Make Sure You're Not a "Hip Spinner!"
You may have been taught to take your hips and turn or rotate them from the top of the swing as fast as possible. For certain types of golf swings, that approach has its place.
In the Original Rotary Swing, you wanted to feel that you took everything and rotated it aggressively on the way down, because your arms were in a deep position and they were going to stay there during the downswing. You were primarily powering that downswing with the rotation of your body.
That Can Work, But...
That is a viable way to play if you are not going to invest the time to learn how to do everything as efficiently as possible, training your arms and hands on exactly what to do with the golf club.
If you are a higher-handicap player who does not get to practice frequently — gearing your game toward playing once or twice a month without hitting many balls — the Original Rotary Swing, or Rotary Swing 1.0, is for you.
How You Can Take It to the Next Level
The Rotary Swing Tour goes beyond that. We are seeking optimum efficiency. We are going to take maximum advantage of your body's design and capabilities, producing the most efficient, powerful, and safe golf swing possible.
In order to achieve such a perfect golf swing, we have researched which segments of the body need to fire, how, and in what sequence during the golf swing, in order to attain the highest efficiency of movement.
One of the things our better players (typically single-digit handicap golfers) often struggle with is taking that concept of rotation and getting the hips really open at impact, and then going too far with it. They start from the top of the swing and turn their hips as fast as they possibly can.
This "Hip Spinning" Causes a Couple of Problems.
- When you go to the top of your swing and just start rotating as fast as possible, almost invariably you will be short of neutral joint alignment at impact. Your lead hip will not be lined up over your ankle, and you will risk injury. You can tear your labrum or do any number of things to your hip that can cause discomfort and, eventually, serious pain or injury.
Of course, you know you need to get that hip all the way into neutral — where it is designed to be — in order to pivot safely and efficiently and be able to fully activate the muscles in the glute and the hip.
- Hip spinning tends to produce too much secondary axis tilt. Your hips move way out in front of your upper body, leaving your spine feeling like it is leaning back away from the target.
Your legs and hips are so powerful that your upper body simply cannot keep up. You spin your hips so fast that you get hung back. This leads to a lot of blocked shots, coming way from the inside, getting stuck.
You have heard Tiger talk about this a hundred times, and it is certainly still a factor in his golf swing today.
You spin those hips, and you develop all this tilt. You are going to come too far from the inside, and for golfers who are not quite as skilled, it also leads to many thin shots — especially with the longer clubs and fairway woods off the deck.
Many golfers really struggle with getting to the top of the swing and spinning their hips. To see how your own hip rotation and impact alignments compare to elite standards, try a free AI swing analysis.
Solve the problem with these simple drills
We have a couple of drills that will help you start to change your movement patterns and recognize the feeling of doing it correctly. These exercises will help dramatically, allowing you to feel much more on top of the ball and able to compress the golf ball rather than just spinning your hips.
Hip spinning is actually a very powerless feeling, because your angle of attack is wrong and your spine is leaning too far back, so you never hit the ball solidly.
Here is the first drill we are going to use to correct that problem. It is an extremely simple concept, but many golfers struggle with it in practice.
The Belt Buckle Drill
Here is how it works. We call this the Belt Buckle Drill because we reference the position of your belt buckle and pay attention to where that buckle is pointing at impact.
If you are one of those golfers who really wants to drive and spin those hips around, you are going to concentrate on feeling that your belt buckle is pointing at the ball, or even behind it, at impact.
Now, there is no way you are actually going to achieve that. However, if you are used to having your hips very open, this drill will absolutely allow you to feel that your hips are shut as you come down into impact.
Go to the top of the swing. As you come down, feel that your belt buckle stays pointed away from the ball. You are going to shift your hips, but then keep that belt buckle closed while you start to pull down with the lead arm and fire the trail arm. (Depending on what you are working on, you are going to feel one over the other.)
As you come down into impact, you should still feel that your belt buckle is pointing behind the ball.
This sensation will help you get into the proper impact position, where you are stacked. If you just go to the top and rotate, one movement or the other is going to dominate. You will either rotate your hips or shift laterally, but rarely both simultaneously. One is going to take over the other, and it is typically the rotation that wins out.
When we start working with in-person lessons to improve someone's golf swing, what most golfers find is that they always end up short of neutral. They are always leaned back too far, so they cannot get on top of the ball and compress it properly.
We work with them to learn to just shift laterally, while keeping their hips shut. We call this a closed hip slide.
We are going to exaggerate that slightly because it is a drill, but as you go through these motions, you are going to feel that your hips are very shut.
Try It Yourself
Go to the top of the swing, shift, feel like your belt buckle stays closed, and come into impact. You should feel that you are totally posted up and braced on the lead side. Keep your lead glute fully contracted during this drill to get the feeling of stabilizing the hips, rather than spinning them.
There is a very important distinction between how you probably swing now, if you are a hip spinner, and what you are going to feel in the future. You want to think of your lower body as providing stability, not just rotation.
If you are a hip spinner, you are going to feel zero rotation. However, when you do this drill and you hit half shots — which is how you are going to start — you are going to see that, every single time, your hips are going to be way more open than you think.
Start with Half Shots
When you first attempt the drill, start halfway. Raise the club up just a little for a short, halfway-back swing. Shift, keep your hips shut, and try to stop just after impact. You want to feel that your hips are still shut.
Invariably, what is going to happen is you will stop and your hips will be 90 degrees open. You will be coming in stuck, with that feeling of your spine leaning too far back, not really getting on top of the ball at impact.
This drill is going to be really challenging at first, and you must really exaggerate keeping that belt buckle feeling closed as you start to pull yourself back into impact, and let the arms and club release past the body.
That is where the release comes from. If the hips do not stop turning, the arms are typically going to release late, so you are going to have speed at the wrong point in the golf swing. We want all of our speed to happen right at impact.
That is the first rule. We are going to feel hips shift, get into neutral, and then pull our arms down into impact and keep that belt buckle feeling like it points away from the target, all the way into the release. You want to feel very stable here.
The Driver Drill
The second drill is performed with the driver. Again, the concept is very simple, but many golfers really struggle with it.
For this drill, tee up your driver, then four or five inches in front of the ball place another tee about a half inch to an inch off the ground. You are going to try to hit the ball on the tee, and then clip the second tee. It is that simple.
Many of you are going to feel like you are hitting way down on the driver, far more than you are accustomed to.
If you are a hip spinner and you see yourself with your spine tilted way back at impact every time, this drill is going to seem impossible. This means that you struggle with getting your spine more vertical, rather than falling into that secondary axis tilt. That is probably why you hit a lot of thin shots and blocks to the trail side.
You are going to feel, as you come into impact with your driver, that you are way more on top of the ball. Many golfers have this extreme subconscious fear of getting their head in front of the ball. They work so hard to keep it behind that they put themselves in a compromised position.
Obviously, you do not want your head in front of the ball at impact. If you have spun your hips and then developed all that secondary tilt, you are going to feel like your head is in front of the ball.
The other key to this drill is to tee your driver a half inch off the ground. Just put your fingers underneath the tee — that is all the space you need between the top of the tee and the ground. For many of you, it is probably going to feel like it is teed up at the height of an iron.
When you start doing this drill correctly, you will hit the ball perfectly solid in the center of the face and be able to clip and remove the second tee as well. You do not need to take a big divot — that is not the point. The point is to start to improve your impact alignment so that you are not leaned back so far.
At first, you will definitely be hitting down on your driver. The goal, again, is to improve impact alignment and to improve how solidly you strike the ball with the driver on the club face. That is critical.
Practice Both Drills and See the Difference
Once you put these two drills together, you are going to start seeing that you can really compress the ball again, and you are going to save your back and save your hip.
These two drills are critical for hip spinners, helping you learn to get yourself stacked and into a more neutral alignment at impact, and eliminate that dramatic secondary axis tilt. For real-time coaching on your hip rotation and impact position, try a free AI golf lesson.
This will dramatically improve your ball striking.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Hip spinners may find their hips too open at impact
Secondary axis tilt
Keep your belt buckle pointing behind the ball
Is this you? Try the Driver Drill.
