The Six Minutes Before Your Warm-Up: Why Mobility Comes First
Hitting balls on a cold, tight body is how most golfers warm up — and it's backwards. Six minutes of movement before you swing a club gets you more clubhead speed and fewer twinges.
Most golfers' warm-up is a bucket of balls on the range, starting with a wedge and working up to driver. That's a good warm-up for your swing — but it assumes your body is already ready to make one, which for most of us, standing in a car park at 7am, it isn't.
Your swing needs rotation your body may not have yet
A full golf swing asks your thoracic spine, hips and shoulders to rotate through a range most of us don't use anywhere else in daily life. First thing in the morning, or straight from a car seat, that range simply isn't available yet — so the body compromises somewhere else: a shorter backswing, extra strain through the lower back, or a swing that gets going before it's actually warm.
None of that shows up as an obvious injury on the first tee. It shows up as a thin 7-iron, a pulled tee shot, or — more slowly — as the kind of back stiffness that quietly limits how often you can play.
Movement first, then the range
The fix isn't complicated: a few minutes of dynamic movement — thoracic rotation, hip openers, a rotational lunge, some arm circles — before you hit a single ball. Dynamic means moving through the stretch, not holding it; static stretching (holding a position for 30 seconds) is better saved for after the round, when you're not about to ask the muscle to fire explosively.
Six minutes is enough. You're not trying to get flexible for the first time on the first tee — you're switching your body on, the same way the range warms up your swing.
Two warm-ups, in order
Think of it as two short routines, back to back: mobility first, swings second. The Pre-Round Mobility Card covers the first six minutes — rotation, hips and shoulders, no equipment, no video needed. Once you're moving freely, move straight on to the Pre-Round Warm-Up card for the ten minutes of actual swings, wedge to driver, finishing on the putting green.
Keep both in the bag. On a cold morning especially, the six minutes you spend moving before you swing is the cheapest clubhead speed you'll find all day.
Put this into practice with the free cards: Pre-Round Mobility Card · Pre-Round Warm-Up