What Pros Do In The Off Season

By Sofie Andersson

What is your off-season recipe for success?

As a professional golfer on the Duramed FUTURES Tour with the goal of earning a spot on the LPGA tour, the tournament season is long. Competition starts in mid-March and most of us finish up the season with the LPGA qualifying tournament in the beginning of December.

I have recently, and repeatedly, been asked what we all do during the months away from competition? The time is easily counted to half of December, all of January and all of February. I believe that most of us players do pretty much the same thing. We hit the gym. We work on our full swing technique. We sharpen up our short game and practice on making more putts. But we all do it in different ways.

Here is my attempt to answer all, or at least some, of your questions of what goes on behind the scenes during the winter:

The first thing I do after the season is over is to rest. I usually end up spending a good two weeks in my role as a “couch potato.” It is quite something to be able to have a few weeks of not having to travel anywhere, not having to do anything but taking care of your body and mind. It is a very welcomed time of the year after spending 25-30 weeks on the road over the past 9 months.

The second thing on my list is to plan and get ready for the next season. The Duramed FUTURES Tour schedule is released in late December. I will know 9 months in advance what I will be doing and where I will be in September the following year! Details like this really help you to make a solid plan to set yourself up the best way possible to reach your goals.

This past winter I decided to expand my network. Over the last two years, I have built a network around me, consisting of coaches, sponsors, and supporters to help me with my training and my plan for success. As much as golf is an individual sport, I have created a “team” of my own from which to extract knowledge, get advice, support, motivation, inspiration, and to learn.

In the late fall, I added a fitness professional to be my personal trainer, customize my workouts, and guide me in the gym. I also improved my nutrition regimen through adding a recovery drink sponsor, helping me to reach my goal of becoming more fit for my swing, less injury-prone, and over all healthier. Together with my trainer Michael Hughes, and FLUID recovery drink, I have made improvements in the gym, which has translated into me being able to adapt to, and execute more efficiently the swing changes that my golf coach Spencer Dennis and I wanted to carry out over the off-season. For some time, Spencer and I had been working on improving my lower body movement in my full swing to bring more consistency to my long game. I put in the hours on the driving range, and with the individualized gym workouts, I was now able to better implement the swing changes.

The increased fitness aspect in the training for professional golfers is probably nothing “new” to you. I believe though that your next question is, “Why a recovery drink like FLUID for a golfer?” I will say that I was just as curious as you about this addition. I was, on the other hand, easily convinced of the positive impact it had on my recovery after a workout or a day of training on the golf course.

As important as training is, I have learned that the recovery is just as important, if not more. You can put in the hours of hard work to get stronger, more flexible and improve your stamina. You can hit so many balls on the range to build new muscle memory with improved technique. Spend the morning at the gym, and then follow up with an afternoon on the golf course, and I can promise you that you will get tired. Your muscles get fatigued and need to be replenished and restored for you to be able to carry out the same schedule day after day, week after week. Adding FLUID to my daily workout and training routine not only improved my immediate muscle recovery, it also helped me stay better energized and alert for my afternoon session of golf practice.

I guess the final question is: “What kind of result do you anticipate from all this hard work, additions and changes to your training?”

There is no simple answer. A valuable lesson I have learned over the past few years, having worked with my sports psychology coach Jeff Troesch, is that all you can do is to train to the best of your knowledge, and set yourself up for success. You can do so much in preparation, improve in all areas, and get better to reach your goals. That is what the off-season is for. What the end result will be, you do not know, and you will not know until you are at the finish line. Work hard, believe in the process, gather information, adjust, fine-tune and carry on. Only time can tell what the result will be.

Sofie Andersson is a fourth-year professional and member of the Duramed FUTURES Tour. A native of Angelholm, Sweden, she was a member of the Swedish National Team from 1999-2006, and was a member of the Swedish team that won the 2004 Women’s World Amateur Team Championship. As a collegiate player at the University of California-Berkeley, she recorded 16 top-10 finishes, including one win. She won her first professional title on the Duramed FUTURES Tour at the 2007 Aurora Health Care Championship in Lake Geneva, Wis.