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how do you use dumbells to increase golf strength and flexibility


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I am 70 and recently bought a set of dumbell weights (5,10,15 and 20) with intent of working out regularly to improve strenghth and flexibility for golf.

Any suggested exwecises would be appreciated

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The first thing I'll say is that I think it's great that you want to work on getting stronger and more flexibility. Being old doesn't mean that someone has to become weaker and more inflexible, and there is a good body of evidence that strength and flexibility programs can do a lot to slow down the aging process and improve quality of life. Along with golf probably too.

I'm not going to make any specific recommendations because I don't know anything about your current condition. I'd say it might be a good idea to consult with a qualified physical trainer who could assess your current level of strength and flexibility and make good safe recommendations on how you could go about improving things.

Generally these days it is thought that a good strengthening program will incorporate some sort of squatting and lunges to help strengthen the legs and overall body, upper body pushing motions like push ups, bench presses, overhead presses, and upper body body pulling motions like chin ups/pull ups, and barbell or dumbbell rows. Other quality exercises that can be done with dumbbells are swings and snatches, but you definitely might want to have someone qualified to show you how to do those and make sure that you do them safely. Working out should be done in a way that improves health and you don't want to do things with poor form and risk injury.

The dumbbells themselves won't do much for your flexibility, but flexibility can be important to help with performing dumbbell exercises with good form. Yoga and tai chi programs can be very good to help teach basics of flexibility and balance. Mostly it involves developing a routine that works to hit nearly all the muscles and joints of the body, and then being diligent on putting in at least 10 minutes a day doing at least some portion of the full routine.

Good luck and remember. You don't actually get stronger while you lift the weights, you get stronger when your body repairs itself afterward. So eat good too and get your sleep.

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The dumbbells themselves won't do much for your flexibility, but flexibility can be important to help with performing dumbbell exercises with good form

Actually this is false, any form of weight lifting will produce above average flexibility in a person. Generally being active alone will improve flexibility. So basically move around, be mobile and you will see a great increase in flexibility. Sitting around all day, sitting on the couch, being sedimentary is what causes decrease in flexibility.

But a study was done between: Male Bodybuilders, College football Players, College students who took conditioning classes, Olympic weightlifters, and general college students. Out of all these people, Olympic Weightlifters showed the highest level of flexibility.

Another study done on novice weight lifters shown they improved flexibility over an eleven week period.

Basically, if you weight lift through the full range of movements, you will gain flexibility.

Yoga, martial arts, all of them have great range of flexibility as well, but weight lifting is a great way to improve on flexibility.

As for starting out on weight lifting, i would recommend taking a class. There are ton's of classes geared towards senior citizens at local fitness center's or colleges. There you can learn proper technique and gauge how much you should be lifting.

But ScT1 is right, after working out, drink plenty of water, eat healthy, and make sure to get lots of sleep as well. You can hamper your improvements greatly by not sleeping well at night.

Matt Dougherty, P.E.
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I am mid-50's and do a kettle bell workout - Art of Strength Providence - on amazon.

I also use dumbbells but found the above workout with kettle bells to be superior.

I also use a heart monitor.

You'll need it.

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Great to see you are wanting to work on your fitness and strength a litle. It cn really help on and off the course.

A couple of exercises wont totally work for you, a complete program will always yield the best results. But if you are new to working out, I always recommend getting a full personal assessment and perhaps a couple of basic personal sessions to teach you some basic moves and form so at least then you can have a good foundation to develop from.

Good look, and the flexibility will indeed come once you start moving with weights, but dont force it by any means.

www.athleticgolftraining.com although geared toward younger golfers does provide lots of general health and fitness tips for golfers. Plenty of youtube videos and even recommended programs that you can try.

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Any workout if done with full range of motion will help improve flexibility and strength.  Dumbells usually offer a wider range of motion than barbells as a general statement but you can still improve flexibility with barbells.  In any exercise where flexibility is important, quality over quantity, make sure you do the exercise correctly getting a full stretch of the muscle and full contraction.

I'd suggest before any lifting you do warm up and then some stretching.  Your first set should also be a warm up set to get your muscles prepared for the increased workload.

Kettle bells are a good workout but they tend to be a combo of cardio and lifting, where one limits you before the other has it's full effect.  I'd usually suggest kettle bells as a 2nd step after having done some stand alone cardio and weight lifting routines for a few months.

Joe Paradiso

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Originally Posted by newtogolf

Any workout if done with full range of motion will help improve flexibility and strength.  Dumbells usually offer a wider range of motion than barbells as a general statement but you can still improve flexibility with barbells.  In any exercise where flexibility is important, quality over quantity, make sure you do the exercise correctly getting a full stretch of the muscle and full contraction.

I'd suggest before any lifting you do warm up and then some stretching.  Your first set should also be a warm up set to get your muscles prepared for the increased workload.

Kettle bells are a good workout but they tend to be a combo of cardio and lifting, where one limits you before the other has it's full effect.  I'd usually suggest kettle bells as a 2nd step after having done some stand alone cardio and weight lifting routines for a few months.

Agree -

I found kettle bells to be great exercise, but you must respect the bells. I still do not do my entire bell workout because the heart rate gets too high to keep going. I rest, let it decrease and continue.

A warning about bells to anyone - respect them. I did not use a heart monitor the first time I did a kettle bell workout and had a heart attack - literally. Thought I was just sore, but later I found out differently. So I would suggest some form of cardio beforehand, and  lighter bells if you choose to do a bell workout in the future.

At any age, I'd suggest a heart monitor, but especially middle age and above. Working dumbbells and even weight machines, I was surprised by the steep climb in heart rate when lifting weights.

Ping G400 Max 9/TPT Shaft, TEE EX10 Beta 4, 5 wd, PXG 22 HY, Mizuno JPX919F 5-GW, TItleist SM7 Raw 55-09, 59-11, Bettinardi BB39

 

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I personally like using resistance bands, if people say there sissy, think again. Some of the most brutal workouts have come from resistance bands. Especially if you start getting higher up.

Bret Contreras has done great work on using Electrodes to measure muscle activation, and many of the best workouts have been using some sort of resistance bands.

What i like about his workouts, there geared towards Glute Activation, which is the power station of the golf swing. This one is very good for getting your glutes to fire in a rotation way. I tried this one out yesterday, didn't feel much, but today, man i am a bit sore :p

Matt Dougherty, P.E.
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What's in My Bag
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Originally Posted by saevel25

Actually this is false, any form of weight lifting will produce above average flexibility in a person. Generally being active alone will improve flexibility. So basically move around, be mobile and you will see a great increase in flexibility. Sitting around all day, sitting on the couch, being sedimentary is what causes decrease in flexibility.

But a study was done between: Male Bodybuilders, College football Players, College students who took conditioning classes, Olympic weightlifters, and general college students. Out of all these people, Olympic Weightlifters showed the highest level of flexibility.

Another study done on novice weight lifters shown they improved flexibility over an eleven week period.

I felt it's important to revisit this. I'm not going to argue with you that lifting won't increase flexibility, I think it can help, and it can especially help with individuals who are not only told what types of lifting to do, but how to do them . Which can be extremely important for all types of people, sometimes even well-conditioned athletes can have deficiencies in movement patterns and their amounts of flexibility. It's also important in view of how we had an older individual asking about this. If there's one damn certain thing about this world, it's that the older you get, the more you can lose flexibility and movement. I'm not old yet, I'm 42, but even when young I wasn't all that gumby-like and I've also had type 1 diabetes for over 27 years, and there is a good body of evidence about how diabetes tends to do cruddy sorts of things to the stuff that's involved in being limber -- the ligaments and tendons, and how the muscle fibers lay out. So speaking as someone who decided to get off his butt in late 2005, and began doing stuff like golfing, running, lifting, lifting itself wasn't enough. I've had to put time into working on getting more flexible. And I'm still working on it because I've got some compensatory movement patterns and I slacked off for about a year and half while my left shoulder was frozen up pretty good with adhesive capsulitis.

Anyhow, I came across a good thread today at the Irongarm forums where someone asked about putting together a program for his father at the age of 62. There's a lot of quality advice in there and there's a pretty consistent theme among them all -- mobility is huge.

Another place recently where I saw some talk about flexibility was on Joe DeFranco's site, The Stretching Roundtable .

So I do take some issue with the assertion that any form of weightlifting will produce above average flexibility in a person. It is certainly not true in all individuals, and the older the individual we have, it may be even more likely there will already be compensatory factors that will interfere with a person achieving above average flexibility simply through some sort of weightlifting.

I've also been unable to find anything about that study of novice weighlifters after 11 weeks having become more flexible, at least nothing detailed to say what the ages were of the participants and what exactly the program was and if it didn't include some sort flexibility and mobility work.

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Weightlifting is too generic of a term to tell you much of anything. People lose flexibility when weight training when they use limited range of motions. If you are doing full range of motions you will increase flexibility (at least for the ROM of the exercise). In theory you if you packed on enough pounds of muscles, you could still be flexibile in a lot of directions but have those muscles interfer with your swing. That isn't likely to happen to anyone without them noticing.  Very few people can pack on the 50+lbs of muscle that would be needed. If you start looking like this

you are not spending enough time on the course.

Originally Posted by ScT1

I've also been unable to find anything about that study of novice weighlifters after 11 weeks having become more flexible, at least nothing detailed to say what the ages were of the participants and what exactly the program was and if it didn't include some sort flexibility and mobility work.

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True, but is flexibility and immobility due to sedimentary lifestyles or age. I say its probably more the lifestyle than the age. There are stories of older people who can still tough there toes, have very active lifestyles and mobility. I think the key is, keeping active through out your life, greatly enhances your chances of being mobile and active when your older.

But i agree, i was just answering in a broad sense that any form of activity, especially were weight lifting is concern can increase your mobility and strength.

For someone his age, i would recommend a weight lifting class that specializes with seniors. they know the challenges seniors face when wanting to become more active. I also recommend some form of yoga as well. Yoga is beneficial at any age.

The fear that if you lift weights, that you will be come huge and less mobile that will inhibit your golf game is completely false. Look at Mark McGuire, took steroids, big bulky guy, plays a great game of golf.

Unless your genetically gifted, taking supplements, or spent years body building, you will not get to large to inhibit your golf game.

Matt Dougherty, P.E.
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What's in My Bag
Driver; :pxg: 0311 Gen 5,  3-Wood: 
:titleist: 917h3 ,  Hybrid:  :titleist: 915 2-Hybrid,  Irons: Sub 70 TAIII Fordged
Wedges: :edel: (52, 56, 60),  Putter: :edel:,  Ball: :snell: MTB,  Shoe: :true_linkswear:,  Rangfinder: :leupold:
Bag: :ping:

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  • 2 weeks later...

I agree with all the comments and we all learn from each other.  I'm 65 and I use light weights not more than 15 lbs. for my wrist and I do move my wrist the way I swing a club. 25 reps 3 sets. I use the resistance bands for my chest pulls and arm pulls to the count of 20, 3 times with each set.

I work on my core with a the dumb bells twisting 25 times 3 sets. I've been doing 500 setups 5 days a week starting at age 14. I walk 2 mile 5 days a week. I stretch on a big ball 5 days a week.  Start out with light weights because you don't want to pull something.  For me light weights with more reps are the best for me. I hit the ball a long way and I hope I can keep it up by improving my work out. Good Luck

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I use dumbells as part of my resistance workouts. I have three types of workouts: Upper Body, Lower Body, and Back/ABS. Each workout has five lifts, some of which use dumbells.

Sequence goes: Warm-up, lifts, cardio, and cooldown-stretch.

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