Sit-ups aren’t helping your golf, here’s an alternative

Core strength is essential if you want to be a top golfer, but doing sit-ups is not beneficial if you want to play better golf.

While it might be a good exercise for some, it’s one thing that won’t help your golf. If anything, doing lots of sit-ups will be a hinderance.

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The sit-up brings your shoulders closer to your pelvis, and if you’re used to sitting at a desk, as many of us do, then this is something we want to reverse.

Basically, you’re getting hunched over, and that’s not helping your golf swing one bit. Look at the best players in the world and none of them are hunched over, they all have athletic, tall stances over the ball.

Here’s an alternative exercise that is going to activate the same muscles, but help keep you in top shape at the same time.

It’s an exercise called the dead bug. It might look easy, and in a way, it is, but you’re going to be working the muscles in your core, the ones that give you a six pack, in the same way a sit-up would. When you do this, you’ll want to feel it in your trunk muscles, around your core and your spine.

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How to do the dead bug

Tuck your pelvis in and push your belly button into the floor. Then, get into the position in the below picture, with your arms stretched as high as possible to the sky, and your legs tucked in, like you can see here.

Put your left arm flat on the floor and feel like you’re reaching for something above your head, while also stretching your left leg and keeping it as flat to the floor as possible.

Repeat this with opposite arms and legs. You’ll want to do around five on each side.

If you can incorporate this into your core workouts and you’ll be hitting the ball further in no time.

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

This exercise first appeared in issue 199 of bunkered. You can subscribe to bunkered here.