7 Golf Stretches To Improve Flexibility And Your Golf Swing

GolfBox have teamed up with StretchLab’s expert team of flexologists to demonstrate how stretching can improve your golf swing and lower your scores

Long, loose muscles and perfect posture are the essential building blocks for a fluid and powerful golf swing.

The problem is… long and loose muscles become short and tight when you’re sitting behind a desk 9 to 5 or have sustained an injury.

While you may never achieve Rory-like rotation or Rahm-levels of torque, implementing a few golf-specific stretches into your daily routine will help you develop flexibility to improve your pivot, speed and strength and get you swinging free, fast and, importantly, pain-free.

Try these golf stretching exercises to improve your performance out on the course and clear those niggling aches and pains.

Chest stretches activate the pectoralis muscle group (or pecs as they are commonly referred to) and will increase shoulder and ribcage rotation. They also help golfers to maintain postural strength, which is vital to achieving and maintaining correct positioning and sequencing throughout a golf swing.

Running from the lower back up into the shoulder, the lats (Latissimus Dorsi muscles, in case you’re wondering) are highly active during a golf swing.

Lats are pivotal to achieving an efficient chest and torso rotation during the backswing and they also need to fire rapidly to close the body through impact and into the follow through.

However, they are often overused and overworked, especially if they are tight and inflexible.

Targeting the lats with this stretches will loosen them up and lead to a freer and bigger rotation of the shoulders and torso for more width, power, torque, distance and control.

A common curse for golfers is a tight lower back. Usually, the culprits are the muscles known as the obliques and the quadratus lumborum (QL).

The obliques run from the ribcage into the torso while the QL is the deepest abdominal muscle, often referred to simply as the “back” muscle. It runs from the top of the pelvis to the lowest rib.

Stretching and strengthening these muscles will help you get “golf fit” to support a superior rotation in the golf swing. And when the obliques and QL are happy, stretched and flexible, lower back tightness is usually minimised.

StretchLab provides a suite of tailored assisted stretching programs that identify and remedy tightness and imbalances within a client’s body.

Under the direction of highly-skilled StretchLab flexologists, the advanced muscular flexibility treatment has been proven to improve performance across a broad range of sports, including golf.

In fact, StretchLab have offered their services to the world’s best golfers at PGA Tour tournaments in 2022.

But it’s by no means just for elite athletes and fitness fanatics; it increases flexibility, reduces muscle and joint pain, improves posture and reduces stress for all ages and body types.

StretchLab’s team of experts are trained to place a client into a much deeper stretch than is possible with unassisted stretching. In this deep stretch condition, a flexologist will get their client to contract specific muscles then hold for a short period before releasing.

It’s an advanced form of stretching and retrains the neural pathway from the brain that activates the muscle, delivering improved muscle function and flexibility.

For a FREE demonstration stretch at StretchLab, simply click the "Book" button and select your location and click Demo Stretch.