Learn to Move Your Hips Like the GOATs - Pt 1
Sorry, you need to be a member to access this video.
You Are Just Seconds Away - Become a member here!
Already a member? Log in now
Did golf's greats move their hips in any special way? They definitely moved them differently than most recreational golfers. To feel effortless power in your golf swing and become a consistent ball striker, you must learn how to move your body correctly. Without this nothing will sequence correctly. In this first video, we start with getting your hips to load correctly and dynamically so that you can get your pressure back to the lead side earlier in the downswing than you likely do right now.
When it comes to how the body moves in the golf swing, it's the number one differentiator between the average pro and the average Joe.
And so in this video, What we're going to work on today is getting you the feeling of what it's going to feel like.
To start moving your body and your hips and your pressure at the right time in the right sequence.
So you start feeling what these mechanics are supposed to translate to in terms of feeling power and speed in your golf swing.
So the first thing that we've got to talk about is how the hips and the body really kind of move in the backswing.
Because if we don't have a basic understanding of this, then nothing's going to really work.
And so you've heard me talk about many, many, many years, probably 15 years ago, the first video I did on the hips is this old pant crease thing you saw me talking about.
And that's what we need to first understand is that the way that you're moving your hips, a lot of times people try and turn their hips in the swing.
And if you're turning them a lot like this, then it's a lot of work to try and get them turned in the back in the downswing.
And you'll never get as open as the pros.
You'll never see both butt cheeks at impact by doing it that way.
What you really need to feel is what I talked about before is that you move into this thigh through internal rotation.
So if I just took my leg and I just internally rotate without moving my hips, this is internal rotation and this is external rotation.
In the swing, what you're really doing in both hips is internal rotation.
This shouldn't be rocket science.
Of course, you know, when you're rotating, unless your foot twists, you're going to have internal rotation.
But what this feels like is very, very important because there's two things that have to happen.
One, we have to get this internal rotation at the right time and the right amount.
And two, we have to get our pressure moving the right way.
And if our hips are not moving correctly, we're not internally rotating on this hip.
We're never, ever going to do that.
So when you're standing up, what I want you to start to feel is that A, you need to shift your pressure much more and much sooner than what you think.
Because most golfers that I see never get their pressure.
And when we're looking on the force plates, never get their pressure back to the lead side early enough.
And tour pros all do this completely different than what amateur golfers do.
The amateur golfer goes to the top and they're kind of stuck hanging on the side because they didn't really internally rotate that much.
They either kind of slid or they tried to get a lot of weight over here and keep turning to the top.
And by the time that you are shifting back to the lead side, it's too late.
The golf swing should have already been over by then.
So what you have to feel is this internal rotation.
And if you do this, my hips can't really turn that much.
Now, if I, instead of trying to internally rotate into this hip, if I try and turn my hips, well, now I can turn almost 90 degrees.
So if I turn 90 degrees, I got to turn 135 on the way down.
What I really want is internal rotation.
And you can see, as I do this, my knee and my hip are in alignment.
Like right now, here's my hip socket.
And now they're kind of an alignment.
I've moved into this thigh.
And what this does is not only restricts my hip movement, but it gives me a platform.
And this is where the first feel that we're going to talk about, that the goats all did the same.
When they went back, you never saw them doing this and this, and you never saw them doing this and this with their hips.
In fact, when I look at tour players' movements and the goats, their hip movement looks so simple.
It's like they're barely moving at all.
And that's really the goal.
But to feel this, we have to move into it in what feels to me in a more lateral fashion.
Now, if you're like, oh my gosh, I do not want to have a hip sway or reverse pivot.
And of course not.
We don't want those things.
But the feeling is not so much rotating my hips.
It's more moving into this braced leg that's still angled toward the target.
We're going to talk about the importance of this in a minute.
And as I move into it, what feels lateral, I feel that I'm moving more into side bend instead of trying to twist.
And you can see if I try and twist my hips and twist my spine, it's going to be very difficult for my head to not move off the ball a lot, which is going to make it even harder to get back in the downswing.
But if instead, if I feel like I move into this hip, but this hip isn't allowed to move this way because it's bracing, then as I create this energy, and this is what I'm going to have you feel, I want you, as I talked about in the four pressure shifts video, as you're pushing off of this leg.
Now, if I just pushed really hard off my lead leg and didn't have this brace, all of this energy would just kind of go out this way.
But now push off of this leg, but this is a brace.
Now it's okay.
It's going to move a little bit.
You don't want to keep yourself rigid and static because you're never, ever going to move correctly and swiftly in the downswing.
So as I'm doing this, I'm moving laterally just a little bit, maybe an inch or two as I go back.
And now, because I'm not allowing this hip to slide, this energy that I've pushed into this thigh has now braced me.
And now I've kind of hit a wall to where, guess what I want to do?
I want to take that energy that I've pushed into this leg and moved.
Again, I'm going to kind of exaggerate these things to help you visualize what I'm feeling.
This, as I move this way and I get into side bend instead of rotation.
And just to be clear, side bend is just this.
This is it.
There's a lot of side, well, a lot's not the right word.
There's a lot more side bend than people realize in the swing.
If you're used to moving your headway off the ball, this is getting into flexion.
We talked about extension in some of the other videos, but what you're going to feel is this and this and this.
If I go into side bend, as I move into this hip, guess what my body naturally wants to do?
It naturally wants to fall into the side.
As long as I've moved energy into this braced leg, it starts to push me back over here.
That's the first important feel, because that is the key to getting yourself that headstart that you need.
In order to be your hips open enough at impact is feeling moving into this leg.
It's bracing, you're internally rotating.
And now as you're doing this, what is this lead leg doing?
Is this, is it twisting like this?
No, of course not.
As this hip is going back from down the line, you'll see it go back just a little bit this way.
As this leg's going back, this hip is now opening, just like what's going to happen in the downswing.
So in the downswing, I'm going to go into extension with this hip.
Well, in the backswing, it's a little version of the downswing.
So you can start to translate this feel into what you're going to feel in the downswing.
So as I go into internal rotation, this goes into extension a little bit, upper body goes into side bend as it's turning.
Now, as I've driven into this thigh and because I've braced, It naturally wants to push, and the ground naturally wants to push against me back over to the lead side.
That's the first thing to feel this dynamic stretch.
Now, the question is, when does this happen?
That's the important part.
And this is the biggest thing that I want you to try and translate into your swing.
The feeling of this is that most of your shift, your pressure going to this lead, this trail side happens about the time that you're done with the takeaway.
That is way earlier than what most amateur golfers do.
They tend to kind of keep shifting all the way to the top but the force plate data doesn't lie.
What you can see in all the great players is that most of their shift is done by the time the club's about here.
And then as this leg is ankle angled toward the target and bracing, they're starting to move back toward the target by the end of the takeaway.
Now, that's so much different than what I see in amateur golfers, who I get on the force plates for the first times.
Who are going all the way this way and just continuing all the way to the top.
And then they're trying to get all the way down and get their hips open enough.
It just won't happen.
So pushing here, by the time this is now braced, it's now helping me start to move back this way.
And if you keep this shoulder, hip, and knee lower than their corresponding counterpart on the other side, my left knee is lower than my right knee.
My left hip is lower than my right hip.
My left shoulder is lower than my right shoulder.
This naturally gets me into position to start to fall back into this lead side.
This is of utmost importance when it comes to rotating your hips and getting them open like the goats.
If you're falling back into the side, you're going to get more pressure over here early.
What I see in most golfers is that by the time they're at impact, they're 50-50 or maybe 60-40.
And the greats are at 70, 80, 90, typically 80 or 90 percent by the time they get back to the ball.
You need that head start.
But so many golfers are so afraid of doing something funky.
They don't want to move.
They're trying to kind of stay so static.
But then by doing that, you're restricting all the dynamics that have to happen in the swing.
And this is, there's no question about a dynamic movement.
You are, the club's going this way while you're going to feel that you're going this way, which is a strange feeling at first.
And that's why I want to take just this one piece to start to feel this in your golf swing and nothing else.
Don't worry too much about what was going to happen in the downstream.
We're going to talk about that in another video.
But I want you to start to get a feeling of pushing into this right thigh, to get some force to get this loaded.
So that the ground in your leg naturally wants to start pushing you back this way.
So if you can just start kind of feeling this.
Again, I'm exaggerating this a little bit, but this is the goal.
But the key, and in my own swing, What I really have to feel is I need to move a fair amount into that right leg in terms of what it feels like.
Now, of course, when I look at it in the mirror or more specifically on video, it's only about that much.
That much lateral move into this trail side feels like a huge shift to me.
So it feels like I'm moving a lot.
So again, first of all, you have to understand what you're doing.
All great players shift into this trail side immediately.
All powerful ball strikers do.
And as we're talking about getting into this power arc, this curve that you see, it's going to be so important as we move into the downswing phase.
But if the backswing phase isn't happening and you're not moving enough, you're not going to get enough load into this leg to help you start to move back the other way.
And that dynamic stretch is what I'm wanting you to feel.
And if you feel this, you're going to be on the right track.
The feeling is that as you're going back and you start shifting this way and your hips begin to rotate.
As you get pressure onto this lead side and you unweight this trail foot, the arms are almost getting wider because your body's going the other direction.
In other words, What most golfers do is they go to the top and they're hanging on this trail side.
And then they kind of fire everything together and the arms get kind of narrow.
You lose all your width in the swing.
But if I'm going this way while my body's going this way, it creates a huge dynamic stretch.
And that is huge for effortless power, which is really what rotary swing has always been about.
My number one thing has always been injury prevention.
Make no qualms about that.
I'm always trying to protect the spine and the body first.
But after that, we need power and control.
And by doing this, by getting this dynamic stretch, all of a sudden, as you get this momentum going this way, there's a huge difference in the speed that you feel without putting any more effort into it.
And that's your goal to feel.
So you'll have to do this, first of all, with a little bit of, at first, you got to go slow just to kind of get the feeling of it.
But this is something that happens very quickly in the swing.
And to get that true stretch of these muscles, in order to get them to want to fire very quickly, you have to start moving very quick.
As you're going back, You're going to push into it and start to feel the faster you that that body is getting stretched as everything is moving back to the lead side.
So the goal for your next practice session, when you go out, Is to start to feel a moving from this to shift in here because you need something to help you get over here a little bit.
And again, it's not a big sway, but all pros move about an inch, inch and a half, Some even a couple inches off the ball with their pelvis and their sternum as they start the backswing.
But then they're immediately starting to recenter by the end of the takeaway.
By the time you're here, you're, of course, you're not going to immediately go over there that far, but it's going to feel that way so that you're starting to move back over here.
And that's going to give you the dynamic stretch.
And that's the first step to getting your hips open and getting into this power curve that you see in all the greats.
Barbara
Chuck
charles
Chuck
charles
charles
Rob
Chuck
Diane
Chuck
Robert
Chuck
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Asle
Asle
Chuck
Steve
Chuck
Loveneet
Chuck
Steve
Chuck
Steve
Chuck
Steve
Chuck
Steve
stephen
Chuck
Venkatesh
Venkatesh
Chuck
Venkatesh