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Torso, Hips Over Rotating in Backswing
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How much shoulder turn is too much and how much is not enough? Depends on how it's measured... At some point you need to understand shoulder blade protraction and how it helps the hips from over turning.
- Getting "150° of turn" like the pros doesn't mean rotating your rib cage that far
- If you try to turn your torso that much, your hips will get pulled too far around
- Rotate your rib cage 90° or so - the rest of the "rotation" is actually provided by shoulder protraction
- Extend your arm as if to shake hands with someone - that's shoulder protraction
One of the common problems I see for certain golfers that I teach is over rotating going back and that's not a common problem for everybody trust me so if that's not you you're not making enough turn and you're getting too armsy with it ignore this video but for those of you who look at your swing on video and you look like this and you go back to that necktie drill and you're saying yeah I really struggle with that the necktie is hanging across my belly what you're doing is taking a good thing and misinterpreting it and not understanding how the rotation actually occurs so first of all I want to I want to help guard you against some misunderstandings that are out there in the golf industry when they're measuring shoulder rotation because we all look at guys like Jamie Sidlowski and Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods and they make this tremendous amount of turn and if you've ever seen their data quantified and measured these numbers seem astronomical and there's a reason they're not measured the same okay so recently I believe it was in a one of the golf publications that they took Jamie Sidlowski and put him on the 3d motion capture and measured how much shoulder rotation he made and the number was astronomical if we're talking about making a 90 degree turn Sidlowski's was a hundred and fifty or something like that I don't remember what the exact numbers were but it was huge huge shoulder turn and then you take if you took him and measured him through a k -vest for example that number may be cut down to a hundred degrees well why the huge differentiation are the tools you know which one's better than the other well neither one is this necessarily better than the other the tailor-made stuff is fantastic the 3d motion captures fantastic but they're measuring different points and that's what you have to understand when you start seeing this data and somebody takes that and says well to hit the ball further you need to turn your torso 150 degrees it's not possible without your hips getting ripped around with you you have to understand how this happens okay so when you look at a 3d motion capture they're actually measuring points on the shoulders not the actual ribcage rotating they're measuring how far this point moves from point A to point B big difference between how the k -vest measures which is a pack sitting on your back and it it doesn't detect shoulder blade movement in fact there's no sensors here at all to detect whether or not the shoulders moving at all they have no clue whether that moves so they're just technically measuring whether or not your ribcage rotates with an accelerometer they're measuring that TaylorMade's not measuring just that they're measuring this point moving a great distance in space so well how do the numbers come up so differently very simple so I'm going to show you something that you can start to understand this by so as I move closer to the camera I'm going to try and turn 45 degrees and you would agree that that's pretty much about 45 degrees of rotation you look at the seam on my shirt as best you can see that now without moving the buttons on my shirt which are an indicator of my torso rotating I'm going to just stay right here keep my buttons on my shirt in the exact same spot but now I'm going to move my shoulder now from your perspective now I almost look like I have a 90 degree shoulder turn and you can actually start to see the the riding on the back of my shirt whereas if I don't move my shoulder you definitely can't see that but if I do that and then protract my shoulder I all of a sudden look like I have a ton more rotation and that's the key that's not actually rotation that's shoulder protraction like me shaking reaching out to the camera to shake your hand that's all that is now does that happen in the golf swing yes absolutely it has to but if you're taking that number of Sadlowski and say god I want to hit the ball further I want to be like Sadlowski and you start trying to take your rib cage and rotating that 140 degrees your hips are going to get ripped around with you all the way around nobody has that kind of separation unless you're just wildly flexible and if that case you're probably not playing golf you're probably in the circus two totally different animals here so if you're rotating your rib cage as far as you can you really need you know 80 90 degrees of rotation here the shoulder protraction is what facilitates the rest of it you can't keep your arms in the box the whole time and just rotate you'll be like a robot and you're not going to get the free swinging movement that's necessary for the arms to generate speed okay so as I rotate back the shoulder the left shoulder is also moving out and forward this is helping facilitate width it's helping the club stay more in front of me and my hand staying in front of me but it's doing this by letting the shoulder protract if you don't let this happen this is where I see a lot of golfers get to the top and they're trying to make this huge turn and they're all bound up and they wonder why their hips are turning so much and they can't stop them from turning you know 70 degrees yet they know that all the long-hitting tour pros only turn their hips 35 45 degrees that's why you've got to rotate but then let your arms protract to facilitate the rest of the appearance of the rotation rather than actually taking your rib cage and rotating it 120 degrees it doesn't work that way okay so hopefully that helps you understand that if you struggle with getting your hips moving with you you're probably trying to turn too far and not letting the shoulder protract to help facilitate the rest of the rotation and the appearance of rotation on camera and then when you start to do this now you'll start to understand how that necktie drill works so that you can have a much better position at the top rather than continuing to rotate your torso hurting your back and putting yourself in weak position so understand that that shoulder's got to protract as you're rotating back and you'll get into a much more powerful position with a lot less effort at the top
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