When Landscapes Golf Management was established more than two decades ago, it rightfully started with core values. Providing a safe and fun environment where people play golf and otherwise recreate was atop the list.
The same mantra exists today at the 60-plus golf courses, country clubs and resorts under the company’s operation.
For one, Landscapes Golf Management’s Jeremy Ranch Golf & Country Club is steadfast about its members and guests becoming the healthiest versions of themselves. According to Head Golf Professional Jake Hanley, the team there turned to yoga with amazing success.
To some that may appear to be an odd choice of pursuits – how does yoga, of all exercise regimens, bolster performance on the golf course?
“The commonalities are plenty,” says Hanley. “Logic and science prove it.”
The logic: Yoga and golf both require flexibility, strength and balance. This is evident through slow and steady movements which gradually increase in difficulty throughout a yoga flow, loosening previously tight muscles in the body and mind. Concurrently, yoga’s myriad, continuous bodyweight formations, increase endurance.
The science: A core principle of yoga is balancing the vairagya (discipline, practice and effort) and abhyasa (surrender and non-attachment) through specific inhale and exhale exercises to the beat of the heart. Abhyasa takes the yogi toward perfection while vairagya helps the yogi remain undisturbed to the attachments or expectations within oneself; therefore, augmenting the effort of practicing and playing golf with a clear mind and state of equilibrium.
The yoga-golf connection is not supposition, says Hanley, evidenced by Jeremy Ranch members and guests pointing to yoga at the club as a reason for their improvement on the course.
Jeremy Ranch’s two most popular yoga classes:
- Wednesday Wellness – The yin-style yoga class boosts immunity, encourages and enhances mindfulness, and stretches and articulates joints, ligaments and circulatory systems. This format continues to build on the principles of whole-body health through restorative and preventative care.
- Friday Free Flow – The vinyasa-style class warms muscles, trains the mind and supports breath and body connection. Each class is tailored to the group based on skill levels and specific movement patterns.
Hanley and the team have brilliantly taken yoga a step further. Jeremy Ranch partners with a local StretchLab franchise that attends the club’s major golf events where it offers complimentary yoga sessions. Several members now frequent the Stretch Lab to enhance their mobility and flexibility to supplement yoga classes, as well as other golf-oriented exercise and fitness regiments, at the club.
Benefitting the mental and physical wellness of golfers specifically, it’s recommended they engage in pigeon, bird dog, down dog, chair, warrior 2, triangle, bridge, boat and reclined twist poses.
That may sound intimidating at first, but Jeremy Ranch students pick it up to its full intent relatively quickly. “It’s easier than people think,” says Hanley, and, debunking myths, yoga is just as popular among men as women.
Summing up the outputs of yoga benefitting golfers, according to Jeremy Ranch wellness staff: Greater flexibility increases range of motion and power, with less strain, during the golf swing; activation of golfers’ cores improves their balance during the golf swing as well as strengthening of back and shoulder muscles; and time alone during yoga promotes more relaxed breathing, thinking, strategy and full focus on the task at hand over nine or 18 holes.
You don’t have to be flexible and in good shape to start yoga-for-golfers classes and Jeremy Ranch is proof. Surveying its classes, golfers of all shapes, sizes and ages very infrequently miss a class.