While playing golf certainly isn’t the highest calorie burning exercise by far, you can maximize your calorie consumption by simply walking the course instead of riding in a cart. By all means, don’t let this take the place of regular exercise, but if you already play golf or are planning to get into it, consider walking. I’m not going to lie, you certainly have to be on your toes or other golfers will get irritated pretty quickly if you’re slowing down the entire course by dragging your feet from one hole to the next. But it IS possible to walk the course AND carry your clubs rather than wheel them, which also makes it into a more legitimate sport in my eyes. I’ve been noting the average caloric expenditures in previous posts using a site called Sparkpeople.com to calculate calories burned based on body weight and time at the sport. If you weight 200 pounds and play three hours golf carrying your clubs, you’ll burn approximately 1,008 calories. San Diego offers a ton of beautiful courses and you can’t beat our weather here, that’s for sure. You could play every day of the year if you wanted to! Cottonwood in particular boasts some fabulous deals on a regular basis, and the golf pro on site is none less than Rex Cole, a very talented instructor that you can purchases lessons from to improve your game very quickly. He offers group lessons for your long game on Saturdays at 2:00pm, and short game lessons are Sundays at 2:00pm. So get out there with some friends and play a round, you won’t be sorry!
Melissa Allen, BS, CPT, CES. Please visit my website at http://www.optimumcondition.org/services/fitt.html
