golf a few weeks ago.
If your training was inconsistent, can you start by doing two days consistently? If you already trained twice a week but mostly went through the motions, can you make those two days count? A third day may eventually fit, but first look at how you are using the time you already have. If you currently run once a week, a second manageable run might be a more realistic next step than jumping straight to four.
These are examples of building from your own baseline. The amount you add needs to suit your experience and recovery. You might improve your control of an exercise, increase a familiar weight a little, or make your routine more dependable. Give yourself time to see how you respond before changing several things at once. An ambitious first week is not much use if you cannot keep the routine going.
Keep some exercises you enjoy
I deliberately keep movements I like in my training. A barbell clean is a really fun exercise for me. I also like an incline chest press, and pull-ups are another one I keep coming back to. There are days when I do not particularly want to do pull-ups, and days when I really enjoy them. They can feel tougher on some days than others, but overall I like working at them and trying to improve.
Those are personal examples, not a list of exercises every golfer should copy. Your choices need to fit your experience, goals and any limitations. It is worth finding movements you want to get better at, even if you do not love every repetition. That gives you something to return to when the initial enthusiasm for a new routine wears off.
For a broader look at how the different parts of training support golf, see my golf fitness guide. As you play less, choose something you genuinely want to improve, start from what you can currently do, and keep enough enjoyment in the routine to stick with it. For me, that is one of the things I look forward to about this part of the year.
