Healthy Habit Building Tips to Improve Your Golf Game: #3 - Sleep

In May 2013, Golf Digest published a great article describing a 42 point, six week get fit plan – Click Here to see the Golf Digest plan.

We’re expanding on the points and adding insights and perspectives. The list was authored by Ben Shear, who trains many of the game’s top players, including Luke Donald, Jason Day and Webb Simpson. Embrace his suggestions, and it won’t be long before you look better, feel better and, yes, play better golf.

“Write down how much you sleep each day. Your goal is 60 hours a week.”

Wow, that’s a stretch goal for most of us! Between managing a busy work schedule, balancing family life, getting enough exercise, and practicing our golf game, fitting in 8 and a half hours per night seems practically impossible. A key point to remember here is that sleep is important. Sleep is key, essential, and absolutely downright necessary for our basic physiological operations. Sleep supports our neurological performance, endocrine balance, immune system functioning, and musculoskeletal growth and repair. Our bodies release human growth hormone (HGH)during sleep which is an essential player in cellular regeneration.

Like most aspects of health and fitness, the need for sleep varies by individual. Some of us fall into the range of the seven-eight hours and others of us can’t get by without nine or ten. A few mutants among us hit our optimum with only six or so hours of shut eye but these are truly very rare indeed. Much of our differing sleep needs is determined by age. Babies need the most, while adults require the least. Older adults actually need as much sleep as other adults, in contrast to popular belief. Although sleep patterns become more fragmented as we age, we still need more than we typically get. Sleep still enables critical hormonal secretion (like growth hormone) necessary for healthy aging. One study in particular linked solid sleep with higher levels of testosterone in older men.

Most of us with busy schedules and extreme demands on our time will benefit from more sleep. If you’re not getting 8-8.5 hours per night, make an effort to get 30 minutes more every night for a week and see if you feel differently by the end of the week and see if it impacts your golf game that week. Other suggestions to help you get better sleep include:

Eat a light dinner: lighten up on the size of dinner to help get a deeper sleep

Have a glass of wine: One glass will help you relax and release the day’s pressures. More than one can be detrimental and cause intermittent sleep which will defeat the purpose.

Handful of nuts: eating a few nuts before bed can help you get to sleep faster due to the nutrients they contain.

Write out the reflections of the day: Take a few minutes to write out the accomplishments, tasks, worries, andpressing concerns of the day. In many cases you can arrive at solutions if you don’t try to consciously force them.Recording them before bed will enable your sleeping mind do the work for you and you will be ready to tackle the list refreshed in the morning.

Watch or read briefly: Reading is overall better for your mind than watching television but sometimes intentionally doing something mindless can help you relax. Periodically, perhaps watching a movie can help your sleep. However, if reading helps you fall asleep, then read before bed.

Sleep is good for your health, your life, and your golf game. Develop a strategy for getting more sleep and improving the quality of your sleep. Try to increase the amount of sleep you get for a week and feel the difference for yourself.

http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2014-05/improving-your-sleep-ron-kaspriske

Healthy Habit Building Tips to Improve Your Golf Game: #2 - Walk

In May 2013, Golf Digest published a great article describing a 42 point, six week get fit plan – Click Here to see Golf Digest’s plan.

We’re expanding on the points and adding insights and perspectives. The list was authored by Ben Shear, who trains many of the game’s top players, including Luke Donald, Jason Day and Webb Simpson. Embrace his suggestions, and it won’t be long before you look better, feel better and, yes, play better golf.

“Walk. Walk more rounds. Walk to work. Walk to the store. Walk around the block. Walk the dog. Stand up from reading this right now and walk.”

Walking is a great, practical, functional way to build fitness. Man has been walking for millions of years. It was our only source of transportation for most of those years so we are built and well suited for the task. Walking is an essential human activity that has served us well since our ancestors got up on two feet. People in ancient (and some modern) cultures would spend many hours each day walking to get where they wanted to go. The modern advances in transportation technology and digital communication have reduced the amount of walking that we are required to do in our everyday lives so we should make a point to walk more.

Walking is easy, any healthy person can do and some that are not so healthy. Walk with your children, walk with your spouse, walk your dog, walk with your parents or even your grandparents. Enjoy the companionship of a brisk walk and talk. Those that suffer from arthritis can walk and can benefit from walking. Walking is an activity we can do when suffering from back problems and it can help with injury recovery. The elderly can walk and it can help with maintaining balance skills.

Walking is fun. Walking can help us see the work around us in a different way. We can walk places that cars can’t go. Take a walk on a trail through the woods, up a mountain through a forest, along the shore of the ocean or a lake. Enjoy a walk by clearing your mind and experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of the moment. If you can’t spare 10, 20, or 30 minutes (you should really examine your priorities), take your team with you and have a walking meeting – in a courtyard, out to lunch, or around the parking lot.

We have all the equipment we need. Look down at the ground. You already have the feet which have evolved into effective walking tools over millions of years. At most, you’ll only need a new pair of shoes. You also have the internal predisposition (genetics) for walking as a primary source of transportation.

Walking is a foundation of good health and fitness. It can help reduce body fat. It can improve and manage our “numbers” such as blood glucose and triglyceride levels in the blood. Walking can help elevate our mood and we can mediate while walking to clear the mind and stimulate the brain. We can use walk time as think time to develop new ideas or simply relax and let built up stress fade away.

Walking can have a significant positive impact on your health and you don’t need to spend 10 hours a week doing it. Most scientific studies showing the benefits have people walk for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes at a time. Click Here to read more on the benefits of walking.

You can find that much time each day. Walk a little farther at lunch. Park in the farthest space rather than searching and waiting for the closest space to the door. Take a quick trip around the block with the dog when you get home, she will love it and you will too. You can do it and you will thank yourself when you do.