The Best Warm-Up for Golf: A Physiotherapist’s 5-Minute Pre-Round Routine

The Best Warm-Up for Golf: A Physiotherapist’s 5-Minute Pre-Round Routine

You arrive at the golf course with ten minutes to spare.

The clubs come out of the car, the golf shoes go on and you head towards the first tee. Perhaps you make a couple of practice swings, stretch your back once or twice and reach for the driver.

Then comes the first full swing of the day.

It feels stiff.

The second isn't much better. By the fourth or fifth hole, however, your body finally feels as though it is moving properly.

Sound familiar?

For many golfers, the first few holes effectively become their warm-up.

Get Golf Ready

And it appears to be remarkably common. Research observing 1,040 amateur golfers found that only 54.3% performed any form of warm-up activity. Among those who did warm up, 88.7% used practice swings as part of their preparation.[1]

The Victorian Better Health Channel also reports research from Deakin University's Sports Injury Prevention Unit suggesting that fewer than 3% of Victorian golfers warmed up properly, while nearly half did not warm up at all.[2]

Yet golf places considerable physical demands on the body.

Your hips, trunk, shoulders and arms need to coordinate rapidly while you produce and transfer force from the ground through the body and into the club.

So rather than using your opening holes to get moving, it makes sense to prepare your body before you hit your first shot.

The good news?

You don't necessarily need a 20-minute stretching routine.

Here is a practical 5-minute golf warm-up designed around the movements your body is about to perform.

Why Warm Up Before Golf?

A good golf warm-up isn't simply about becoming more flexible.

The goal is to progressively prepare your body for the demands of the golf swing.

That means:

raising your body temperature → moving through useful ranges → activating muscles → rotating → loading → progressively increasing swing speed.

There is research supporting this approach.

A small study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine investigated a golf-specific warm-up in 20 male golfers. The golfers performing the warm-up demonstrated an average 12.8% increase in clubhead speed immediately after the warm-up compared with their baseline testing.[3]

After performing the programme regularly for five weeks, their clubhead speed improvement compared with baseline was even greater.

This was a small study, so the exact percentages shouldn't be assumed to apply to every golfer. But it provides useful evidence that physical preparation before golf can influence performance.

Research in youth golfers has also found that combining dynamic exercise with a golf-club warm-up improved clubhead speed and golfers' perceived shot quality, while simply warming up with the club did not produce the same significant improvements.[4]

In other words:

Your practice swings can be part of your warm-up. They probably shouldn't be the entire warm-up.

Get Golf Ready

The 5-Minute Golf Warm-Up

This routine follows a simple progression

MARCH → RAISE → MOBILISE → SEPARATE → LOAD → SWING

You don't need gym equipment.

You don't need to lie on the ground.

And you don't need to turn the first tee into a fitness class.

All you need is approximately five minutes and one golf club.

1. March to Fast Feet

Time: 30 seconds

Start with a brisk march on the spot.

Allow your arms to move naturally and gradually increase the pace. If comfortable, progress towards light, quick feet for the final 10–15 seconds.

Why?

Many golfers begin their warm-up by immediately stretching.

I'd rather start by simply getting the body moving.

The aim is to gradually increase heart rate, circulation and body temperature before asking your joints and muscles to move through larger ranges.

This is particularly useful after driving to the golf course or before an early-morning tee time.

2. Squat to Reach

6–8 repetitions

Stand with your feet approximately shoulder-width apart.

Sit into a comfortable squat.

As you stand back up, reach both arms overhead.

Move smoothly rather than trying to squat as deeply as possible.

Why?

The golf swing doesn't only involve your shoulders and spine.

Your ankles, knees and hips all contribute to how you interact with the ground and move during the swing.

The squat-to-reach gives us an efficient way to introduce movement through several areas simultaneously.

Think:

movement first, maximum flexibility second.

You're warming up — not performing a mobility assessment.

3. Reverse Lunge With Rotation

4–5 repetitions each side

Step one leg backwards into a comfortable reverse lunge.

Keeping your balance, gently rotate your upper body towards the front leg.

Return to the middle and step back up.

Alternate sides.

Why?

Now we're beginning to combine lower-body movement with rotation.

That's important because golf doesn't happen as a collection of isolated joints.

Your hips, pelvis, trunk and shoulders have to work together.

This exercise also challenges balance and control while introducing rotation before we progress towards faster movements.

4. Pelvic Turns

8 each direction

Take your normal golf posture.

Place your hands across your chest or hold a club horizontally across your hips.

Keeping your upper body relatively quiet, rotate your pelvis gently from side to side.

Don't worry about making the movement enormous.

Why?

Here's something many golf warm-up articles don't discuss:

Golf isn't simply about how far you can rotate. It's also about how different parts of your body coordinate and move relative to one another.

The pelvis and upper body don't move identically throughout the golf swing.

Being able to move the lower body while maintaining some control through the upper body introduces the concept of upper- and lower-body separation — something commonly considered within golf-specific physical assessment.

5. Golf-Posture Upper-Body Rotations

6 each side

Stay in your golf posture.

Place a club across your shoulders.

Now keep the lower body relatively quiet while rotating your upper body left and right.

Start gently.

Gradually increase the range as you become warmer.

Why?

This complements the previous exercise.

Instead of moving the pelvis beneath a quieter upper body, you're now asking the upper body to rotate over a relatively stable lower body.

One important point:

Don't force your lower back to twist as far as possible.

Rotation during the golf swing is shared between multiple regions, including the hips and thoracic spine.

More movement isn't automatically better.

What matters is having enough movement — and being able to control it.

6. Lateral Lunge

5 repetitions each side

Take a comfortable step to the side.

Shift your weight towards that leg while allowing the hip and knee to bend.

Push through the ground and return towards the middle.

Alternate sides.

Why?

Golf is often described as a rotational sport.

That's true — but it can make golfers forget that the body must also manage forces in other directions.

During the swing, pressure moves beneath your feet while the lower body contributes to producing and transferring force.

The lateral lunge introduces side-to-side loading before we begin swinging.

7. Single-Leg Balance With Reach

Approximately 20 seconds each side

Stand on one leg with your knee slightly bent.

Maintain your balance while gently reaching the opposite foot or hand forwards, sideways or diagonally.

Keep the movement controlled.

If balance is difficult, keep your golf club lightly touching the ground for support.

Why?

Your feet are your connection with the ground.

This simple exercise introduces foot and ankle control, hip stability and balance without turning the warm-up into a complicated rehabilitation programme.

Remember:

this is preparation, not a balance test.

8. Progressive Practice Swings

Approximately 6 swings

Now pick up your club.

But don't immediately make the fastest driver swing you can.

Instead, progressively build the intensity.

Try:

2 swings at approximately 50%

2 swings at approximately 70%

2 swings at approximately 80–90%

If you're heading to the practice range afterwards, continue progressing towards your normal playing speed.

Why?

This is arguably the most important part of the routine.

Your warm-up should eventually begin to resemble the activity you're preparing to perform.

You've increased your temperature.

You've moved your joints.

You've introduced rotation.

You've loaded the lower body.

Now you progressively introduce speed and the golf swing itself.

The transition should feel gradual:

general movement → golf-specific movement → golf swing.

Get Golf Ready

Should Golfers Stretch Before Playing?

Yes — but we need to distinguish between dynamic movement and prolonged passive stretching.

If a particular area feels stiff, gentle mobility work may certainly form part of your preparation.

But spending 15–20 minutes holding long static stretches immediately before trying to produce speed may not be ideal.

One study involving competitive golfers compared an active dynamic warm-up with the same warm-up preceded by 20 minutes of passive static stretching. The prolonged static stretching condition negatively affected several measures of driving performance.[5]

That doesn't mean static stretching is "bad".

It means timing and purpose matter.

If your goal immediately before teeing off is to prepare for movement and speed, dynamic movements that gradually resemble golf make sense.

Long-term flexibility work is a different goal and may be better addressed separately within an individual mobility or rehabilitation programme.

Get Golf Ready

What If You Have Another 5–10 Minutes?

Excellent.

Don't necessarily add ten more stretches.

Instead, use the extra time to make your preparation increasingly golf-specific.

You could spend a little longer on an area you know needs attention, add comfortable club-assisted shoulder movements, then begin hitting balls.

On the range, start with shorter, controlled swings before progressing towards longer clubs and greater speed.

Think quality and progression rather than quantity.

Twenty rushed driver swings aren't automatically a better warm-up than ten progressively built swings.

What About Golfers With Back, Hip or Shoulder Pain?

This is where generic warm-up advice has limitations.

A 30-year-old golfer with no injury history may require something very different from a 68-year-old golfer returning after shoulder surgery.

Similarly, someone experiencing lower back pain during rotation shouldn't simply force themselves through increasingly aggressive rotational stretches because they have been told they need "more mobility".

Pain can be influenced by many factors, including joint mobility, strength, load tolerance, previous injury and how the body is managing the physical demands of golf.

Your warm-up should therefore be adapted to you.

If an exercise consistently causes pain, stop rather than trying to push through it.

Book Your Assessment

One More Thing Most Golf Warm-Ups Forget

Your warm-up shouldn't make you tired.

The goal isn't to complete a workout before your round.

You're trying to arrive at the first tee feeling:

warmer, freer, switched on and ready to swing.

That distinction matters.

A warm-up should prepare you for performance without creating unnecessary fatigue.

And while warming up is sensible preparation, it is important not to overstate what five minutes can achieve.

Golf injuries are multifactorial. A warm-up cannot guarantee that you won't become injured, and it cannot compensate for inadequate strength, sudden increases in playing volume, poor recovery or an existing injury.

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis estimated an overall golf injury incidence of approximately 2.5 injuries per 1,000 18-hole exposures, although rates varied considerably between populations and the researchers highlighted limitations in the available evidence.[6]

So think of your warm-up as one part of preparing your body for golf, rather than an injury-proofing routine.

The Best Golf Warm-Up Is the One You'll Actually Do

Five minutes isn't long.

But compare it with the alternative.

You can arrive at the first tee cold, make three practice swings and hope your body starts moving properly somewhere around the fourth hole.

Or you can give yourself five minutes to progressively prepare for what you're about to ask your body to do.

Remember:

MARCH → RAISE → MOBILISE → SEPARATE → LOAD → SWING

Squat and reach.

Lunge and rotate.

Move the pelvis.

Rotate the upper body.

Load side to side.

Challenge your balance.

Then progressively build your golf swing. Your first few holes shouldn't have to be your warm-up.

Need Help Getting Your Body Ready for Golf?

If pain, stiffness or a previous injury is affecting your golf, simply adding more stretches may not address the reason you're struggling.

At Melbourne Golf Physio, we combine physiotherapy assessment with an understanding of the physical demands of golf to identify factors that may be affecting your movement, rehabilitation or return to play.

Bethany Robson is a TPI Certified Physiotherapist (Level 1 and Medical Level 2) with more than 14 years of physiotherapy experience across private practice, sport and orthopaedic rehabilitation.

Appointments are available in Brighton and Brighton East, Melbourne.

Get Golf Ready

References

1. Fradkin A, Finch C, Sherman C. Warm up practices of golfers: are they adequate? British Journal of Sports Medicine.

2. Better Health Channel, Victorian Government. Golf – preventing injury.

3. Fradkin AJ, Sherman CA, Finch CF. Improving golf performance with a warm up conditioning programme. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2004;38(6):762–765.

4. Coughlan D, et al. The impact of warm-up on youth golfer clubhead speed and self-reported shot quality. International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.

5. Gergley JC. Acute effects of passive static stretching during warm-up on driver clubhead speed, distance, accuracy, and consistent ball contact in young male competitive golfers. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

6. Injury incidence in golf—a systematic review and meta-analysis. Irish Journal of Medical Science, 2024.