To play great golf, you need to be fit.

You need the ability to contort your body into difficult positions, and then uncoil to reach speeds of over 130mph. You must have the endurance to last rounds over four hours — and four miles — long, the mental strength to overcome an infinite set of challenges, and the skill to be as good with your first shot as with your last.

It’s no wonder why golf is one of the world’s most popular and demanding sports. But to take your game to the next level, you need more than just practice — you need to build great strength, flexibility, endurance, and power.

To teach you some of the best tips and tricks to boost your golf fitness, we brought in Ron Kaspriske, Fitness Editor for Golf Digest magazine. He shares some fantastic advice to help you reduce injuries, drop your scores, play better golf, and maybe win a few extra skins too.

Enjoy!

The biggest mistake you see golfers make with their fitness is _________________.

Thinking that all they need to do is stretch for a few moments before a round and they’ll play their best. The body isn’t designed to swing a golf club—that’s a sad but true fact. Knowing this, we need to exercise in order to not only have the best chance at making an effective but repeatable swing, but also minimize the chance of injuries.

More important for golf fitness: strength or flexibility? Why?

Stability is the cornerstone of any athletic movement. Without it, your body simply won’t let you perform the task at hand. Think about how you normally walk and then think about how you walk when you’re standing on a sheet of ice. Since you lack stability, you can’t walk the way you normally do or you’ll end up on your back. Same holds true for swinging a golf club. If you don’t have stability, you can’t move dynamically or tap into your natural range of motion. Your brain operates a shut-off switch that prevents you from getting into a position where you would hurt yourself if it senses you are unstable.

What are some of your favorite warmup drills before hitting balls or playing a round?

I like warming up the hamstrings, glutes, hips, all the prime movers in the golf swing. I do a series of dynamic movements. I don’t recommend doing any long-hold stretches before you play. You want your muscles pliable, but also elastic. Lunges are great. If you’re short on time, take a hot shower and walk some stairs—up and down—or a hill.

5 best exercises for golfers are ________________.

Dependent on where the deficiencies lie. Most golfers have limited mobility in their hips and mid back, and that puts a lot of stress on the bottom of the spine. So I’d say focus on exercises that work the muscles from the knee caps to the chest. And that includes the front and back of the body. Almost all of my workouts include push-ups, planks, lunges, rows and deadlifts. My friend Mike Boyle, one of the best strength coaches I know, suggests doing a push exercise, a pull exercise, a lower-body exercise and a core exercise. I’d also add that it’s important to work in all three planes of motion—linear, lateral and rotational.

5 worst exercises for golfers are ________________.

Typically ones that provide a false sense of stability. For example, it’s much better to do a squat than it is to sit down on a leg-press machine. Most gym machines isolate muscle groups and offer stability. That’s great if you’re rehabbing an injury to a specific area of the body, but you need to learn how to stabilize your body before performing an athletic movement. You won’t get that from most gym machines.

How often do you need to exercise to see improvement in your golf game?

If you haven’t done anything, you’ll see results on and off the course if you exercise for about 30 minutes twice a week. But rather than focus on a set amount of time or set amount of workouts per week, why not just exercise whenever the opportunity presents itself? Take the stairs. Rake leaves. Shovel the snow off the sidewalk. Vacuum the house. Move and then move some more.

True or false: Golf is a sport.

Is this a trick question? Golf is more than a sport. It’s a passion. It’s a challenge. It’s a reason to get out of bed and it’s a reason to look forward to tomorrow. Too much? Ha.