How Your Nutrition Can Affect Your Golf Game
From Tiger Woods being strongman yoked to Jon Daly ripping heaters and chocolate milk, golf has athletes of all shapes and sizes with just as differing nutrition regimens. Some might have a private chef to cook them healthy meals. Some are overweight with unhealthy habits, and still compete against the best. Outside of the rare outliers, how can one’s nutrition affect his or her golf game?
Nutrition is your fuel, your overlooked ‘x’ factor, your legal performance enhancing drug. Poor nutrition can negatively impact how your body moves, your energy levels, how gassed you might get, and much more. We don’t hear or talk about it much, but your nutrition can give you the slight edge that makes the difference between first and second.
In this article, we’ll go through a few ways that nutrition can impact your golf game. If you want to be the best, you have to take every aspect of your sport and performance into account, food included.
Weight Management
Most sports require some sort of weight management, and golf is no different. Your weight can make a positive or negative impact on your game in a multitude of ways:
Not as gassed on the course – If you’re carrying around a lot of excess weight/body fat, then your body and heart has to work harder. This in turn can cause you to feel winded and like you aren’t getting enough air, which will exhaust you further and you won’t hit the ball as far or as accurately.
You will fatigue faster – When you’re working twice as hard as someone who weighs a lot less than you, it is inevitable that you’re going to fatigue quicker than others and likely start to see your performance decline. In short, you won’t be able to keep up.
Don’t rotate as well – Poor nutrition can cause weight gain, which can hinder the way someone rotates. Golf has so much rotation to it, that if you’re not able to move as well due to excess weight, particularly in your midsection, you won’t be able to hit the ball the way you need to.
Not being overweight can help your game in ways we don’t often think about, but staying in shape can help you last longer on the course and in the sport.
Being Properly Fueled
Your food is your fuel. Are you going to fill your Lamborghini with 87 Unleaded gas? I don’t think so. So if you want to perform at peak levels, you need to feed your body with premium foods in order to play the way you want.
Let’s go through some ideal meal breakdowns if you’re going to play 18 holes. Since you’re going to be out there 3-4 hours (or 5 if you shoot like me), you’ll want to eat a solid meal of proteins, carbs and some fats about 90-120 minutes before tee time. This will allow your body enough time to break down that meal and convert it to fuel.
In terms of macro breakdown, you’ll want that pre-golf meal to consist of 45% protein, 35% carbs and 20% fat. Most of your energy is going to come from the carbs, but since the time duration of exercise is significantly longer than most, some fat will help keep you full and fueled a bit longer as well.
It also would be good to pack a protein bar or beef jerky in case you get hungry in the middle of the round. With longer bouts of exercise, an intra workout snack can help if you’re starting to feel a little drained.
When you feed the body what it needs, it will perform how it should.
Affecting Things Off The Golf Course
We’ve stayed on the course up to this point, so let’s dive into how nutrition can help your game when you’re off the course.
Sleep
Easily the best way to enhance your performance is by getting quality sleep. How you structure your dinner can prime your body to rest and digest to be ready for bed when it’s time. If you’re eating a lot of processed foods, alcohol, etc. then you could be more susceptible to waking up in the middle of the night, snoring or just waking up not feeling rested.
Stress
Yes, we can alter our stress levels with food. For example, I’ve used carbs in certain cases with clients to try to bring stress down at night time. Carbs spike insulin which brings down cortisol (that fight or flight response hormone) and can decrease stress levels. When athletes live in that high stress state, it can hinder their gains, whether that’s golf or weightlifting.
Cognitive Function
When you’re on the course, you need to be sharp. From reading greens to the small things like keeping your head down when you drive the ball. You want to make sure your head is in the game for all 18+ holes.
Certain foods like fatty fish, green leafy greens and various fruits and seeds can help improve your cognitive function. With the right balance of foods before your round of golf, you can feel sharp and locked in for however long you’re playing.
Now, very few will eat fish for breakfast, so you can resort to eggs, Greek yogurt (or similar), berries, seeds and others.
Conclusion
The right nutrition plan can give any player the slight edge he or she needs over their competition. Sometimes we see golfers that are in much better shape than others, and it can 100% make a difference. And it’s not just lifting weights that matter, but nutrition also plays a monumental role in a golfer’s performance and outcome. If you think you have some room for improvement, take the next step and get the plan best suited for you and your goal(s).