How to Enhance Your Swing Speed

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How to Enhance Your Swing Speed

Louis Pringle
Jun 17, 2020
4 minutes

Speed kills, and in golf, it kills the ball. There’s simply no denying it, as a faster swing speed combined with a controlled motion will lead to more distance off the tee. In the long run, this will help as you’ll get to play with shorter approach shots to the flag.

There are plenty of drills for you to do on the course or at the range to better your swing speed, but what you may be overlooking is the work that can be done at home or the gym. We’ll examine some of the physical exercises that can serve your game. 

Although you may not get your body in a shape similar to Bryson DeChambeau’s, you’ll still be able to cut out a large portion of the course. This also means that you’ll be cutting down shots on your scorecard in the long run. Here are the two aspects we’ll be covering:

  1. Hip flexibility
  2. Powerful leg for extra power

Hip Flexibility

Most golfers (not the pros) tend to struggle with hip flexibility and motion. This is unfortunate, as your hips play a major role in pivoting your upper body through your golf swing. Here’s the first exercise to help strengthen your hips:

  1. Pick up a medicine ball (heavy enough to create some resistance)
  2. Place yourself in a squat position, with the knees bent a bit more than your golf stance
  3. Hold out the medicine ball and rotate your upper body (using your hips only) to the left or the right
  4. Swing back to the front as hard and as fast as you can while throwing the ball against the wall.

You can also bring in the shoulders after you’ve done the original exercise properly. By adding the shoulders to the motion, combined with the rotation of the hips, the feeling will be much closer to that of a golf swing.

Powerful Legs for Extra Power

Hips rotation will help ease the transition of your weight from the back foot to the front foot, but it doesn’t generate any power of its own. The energy conducted by the hip comes from the legs and can be augmented through a very simple exercise. This one looks to improve both your leg strength and your balance.

  1. The basic name of this exercise could be lateral jumps as your goal will be to jump from one leg to another while maintaining your balance.
  2. When executing the jumps, you’ll want to try to land softly every single time while also minimizing your time in contact with the ground and pushing off the floor vigorously.
  3. The goal of this whole exercise is to strengthen your knees and your ankles as well as adding flexibility to your hips. 
  4. You can turn up the intensity for this one by picking up a medicine ball for added weight or by tying an elastic band around your waist and attaching it to a steady base that will produce resistance.

These exercises may not be the key to fixing your ball flight or trajectory, but they will certainly help you gain some extra yards from the tee box on top of helping you get fit!

The physical changes you’ll experience from the drills listed above may never show up in front of the mirror, but they’ll show on the course as they’ll come out in added yardage in all aspects of your game. It will also serve as a great solution for golfers struggling to get the ball off the ground.

However, you can always opt for a quick fix solution off the tee with launch-adjusted drivers. These may serve you well off the tee, but your airborne issues will persist once you reach the fairway.

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Be sure to put in the extra work before heading out to the course and use these two exercises as an introduction to better your swing speed.

Until Next Time,

The Golf Avenue Team

Further reading

A good day with the driver will make a huge difference on the scorecard. Our team came up with easy five drills to help you find more fairways than ever!

Our in-house PGA of Canada professional, Nicolas Drozdoski-Richardson, offers insightful tips to help you avoid that early season rust.