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5 Golf Cable Exercises To Increase Your Yardages

Golf Cable Exercises

Cable machines are a staple in most gyms, but did you know golf cable exercises can help increase your yardages?

The reason why they are an effective tool for golf-specific training is that they always have constant tension.

Some exercises with dumbbells, barbells, or medicine balls, lose their resistance at certain points in a motion or have points at which resistance is greater.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is advantageous for your development as a golfer to include exercises in your training that keep a constant tension on your muscles.

The reason for this is that the longer you place a muscle under tension, the stronger that muscle will get and the easier it will be to isolate a specific muscle.

These two points play a big factor in the new Bryson DeChambeau workout routine that has helped him gain a stock driver yardage of 342 yards.

What if I don’t have access to a cable machine…

If you don’t have access to a cable machine, there are solutions! The other beauty about doing cable-specific work is that it can be done at home in a way that is significantly cheaper than buying dumbbells, barbells and medicine balls.

In order to do these exercises at home, all you need to do is buy a pack of resistance bands that have a door frame anchor. These packs are sold on Amazon and come with total poundages of up to 250 lbs!

Here is an example:

About the Golf Cable Exercises

The golf cable exercises that we will be doing in this workout will start with a couple of slower-moving exercises to prime our core muscles and then move into more explosive exercises that mimic the nature of a golf swing.

Make sure you remember to breathe during every exercise, maintain good posture, and use a weight you can manage.

As a general rule of thumb, I tell my clients that the weight they are lifting should be heavy enough that they complete the suggested reps with good form, but only just.

If you finish a set and think to yourself, “that wasn’t so bad,” then you should probably increase the weight. If you finished the set, but your form broke down, and you were flailing around wildly, then you probably were doing too much weight and need to drop it down some.

It takes some time to calibrate what the right weight for you is. Stay patient and focus on your form!

Exercise 1: The Pallof Press

The first of the golf cable exercises we will go over is the Pallof Press. The Pallof Press is an isometric movement that will help increase your core stability and anti-rotation strength.

You may want to work on an anti-rotation exercise when the very nature of a golf swing is rotation. To understand this, I want you to imagine a rubber band that is old and loose and a rubber band that is fresh and tight.

If you pull each rubber band and then let them go, the one that is fresh and tight will snap back faster and harder because it has more resistance to being stretched. This is analogous to how this exercise will help you with your golf swing.

If you have more resistance to rotation, you can snap back through your swing with greater speed and power.

To do the Pallof Press, follow the steps below:

  • Attach a single handle to a cable machine and set the height to be right at your stomach.
  • Stand sideways to the cable machine and step away from it, so the weight is floating. You should feel like the weight is pulling you to the side.
  • Position your feet, hips, and shoulders straight ahead but keep the handle on your stomach.
  • Keep your whole body pointing forward, slowly push the handle out in front of you until your arms are fully extended, and slowly return to the middle.
  • It should take a significant effort to resist the weight pulling you to either side.
  • Repeat this exercise for three sets of 10-15 reps on both sides.

Exercise 2: Cable Rotation (slow)

The Cable Rotation exercise is very similar to the Pallof Press, except you are rotating in this one instead of staying still.

The point of this exercise is to do the opposite of the Pallof Press: train the muscles responsible for rotating your torso.

It’s no secret if you want to have a stronger, faster golf swing, you need to develop strong abdominal muscles. The abdominal muscles that we will specifically focus on here are the obliques, which are the muscles that run down either side of your body.

To set up for the Cable Rotation, follow the steps below:

  • Attach one handle to the cable machine and set the height of the cable to be the height of your chest.
  • Stand sideways to the cable and step away from it just as you did with the Pallof Press.
  • This time, instead of standing still, you will twist to face the cable machine and then, with straight arms, twist completely around to the opposite side.
  • You should feel your abs working very hard to pull your torso around.
  • Returning slowly to the starting position
  • Repeat this exercise for three sets of 10-15 reps in both directions.

Exercise 3: Single Arm Cable Punches (explosive)

This golf cable exercises will mark the point in the workout where we will start working on being explosive. The golf swing is an explosive movement, and as valuable as slow-motion exercises are if you want to have an explosive swing, you need to train explosively.

This exercise will target your abs but also work on your hips, triceps, chest, and shoulder muscles, making it a great all-around exercise.

To set up for this exercise, follow the steps below:

  • Keep the initial setup the same as the two other exercises above: single handle, chest height, and sideways to the machine.
  • Grab the handle with the hand closest to the cable machine and pull the handle into your chest.
  • Reach out with the opposite hand and turn the heel furthest away from the machine out (as if you were at the top of your backswing).
  • In a single explosive motion, stomp your heel down, fire your hips around, and finally punch away from the cable machine extending as far as you can.
  • Slowly return to the starting position.
  • Repeat this exercise for three sets of 10-15 reps in both directions.

Exercise 4: Lawn Mowers (explosive)

Now we will move away from our abs for a bit and focus on our back muscles. In the golf swing, having strong back muscles will help you develop more power but will also help you avoid back injuries. A major reason for many back injuries in golf can be traced to having weak back muscles.

This golf cable exercise is another explosive movement that will develop your ability to pull through your swing faster and help you coordinate your downswing with your lower body. The muscles that we will focus on in this exercise will be your lats, biceps, quads, glutes, and low back muscles.

To set up for a lawn mower, follow the steps below:

  • Attach a single handle to the cable machine and place the cable at the lowest position that it can go.
  • Face the cable machine slightly off of 90 degrees so that you would be pulling across your body and grab the handle with one of your hands.
  • Next, you will need to lunge down to get in the proper position. To do so, set the leg opposite to the hand you’re holding the handle in front of the leg on the side you are holding the handle. If you are holding with your left hand, your right leg should be in front and vice versa.
  • At this point, you should be at the bottom of a lunge with your working hand stretched out in front of you and slightly across your body.
  • Now, in one explosive motion, drive out of the lunge, rotate your hips, and finally pull through with your working hand pointing your chest slightly away from your lead leg.
  • Return slowly to the starting position.
  • Repeat this exercise for three sets of 10-15 reps on both sides.

Exercise 5: Donkey Kicks (explosive)

Finally, we will end will the biggest muscle in our body: the glutes. For a lot of people, the glutes are SERIOUSLY undertrained. Unfortunately, this is bad news for golf because the glutes play a HUGE role in the golf swing by stabilizing and firing the hips in the downswing.

The exercise we will be doing to target the glutes will be Donkey Kicks. These will be another explosive exercise to help strengthen your glutes in the exact way they will be used in golf.

To set up Donkey kicks, follow the steps below:

  • Find a heel attachment for your cable machine. This should look like a cuff that you can wrap around your ankle and link to the cable machine. Set the cable to be at its lowest setting.
  • Back away from the cable machine so the weights are floating, and bend over slightly, holding onto the machine.
  • Bend your working leg to about 90 degrees and raise your knee up in front of you.
  • Now, in one explosive motion, drive your leg back and up, fully extending your leg. Pause for just a moment at the top to make sure you are engaging your glutes.
  • Return to the starting position.
  • Repeat this exercise for three sets of 10-15 reps on each leg.

Conclusion

Completing this exercise routine for golf cable exercises, you will have successfully worked all of the major muscles that are used in your golf swing. Keep in mind that when exercising, results do not happen overnight.

Depending on how in shape you are, it may take a couple of months or more before you really start to see the gains from these exercises.

You didn’t get to the level of golf you are at now after your first week of playing; you cannot expect your body to get stronger after doing these one time through.

Make sure that through all these exercises, you maintain proper form but are also challenging yourself. If you do not challenge yourself enough, it will take you much longer to develop strength and speed from these exercises.

Because of this, it is advisable to ask help from a personal trainer or other fitness experts to check your form and make sure that you are doing the exercises correctly in person. Typically, any personal trainer at a gym will happily critique your form for free if you ask!