How important are your wrists in your golf swing? Have you given it much thought?

Take a moment and picture your golf swing. Start at the address position - to the top - through impact and on to the follow through. Now just isolate your wrists and even your hands to get a better visual. Do you see how important they are in your swing? If not, let me explain briefly.

There are several roles the wrists play in your golf swing, but two that really come to mind. They are:

1. Controlling the club throughout the golf swing. That means on plane and with the proper clubface alignment.
2. Providing power through impact or the "hitting zone".

If your wrists are weak it will be very hard to accomplish these actions. This is a common scenario for junior golfers, since their strength hasn't been worked on yet. While you shouldn't be cinching up on your grip, your wrists need to be firm to control the club throughout your swing. For example, picture "setting" your club at the top. It needs to be consistently in a certain position to make a proper downswing. If your wrists are weak you will have a difficult time controlling the club due to its length and weight.

What about impact? The wrist position is crucial in generating maximum distance and clubface angle. The most common mistake caused by weak wrists is the collapsing or breaking down of the lead wrist at impact. This dramatically reduces distance and accuracy. If you discuss this with your teaching pro he will tell you the same thing.

So what's the solution? Doing exercises to strengthen your wrists specific to their role in the golf swing. Here is one I recommend to all the golfers I work with personally and in my online program as well. And you don't even need to go out and buy any equipment for it. You already have it.

I call it the Golf Wrist-Cock Exercise. Here's what you do:

1. Stand with your arm hanging at your side.
   
2. Grab a golf club (pitching wedge if you're just beginning, long iron if you have strong wrists already) in one hand towards the end of grip.
   
3. Raise the club only by cocking your wrist and keeping your arm at side.
   
4. The club will have the toe pointing up to the sky straight out in front of you.
   
5. Raise as high as you can, which will probably be just above parallel to the ground with your shaft.
   
6. Then lower and repeat until a set of 15 repetitions is done.
   
7. Switch arms and do the same thing.

Do one or two sets per wrist, 3-4 times per week (every other day or Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday).

If you do this exercise correctly you will get a burning sensation in your forearms. If so, that's great! If not, you may need a longer iron; or you are using more than just your wrist for the movement.

I've had juniors improve their drives by up to 20 yards just by doing this one exercise. What a great return on the small amount of time invested. Give it a try. I'm confident you'll like the results.

Mike Pedersen is a golf fitness expert and founder of Golf-Trainer.com. For more information on exercises specific for golf, visits Mike's Web site.