Want to hit the ball solidly all the time? Train barefoot

A buzzword in fitness for years has been "proprioception." It's typically linked to improved balance but in a wider interpretation, it's awareness of where your body is and what it's doing without actually seeing it. For example, can you close your eyes and touch your nose? Being able to accomplish that comes from having good proprioception.

When swinging a golf club, you can imagine how valuable it is to be aware of your body movements and how to control them. Just take a look at Scottie Scheffler's footwork (below). It looks helter-skelter, but Scheffler has figured out a way to move his feet to generate a lot of swing speed without losing balance. Perhaps the biggest value to having good proprioception is the ability to repeatedly strike the ball solidly. Solid contact is the No. 1 component to accuracy, as it's hugely responsible for distance control.

A big pro-ponent of proprioception training is Jennifer Fleischer, one of Golf Digest's Best Fitness Trainers in America. Fleischer will demonstrate a few great barefoot exercises for golfers in a moment, but her take is that it should supplment other things you do in the gym. Lifting weights, for example, is probably best done with shoes on. But when you're working on balance and mainly doing that without external loads or resistance, you're going to give your athletic coordination a real boost by training without shoes on.

"The ground is vital for power and coordination in the golf swing," says Fleischer, a Golf Digest Certified Fitness Trainer in the San Francisco Bay area. "Training barefoot gives you tremendous feedback from the ground, which can translate to better awareness of the ground in the golf swing. If your swing coach is telling you to load into your heel or into the ball of your foot, you'll have a better understanding of what that feels like, which can allow you to repeat it on the course.

"Training barefoot also strengthens the muscles in your feet and improves your ankle mobility, which can lead to a more efficient transfer of force from the ground, up into your swing. Even though we play golf with both feet on the ground, the three exercises I've selected also challenge your single leg-balance, which can lead to a better transfer of force from your trail to your lead side in your swing."

Before you try her moves, let's get the common-sense disclaimer out of the way: You leave your feet more vulnerable to cuts, scrapes, stubs, bruises when training without shoes and socks on. So if you're going to try this, please do so carefully.

Click on the video to watch her demonstrate the moves and read these tutorials to understand why she chose them and to make sure you perform them correctly.

1. Clock taps: These will challenge your stability in all three planes of motion, and all three are involved in the golf swing. Imagine you're standing on a large clock. Tap your left foot to 12 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 6 o'clock then all the way around your right leg to 4 o'clock. Then repeat with the opposite foot.
   
   
2. Gate swings: These target your internal and external hip rotation, making it so much easier to coil into your trail and lead sides in the swing for solid contact. Stand on one leg with your free leg bent with your foot wrapped around your standing leg. Open and close your bent knee as far as you can. Imagine someone is standing on either side of you and you’re trying to tap them with your knee. As you do this, work hard to keep your upper body still. Switch leg positions and repeat.
   
   
3. Hip hinges to kick throughs: These challenge your single-leg stability while stretching the hamstrings, which are crucial to maintaining golf posture. Stand with your feet hip-distance apart. Shift your weight onto one leg with a slight bend in your knee. Begin to hinge at your hips and kick your opposite leg up in the air behind you. Then stand up and kick your back leg in front of you and you’ll feel a nice hamstring stretch. Switch leg positions and repeat.
   
   Click on this link if you're interested in becomming a Golf Digest Certified Fitness Trainer.