Why Tiger Woods’ training sessions sound hellacious

Tiger Woods played 72 holes of golf over four days last week at TPC Harding Park for the PGA Championship. He played four days of practice rounds, too. In two weeks, he could begin a stretch that would see him play four tournaments over five weeks – the Northern Trust, the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship consecutively and the U.S. Open two weeks later. All with a body that’s undergone multiple surgeries and that, prior to two weeks ago at the Memorial, hadn’t played a tournament since the middle of February. 

He won’t be sweating those weeks. 

He’s been sweating during others.       

Woods is off this week. Only by definition. He told GolfTV on Sunday that this week there will be more training for this tournament run.  

“We’ve been training a lot of strength and endurance, making sure that I’m ready for this long stretch,” he told GolfTV. “We were committed to playing at Memorial. We’ve been training to get the body ready for a long stretch with a lot of play and making sure I’m strong enough and have the physical endurance to do it. 

“The training sessions have been brutal.”

Woods would know. 

For the first part of his career, Woods has said he would start his day with a four-mile run. Next, he’d lift at the gym, play golf for two to three hours and work on his short game. Woods would end his day with another four-miler and possibly some basketball or tennis.   

Now 44, he told GolfTV that his training involves “a lot of sweating, a lot of lactate, a couple of throw-up sessions in there.”

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Lactate, according to a story on the Livestrong website, “is produced by your body in response to aerobic exercise and serves as a fuel for the muscles, delays fatigue and prevents injury.” Of course, according to a story entitled “Train Till You Puke” on the Caveman Training website, “when someone is working at an intensity that they’re not used to,” you may get those throw-up sessions. 

“So that’s just part of the training process,” Woods told GolfTV. “That’s what you need to do and all athletes understand that, they’ve all been there, done that. Then you taper off and get ready for your competitive rounds. We’ve been staying active. The body felt pretty good this week.”

Woods tied for 37th at the PGA with rounds of 68, 72, 72 and 67. He finished strong. 

The workouts worked. 

“Every athlete understands it,” Woods told GolfTV. “There’s training cycles in which you go through those cycles and got to pay the price for having the ability to do it when you need to.”