English golfer Charley Hull opened 2026 the way she closes most seasons: on top. She won the PIF Saudi Ladies International in February, climbed to a career-best World No. 3, and followed it with a tied-10th at the HSBC Women’s World Championship and a tied-second at the U.S. Women’s Open in June, her best finish of the season. However, none of it came from a body that was fully right.

The ankle ligament she tore after tripping over a curb at the Centurion Club during the 2025 PIF London Championship never fully stopped affecting her. Neither did the back problems that were already there. Nearly a year later, both injuries continue to dictate how she trains, forcing one of the LPGA Tour’s most fitness-conscious players to abandon the gym almost entirely.

“Yeah, I can’t really go to the gym or anything. So I just have to eat healthy. It’s a shame because I can’t really go running because of my injuries at the minute,” Charley Hull said in a press conference at Dundonald Links, where she is teeing off at the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open. For most professional golfers, cutting back on workouts would be an inconvenience. For Hull, whose athleticism has long been one of the defining features of her game, it represents a complete shift in lifestyle.

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Hull has built a reputation as one of the sport’s hardest trainers. Running, weightlifting, and endurance work are staples of her weekly schedule, helping her generate the power that consistently ranks her among the LPGA Tour’s longest hitters. In fact, she said that she didn’t like any golf-specific exercises because those are boring. She prefers her own schedule and endurance training. That routine no longer exists.

With running and lifting off the table, diet is the one lever Hull still has to manage her fitness. “Just when I tore my ligament in my ankle last year and had my back problem from that as well, and yeah, managing and eating healthy, people should eat more healthy because it’s what you put in your body,” the English golfer added.

This isn’t the first time Hull spoke about eating healthy. Back in October, when she was in Korea for Hanwha LifePlus International Crown, she spoke about her diet and how it ties to her skincare routine as well.

“A lot of people do crash diets and fad diets, but I try and eat a lot of fish, eat a lot of vegetables, because that’s really, really good for the skin. And even like, you know, salmon, skin off the salmon, that’s really good for your skin. Loads of green vegetables, avocados are really good… I can drink up to 15 bottles (of water) a day, but that’s because I’m on the golf course as well.”

She credited her mom for building her dietary habit. Her mom, Bash, was Eastern European and, as Hull said, was always very health-conscious.

“I was never allowed a fizzy drink until I was 12 years old. I was never allowed McDonald’s or Haribo sweets or anything like that. So, as an adult, I’ve never craved it. My mom has always been very into homemade, fresh, cooked food. If you had a treat, maybe Friday have a pizza, but apart from that, no,” she was quoted by Golfweek as saying.

So yes, Hull has been relying on a healthy diet lately. As for the ankle tear from August 2025, that didn’t stay isolated. It exacerbated the back injury she was already dealing with, and together they’re what’s shaping her training now.

A change in lifestyle that traces back more than a year

The ankle injury alone was significant. Hull tore the ligament completely, an injury doctors initially projected would take roughly nine weeks to heal; she returned in three. And she also notched a top-ten finish in her first start after her injury hiatus. But the fall didn’t stop at the ankle. The compensatory movements that followed contributed to the back problem, and Hull has separately described dealing with a torn muscle and cysts on her spine.

For a player who has built her physical game around gym work, the shutdown changes more than her weekly schedule. Hull has spoken previously about noticing lost ball speed and clubhead speed as a direct result of not being able to train the way she used to, a gap that shows up in her numbers even when her scores don’t reflect it.

Hull is averaging 265 yards off the tee this season. By comparison, she was averaging 273.21 yards last year. That eight-yard difference might seem insignificant, but that has pushed her from 12th in the LPGA Tour in driving distance to 61st this year. Interestingly, last year, despite hitting longer, she was more accurate off the tee, 71.28% vis-à-vis 68.46% this year.

None of this has pulled her out of competition. Hull has continued playing through both injuries, and her season includes results that predate and postdate the original fall, evidence that she’s managing the injuries rather than being sidelined by them. But managing is different from training normally, and Hull’s own description of the situation, a shame, reflects a gap between where her fitness work used to be and where it is now.

Diet has become the substitute, not the replacement, for what the gym used to provide. What comes next depends on recovery timelines. But it has already been hard to predict. Hull cut her original ankle recovery time from nine weeks to three, but the back hasn’t resolved. Until it does, her training will stay limited to what diet alone can offer.