How using a medicine ball can power up your golf swing

Using medicine balls, or doing ballistic training as it’s known, is a great way of gaining power and speed in your golf swing.

At the end of the day, that’s going to help you hit the ball further, and we all know how important that is to shooting lower scores.

A medicine ball is a great place to start with this as it helps with gaining power. The definition of power is strength multiplied by speed, so if we can build up both of these we’re in business.

• Dr Golf: Add this move to your warm-up for a better start to your round

A really good form of this is ballistic training. That’s a posh way of saying you’re using medicine balls or resistance bands to build up strength. But, because I’m moving these things quickly, I’m also going to be building up my speed. It’s a win-win.

How to use a medicine ball to help your golf swing

As a beginner, you want to get something that’s somewhere between two to four kilograms and make movements that are going to be as hard and as explosive as possible.

The exercise in the image above is a rotational floor slam. That’s going to help to increase speed from the top of your backswing on the way to impact.

• Dr Golf: Do this instead of sit-ups

The second exercise, pictured below, is a rotational medicine ball throw which is going to help the acceleration phase of the swing, which is through impact and beyond. With the throw in front of us, we want to get a nice stable front foot, and then throw the ball as hard and as fast as possible through impact.

With these, you need to find a balance. You need to have something heavy enough where there’s a resistance, but light enough that you can move it quickly.

Incorporate this into your workout and you’ll start hitting the ball further on the course.

Zach Gould is Dr Golf. See drgolfglobal.com for the latest free home and gym workouts.