Pro golfer Michelle Wie West has been swinging a golf club for years. After all, she became the youngest player to qualify for the United States Golf Association Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship at just 10 years old. Watching her the motion seems smooth, unencumbered, and innate.
So it came as a bit of surprise when Wie West told us that no matter how natural of a golfer you might be, twisting your body like a corkscrew while swinging a club overhead just isn’t a natural motion for the body.
Yet to drive that ball you have to twist in that unusual way over and over again—for hours per session, stretching over years, and often decades.
It’s a necessity for any golfer, but there are some things that can make the whole process a little safer. One huge one? Building core strength, which helps you ward off injury, preserve your mobility, and harness your full power.
“Having a strong core is the only way to protect your spine and have a solid foundation for movement,” Wie West says. “If you want longevity in golf, and especially if you want to keep yourself safe, you’ll need to work your core very strategically.”
Wie West has been putting that into practice for years, ever since her preteen and teen days. After her qualification at Public Links, she also became the youngest player to qualify for an LPGA Tour event at the age of 12, and turned professional in 2005 at 15.
Like many athletes who have spent years honing their sport, Wie West is very aware of what works for her body. That became even more apparent in 2019, when Wie West became pregnant with her first child, Makenna, now two years old.
“As my body changed during pregnancy, there were movements, like twisting, I couldn’t do automatically anymore,” she says. “I had to be much more thoughtful about how I positioned myself.”
That experience helped highlight what she’d always known: Core strength is about supporting your entire body, not just your abs. We sat down to chat with Wie West about how her workout routine—especially her core work—has evolved over the years, and how she’s tweaked it to continue swinging strong (and moving strong!) too.
Skip the crunches. (You’re welcome.)
While core exercises like crunches—or any move that involves flexing or rounding the spine—can have their place in an exercise routine, Wie West prefers exercises that target the entirety of her core musculature, an important part of lowering injury risk. That’s because crunches can be great at targeting your rectus abdominis (the muscles that run vertically along the front of your abdomen), but your core is actually made up of several other muscle groups, including your obliques (the muscles on the sides of your torso), transverse abdominis (your deepest core muscles), your lower back, hips, and glutes—all of which practically get neglected if you’re only doing basic crunches.
“When I was younger, it was all about crunches, because I thought that was the only way to build your abs,” Wie West says. “Now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I know I don’t have to do them, especially when there are options I find more effective."
One of her favorite picks is Bulgarian split squats, since they work both your core—your core muscles need to fire to help you keep your balance—and your glutes, which activate while squatting and standing. Wie West is also a fan of the woodchopper, which works several major muscle groups, like your obliques, transverse abdominis, and shoulders through rotation. She also makes sure to include exercises that strengthen her lower back, like a bear crawl or goblet squat.
Build power through focusing on form.
Along with flexibility and range of motion, golf is also about power, especially explosive movement on the follow-through—the part of your swing after you make contact with the ball—in a long drive.
But rather than focusing on traditional power moves like plyometrics or lifting heavy weight, Wie West says she prefers emphasizing proper form by cultivating more mindful movement while lifting lighter weights. After all, when your mind-muscle connection is on target, you’re more likely to be working the muscles you want to work in a move rather than having nearby muscles take over, which can lead to strain, as SELF reported previously. What’s more, a solid mind-muscle connection can help boost activation in specific muscles, which is important for building strength—a key component of power.
Wie West, who has recently partnered with Tonal, uses the home workout system to help with that all-important mind-muscle connection. The machine, which features artificial intelligence to “read” and correct your form and allows you to adjust weight gradually, lets users mimic a golf swing—something Wie West says can assist with muscle memory and getting the proper motion down.
Gradually, as you master the movement of the swing, you can add incremental amounts of weight to challenge your muscles and gain strength, Wie West says. It’s similar to a technique baseball players use when swinging a weighted bat before they step up to the plate: It helps bring strength and power into the equation for the actual swing.
Wie also slots in moves like rotational lifts and chops on the Tonal machine to help establish core stability and mobility—also important for adding power to your swing—and combines them with floor moves for variety. Her favorite off-the-machine moves to build strength, stability, and mobility include squats, kick-throughs, Russian twists, and half-kneeling woodchoppers.
Work on your inner strength.
While it’s incredibly helpful to build emotional resilience and mental grit to succeed in sport, what inner strength means in regard to core work for Wie West has to do with her pelvic floor muscles. Since having her daughter, Wie West has spent more time on exercises that support the muscles around the bowel and bladder.
“Pelvic floor strengthening—putting more focus on your lower abdomen—is really helpful because it transfers into any workout,” she says. “It even makes everyday movement easier.”
You don’t need to be a new mom for this to be important, either, Allyson Loupe, PT, DPT, a pelvic health specialist at Genesis PT & Wellness in Addison, Texas, tells SELF. People from their tweens to those well past menopause (and men as well) can benefit from better engagement of pelvic floor muscles—and that doesn’t mean Kegels all day, every day. Instead, like Wie West, you also need to spend time actively thinking about those muscles as you move.
“The most ideal way to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles is through neuromuscular reeducation, which comes from slowing down and focusing on low-impact workouts with greater awareness,” Loupe tells SELF. “You need to develop kinesthetic awareness of how you’re functioning and moving. Slow and mindful are the keywords here.” (For more information on how to address a weak pelvic floor and exercises that can help, check out the SELF guide here.)
Of course there’s the other inner strength work too—the kind that’s about emotional well-being, and Wie West has been putting in time for that as well. Usually that involves running around after her daughter, but it also means spending less time on fitness and more on golf-life balance.
“Becoming a mom has wreaked havoc on my training schedule, but in such a beneficial way,” she says. “It’s forced me to be much more efficient and focused so I can do just as much in less time. That’s the great thing about being engaged with your training, including with core work: As long as you’re present, it doesn’t take much time to make a difference.”
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