Clinic - Setup

The golf swing starts with setup, a poor one will make it impossible to make a proper golf swing.

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There's a lot of different ways to get over the ball, and typically people, when they go to get set up to the ball, they abide by one thing, and it dictates everything for them, it throws their swing off.

So, the one thing I want to talk about is, when you're getting set up over the golf ball, what is the one thing that all of you do first, and you all do it the same way, but it can completely change your spine angle at a dress?

What's the first thing you do when you set up to the ball?

And it usually causes problems in your swing.

It causes a lot of problems for your body.

You all do it.

It's the number one fundamental of a golf swing, believe it or not.

The first thing you've got to do to get set up to the ball, what do you do?

You've got to look at the ball.

You don't think about it because you all do it, right?

Of course you look at the ball.

The first thing you do when you do this is look at the ball, and all of a sudden you change your spine angle because almost everybody, instead of bending from their hip socket, will either bend from their waist or tuck their chin down.

Now, why does that matter?

Well, let's figure it out.

So, scoop your chair back.

Give yourself a little bit of room.

Put your arms across your chest, and I want you to roll forward with your shoulders and then take your head and bury it in your chin.

Or, excuse me, take your chin and bury it in your chest.

And now, try to rotate back and forth.

How does that feel?

Pretty good?

Okay, now, imagine I had a string attached to the top of your head, and I'm pulling you up nice and tall and straight.

Your chin is up.

Your chest is up.

And now, rotate back and forth.

What do you feel?

Keep your head forward, looking forward, just like you're looking at the golf ball.

Do you have more or less mobility when you're hunched forward and your chin is rolled forward, or when your head is up nice and tall and your spine is nice and tall?

More up.

More up, right?

Everybody does, right?

The reason is, is the way that your spine and the way it articulates, your spine has these little things called facet joints for each vertebrae.

And as you roll forward, you're taking these and creating gaps and space in the back, but you're pinching them in other parts, and so the facets can't rotate over each other.

Now, each little vertebrae in your spine only has about a degree or degree and a half of rotation.

So, you have a lot of vertebrae, and you need every single one of them to move to that full degree, degree and a half of rotational mobility for you to make a full shoulder turn.

And when you're all rolled forward, you're compressing your spine like this, you can't make a full turn.

So, when you set up to the ball like this, what are you doing to your spine?

Well, you're bending it up near the top, and because your spine is all attached, it's kind of like a slinky.

If you pull it from one part, you're going to affect the other part of it.

So, now, all of a sudden, when you get into this posture like this, it's impossible for you to make a full shoulder turn.

That's why it's so important when you're addressing the ball that you maintain a neutral spine angle.

How do we know what that is?

Well, a real simple way is to take a golf club, put it against the back of your head, the middle of your back, and hold it down here against your hip, your belt, and hinge forward until you can see the ball without tucking your chin down, and the club reaches the ground.

So, now, my spine is in neutral.

So, as I go to make a turn, I can make a really nice big full turn really easy and maintain maximum mobility.

So, that's one of the huge critical things that everybody starts doing incorrectly.

And so, I'll tell you to take your chin back, and as you bend forward, keep your chin there until you can see the golf ball without burying your chin in your chest, okay?

Width of stance I talked about earlier, about two inches outside of neutral.

How do we find neutral?

For our stance, the center of your hip socket is about, to make it simple, it's about where your first belt loop is.

Now, obviously, everybody's pants are different.

So, I use this as a really generic guide, but it'll generally get us in the ballpark.

You can take two fingers, put it on the outside edge of your hip bone, and just inside your first finger, if you drew a line straight down, it's about where the center of your hip socket is.

So, you can see it's a little bit outside of my belt loop here, and that's about where the center of my hip socket is.

If I take a club shaft from the center of my hip socket and drop it straight down to the ground, it should go straight through the middle of my knee and the center of my ankle.

That's neutral for me.

So, if you took all of my bones off and hung me just by my skeleton, this is how my joints would naturally align.

If I go two inches on either side of that, that's going to give me enough stance width to be stable if I'm moving correctly, and also be able to transfer my weight fully without my head moving all over the place.

Now, if you stand much wider than this, which is what most people do, this is going to feel way too narrow for you.

The reason this feels too narrow, what do you think that is?

What's that?

You're losing your balance, but why?

What's causing you to lose your balance?

He can't be on the appropriate part of your foot when you wait.

Think about force of movement.

You push it from the right.

You should push it from the right.

You push it from the right.

What would that cause you to When we talked about pushing versus pulling earlier, I like to use the example, if you're walking, if you play golf walking, you use one of those pull carts or push carts, depending on how you want to phrase it.

If you pull it, what does that cart do?

It goes in a straight line, right?

Now, if you push it, what does it tend to want to do?

Because we've got to line up my center of gravity, the force of movement from me with the center of gravity of this chair.

And if I'm off a little bit, it's going to rotate around its own center of gravity.

Does that make sense?

So we don't want to do that.

So if I'm pulling, in what direction am I moving if I'm pulling something?

If I was pushing this chair, in what direction was that chair moving in relationship to me, the force of movement?

There you go.

If I'm pushing something, I'm pushing it away from me.

And if I'm pulling it, I'm pulling it toward me, right?

Me, toward me, the force of movement of me is going to be towards the center of gravity of me.

If I'm pushing it away from the center of gravity of me, in what direction is it moving?

What direction is away?

What direction is away?

It's going to be off balance.

It's going to be on a certain direction.

Yeah.

It's a tricky question.

Let's go back.

It's going to be away from me.

It's going to be a frame of reference.

It's going to be away from me, right?

Away from me.

In what direction is away?

Every direction.

Exactly.

You can move in any direction.

Away is 360 possible different degrees away from your center of gravity.

But towards you is at one specific point.

Because if you're pulling something towards you, it's trying to move.

Remember what?

It's aligning its center of gravity with your center of gravity.

So that object that I'm pulling is trying to pull and align itself exactly in line with my center of gravity, which is how specific of a point is that?

It's very specific, right?

We can be very, very specific when we're talking about pulling something.

I can get everything lined up just the way I want it.

And I'm pushing something that's moving away from me in any possible direction.

So now to go back to width of stance and you just like, dude, Every time I swing, the way you're telling me to with what I consider is a really narrow stance where you're telling me to do this, I keep falling over and losing my balance because you're moving in what direction?

Away in any direction, right?

You may be moving toward the ball.

Sometimes you're moving this way.

Sometimes you're moving this way.

This depends on where you start driving that force from.

And that's how you lose your balance.

That's why you feel like you can't swing very narrow with a narrow base.

When you're moving towards center, how would you ever lose your balance?

You wouldn't.

So you could stand like this if you wanted to.

So if you feel like the stance width that I'm advocating is too narrow, I can guarantee you that you're pushing from the wrong side.

And that's what's causing you to lose your balance because you're trying to work against the laws of physics.

You're pushing yourself away, which is always going to be off balance.

Now, Another key to balance is finding where we should be balanced in our feet, in relationship, from our toes to our heels, right?

We've got a big range here.

So everybody stand up, give yourself some room.

And all I want you to do is just slowly rock forward onto your toes and rock backwards onto your heels.

Keep doing this.

It's very little movement to completely transfer your weight from the front to the back.

You can feel how little you have to move.

Now, close your eyes and stop when you feel perfectly balanced.

You don't feel anything happening in your feet.

You feel like you could hang out here all day.

Your feet are nice and relaxed and you feel perfectly balanced.

Tell me where that is on your feet.

Another good way of thinking about this is, imagine.

I was going to come up and push you.

You didn't know what direction I was going to push you from, and I didn't want you to fall over.

Where would you be balanced?

Most balanced.

Your feet muscles feel nice and relaxed.

You feel like you could stay here and I can't push you over from any direction.

Would you say that it's kind of in this green box area here?

Balance is generally where your body is designed to bear load.

So, whoever engineered us, whatever your belief system may be, designed us structurally to bear load, which is really created by gravity, through a very specific way in our body.

So, the way that is, it's pretty cool.

If you drew a straight line from the center of my ear, through the center of my shoulder socket, through the center of my hip, through the back of my knee, and the center of my ankle, you could form a perfectly straight line.

And that's the way that your body is engineered to bear load.

If you pulled all your muscles off and hung you up just by your skeleton, it would be a perfectly straight line.

It's pretty cool.

The reason is that's how our body is designed to bear the load, the force of gravity.

That is perfectly balanced for us, where the body doesn't have to do anything.

The muscles don't have to do much.

Now, the trick is, when I hinge forward to get down to the ball, because the ball is on the ground, so I've got to bend forward, where is my weight going to go?

It's going to go on to the balls of my feet, right?

So now, if you came and tapped me from behind, I'd easily fall over.

Now, where's all the force of the club going in the downswing?

Going out this way, right?

So, the last thing I'd want to do is be way out on my toes, and then have all this force of this club going this way.

I'd have to fight really hard to keep my balance.

So, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

So, if I stay back where I'm designed to be, back on my ankles, all I have to do is, as I'm hinging forward, instead of letting my weight go forward, let my hips drop back to counterbalance my upper body.

Because I'm moving all of this mass forward, it has weight to it.

I let this mass go back, it's a counterbalance, and I just relax my knees and setup's done.

It's a piece of cake.

So, the trick is, as you're hinging forward, your goal is to try and maintain your weight to be in that same spot.

So, you're nice and balanced the whole time.

You're never out on the balls of your feet.

And the way to do that, again, grab the club, hinge forward, let my hips go back.

My weight is still really firmly planted on the center of my feet.

I relax my knees, and I'm done.

As long as I maintain my spine angle, or excuse me, my neutral spine, I'm going to be able to rotate really easy and be perfectly balanced.

Now, the last one is leaning inside both ankles.

And what I mean by that is I see a lot of times people set up like this, Where they're way out on the outside of their feet and their shoes are kind of bulging over to the side.

This is a horribly weak position to be in.

Because as you go to the top, where else can you go?

You're already on the outside of your feet.

This doesn't look like a very powerful position to help me get back going the other way.

So, you want to take your feet.

If you're one of these people, your shoes are bulging out like this, take your ankles and just slightly, not your knees, take your ankles and roll them in slightly.

And that will get you more firmly planted on the center of your feet.

And it will also activate these hip stabilizer muscles, which will make it much more stable for your pelvis.

If you're like this, your hips can slide around all over the place.

And as soon as you do this, these muscles engage and all of a sudden, you're like a big old oak tree and you're anchored to the ground.

So, if your hips are kind of moving all over the place, that's the first thing I'm going to look at is your feet, believe it or not, not your hips.

Perfectly okay.

You know, we generally base that off of hip mobility.

So, that is an area where some physical limitation comes into play.

So, if you have limited internal hip rotation, so which is just like generally, if I'm going to be a right-handed golfer, I'm going to look at my left hip is going to be the bigger issue.

If I can rotate my hip about 45 degrees, that's plenty because that's going to be a full follow through for me, give or take a little bit.

But if you need a little bit more than that with the left foot to get your hips into a follow through, it's perfectly fine.

It's not going to hurt anything.

The biggest one, my biggest gripe, is this one, axis tilt.

Every time that you guys set up today, and for the rest of the weekend, and for the rest of your lives, you must have axis tilt.

What is axis tilt?

What is it?

Leading it toward the target or away from the target?

Away.

Away from the target.

Thank you.

So, how do I check that?

Another really simple tool that you always have with you, probably, a golf club.

Take a club, put it against your sternum, hold it against your belt buckle, proper stance width, slide your hips to the target until the club hits you in the knee.

If you do that, you're going to have a proper amount of axis tilt every time.

Really simple check.

Now, the trick is, do not bend your spine, slide your hips.

Your spine falls back as a result of you moving your hips.

It's not the opposite.

Because if I just keep my hips exactly where I am, and I bend my spine, what am I doing to my spine?

Curving.

It's no longer neutral, right?

I'm trying to keep my spine in neutral.

Why?

Maximum mobility, right?

You saw, as soon as you rolled yourself forward, you couldn't make a very good shoulder turn.

So, if I keep my spine in neutral, I'm going to have to tilt my pelvis.

So, my pelvis is sliding forward, which means the left hip is going to go a little bit higher than the right, and that is what tilts my spine.

Now, why is this so important?

Why do you need axis tilt?

What makes sense to me as a driver is you want to hit up on the ball, but I never really understood the rationale outside of the driver, to be honest.

Okay.

Perfect.

It's a good answer.

If you don't know, let's figure it out.

So, let's see what happens.

All I'm going to do is I'm going to set the club on plane, and I'm just going to alter my spine angle and nothing else.

Okay?

So, would you guys agree that this is a reasonably okay plane?

Okay.

Now, what I'm going to do is just tilt my spine toward the target.

What's happened?

It's way the other way.

In what position am I going to approach the ball from here?

Too far inside.

What's this one going to Over the top.

We want, you know, peas and porridge, right?

Right in the middle.

It's all dictated by spine angle.

Your spine angle dictates swing plane, but I never thought of it that way.

It's not just how you move your arms and your wrists and all of that stuff.

The spine angle is the first thing to impact your swing plane.

So, if you're a spine angle, you don't have axis tilt.

Not only is it going to change your swing plane, but it's going to change the way you're able to transfer your weight.

So, another thing that you've got to understand, if I don't have axis tilt and I start rotating to the top, what's going to tend to happen?

Reverse pivot.

Absolutely.

The first thing that you're going to do when people reverse pivot is the first thing I check is their axis tilt.

If I have axis tilt and I rotate to the top, that's how I keep from having a reverse pivot.

It's that simple.

So, if you want to be able to transfer your weight correctly and have a proper swing plane, which I would think are two important things in your golf swing, you must set up correctly, and that must be with axis tilt.

So, every single time that you set up to a ball, if I tell you that you need more axis tilt, I'm going to beat you.

Because you now know how to do it right every single time, and you must keep ingraining these reps as we're doing these drills out here today.

Because I will see it over and over again that you'll do it like the first one, and then the second one's like this, third one's like this, fourth one's like this.

And then I'll make you start all over again, and you've got to go back and do it over again.

So, every single time, don't waste these reps, because you're not doing any good by learning how to hit the ball from this position.

Because your muscles have to fire and stretch and load in a completely different way than when you have tilt.

So do yourself a favor, go through your setup routine, is to be anchored to the ground.

Now a lot of people don't teach it that way.

If we go back to this one, I had you sway forward and sway back to find balance, to find this little green box area.

Where are people typically taught to set up with their weight?

Pretty much everybody on the planet teaches you to be on the balls of your feet.

Any golf instructor, anything you read in a book, anything you see on TV, almost all of them will tell you to be on the balls of your feet.

Now why on earth would I be so contrarian to set up with their weight on the balls of their feet?

Almost everybody teaches that, from Much Harmon on down, everybody teaches to be on the ball with your feet.

Why?

Exactly.

That's the most common reason to be like a baseball player or a basketball player.

Let's take a baseball player.

It's a good example.

If I'm a shortstop, right, that's the ready position.

In what direction do I need to move as a shortstop?

Any direction.

I don't know yet.

It might be a pop-up.

It may be a bump.

You may have to go down a third baseline.

You may have to go to second.

I don't know what direction I'm moving.

What direction are you moving in golf?

Where are you trying to go?

Forward and back.

You're trying to go anywhere, right?

You're trying to stay centered is your primary goal as a golfer.

So why on earth would you set up with the requirements of a shortstop to be able to move in any direction when you're trying to not move at all?

That doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

So when you look at it from a requirements-based perspective, what are you trying to do with your setup?

Well, my goal is to be anchored to the ground like a big old oak tree.

I want stability so that I can build a lot of rotational power and speed without falling off balance, my head moving all over the place, et cetera.

I don't want to be a shortstop.

I don't want to be able to move in any direction because that's the last thing on earth I want to do.

My requirements as a golfer are completely different than the requirements of being a shortstop or a basketball player, or any other sport.

Does it make sense?

Think about it from a fundamentals requirements-based perspective, and then you can come up with fundamentals that make a ton of sense.

That's why I have you set up here.

It's not just for being anchored to the ground, but it's also for protection for your knee.

If you have all of your weight on the ball of your foot, and you try and rotate on it, which I'll have you guys do, go ahead and stand up for a second.

This will be a really short one.

Put all of the weight on your, if you're a left-handed golfer, put it on your right foot.

If you're a right-handed golfer, put all the weight on your left ball of your foot, and now try to rotate into a follow-through.

I don't hear any grunting, so that's better.

Which one feels better?

Why?

What do you feel when you put all the weight on the ball of your foot?

You feel it on your knee.

Fall forward.

Fall forward, so you feel off balance.

Put your hip and knee on the ball of your foot.

And what do you feel on your ankle?

When you put all your weight on your ankle, what do you feel?

You feel more on your hip.

You feel more on your hip.

It goes into your foot.

Okay, exactly.

Go ahead and have a seat.

So when you put all of the weight on your ball of your foot, your primary balancing joint, which is the joint that your body is trying to stabilize and balance on, becomes your knee.

So you felt it there.

Your quad kind of fires a little bit here.

And you're trying to pivot on your knee.

Now how much rotational mobility does your knee have?

Not a lot.

Not a lot, right?

It's about a degree and a half.

You have a little bit, believe it or not.

But it's not that much.

How far are you trying to turn your hips in the follow through?

Quite a ways.

Not enough that you're going to get it out of your knee.

So you want your primary balancing joint to be your hip socket.

The only way you get your primary balancing joint to be your hip socket is to have your weight where?

Right back over your ankle.

You get back in that green zone, all of the weight goes into your hip.

And now your body is trying to pivot on a joint that's designed to do exactly that.

So from a golf swing perspective, in order for the follow through to happen safely and correctly, Your weight needs to be on your ankle so that you can allow the club to release and allow your body to keep turning.

Does it make sense?

So being on the balls of your feet makes zero sense for golf.

Absolutely zero.

There's no reason for you to ever set up on the balls of your feet, unless you want to blow out your ankle and you want to fall off balance.

If those are your requirements, then knock yourself out.

If you're trying to be stable and balanced and anchored to the ground, then it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Any questions on setup stuff?

Setup's really simple, but it's vital.

If it's wrong, everything else you do from then on out is going to be a compensation.

You might be able to recover from it, but you're going to put way more moving parts in your golf swing than you need.

When you do it correctly, it's really easy.