The ISU women’s golf team has reached new heights this season.

Though they’re ranked 28th due to their performance on the golf course, their accomplishments are being earned in a place where few people would think to find a golfer – the weight room.

After last year’s team finished no higher than seventh in any of last season’s tournaments, this year’s team finished second at the Lady Badger Invitational and placed third in the Ron Moore Invitational earlier this month. Golfing magazine Golfweek has them ranked 28th in its latest polls.

Coach Christie Martens believes the amount of time the golfers put in during morning weight-room sessions has contributed to their success. The No. 28 ranking is the highest that she can ever remember at Iowa State.

“I think we’re one of the fittest teams in the country,” she said. “We place a big emphasis on fitness, flexibility and strength. Our workouts are far more intense than most places because we place a bigger emphasis on it and devote more time to it.”

Martens said one of the most common misconceptions about golf is that golfers perform little conditioning in the off-season and don’t prepare much for in-season tournaments. Her team has spent many mornings this season debunking that myth.

“It gets to be a long day. We’re out on the golf course for 11 or 12 hours toting bags and we’re training them specifically for that,” she said. “Our goal is to make sure that we’re still strong on the 31st, 32nd, and 33rd holes. So far, we have been.”

National recognition is nothing new for Martens. After making a name for herself as an assistant at Purdue, a program that was perennially ranked during her tenure there, she took over for the Cyclones in 2005. She was also the captain of the 2000 Northwestern team, which was the first team in school history to make it to the NCAA Championships.

As of Sunday, the Cyclones had four players ranked in the top 200 of the Golfweek.com individual rankings. True freshman Laurence Herman is ranked 71st, sophomore Penappa Pulsawath 82nd, senior Karly Pinder 114th and senior Kendra Hanson 172nd.

Herman has two top-11 finishes in the only two tournaments she’s competed in. Both Pulsawath and Herman tied for second place at the Lady Badger Invitational. Hanson won the Invitational.

Martens credits Sean Waldstein, the strength and conditioning coach for the team, for the strides that the team has made in the weight room and with preparing them for this season. Waldstein is a graduate student and has been a strength and conditioning coach at Iowa State for one year.

“I train a golfer just like I train any other athlete,” he said. “They lift weights, they do Olympic movements and power movements just like any other athlete would.”

While Waldstein focuses on posture and training specific muscle groups, his main goal is to prevent injuries.

“To be a Division I athlete, you have to put in your time in the gym, no matter what the sport. My job is to make sure that they stay on the field,” he said.

Waldstein puts the team through a series of workouts intended to strengthen the “core,” or midsection, of the golfer. He also strengthens their legs because they, along with the core, are where most of the power in a swing is generated from. He also works on flexibility and tries to keep a fine balance between the back and chest muscles.

“Many golfers have muscle imbalances – a strong front and a weak back. Everything that they see in the mirror is strong, and what they don’t see isn’t,” he said. “If a golfer’s front is stronger than the back, then they could have rotator cuff issues or have issues with slicing the ball.”

The team works out five times a week during the off-season and two to four days during the season. Half of the workouts are related to weight training, while the others focus on cardiovascular fitness – sprints to develop power or longer-distance runs to build endurance. In weeks with five workouts, one day is spent doing endurance exercises in the pool.

Hanson, one of only two senior golfers on the team, believes that the extra time in the gym has directly improved her golf game.

“It really helps us make it through the last three holes,” she said.

Although Hanson enjoys seeing the improvements on the scorecard, she’s not quite sure she enjoys the rigorous 6 a.m. workouts.

“Some days it is brutal,” she said. “The core is hardcore.”Pinder, the other senior on the team, tied a school record this year by posting a final-round 69 at the Ron Moore Intercollegiate on Oct. 18. She credits the weight training to improved confidence during competition.

“I feel like, in the development of power and distance in my game, that the workouts had a lot to do with it,” she said. “I think the confidence part of this gets overlooked. You just feel better and more confident swinging a club.”

Waldstein credits Tiger Woods and the impact he has had on golf in terms of player fitness and nutrition.

“Golf is changing. People like Tiger Woods are working out more and more now because the game is becoming so much more advanced and the competition gets better every year,” he said. “It’s so competitive now that you need every advantage you can get.”

Martens agrees with Waldstein.

“It used to be that Craig Stadler and guys like that had a reputation for going out the night before a tournament,” she said. “Tiger has made golf a different game in that way, which is great for the sport.”