Here’s how Brendan Steele builds power in just 15 minutes

There are only 24 hours in a day, so if you can only manage to carve out fifteen minutes to hit the gym, how should you spend it?

It depends on who you ask.

For some, like Joel Dahmen, a fifteen-minute circuit workout is the perfect way to get your sweat on efficiently.

According to other health professionals, if you’re heading to the gym looking to bolster your golf game, your time is best spent building strength and mobility.

But if you ask PGA Tour pro Brendan Steele how he’d spend 15 minutes at the gym, he recommends something a little different.

“The things that help me most are deadlifts and squats,” Steele said.

With the golf swing so reliant on driving through your legs to generate power, it makes sense that deadlifts and squats would be at the top of Steele’s to-do list in the gym.

Deadlifts and squats are total-body exercises, relying on the use of your legs, core, and shoulders to maintain proper posture throughout the exercise. What else relies on the legs, core, shoulders and proper posture? Your golf swing.

Injury Prevention

Should you heed Steele’s advice, it’s paramount to make sure you’re executing these movements correctly.

For deadlifts, it’s essential to maintain a neutral spine throughout the movement. To perform a deadlift, you’ll want to hinge at the waist and keep your knees slightly bent as you bend forward. You should feel tension in your hamstrings as you do this. Once you’ve grabbed onto the barbell or weights, you should push your feet into the ground and stand, keeping your lats engaged as you stand all the way up.

For squats, you want to start in a standing position. Then, sit your hips back as if you’re going to sit in a chair. As you squat down, make sure you’re keeping your chest up and engaging your core. This will help you maintain good posture. As you stand, you want to push your feet into the ground and push your knees out.

If you can’t squat all the way down without compromising your form (rounding your back, knees falling inward), you can squat to a target, such as a chair, bench, exercise ball, or medicine ball and slowly work up to a full squat.

If you’re new to these movements, start with very little or no weight at all until you’re comfortable and your form is solid.

If you’re looking to increase the power generated with your legs in your swing, try adding three sets of 10 deadlifts and three sets of 10 squats to your next workout.

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