Golf is a game that’s famously not as high-intensity as other sports. Golf clothes certainly don’t look like anything close to football gear, and golf often attracts a different, older audience.
However, playing golf has a lot of health benefits that many people wouldn’t expect. The benefits of golf aren’t quite as obvious, but when you look closer, you’ll realize they’re a lot more surprising than the benefits of other sports.
This article will walk you through five of the top health benefits of golf, and try to convince you to play a game.
1. You’ll Reduce Your Risk for Diabetes
Golfing falls under the category of “light exercise”, sometimes known as “moderate exercise”. While it’s not quite as intense as weightlifting or running, it still comes with many health benefits. A standard 18 hole golf course will see you walking from 3 to 6 miles — even a quick 9 holes will get you a lot of steps in!
Moderate exercise has been proven to reduce the risk of type two diabetes. By keeping your blood flowing and your calories burning, you’re much less likely to succumb to diseases like this.
Speaking of which.
2. You’ll Burn Calories
You can burn about 100-200 calories an hour when you’re walking. Considering the other physical activities — the hills, the swinging, if you don’t have a caddie: carrying clubs — the number is probably even higher than that.
By burning calories, you’ll prevent the excess gain of fat, which can lead to some serious health complications as you get older. By gaining too much weight, you’ll increase your risk for heart disease, hip fractures, and the aforementioned diabetes.
While these things aren’t directly linked to golfing, they come as a result of the exercise you get while golfing. Because of this, make sure that you don’t use a golf cart when you golf, or you’ll drastically reduce the benefits.
3. It’s Easy On the Knees
People who gain too much weight famously have knee problems. The human body is constructed to withstand a certain amount of pressure, but if you exceed the natural amount, things will start going wrong.
On top of that, however, moderate exercise is the perfect solution to keep your knees healthy, even if you aren’t overweight.
While generally exercise is good for you, the knees are famously fickle. Running improves your cardiovascular health — but if you’re not running on a perfect surface (i.e., you don’t happen to live near a track), there’s a high chance you might trip and injure yourself. Even if you do run right, you might develop a knee or ankle problem over time.
However, the solution isn’t to simply get no cardiovascular exercise. Your knees could very well atrophy from disuse.
This is why walking is so important. It keeps your knees moving while not overexerting them. Golfing, therefore, is great for your knees.
4. You’ll Get Some Sun
While golf might not be the number one sport out there to raise your heart rate, it will provide you with a lot of time out in the sun.
Golf is a long-term activity with a significant amount of downtime. This means that you’ll get to spend more time soaking up the benefits the sun can provide.
The sunlight is humans’ natural habitat. Humans are animals, after all, and a good portion of our bodies are still not adapted to living indoors.
More sunlight is shown to improve mood. In fact, the SAD lamp simulates sunlight rays to improve the mood of people with seasonal affective disorder.
On top of that, you may even find yourself sleeping better. A better mood and better sleeping just on their own means a whole plethora of health benefits.
However, too much sunlight can damage you. It can cause skin cell death and even skin cancer.
To reconcile the negatives of time in the sun with the positive, buy yourself some great sun sleeves. Let the sun work on your emotions — not your skin.
5. You’ll Reduce Stress
Stress — it’s the silent killer. Mental health and physical health aren’t in separate worlds, and nothing emphasizes that more than stress.
When you’re stressed, your body produces cortisol, which helps your fight or flight response. Too much cortisol can lead to myriad health problems.
When you’re golfing, however, you’re actively fighting stress. This doesn’t just come from the love of the game. The focus it takes to play correctly will block out any personal problems you may have, and walking is known to decrease stress drastically.
On top of that, golf is a social activity, without being a highly competitive one like tennis or chess. You can compare scores with your buddy, but at the end of the day, no one is trying to win in golf unless they’re in a tournament — they’re just trying to top their personal best. (Try playing a game of tennis where no one wins but someone beats their personal best.)
And then on top of that, golf is a slow game with downtime, enabling you and your buddy to chat, catch up, and get into a flow of conversation.
All of this together makes golf one of the most social games out there. It’s not uncommon for two golfers to get so caught up in their conversation (which they pause when focused on the ball), that they end up not even comparing themselves to each other, but simply playing their own game side by side.
Playing Golf Comes With Many Benefits
As you can see, there are many benefits that come with playing golf. By making golf a regular habit for you, you’ll reduce your risk for diabetes, burn calories, make things easier for your knees, get some sun, and reduce your stress.
These benefits can in turn lead to other benefits, which will help you improve your life.
For more articles like this, check out our “health” section.
