Benefits Of Golf For Senior Players

Benefits Of Golf For Senior Players

 Golf is a great game for people of all ages. It is a hobby that you can take on and keep up for your whole life including into your senior years. Everybody has heard of the concept of retiring with Golf and it is true that golf provides a ton of benefits for people in their later years and even helps people who golf to live longer lives.

Golf is relatively low intensity and it is low impact so people can play it no matter what age they are and there are plenty of different options for navigating the course. You can use a golf cart to drive around, you can use a push cart or you can even walk around carrying your bag.

Whatever way you want to navigate the course, golf can offer many wonderful options and benefits for anyone who is approaching their golden years.

Gives Senior Players A Purpose

The senior years, can take a lot away from a person including their work, and many things they used to enjoy. Having read Viktor Frankel’s man’s search for meaning, we understand that everyone has to have a purpose and goals in their life that they can strive towards to be happy.

If we wander through life aimlessly, we can easily become depressed and this can have negative impacts on our body, mind and overall health.

Golf can be a great way to find purpose in your life especially if you live near a course. It can provide hours of endless entertainment and give you a new lease of life as you get older.

Develop A New Hobby

Just like having a purpose, having a hobby that you love can add 10 years to your life.  Any times when you would have been bored, you can now think about the next time that you’ll be able to get out on the course or to the driving range and you can be a much happier person again overall.

Golf as a hobby, doesn’t just involve the time that you are on the course, it also involves the time that you spend thinking about the game and how your next round is going to go.

It’s never too late to start a new hobby and if you already know how to play, there is nothing stopping you from heading to the driving range and hitting a few balls.

You might be surprised how much of your skills you still have.

Meet New People And Make New Friends

A lot of times as people get older, they stop making time for their friends and spend more or more of their lives alone or in isolation.

You can play golf on your own, in groups of up to four or you can even play in seniors tournaments.

Golf is a game of camaraderie and you can use it to make new friends, keep in touch with people that you love and even compete against people in a similar situation to yourself. Nothing gets the blood flowing like a bit of competition and it provides a great way to improve your game and add some new achievements to your life story.

Start Watching Golf On TV

It’s interesting how as your interest in your own game begins to rekindle, you can also start to look at the pros for inspiration and tips on how to improve your game.

You can also watch for the enjoyment of seeing the best players doing their thing in highly competitive environments, like the Masters and on the PGA Tour.

You can also plan some travel around taking in a live PGA Tour event, with your friends and family.

Physical Health Benefits

Having looked at the main overview of benefits of golf for seniors, we can now take a look at the physical benefits which are just as important if not more so.

We only have one body so keeping it in ideal condition should be high on everybody’s priority list and especially as we grow older.

Heart Rate Up And The Blood Flowing

Physical exercise is crucial as we get older and golf is one of the best ways we can achieve this. It is not too taxing like other sports, we can use a push cart or an electric cart to move around or we can even carry our own bags.

Golf is a sport anybody can enjoy that. The golf swing involves the entire body and coupled with walking around the course should get our heart rate up and keep it there for a few hours allowing the blood to flow all around our body which is crucial for keeping the body from breaking down, especially as we get a bit older.

Build Up The Leg Muscles

Getting older doesn’t mean we need to be in bad condition or that we can’t be fit. If you look on the Internet today you will find plenty of people in their 60s and even in their 70s who are in fantastic shape and don’t look at day older than 50.

If we can get out once a week to walk for a round of golf, we can really build up the leg muscles, stay lean and have a healthy heart. A full round of golf incorporates over 15,000 steps on average and that is well more than the 10,000 needed to stay healthy.

Building up leg muscles can help us to perform all sorts of different tasks without having to worry about leg or hip pain.

The exercise involved in golf is a great way to keep us agile, mobile and strong

Build Core Strength

The core lies at our center of gravity and is responsible for almost all of our movements. The golf swing strongly engages the core and builds up the strength.

Having a strong core would have many benefits to our mobility, as we can move around freely and without pain in our Golden years.

Aides In Weight Loss

Once we get inactive, we don’t burn as many calories as we did before and they get stored on the body as fat. The typical round of golf can burn well over 2,000 calories and help us to stay lean as opposed to gaining weight.

It’s no secret that storing too much body fast is unhealthy, especially around the belly area and getting out for a couple rounds of golf every month can help us to stay lean, trim and healthy.

Reduces Stress And Anxiety

Growing older can result in us having a lot more free time on our hands and this can lead to increased stress and anxiety.

Golf is an excellent outlet for stress, you got to swing the club hard for every shot and if you do well it can be a great release of pent up emotions.

Even if you’re having a bad day at the course and this leads to increased stress, that kind of stress will quickly subside and you can focus on putting things right the next time you go for a round of golf.

Improves Sleep

If you have a buildup of negative emotions like anxiety and stress it can stop you from getting a good night’s sleep. Getting to sleep won’t be an issue for you after a hard day on the course, where you get to chat with your friends and exercise your body to a level where it needs sleep to recover.

A good game of golf followed by a healthy meal will result in a solid night of deep REM sleep after. This is the kind of sleep that is so beneficial for repairing our muscles and joints but also for our brain function.

Keeps The Joints Loose

If we don’t workout as we get older, our joints will become tighter and it will get harder for us to move with the same mobility like we used to.

Your joints won’t get tighter because you’re getting older, they get tighter because you stop using them.

Golf is a full body exercise and navigating a golf course will give you all the exercise and movements that you need to keep your muscles engaged and your joints moving freely.

If sore joints is something stopping you from getting out on the course more often, you could always try out some CBD oil which has awesome effects on pain and inflammation.

Can Provide Various Forms Of Exercise

Overall, none of the movements in golf are too strenuous but when you put them together over a full round that lasts three to five hours, you would have walked many miles, exercise your whole body with various swings along with bending down to pick up your clubs and balls.

Golf is not over intense but it gives you all the movements you need to maintain a happy, healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Mental Benefits

If you think golf is a tough game physically, all serious players know that it is at least 50% mental and keeping our brains active and stimulated is an excellent benefit of golf as we get older.

Enjoyable And Releases Endorphins

The exercise alone from golf is a great way to release endorphins in the brain. These are the chemicals that are responsible for making us feel happy and exercise is one of the best ways we can release them in a healthy way.

Happier people live longer and fuller lives which is why golfers live up to 7 years longer than people who don’t play golf.

If the exercise alone is enough to release endorphins, you can imagine how good you feel if you are playing well or even if you won a tournament for senior golfers, it could give you a feeling of wellness for a long time to come.

Provides A Goal To Aim At Getting Better

Once you start getting out on the course regularly, you can start setting goals for how you want to improve. Whether you want to hit the ball further, hit more greens off the tee, improve your short game and your putting, setting golf goals can add a genuine and fulfilling purpose to your life.

You will find that an active hobby in golf will take up far more of your thinking that might replaced by negative thoughts if you spend a lot of your time sitting around being idle and bored.

Something To Look Forward To

If you can get out to play golf a couple of days a week, you can easily be looking forward to those days for the rest of the week when you are not playing. If we don’t have anything to look forward to we can easily start to have negative thoughts which have a profound negative health impact.

Keeping your mind active with thoughts of meeting up with your golf buddies or even getting around in on your own can keep you going and positive in times where you might otherwise become stressed .

Tips For Senior Players

If you are a senior player and you want to get into golf or get back into the sport, we have a couple of tips that will help you get back on the course as quickly and successfully as possible.

Start With The Driving Range

If you haven’t practiced in awhile, showing up at the first tee box might be a daunting task. If you shake off the cobwebs and get your game back going at the driving range, it can help you to build confidence and get thinking about a full round of golf again.

Get The Right Clubs

These days there are all sorts of fresh club sets that you can choose from and some are made specifically for seniors. The typical things you would like to lookout for are graphite shafts, senior flex in the shafts and oversized club heads that will support a slower swing speed. These will allow you to hit your greens and fairways in regulation with increasing accuracy.

We have gone through a lot of different club sets in detail but our number one recommendation for senior players will be the Cobra XL speed clubs and also the Callaway Strata are built for forgiveness distance and accuracy with slower swing speeds.

Either Carry Your Bag Or Get A Push Cart

There are different ways to approach your golfing experience, you can rent a golf cart and drive around which is obviously going to require the least amount of exercise. You could get a carry bag and walk around the whole course with the weight of your clubs. There are also plenty of push carts, even electric ones that you can buy to take the weight off your back but still get all the exercise in your legs from walking and your body with all the swinging.

Depending on what kind of condition you’re in, you could build up to the most exercise intensive way of playing that is comfortable for you or you can start by walking the course and getting a great days exercise from the beginning.

Practice At Home

If you have space in your home or in a garden you could even get some practice in without leaving the comfort of your home.

Best Hitting Net

Hitting Nets can I love you to work on your drives and iron shots from the comfort of your garden or even in the house and this opens up a huge door to the technology in golf like personal launch monitors golf simulators that allow you to play a full round from your living room.

the Galileo hitting this is the best on America at the moment there are various different sizes but the net is sturdy and it’s designed in a way that you can’t miss the protective net.

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Best Putting Mats

The Varispeed putting mat can offer endless hours of entertainment at home and allow you to improve your skills for the short grass.

It offers four different speeds that can be adjusted by brushing the grass backwards or forwards, there’s wedges you can put under nice to get different slope sand the markings on the mat represent various different games that you can play on targets to aim towards

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Chipping Net

Chipping and the work from just around the green is also equally important to golf and the Callaway chipping net offers three different targets in a pop up stand to allow you to work on the accuracy of your chipping and improve your overall score at golf. It can be a great thing to have in your house for senior players to spend an hour honing your craft as opposed to being bored or idle.

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Conclusion

Golf offers an excellent escape from the house for senior players and it’s probably the best sport available for senior players for staying fit and healthy and in touch with all their friends. Senior golfers can even compete in golf tournaments against their peers making golf an excellent game both physically and mentally for seniors and retirees who may have some more time on their hands as they age.