Opinion & Analysis
The Frost Delay: Building a fitness routine
So I’d better start this out with an admission: I’m a pre-Tiger golfer. While he’s only one year my junior, anyone who learned the game before the aforementioned Mr. Woods took over understands just how different of a game golf used to be.
When I played the majority of my competitive rounds, Nike was a company that made basketball shoes. More than $25 was a lot to pay for a round, and most importantly, golfers didn’t workout.
This came from the top down. The tour was full of a bunch of skinny dudes (Paul Azinger, Payne Stewart, Corey Pavin), the occasional fat dude (Craig Stadler) and one dude who looked like he could beat them all up (Fred Couples). These were not “athletes” in the traditional sense. These were “golfers,” and until Tiger came into prominence, other “golfers” seemed totally cool with it.
In fact, after following a terribly unsuccessful freshman football season with a reasonably accomplished freshman golf season, my high school coach sat me down and had a heart to heart.
“Danny,” he said, “I talked to your football coach. We both agree that you’re never going to be Mike Singletary, and you’d probably be better served to spend your falls pounding range balls than getting slaughtered on his football field.”
Looking back, the man had a point.
However, the second I dropped football, I also dropped any sort of formal strength training — coach’s orders. As far as we knew back then, weight training was bad for a “golfer.” The logic was that the reduced flexibility and added strength would make it harder to maintain a consistent swing. The only strong dude I had ever played golf with was the late Derrick Thomas (who was a member at my country club), and to be honest, his muscles really did get in the way of his golf swing.
Obviously, the game has changed tremendously since then. My attitude toward fitness, however, has not. Don’t get me wrong, I love athletic activities — I used to ski 40 to 50 days a year when I lived in Denver. And I’ll happily play the Stockton to your Malone in a pick up game of hoops and, if it’s below 90 degrees outside I’d rather walk than ride. But I’d never spent an minute in the gym until last year.
I’m not sure if it was the realization that I was about to go from “a little doughy” to fat, or maybe it was in an effort to keep myself alive for a couple more years, but I the notion of getting my self in a bit better shape became non-negotiable. And to be honest, for the first three months of the year last year, I was really enjoying it. I felt stronger, slept better, tended to eat healthier and had a ton more energy — all good things for a father of three. But alas, life and work got in the way, and after a couple horrible weeks I fell off the wagon.
Getting back on the wagon
As I’ll be working out toward something this year (a better golf game versus general health), I’m going to separate my exercise into two separate types this go round: The first type is pretty obvious—it’s the kind of general health and fitness we should all seek and it will be the focus of this column. There are, however, some things we should look for as golfers when we design even a general workout. While this isn’t universal, I believe golfers should workout for strength and tone rather than to “bulk up.” This means lifting less weight and doing more reps. I’m sure that there’s an exception for every rule, but I’ve never played with a giant muscle head dude who could
- Break 80, or
- Hit the ball further than me at my skinniest
In my honest opinion, I don’t believe that giant pecs and arms that are so big that they can no longer lay static next to your body are conducive to a “proper” golf swing. I made a couple call to some instructors I know, and I didn’t hear anything that changed that assertion.
Now, back to the matter at hand. I consulted with a trainer last year and we settled into a circuit-based workout. This provides a couple of advantages for me: First, I have limited time, and I can generally get one of these workouts in over a lunch break. Second, I have the attention span of a gnat, so long cardio sessions are out for me. By combining strength training with my cardio I tend to keep more engaged and am less inclined to spend my hour at the gym staring at random shiny things.
Here’s my general strength/fitness program:
I start with a 5-to-10 minute warmup. I had a back surgery 15 years ago, so the treadmill tends to tear me up a bit. I’ll generally run one of the “programs” on the bike — usually something that has to do with a heartrate.
I move to the bench machine. I do three quick reps of 10 at 75 percent weight, monitoring my heart rate. The whole point of the circuit idea is to keep your heart pumping like you’re doing cardio.
The next step is the bicep machine. Again, I do three quick reps of 10 at 75 percent. Then I move to the shoulder press machine. Again, three reps of 10 at 75 percent.
My final upper body station is the lat bar. I tend to alternate between lat pulls and tricep push downs, each 10 at 75 percent.
Abs are next. I hate sit ups and crunches — I mean I seriously hate them. I find them both boring and miserable, so I tend to do less of the more difficult inverted situps. If it’s a day where I’m doing legs as well, I’ll generally do them to burnout (which is generally less than 50 if the bench is steep enough). Afterward, I do my leg excercises, and then do my abs to burnout again. If I’m not doing legs, I do them to burnout, give myself a minute, and do it again.
As I mentioned before, sometimes my schedule works out better to do a full workout three days a week, and sometimes it works out better to do six shorter workouts (alternating between upper and lower body with abs being the only constant). In the case of the latter, I’d hop back on the bike, ride it 5-10 more minutes, stretch and hit the shower. If it’s the former, we move on to legs.
I start out on the leg press. Back to the three reps of 10 at 75 percent.
I move on to the quad machine. Three of 10 at 75 percent.
I move to the inner thigh machine. Three of 10 at 75 percent
I then move to the hip flexor machine (this one beats me up for some reason). Three of 10 at 75 percent.
I finish with leg curls. Three of 10 at 75 percent.
I then cool down with 5-10 minutes on the bike, and finish with a five-minute general stretching session.
A couple additional notes on this workout:
I’m certain you could do a full circuit workout with free weights, and I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t do it all kinetically. I personally don’t like free weights (I’m always nervous some chic next to me is going to be lifting more) and don’t understand enough about the kinetic thing to have any advice on it, so this is what works best for me. Your milage my vary.
Sometimes I mix it up — I’ll do more weight with less reps, or less weight and more reps. I can’t tell you this is for any important reason other than sometimes I have a little less/more time and sometimes I just get bored.
Finally, it’s critical to let your muscles rest, as strength is essentially built by tearing up your muscles and letting them heal stronger. If you want to workout every day, you’ll need to either alternate from upper to lower body or one day of full-body and one day of cardio.
With all this being said, an exercise routine is a lot like a golf swing. Sometimes it’s cool to learn stuff on the Internet, but often it’s better to enlist the help of a professional (or in this case a trainer). I’d highly suggest at least a fitness consultation before starting a new workout program.
Click here for more discussion in the “Instruction & Academy” forum.
Next column: Golf specific flexibility and using training aids to increase “golf” strength.
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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Cris
Feb 19, 2014 at 1:54 pm
This is one of the most ill-informed articles I’ve ever read. We should start asking for specific credentials before we allow nonsense like this to be posted. It can really hurt people. The comment below from Ryan is substantially more accurate.
kcslonghitter
Jan 30, 2013 at 5:12 pm
Great Article it helped me understand that some of me problems may not be another swing lesson, but an increase in Body mobility
Ryan
Nov 30, 2012 at 12:32 pm
I think a lot of people are misinformed on this subject. I agree that bulky muscles are not ideal for golf but in order to get stronger you should be working with more weight and less reps, and not circuit training. Strength training will not give you bulky muscles. Strength is largely due to training your nervous system to send stronger signal to your muscles and muscle size is largely down to hypertrophy, the breaking down and regrowth of muscle you mentioned.
I believe anyone serious about improving their athletic ability should fragment their training. Strength training separately in order to get the most return for your time invested. Proper stretching routines to stay flexible and then separate cardio if they feel fitness is an issue.
It’s a myth that the above cannot be achieved without a large amount of time invested. The focus should be on quality not quantity; proper warm-ups and one or two intense working sets. This approach will get you in and out of the gym faster, stop you getting bored and keep you coming back, improving.
Circuit training is fine if you just want a generic workout but it won’t allow you to focus enough on each component (strength, power, cardio, flexibility) or let you have the energy to commit to each component 100% and progress as quickly as you should be in each separate area.
I would also avoid ‘golf-specific’ training if you’re trying to hit the ball further. I guarantee you ‘ll hit the ball further if you increase your deadlift or squat by 50 lbs than if you can do 100 press ups on a Bosu ball and pull a cable to mimick your golf swing. Lower body strength is the key.
Everyone needs to find what works for them based on their personal preference, goals and limitations, but I submit that circuit training is second to a number of other methods in the pursuit of athletic improvement.
Having said all that, improving your physique is 90% diet, exercising is the easy part!
fitnessforever
Nov 29, 2012 at 9:51 pm
While I commend you on working out, your workouts are as pretty old school and don’t do much service to your body. Routines like you posted become tiresome, repetitive, and will NOT provide the results your are looking for after your body gets used to the workouts. There’s plenty of research out there that shows after repeating the same workout a few times, it becomes ineffective. This type of training will undoubtably lead to plateauing.
To be more effective, look for workouts that use plenty of energy within a short timespan, require more explosive movements (pushups, burpees, squat jumps, etc), use body weight and weighted movements, and utilize aerobics during and in-between sets. Otherwise, you’ll end up where you started if you continue to do the old school “circuit training.”