How Your "Love Handles" Affect Your Shots

Okay, technically your obliques aren't the same as your love handles. Your oblique muscles are beneath the fatty rolls we name love handles. But if you've got love handles, there may be a good hazard your obliques are a touch vulnerable... And that could affect your swing.

I've got multiple articles that will let you identify the hassle and reinforce the muscle groups.

The first article is a post from Golf Digest's Instruction Blog called Activate Your Obliques for a Better Swing. GD's Fitness Editor Ron Kaspriske talked to Dave Phillips and Greg Rose -- the guys you see every week on GC's Titleist Performance Institute show -- about how weak obliques and weak glutes combine to affect your swing. One of those affects is the notorious reverse pivot, and the TPI guys show you how to test for weak obliques and give you a simple exercise to help strengthen them. The photo to the right is from that post.

But I know some of you will want more, perhaps even a full plan to help really build your core strength.  For that I found an article over at military.com called Lose the Love Handles. The author, Stew Smith, was a Navy SEAL and is a fitness author certified as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. (That means he's a trustworthy source of info, folks!) Smith, like Phillips and Rose, works the obliques and legs together.

The article is reasonably long however the component you'll be inquisitive about (a touch over midway down the page) is the Tuesday and Friday exercise for the legs and love handles. You might not need to comply with his workout precisely but it will come up with an idea approximately what sporting events are handiest for operating these areas.

And just a piece below that is a list of sports for constructing the core, specially the belly and lower lower back, if you're interested.

With wintry weather simply across the corner, now might be a great time to begin some simple middle work to get equipped for next 12 months. These articles can get you started.