If You Want To Improve Your Golf Game, Here's How The Pro's Train

You can spot it a mile away: someone decides they “need to get in shape,” grabs a random workout off the internet, goes way too hard, and then disappears for three months. We wanted to cut through that cycle with someone who’s lived the athlete side of it, so we brought on our friend and former PGA professional Eric Levine to talk about what training actually looks like when performance matters and what changes when real life takes over.

Eric shares how he got into golf, what it was like chasing tournaments, and the lesson he learned the hard way: lifting heavy to look strong can be the fastest path to feeling broken if it doesn’t match your sport. We get into golf fitness fundamentals like functional strength, mobility, and the stabilizer muscles that help you control your swing. If you’re a weekend golfer searching for strength training for golfers, golf workout routines, or how to protect your lower back, the big takeaway is clear: distance and consistency come from timing and control, not just “more weight.”

We also zoom out to fitness and nutrition for normal schedules. Eric talks about travel, late-night workouts, and why sleep often becomes the most realistic recovery tool. On food, we dig into sustainable habits instead of perfectionism, including his approach to intermittent fasting, breaking a fast with more nutritious choices, cutting sodas and juices, and staying hydrated with water, green tea, and black coffee. We wrap with the most overlooked beginner wins: listen to your body, find an accountability partner, and make a plan you’ll actually enjoy enough to repeat.

If you want a smarter way to train for your goals and your lifestyle, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a golf buddy, and leave us a review with your biggest fitness sticking point.

TUT Radio is a podcast about weight loss, behavior change, and building a healthier life without pretending you’re someone you’re not.

Hosted by father-and-son coaches Brian and Vincent of Time Under Tension, TUT Radio challenges many of the beliefs that have made weight loss unnecessarily difficult: that you need more discipline, that your favorite foods are the problem, or that success requires following a restrictive diet for the rest of your life.

Instead, we explore the psychology behind the way people eat—the habits, cravings, environments, memories, and experiences that shape our relationship with food—and how understanding those forces can help us create meaningful, lasting change.

We’ll talk nutrition, training, obesity, metabolism, food behavior, and the science of weight loss. But more importantly, we’ll talk about how to apply that science to a real human life.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey everyone, welcome to Tut Radio. If you are someone who enjoys playing a weekend round of golf and would like some practical advice on how to exercise in order to perhaps improve your game, today is the show for you. David and I are happy to have with us a friend and former PGA professional. His name is Eric Levine, and today he's going to share with us his thoughts on exercise and nutrition and how it relates differently for everyone depending on what outcomes you are actually looking for. Alright, Eric, thanks for being here. Welcome to the show. If you would do me a favor, just give us a brief history of your golf career to get us started.

Eric’s Path To Pro Golf

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Absolutely, absolutely. First of all, thanks again for having me on the show. You guys have have a great podcast, and I love everything you guys put out there. So thank you for that. You know, as for me and my career, it started as a fluke. I I was at the somebody gave me a set of golf club. Somebody my parents knew gave me a set of golf club, and this gentleman named Les took me with him every single Tuesday, I believe it was, to the golf course, and he gave me lessons for free. And I was just one of my, you know, my my dad's buddies and who owned a golf course. And it was such a great experience for me. And then from there, I had a natural talent to do golf. So I started trying out for U.S. Open qualifiers, and then I did some mini tour events, and I moved to San Antonio, Texas, where I played most of my professional golf, coming back to Florida, going back there, and going to other places around the country to play. And then I became a golf pro at a country club, thinking, hey, you know, what if I work on you know helping people's golf game? And also I can afford now to practice for free and all that stuff. And then it came to family life, and here I am.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

So I didn't know I personally I've known you for a while and I did not know uh how you got your start. So so I appreciate you sharing that with us. So let me get started with the the first question because this this podcast today is really about helping people understand the differences between when you start saying like a lot of people say, I gotta get in shape, and they immediately just run to the gym, they don't really have a plan. Uh or it's like we and I were talking about this, you know, P90X or whatever, they they just they immediately grab that and then that that's what they think they should be doing. And the reality is you know, you really got to give some thought about what your own goal should be and what that really looks like. And so because you are a you know a golfer, it made a lot of sense to me. It's like your training, I'm gonna guess, uh, is not the same as let's say a professional bodybuilder. So that's what kind of want to make sure like that today people kind of understand that that's really the premise of this this podcast is that people understand that you gotta change, you know, your thinking first about what it is you're gonna start with. So having said that, so when people hear professional athlete, you know, they often picture endless hours in the gym. You know, what did your training actually look like?

Functional Training Beats Heavy Lifting

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Great question. You know, when I first started, I had no idea what training looked like. You know, I thought I could go to the range and hit some golf balls and that would be it. And I always remember getting caught up in an injury on my lower back because I improperly trained. I went and I did a back workout and I thought I wanted to lift heavy because I wanted to be strong and I wanted to be, you know, look like like like the Hulk, you know. And for golf, that didn't work. And you can you can see with you know, some some of the athletes today who do play golf, they they work out for functionality and not for bulkiness and looking big and being big and being strong. And I think everybody has a vision of what a person that works out is supposed to look like, and and I think that that's where we all go wrong. So as a young athlete, my my workout regiment started very poorly, not stretching, going to the gym and pounding as much as I can lift and as heavy as I can lift because the joints didn't hurt at that time and nothing hurt at that time, and and it took a quick minute until I really realized that you know working out was about how do I make myself better at what I do. And I had to start, I I started reading books and I started watching videos, and I I bought a book that called that was called The Anatomy of the Body, and it showed every detailed part of the body, and then I started watching golf videos and putting the two together on what what what can I work out that works with my golf game because hitting the ball far is not about being stronger, it's about timing, right? It's about letting your small muscles work, not the big muscles, right? So the stabilizer muscles in the golf swing are so important. So over the years, that's what I had to learn to work out as opposed to just going to the gym and ground and pound. And trust me, I love doing that as a kid. It was fantastic going to the gym with your buddies and you know, showing off on who can lift more and who can curl more and so on and so forth. But in the golf game, as a professional athlete, that did nothing. Actually, it hurt me more than anything.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, okay. So so that makes perfectly good sense. So it's one of those things that again, my father and I have gone back and forth a lot is that people, when they're just getting into the gym for the first time, they don't really set themselves like a real goal, right? It might be some arbitrary number, you know, amount of weight that they want to lose or what have you, but they go into the gym and they don't really know what it is that they're doing, right? But so as you see, right, based off of your response, a an athlete has a very specific goal in mind, right? And I think that's just something that people they don't consider, they might want to emulate their favorite athlete's workout regimen because they think that, okay, well, I just want to be like Mike. But even so, you know, if you just if you want to just lose some weight, you know, maybe those sorts of workouts look a little bit differently. So when when your career was progressing in the same sort

Travel, Sleep, And Recovery Reality

SPEAKER_00 6:20

of vein of working out and trying to be a better athlete, what do you feel became more important? Working out harder or like recovering better?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Oof. Sometimes we didn't have time to recover. Fair enough. You know, you you think about, you know, when you travel, you sit in the car for sometimes a full day, right? And the only recovery you get is to get out to pee or to go put some gas in the car or whatever it may be. So it in a sense, recovering was not really an option for me at the time. Although sleep was probably the best type of recovery I could get in that moment. Because I would drive a car, we go around, go to different venue, different site, get to the location, then you're practicing, you're trying to get a claim to the to the rough, you're trying to get a claim to how fast the greens are, because every location is different. The roughs are different from state to state, the grass is different, everything is, you know, though it could be a windy place, not a windy place, you know. You have to take those things into consideration as a as a professional golfer. So so the the the time that I spent at the gym in those moments sometime was 11 o'clock at night. You know, and and and then I have to be back up at six o'clock in the morning. So the only the only rest I could get would be sleep. That would be my recovery aspect of it. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

That makes sense. Okay, Eric, I'm gonna pull you off the golf course for just a second.

Fitness Myths And The Aging Body

SPEAKER_02 7:45

And that is I want you to talk a little bit more because how how long has it been, first of all, that you've been not playing golf professionally? How long come you know, how long ago? Ten years. Okay, so for 10 years. So now clearly your your routine and fitness has changed. So I want you to talk a little bit more about fitness in general, but you know, knowing that you were a pro athlete, what do you think most people you really misunderstand about fitness in general?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

For me, it's I n I I look at my boys now, right? I have a 15-year-old that's taller than me, and he loves to go to the gym. And the first thing he says to me is, Dad, did you see this this muscle magazine? Hey dad, did you see Arnold Schwarzenegger's video? Hey dad, did you see you know, and they already have a vision of what they think a workout should look like. And it goes this goes way beyond working out. I think that that the the misconception of the gym is is how people look at things, and I think it's it's a defect that we have as a people. It's that we see something and we want it now, and we don't think about what it takes to get to that moment of where Arnold was or some of these other major bodybuilders are. If that's your goal, then that's your goal. But it takes a long time to get there, and it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of effort. So for me, it's to to tell my boys to go into the gym and then start with very simple exercises. You know, the the internet today is full of information that we didn't have when we were a kid, you know, right? We had to look at at the magazines, right? And we saw what we saw in the picture because that's all we knew. But with technology today and the apps that we have today, you you tell an app that you're a beginner, and now it it shows you some workouts you can do according to what you want. So for me, that was a that that's a big thing. Uh the mixed misconception today is how people look at these athletes and think that they can become that now, and that's not a reality.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

That's that's really interesting. I I think that you you brought up a really good point. There's so much information that it's almost to like a deficit at some point because it's like, well, I want to, you know, get where I want to go. Let me just emulate what the internet says this person's routine looks like. Meanwhile, it's wrong. One, and two, you're not ready to work out like that because you're just a beginner. So yeah, it all goes back to what it is you're trying to accomplish and and then finding a routine that works in correlation with those goals, right? Since retiring from professional golf, how has your definition of being healthy changed in a fitness context?

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I think it's more of an as I get older, more than my my brain feels like it's 25, right? I go to the gym and I feel like I can do what I could do a long time ago. And then I just jump off a stool and I'm like, man, that hurt. That really hurt. So so you're you know, your brain, your brain never gets old, it feels like. 42 years old, I'm still young, you know, and I I try to stay in shape, but I try to stay in shape now by by eating better, and I still don't eat perfect by any means, you know. Out of conven uh out of convenience, you know, you go to a fast food restaurant and I work in one. So it's even harder to not to not eat the stuff that I cook every single day. Because out of convenience of having to work an 11, 12 hour day, and then trying to find time for the gym, and where do I eat in that moment? Where do I take care of my family in that moment? So I think from a fitness perspective, it's I try to go to the gym at five o'clock in the morning before anybody's up, before I have to say hi to anyone, before I have to think about work. And and I have to force myself to do it because it's not easy. I think that part of what is difficult about working out and staying fit, and it's getting started, and that's where everybody quits, and that's where I've quit many times. I start and then something comes up, and then I stop, and then I go back three months from then and I start again, and the only thing that has ever kept me going is how amazing I felt once I was past that part of this is hard. You know, and I think that once you pass that part, working out becomes a lifestyle and not a chore. So for me, is I have to I have to make working out a lifestyle, and that's what I've really tried to do is to find time in my day to take care of me because I want to live a long life. I want to be there for my kids. I got three boys. I have to keep up with them because they want to wrestle me on the floor and they want to, you know what I mean, and they want to do things with me. And I got a son that that plays, you know, very high-level baseball and travels all over the place. And I have another son that does boxing and loves to play golf. And then my youngest one is an amazing swimmer. So between the three of them, I'm always they're keeping me active today at my age.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Now, you mentioned something

Nutrition That Fits Real Life

SPEAKER_02 12:55

that uh I want to kind of touch on a little bit. You said, you know, you don't necessarily eat perfectly. Working in a fast food restaurant is kind of challenging. And Vin and I believe strongly in this, is that that is probably one of the one thing that people say to themselves all the time about trying to be perfect when it comes to nutrition. And so maybe talk a little bit about, you know, what you think is good nutrition for you, what actually works for you. Because it's, you know, he and I believe that at the core of it all, the the last thing you want to do is give up the things that you're connected to, your family, your friends, your holidays. And you have to understand if you understand energy balance and how to do that so you're not overeating, the the world really truly is your oyster. You can eat just about anything, and so that's important to us. But kind of give us an idea of what you think, you know, good nutrition kind of looks like from your standpoint and what you've learned over the last 10 years, really.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, good good nutrition is important, and I think everybody nutrition to everybody is different. I think that uh everybody's body is different. Everybody, some people can consume protein, some people can't, some people can do gluten, some people can't. You know, there's certain things that I think everybody's different from that regard. But for me particularly, I got into trying to, I I've tried every diet, I've tried every type of food, I've done the carnivore thing, I've done the keto thing, I've done, you've named it, I've done it, I've tried it, I've bulked where I eat, you know, they say what you eat, eat everything but the kitchen sink, you know, to try to gain some weight because as a young guy, I was 130 pounds and I couldn't gain anything, no matter how much I ate, you know. So and at that point I would eat absolutely everything I could put in my mouth. And now I I got to the point where I learned about intermediate fasting, where I will, you know, go to bed, let's say at 10 o'clock at night. My last meal is I won't eat anything past eight o'clock, and then I won't eat until two o'clock the next day. So I started doing intermediate fasting. I started watching what I put in my body because intermediate fasting is not just about not eating for a short period of time, is when you do get to eat, are you putting great things in your body, nutritious things that are going to be good for you? I try to supplement my body as well with multivitamin and vitamin D3, because I am deficient in vitamin D3. For me, doing a great fasting program is about when you do get to eat, it's not to stuff your face with pizza. But the important part of all that is putting stuff in your body that is healthy in the process. Putting all those things together really made a difference. Now I stopped, I stopped completely drinking sodas and juices. And I started drinking more water, green tea, black coffee, those three things in particular I drink a lot of what water mainly, and and I mineralize my water. So I put some some sea salt in the water, maybe about a pinch. That's kind of where I go. That that's where I'm at from uh from that perspective.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, I think that's that's really interesting to hear that you say that you have implemented intermittent fasting. I think that a lot of people kind of naturally gravitate towards that when they hear it because it's like it seems like just an easy thing you can add to your day. It's like, okay, I just set a window and this is when I'm gonna eat. Well, what I think that is most important to highlight is the fact that you make an effort once the fast is up to then break that fast with things that are nutritious and are actually good for you. Because that's what, in your own experience, has made you feel the best was when you take an approach like that. And so that's good to hear because we we agree. Again, whole foods you you can't get any better than than whole foods that actually make you feel good because they're so nutritionally dense. So, in closing, right, if someone listening here today were to only take one thing away from this conversation, what would you think would be the biggest peep mistake that people make when they first decide to begin exercise?

Beginner Mistakes And A Better Plan

SPEAKER_01 16:55

I think it's you have to listen to your body. I think we don't do that enough, is listen to when your body talks to you. Your body will tell you when it's tired, your body will tell you when it's time to go to bed, your body will tell you when you need something, right? When you dehydrate, when you're when you're not feeling good, your body speaks to you. I think it's I think we have to start by listening to that. And that's a big, big, big way to start that process is listening to your body. And after that, it's find yourself a partner, find yourself somebody, whether it's a wife, a girlfriend, a buddy, a son. Find somebody that wants to go on this journey with you. If you can do that, it makes it makes it so much easier to do the job, to get it done, to get motivated. Because now I'm trying to motivate my kids to be healthier. So what happens in that process is now I'm becoming healthier. You know, uh, the people I work with, I talk to them all the time about the things that they have to do to stay healthy, you know, the things that they eat every day. And man, I was 19 at one point, and I remember thinking I can eat whatever I want, you know. But and then it's then it's knowing that everybody's first day in the gym, they'll they're nervous. It's not knowing what you don't know, right? So going to the gym and thinking, oh my god, people are looking at me, or people are gonna look at me weird for doing this exercise, or man, I I don't know what I'm doing, right? Everybody is the same way when they first go to the gym the first day. So I think the biggest step is to kind of go in and to realize that once you start working out, you are focused on you and you only. Lastly, make a plan that works for you. Know what you enjoy to do at the gym, and then know what you don't.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

So, Eric, let me see. Let's wrap this up this way and say, is it fair to say that maybe the advice that you would give uh and what's really important is that that number one, you have a plan that actually fits the body that you have, the lifestyle that you want. And then the second part of it is really just go and get started, not to be afraid. Because I think, you know, understanding how we started the podcast and and saying that, hey, listen, we we know that every workout is not for everyone. And so I think you pretty eloquently kind of went through that and talked about how it's really important that you understand the differences. So, hey, listen, it's so good to see you again, my friend. We really appreciate you being here, and uh, we wish you the best, and hopefully we'll see you again real soon. So, thanks again for being here.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Thank you guys. Thank you.

Wrap Up And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02 19:37

As always, thanks everyone for joining us today. And don't forget to follow us on all socials at Time of RetentionPT. You can also find our weekly blog post at Stubstack.com. And finally, please leave us any feedback you'd like to share about today's show. Just go to the top of the show notes or podcast description and leave us your thoughts. See you next week, everyone.