How the GOATs Moved their Hips in the Golf Swing
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How did the GOATs of golf move their hips and shift their weight? Rotational, of course!
So I got a couple questions from you guys about what about some of these players and this player and that player, about their hips and so on.
So let's take a look at them.
Let's look at what happens in the sacrum.
And I now think that if you're working on your golf swing, this would probably be the most revealing look that you'll ever get of your swing.
It really tells you everything that's truly happening in the swing.
In fact, I've actually changed my cameras around in my studio to where I don't even have a face on view right now.
I literally just look from behind because it's so much more telling.
I can learn so much more about how people are moving.
So let's take a look at what the greats really did.
So this is Gary Player on the left, obviously not known for being a long hitter.
And Arnold Palmer on the right, who was obviously a very long hitter.
In fact, I just read a story about how he drove the Cherry Hills first hole, which is 350 yards with a persimmon driver and a ballada ball.
And I've played Cherry Hills and I've played that first hole.
And of course, I tried to drive it and I came up just a little bit short.
So with a modern driver and modern balls, so Arnie could pound it.
And we're going to see why in just a second.
So first thing first, we talked in that last video, for those of you haven't seen it on the site, I'll put a link down below, but how to trigger the swing so that you don't just be snatching away with your arms and hands.
And Gary has the same kick that I discussed in the swing actually, or in the video yesterday about kind of how I trigger my own swing.
I do it a slightly different, but this is kind of the same thing to, to actually increase.
Now we don't have, we didn't have force plates in Gary's time, But I promise you that he's almost certainly increasing pressure on that lead foot and then rebounding to the right.
And so I've drawn a line on his sacrum here, his pelvis, center of his pelvis.
And you'll see Gary, again, he wasn't a very long hitter.
And he talked about how to get more distance, he felt like he got more onto his left side and that would get him 30 yards.
He said, but we're going to see him for sure getting onto that left side.
And you'll see, Gary's always had this kind of like little frog and squatty look, where he looks a little jammed up coming into the ball.
And so now he looks kind of smushed in here, and you'll see that his pelvis has undoubtedly moved more laterally and not rotationally.
Like we're going to see in Arnie, who was a much longer hitter.
So I've drawn a line on center of his pelvis.
You're going to see him turn a lot better.
Again, if we kind of compare the two, you can see Gary kind of almost preloading into the lead side early.
And that's really hard to, when you don't move naturally, like I discussed in the video with a pressure shift, How your weights or your pressure is naturally moving from one side to the next dynamically and very quickly.
And you try to kind of cheat the system and try to do something too much too soon.
Like Gary is going to slide laterally.
So again, if we focus on Arnie, he moves in front at first, but you can see notice how much more his left knee is kicked in.
This is an old school swing trait.
We've all seen this.
Uh, we're, you know, had a big left knee kick and left foot coming off the ground.
And now we've taken that out as a whole.
You don't see that really ever anymore.
It's very rare that you see any player at any level do this, but what happens more often than not is that the lower body doesn't work at all.
And this adding this old school kick in, like I discussed in the video on the site is perfectly okay to wake up your lower body.
And it's more important to rotate than to be still, right?
So so many people make mistakes with lower body, but they just don't really understand it, which is why I was talking about how to do a pressure shift in that video, rather than thinking about weights, you know, transferring your weight or shifting from one side to the other.
It's really just shifting pressure.
And so now as Arnie starts down, he's got something to trigger that downswing with, which is going to be his left leg.
Of course, going to plant that heel.
And now he's out in front of that line where he started, just like they all are.
But as he gets back an impact, he's back behind it.
The center of his pelvis is right about here.
So a big difference from what you saw in Gary player and now watch his feet.
This is awesome.
Now, how on earth would your feet do that?
If you weren't just purely rotating, he's rotating as much as he's as rotary as rotary swing gets.
He's taking it to the nth degree and look, his, his pelvis, center of his pelvis keeps moving further back behind that line.
So there ain't no lateral in Arnie Palmer.
Let's take a look at Jack.
So now we got the golden bear, the true goat.
I like to think of Tiger's swing as the greatest of all time.
And Jack obviously statistically is the greatest player of all time.
I don't think that's arguable.
So when I'm talking about goat theory, I'm really talking about, I think Tiger's swing is the greatest.
But as you see, Jack, he's going to move in front at first.
He's going to have the same leg kick in that you saw in Arnie.
A lot of the similar moves in terms of body rotation, Arnie just rotates his hips a bit more because he's going to rotate more in the downswing to generate speed.
And we know Arnie was super long and Jack was super long.
So he actually, Jack starts to almost get back to it, but he doesn't quite get all the way back to it in this swing.
Now I've read over the years that his swing got changed and he started moving more laterally and less rotationally.
And he used to actually move back down.
I don't know.
I don't see, I haven't seen any footage of that, but we also know that Jack, you know, developed that lateral leg drive or look of that lateral drive.
You can see he's not really posted up fully on this left leg.
And we also know that Jack had his hip replaced.
So is this part of the problem?
Who the heck knows?
But, uh, you know, Jack was a super long hitter and you can see when you compare him to Gary player, who was way out here and Gary player, if we pull him back up real quick, you'll note a few things in his swing.
Like one, he's going to stand up a little bit.
So as he's coming in, this is why he looks kind of crowded coming into the ball.
He looks just all jammed up there.
This is where his belt line is now.
This is where it was started.
So he just kind of, you know, kind of the old goat hump a little bit.
He's kind of moving his right hip into that ball on the left leg.
And maybe this is why, you know, he's trying to really put a lot of weight on the left leg.
As I read this article that talked about, he felt that's how he got more power, but you actually need to move very quickly.
And that left leg can't have a ton of weight on it.
If it's going to move very, very quickly, it can have pressure, but just for a split second, and then it's got to move off of it, which is what you're going to see in most modern players today.
Let's take a look at some different stuff.
So now Bryson.
Now I'm not going to lie.
I don't think Bryson's swing is the prettiest of all time, but this dude knows how to make mincemeat of a golf ball.
And I'm going to try and guesstimate where the center of his pelvis is.
Obviously this is a face on view, so I can't tell for sure, but we can kind of make a reasonable grasp.
But a couple of cool things you're going to notice in Bryson's swing.
Notice how I talked about in the video, How we start with pressure shifting to the left and then to the right to hit that wall on the right, to begin to post up.
You can very clearly see how much Bryson does that.
Look how much he actually literally stands up and his right foot actually, it looks like it comes completely off the ground for right there for just a split second.
So all of his pressure's on his left, then it goes back to his right.
Just like I talk about in the video.
And he makes a big turn, big, big, big turn.
And then as he comes down, let's see how much of a rotator he is.
Well, he's rotating pretty hard.
It's hard to tell exactly where the center of his pelvis would be.
Cause I obviously without seeing a rear view, here's the front, the back might be back here, but I'm just guessing.
I couldn't say that for sure, but watch his feet.
What do you see?
The same thing is happening in his feet, just like Arnie, slightly different of course, but you'll see this in most every modern player.
And that's what the video I'm going to talk about today, uh, that I did to help you understand what's really happening here.
Watch how much rotation and how the left foot is pushing away from the ball.
Let's take a look at another guy.
I know you guys know, uh, Seb Twaddle, but he's the longest hitter on the planet.
This guy, he's six foot seven.
He's a monster, but he has the world record for clubhead speed at 169 and a half miles an hour.
No, that's not his ball speed.
It's not 170 mile an hour ball speed.
It's 170 mile an hour clubhead speed.
And what's really wild is this is his real swing.
You're like, Oh my God, he's casting it.
Nope.
He does a double pump, really load that torso.
And he doesn't even set his wrists until very late in the swing, super late.
We're set because he's trying to get as much rotation out of his torso and as much extension, which is very easy to see.
Cause this guy's so big and extremely everything to the extreme.
He's got a lot of spinal extension here.
So he's as loaded up as you can get when you're in that position, when you're in a massive amount of extension and your arms, your right arms fully retracted, that scapula pinched up against the spine, you're loaded baby.
And now he's going to unwind like crazy and watch his lead foot.
Where's it going up in the air and way over there.
You're like, dude, that seems crazy.
But guess what?
The goat himself does the exact same thing.
This is, I can't remember when this was a 07.
So Haney years and watch his left foot.
Look at that up onto the outside of the foot, jumping up into the air and moving away from the target line.
That is how power is created.
And you can, you can look at any long drive guy today.
Most, any long drive guy is doing this exact same thing.
Here we've got one Kyle Berkshire.
Look at his left foot.
What's happening there.
That's what today's video is about.
Because to understand how to truly create speed and power rotationally, you have to understand there's not two weight shifts in the golf swing.
Like a lot of people think a lot of people feel or think about their golf swing.
And I've, even in this past, described it the same way as an oversimplification of what's really happening.
Because you can't really understand this stuff until you use force plates.
And once you see that, you'll understand it.
But most people think, okay, I shift my weight to the right and the backswing, and I shift my weight to the left and the downswing, and that's the golf swing.
And that's not it at all.
Actually.
I actually think of it more as there's four pressure shifts in the golf swing.
There's a pressure shift to trigger.
Like I talked about in the first video, there's a pressure shift going back to load the right.
There's a pressure shift back to the left as early as possible in the backswing or transition.
And then as you can clearly see when these guys foot is in the air, there is a shift back to the right.
So if you want to feel what the modern player is feeling in their swing, I did a video on this talking about these four pressure shifts and how to feel it, and how to actually put it into practical application into your swing.
Because if you struggle with getting the ball, the club to start during the swing, just getting the takeaway going, just feeling what I talked about in the first video, this movement as an exaggeration.
If you can see dramatically in his swing, We'll start to wake up your body and get you feeling some momentum to swing the club instead of to lift the club.
And then from there, it's got to be dynamic.
And this stuff happens so fast.
And that's why I had to kind of take some time in another video and be in front of the camera, explaining, this is what it is.
This is when it happens.
This is what you need to feel to do this rather than thinking mechanically.
And what starts to happen is your entire swing starts to respond, right?
You're creating the pressure shift from your whole body, of course, but you can focus on just the pressure shift as a simple feeling in your golf swing.
And all of a sudden your transition happens automatically.
And at the right time, it's always too late for most amateur golfers, always too late.
And people who overswing, They don't understand that you should already be shifting or pressure shifting back to the lead side.
And the reason you overswing is not because, you know, you're loading up your thoracic spine like Kyla's.
It's typically because you're just swinging your arms and you're not loading your body.
Because once you're loading your body, if you watch Kyle's hip here, notice how his left hip starts to move toward the target.
That's initiating the transition.
It's initiating pressure shift.
If we look at his force plate data, which we have here, we could look at that in another video, then you'll see that that's happening.
And that's him getting into extension.
Look at his upper body.
Do you see how moving dynamically into thoracic extension creates the transition in the body?
You just have to think about, okay, make my hips go first.
No, it's simply going into extension.
So I'm going to talk about all that in this video.
I'm going to explain the whole thing.
So it's going to take a little bit of time, but I get in front of the camera.
I'm going to show you how to do it.
So, if you want to understand how to make this transition happen automatically, to shorten up your swing, how to get your swing to sequence properly, take a look at the video in the link down below.
