Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn a great golf warm-up routine.

We all realize that it's a good idea to warm-up before you hit the first tee...

But I'm often asked by my students, "What's the best way to warm-up before a round?"

That's a great question because your pre-round routine, if done right, can really help you get off to a good start and help you throughout your round.

Now, your warm-up routine can vary, but, for the most part, there's a general framework that I recommend you use.

Below is a quick review of what you'll see in the video.

Loosen Up

Start your warm-up by loosing up.

You can do this with a sand wedge.

Hit nice and easy shots around 40 yards, and gradually build up to a full swing.

Work Through Your Bag

Now that you're hitting full swings, work through your bag.

For example, you can hit a few with your pitching wedge, then 8 iron, then 6 iron.

As you're working through the bag, concentrate on making a full turn, all the way back and all the way through with a good rotation.

Pay Attention to Your Ball Flight

Next, concentrate on your ball flight.

No matter how good a golfer you are, you'll hit a little different from day to day.

For example, after a few shots, maybe you're hitting a slight fade.

That's fine; it just means you're favoring a slight fade that day.

Straighten Out Your Ball Flight

Next, work on straightening out your ball flight.

Back to previous example, if you're hitting a fade, adjust your club to a more in-to-out path.

Bonus: To improve your feel, hit a few draws, then a few fades, then hone in your ball flight to hit dead straight shots.

Grab Your Driver

After working on your ball flight, break out the big boy and imagine you're playing a few of the crucial holes on the course.

For example, if hole #1 is a dog leg left, you may want to hit the ball on the left side of the fairway.

Practice that shot before you even climb on the tee box.

Imagine the added confidence you'll have on hole #1 if you've already practiced that shot several times!

Even if you hit a few stinkers during your warm-up, you'll have a chance to practice the shot and improve.

Overall, the pre-round routine shown in the video gives you a great process to work through and I promise that your confidence will go through the roof.

Watch this video now to master your golf warm-up routine!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:47

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, great to have you here again today. In this video I’m going to answer one of the questions I get a lot of times, and that’s how should we warm up? We’re about to go play a round of golf.

So everybody comes and hits a few balls at the driving range. What should I be working on? What should I focus on while I’m doing this?

Everybody’s going to be a little bit different depending on what piece of technique maybe you’re working on right now, but the overall format is going to be quite a bit the same.

Or if you’re going out to play a tournament, I’m going to show you a great way to take your range game out to the course so you can shoot some better scores.

A lot of times we’ll hit it great on the range, it will fall apart on the course and we can’t figure ou why. I’m going to show you a great tip for that.

So I’ve got my FlightScope out today, and I’m going to actually track some of these shots, but as I start out all I’m going to do is just hit some nice, easy wedge shots.

Really, this is because you’re usually tight as you’re getting up to the course, coming to the course. I want to just have a few swings where I go back and through, and I’m really not worrying about much else other than just getting some good, solid contact and loosening up a little bit.

I’m not really thinking about a lot while I’m doing this, I’m just trying to get a nice rhythm or a flow my golf swing. That one didn’t pick up, let’s try another one here, see if this next one will pick up.

You know, these aren’t full swings, I’m starting out maybe 30 or 40-yard shots with the sand wedge, and then I’m going to build it up more to my full swing later.

That one’s a little farther probably, 55 yards, something like that. That one was 70 yards, so a little farther. I’m just going to gradually build that up. Starting out 40-50 yards, and going farther from there.

Now one thing, kind of a tip here that I recommend trying not to do, a lot of times I’ll see players go out to the driving range, they’ll grab two or three clubs like this and they’ll start to swing them to get loosened up.

That will get my muscles going, get my blood flowing, it will get me kind of loosened up. The problem is when I go from three club heads down to one, now I’ve lost a lot of feel for this golf club.

This feels so light now that I can’t really feel the face, I feel like I may not be able to make as good a contact as I’m doing that.

So I recommend if anything, if that happens, you really want to warm up like that, make a few swings where you turn the club the other way where it’s really light, make a few swings that way and that will kind of balance it back out to where now you can feel the club head again.

When I go from heavy to light, very difficult to feel. From there, now I’m just going to gradually go farther and farther.

I’m going to swing a little harder, and eventually I’m going to get to where I’m making swings for my full distance. 100-110 yards, whatever distance your sand wedge goes will be completely fine. That one 96 yards and I go a few more.

Once I go from the wedges, I don’t really have much of a target my first five or six swings with my wedge. As I go a little harder and I’m getting closer to my full distances, then I want to start to pick out targets.

I don’t want to just hit into open space. Now, one of the big things here, I’ve got a6 iron. One of the big things I’ll work on once I’ve started to make full swings, I’ll work through the bag.

Maybe I’ll go from sand wedge to a 9 iron, 8 iron, 6 iron, work through it that way, but I’m going to hit the 6 iron mostly here. One of the things I’m going to make sure is I’m making a good, full turn. We talk a lot about the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System.

I want to get those shoulders going, those hips going, and then as I come on through, I’m going to get a good full turn coming through the target that way. That would be first things I really focus on in the begging of this session.

I want to make sure I’m making a good, full range of motion. There you go, so that one really got a full turn back, full turn through.

I’ll try to work on several different types of shots here in a second, but they’re all going to be turning over mostly right to left today, because I’ve got a really big wind.

So on that one, making a good, full turn, you’re going to see my club head speed is 94.5. Because of the wind out there, the distances are going to show up shorter. I’m not really worried about how far I’m hitting this, just that I’m making a good swing, getting a good, full swing speed on it.

There we go. So once I’ve hit a few shots and I feel pretty comfortable with my turn, I’m getting some good swing speed, I really want to pay attention to my ball flight.

Every day, no matter how advanced you get, whether you’re on the PGA Tour, no matter if you’re a scratch golfer, or a 20 handicap golfer, every day you’re going to hit the ball a little bit different.

Maybe I’m hitting that nice draw the last 5 or 10 days, and everything’s just really, really solid, getting that great ball flight, and I come out today, and I’m hitting a big slice. You know it happens, sometimes you just get really out of whack.

I want to pay attention to number one, what is my easiest ball flight to hit on this particular day. So if it’s naturally a fade coming for me today, I know that today ‘m probably going to favor hitting fades out on the course.

If it wants to turn over a little bit more right to left, then I’m probably going to favor a draw out on the course. I’m just going to pay attention to my natural ball flight, and see what happens. Let’s go ahead and try to hit one and just see what kind of flight we get on this one.

There we go, so today we’ve got a pretty strong wind right to left, and that one really started to turn over right to left, rode the wind.

I know if I do that several times in a row that I’m favoring that side. Now what I want to do before I go out to the course, is I want to try to straighten that out a little bit.

I want to hit the ball to where I feel like I’m hitting a little bit more of a fade to try to get to zeroed out. Today I’m favoring a draw, but I’m going to try to hit some that are a little bit of fades, and then zero it out.

That way my ball dispersion won’t be very bad. Every day is going to be a little bit different, and I may have to feel something a little bit different.

On this particular day, especially with a right to left wind on this shot, let’s pretend there’s no wind, but I’m going to feel like I really hit a bit of a cut until I can get that ball to turn over left to right.

It may take me 2 swings, it may take me 10 swings. But I’m just going to keep on doing that until I can get one or two.

That one there, barely started to turn to the right, the wind may have pushed it back slightly left. Got a lot of wind once we get up there. We’re blocked by the trees here, but there’s tons of wind going this way.

I’m going to really feel like I keep going a little bit more. You’ll notice on that one, you can see my flight scope numbers, club head speed is 96, I’ve got a good turn.

My path was 1.9 left, meaning that I’m swinging a little bit to the left. That’s exactly what I want to get that ball to turn over to the right.

I’m going to go ahead and do one more, because I was hooking too much earlier, I’m really going to make sure that I can get a couple good fades in there and then I’m going to try to straighten it out. So one more good fade, I’m going to try to swing even more to the left on this one.

There we go, so I overdid that one a little bit. My path is going to be quite a bit more to the left, I think. All right, so let’s see what the path is. It didn’t read it on that one, but you can see it’s a pronounced left to right type shot.

That’s really key, and I think a lot of golfers skip this. They say well, when I get better at golf, or when my handicap gets lower, then I’ll start trying to work shots. We want to be practicing this on a daily basis.

So I started outhitting overdrawing the ball a little bit, then I got a few fades in there, now let’s try to really straighten this out to get ready for the round.

The reason I always want to straighten that out and hit shots that don’t curve very much is because whenever I have big, curving shots, it’s very easy to get off track.

If I have a very inside swing and my path is going way out here and I’m hitting big draws, or big hooks, if I have the face a little open, it’s going to go way to the right, or if I close the face a little too much, it’s going to go way to the left.

There’s just too much margin, not enough margin for error, it can go all over the place. Same thing with a fade. If I’m hitting 20 and 30-yard slices, it’s very easy to pull one or to overcut one. You just have this big, huge area that you’re hitting your shots into.

If I’m swinging pretty straight, then I’m not going to have very much discrepancy between my left and right shots. That’s because the club path is moving squarely through the ball.

Once I’ve kind of tested out both extremes, now I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to try to hit some pretty straight shots. Let’s see how straight I can get this one to go.

There we go, that one was really nice. That one didn’t hardly move at all, it may turn a little to the left, just due to the wind, but that was almost a dead straight ball flight.

We’ll see, if it will read, so my path was 1.3 to the right, so very, very small amount to the right. That was a good straight shot.

In the beginning I got loosened up, then I worked on my turn, make sure I’ve got my speed. Then from there, I’m working on ball flight. I’m trying to hit both fades and draws, and then bring it back into the middle.

So I’ve done that. Now, as a beginning golfer you may not be able to do that, or an intermediate golfer, you may not be able to get all the way to where you want it to be, but if you keep working on it, it will come.

Once I’ve done that, now I’m going to take out the driver and I’m going to work on playing a couple crucial holes that are going to be in the round.

Let me grab a tee, and what I’m going to do here, and this is one of the reasons that people’s games don’t always travel to the course. I want to be actually in my mind playing one of the critical holes that I have coming up.

Let’s imagine this number one, I’m going to visual that in my mind here. Let’s say it’s a dogleg left, and I’m going to try to play it down the left side of the fairway. I want to do the same thing here, and I want to go through my entire pre-shot routine.

So I’m standing behind the ball, I’m visualizing the shot that I want to hit, I’m stepping into it and I’m making a couple little swings, if that’s whatever your routine is, and I’m going to play it right over the left corner to cut the corner.

I got a bad ball there, that one took off really funny. Let me hit one more. So I go through my routine again. Ball must have been cracked, it was acting crazy.

I’m going to visualize exactly what I want to have happen. Step up, I’m playing the shot in my mind like a movie. I’ll take it right over the corner. There we go, that one just started just over the left edge, and was pretty straight.

So start over the left side, started to cut back and almost dead straight, and we’ll see that my club head speed is OK, 114, a lot of wind today so the distances are going to be pretty short. But I’m able to play that kind of shot.

Now imagine I didn’t hit a good shot there. I want to keep on hitting that in my mind over and over again. So I’m stepping back going through my full routine. Once I’ve hit a couple good solid ones there, I get a lot of confidence. I know that I can go to that first hole, and recreate what I’ve already done.

Once I’ve done that, I may go to a critical hole out on the course. Let’s imagine there’s another hole, it’s a dogleg right, and I need to hit a cut shot, well I’m going to go ahead and set up here and play out the cut shot in my mind, and then make it happen.

There we go, hit that one really well. That would have cut around a little bit of left t right. So you’re playing the actual holes that you’re going to be doing out on the course before you ever step out there.

You’re on the driving range playing those in your mind and hitting the shots. If you’re hitting the shots on the range, that gives you that much more confidence when you make it out to the hole.

If you don’t hit very good shots, it gives you a little bit more time to practice to get your swing down so that you can hit those that you want to.

So go through that pre-shot routine. First we’re starting out by just getting our distance control, getting some feel, making a good full turn.

We’re working on our shot shapes, and then to finalize it, we’re going to play a few holes that are going to be on the course that we’re about to play. If you go through that routine, I promise you guys you’ll feel a lot more confident on the first tee.