Slide, slice or stagger? Five winter home exercises, and how to self-refer to an NHS physio

By the middle of October most British club golfers can feel the season slipping away. The clocks go back at the end of the month, the evening nine disappears, the fairways turn soft and the trolley stays in the boot more often than not. It is tempting to write off the next five months as a holding pattern. It is actually the best window of the year to change your swing, provided you work on the body rather than the technique. A surprising number of the faults a PGA pro spots on a Saturday morning, the slide off the ball, the steep loop from the top, the stagger on the finish, come from hips, an upper back or a lead leg that simply cannot do what the swing is asking of them. Five floor exercises, done in the living room in about a quarter of an hour, three times a week, go straight at those limits. Below, each one is matched to the fault it helps with, so you can start with the problem you recognise in your own game.

A word of caution before anything else. What follows is general guidance for adults in reasonable health. It is not a rehabilitation plan and it is not a substitute for being examined by someone qualified. If any movement gives you a sharp pain, sends pain or pins and needles down an arm or a leg, or leaves a joint aching the following morning, stop, and read the section further down on when to have it looked at.

Why winter is the right time

During the season most of us only swing. We play, we perhaps hit a bucket at the range, and the body adapts to whatever compromises it has made over the years. Change something physical in June and you spend July with a swing that feels strange just as the medals come round. Change it between November and February and nothing is at stake. The card in your pocket is a winter card, often played on temporary greens and mats, and the extra rotation or balance you build has time to settle before the spring.

There is a second reason, and it is the office chair. Many golfers spend the dark months sitting even more than usual: at a desk, in the car, on the sofa. Long hours seated tend to stiffen the upper back and the front of the hips, which are precisely the two areas a backswing needs to move freely. A short routine a few evenings a week works against that, golf or no golf.

Find your starting point first

Spend five minutes on three quick tests and jot the results in your phone or on the back of an old scorecard. You will repeat them in early spring.

• The chair turn. Sit on a firm chair with your feet planted and a club resting across the front of your shoulders. Keeping your bottom and knees still, rotate as far as you comfortably can in each direction. If the shaft gets nowhere near the corner of the room, your upper back is the place to start.
• The hips-only turn. Take your address posture, fold your arms across your chest and try to rotate just the pelvis while the shoulders stay put. If everything moves as one lump, your hips and upper back have not learned to work separately yet.
• The stork. Stand on one foot, lift the other knee to hip height and close your eyes. Count the seconds before you have to put the foot down, then swap. A clear gap between the left and right side is worth noting, because the swing loads one leg on the way back and the other on the way through.

If you slide off the ball: the 90/90 hip switch

The sway is often described as a fault of technique. Very often it is a trail hip that will not rotate, so the pelvis drifts sideways to find the turn somewhere else. The same limitation shows up on the way down as a lunge towards the target.

Sit on the floor with both knees bent to roughly a right angle, one leg in front of you and the other out to the side, so your legs make a sort of zigzag. Sit tall, with your hands behind you on the carpet if you need support. Lift both knees and swing them over to the opposite side, so the front leg becomes the side leg. Move slowly, and do eight to ten switches. On the last one, stay put and lean your chest gently over the front shin for three or four calm breaths, then repeat on the other side.

The movement should come from the hip sockets, not from rocking your whole body. When it feels easy, lift your hands off the floor. If your knees object, open the angles a little wider than ninety degrees; nobody is marking you on geometry.

If you come over the top: the open book

When the upper back will not rotate, the shoulders stop turning early and the arms carry on alone. From that position the easiest way down is out and across, which is the classic slice path. This is the exercise most desk workers need first.

Lie on your side with your knees drawn up level with your hips and a cushion or folded towel under your head. Reach both arms out in front of you, palms together. Keep the knees together and on the floor, then lift the top arm and open it across your body like the cover of a book, eyes following your hand, until the back of the shoulder heads towards the floor behind you. Breathe out as you open, hold for a couple of seconds, and close slowly. Eight to ten each side.

If your knees peel off the floor, the twist is coming from your lower back instead of the middle of your spine. A rolled-up towel squeezed between the knees keeps you honest.

If you lose distance for no obvious reason: the lateral lunge

Plenty of club golfers swing almost entirely with the arms. They never really load the trail leg, so they have nothing to push from, and they leave yards on the tee they did not know were there. On a soft winter fairway with no run, those missing yards matter more than ever.

Stand with your feet together. Take a big step out to one side and sit back into that hip, keeping the knee over the toes, the other leg straight and your chest proud. Then drive off the bent leg to come back to the start. Eight each side. To progress, pause for two seconds at the bottom, or sink a little lower.

Watch the bent knee. It should point over the middle of the foot rather than caving inwards. That is the same braced trail knee your pro wants to see at the top of the backswing.

If you wobble on the finish: the single-leg Romanian deadlift

A finish you cannot hold usually means the lead leg is not able to stop the body at impact. This exercise trains that leg to take your full weight while you hinge from the hip, which is also the posture you set up in.

Stand on one leg with the knee softly bent. Tip forward from the hip and let your free leg float out behind you, keeping your back flat, until your torso is close to level with the floor or as far as you can go without rounding. Push the standing foot into the floor to come back up. Six to eight slow repetitions per leg. For the first week or two, keep a fingertip on the back of a chair or a kitchen worktop.

Keep the hips square, as though a cup of tea were balanced on your lower back. Once eight controlled repetitions feel steady, hold a filled water bottle or a small rucksack in the hand opposite the standing leg.

If you stand up through impact: the dead bug

Losing your spine angle, standing tall as the club arrives or finishing with an arched lower back are all signs of a trunk that cannot hold its shape while the limbs move. The dead bug teaches exactly that, lying down where it is safe.

Lie on your back with your arms pointing at the ceiling and your hips and knees bent to ninety degrees, shins parallel to the floor. Gently flatten your lower back against the floor. Slowly reach one arm back over your head while lowering the opposite leg towards the floor, and stop before your back starts to lift. Return, then do the other side. Eight to ten slow repetitions each way, breathing out as you lower.

The temptation is to rush. Resist it: slow is the whole point. If you have a resistance band, you can add a standing press: tie it at chest height to a solid door handle, stand side-on in golf posture, hold the band against your chest and push it straight out without letting it twist you round. Ten each side. The dead bug on its own is perfectly sufficient, though.

How to fit it into a British winter week

Run through all five in one go, roughly three minutes per exercise including both sides. That is the session: fifteen minutes, on three non-consecutive days, for example Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evening. Most golfers notice something within a few weeks. It also counts towards the UK Chief Medical Officers’ physical activity guidelines, updated in July 2026, which ask adults to do strengthening activities on at least two days a week alongside their weekly aerobic activity.

• Before a winter round, keep a few repetitions of the open book and the lateral lunge and add them to your usual warm-up routine. The deadlift and the dead bug stay at home; the car park in January is no place to lie on the ground.
• Connect it to the swing. Once a week, finish with ten slow, full practice swings without a ball in front of a mirror or a dark window. Feel the new turn while the body still remembers it.
• Plan the review. Around the start of March, repeat the three tests. The chair turn and the stork usually improve the most. If nothing has changed, you are probably rushing the movements, or something needs a professional eye.

If you are tidying the bag and the shed for winter at the same time, our checklist for closing the season covers the rest.

When to stop and have it looked at

Some muscle soreness the day after a new exercise is normal. Pain in a joint is not. Stop and seek advice if a movement produces sharp pain, if pain, numbness or tingling travels into an arm or leg, if a joint swells, or if the same spot hurts during and after every session. If you have had back surgery or a joint replacement, or you have been told you have osteoporosis, ask your GP or physiotherapist which of these movements are suitable before you begin. If the lower back is your main complaint, our guide to the golfer’s back through winter deals with what to change on the course as well.

Where to get your movement assessed in the UK

Nobody needs permission to start this routine, but half an hour with someone who understands both bodies and golf swings will tell you which of the five deserves most of your time.

An NHS physiotherapist. Physiotherapy is free on the NHS. In England, the NHS website says that in many areas you can go to community musculoskeletal (MSK) services, which include physiotherapy, without a GP referral. It also warns that waiting lists can be long, and self-referral depends on where you live, so look up your local service. In Scotland, several health boards, among them Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Lanarkshire, accept self-referrals to MSK physiotherapy through their own websites, with eligibility rules that vary from board to board. Bear in mind the NHS is there for pain and injury; a stiff upper back that only costs you a few yards may not be a priority for it.

A private physiotherapist. “Physiotherapist” is a protected title in the UK: only people on the Health and Care Professions Council register may use it, and anyone can check that register online. The NHS also suggests looking for a chartered physio, with the letters MCSP after their name, and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has a search for finding one. When you ring, ask whether they see golfers and whether they will look at how your hips and upper back rotate, not only where it hurts.

A TPI-certified professional. The Titleist Performance Institute trains golf coaches, fitness trainers and medical practitioners in a movement screen built around the swing. Its Find an Expert map on mytpi.com lets you search by town and filter by golf, fitness or medical professionals. The screen looks at the same things as the three tests above, in far more detail.

Your PGA professional. A club pro cannot treat an injury, but a good one will recognise when a fault is physical rather than technical. The PGA, the body for teaching and club professionals in Britain and Ireland, has a search tool on its website for finding a coach near you by location and type of lesson. Take your test results to your next session, and see our advice on getting value from lessons to prepare.

The evidence that it is worth it. A University of Southampton study of 152 people found that limb strength and balance were better in older golfers than in non-golfers. The authors are careful to say this shows an association, not proof that golf caused it, but it is a reasonable argument for keeping the body ready to play into your seventies and beyond.

Your winter card

• Slide off the ball: 90/90 hip switch, eight to ten slow switches, then hold each side.
• Over the top: open book, eight to ten per side, breathe out as you open.
• Short off the tee: lateral lunge, eight per side, knee over the middle of the foot.
• Wobbly finish: single-leg Romanian deadlift, six to eight per leg, hips square.
• Standing up at impact: dead bug, eight to ten per side, lower back flat.

Fifteen minutes, three evenings a week, nothing to buy. Do the three tests this weekend while the season is still fresh in your mind, write the numbers down, and put a reminder in your diary for the first week of March. If the chair turn and the stork have improved by then, take the card to your pro before the first medal of the spring.