The glute muscles are some of the most important muscles in the entire golf swing. Without understanding how to use your glutes properly, you will struggle with consistency for your entire golfing life.
In this video, I reveal the techniques I teach my better players to stabilize their pelvis — and thus their torso and arms — at impact.
Performing these drills correctly will make your swing almost feel like you are cheating — your quality of impact will improve that dramatically.
As the video explains, you really need to feel your glute muscles (highlighted in yellow above) engaged at impact. You can often tell how much a player is squeezing them by noticing how stable they look through the hitting zone.
The pictures below visually demonstrate the differences you will notice:
In the middle picture, you can clearly see the effects of the glutes not being engaged.
That golfer's hips are spinning hard through impact, leading to extreme secondary axis tilt (spine leaning away from the target at impact) and legs that look very "loose" and uncontrolled.
Which position do you look more like?
When you work on the drill in the video and squeeze your cheeks properly, you will enjoy a tremendous number of benefits:
- Your swing will feel much more compact and controlled rather than loose and sloppy,
- You will find yourself "covering" the ball much better (your chest feels more on top of the ball, like the golfers on the left and right above),
- Your shoulders will be more level at impact,
- You will blast crisper, more penetrating golf shots, and
- You will be significantly less likely to experience hip and back pain.
"This in my opinion is THE best tip yet on getting control of overactive hips and stabilizing the lower body. I am a 6 handicap who has always fought the urge to "fire" the lower body hard towards the target and spin the hips in an attempt to build clubhead speed and it always yielded very inconsistent impact. After trying the "squeeze" from everything from SW to Driver for an hour and a half, what a HUGE difference. Impact was super consistent and the feeling is totally different when you have a stable lower body to swing off of."
-Chris B. | 8/14/11 | Georgia
Check out the video now and feel the stability that comes with mastering the "Squeeze the Cheeks" Drill! To see how your own hip stability and impact position compare to elite standards, try a free AI swing analysis.
Video Transcription: Squeeze the Cheeks
Learning how to get into the proper impact position is only part of the equation. One of the most important things that the RST is all about is teaching you what muscles to engage, how to align the joints, and what to truly feel in the golf swing to make everything correct — repeatable, safe on the body, powerful, and efficient.
One of the biggest keys at impact is learning how to engage your glutes, so I use a drill called Squeeze the Cheeks. Long story short, it is not rocket science to figure out what this involves.
What you are trying to achieve at impact is, rather than being in a soft and sloppy position — where your hips are really relaxed, your legs are loose, and you can just spin easily in that relaxed state — you want your lower body doing its actual job in the swing, which is to provide stability.
If your lower body is providing stability, certain muscles need to be contracted so they can support what is happening in the upper body, giving you control and stability at impact.
In order to accomplish that, at impact your legs and your glutes should be firmly contracted. I am going to exaggerate this drill slightly, but what I want you to imagine is that you had a penny between your cheeks and you were trying to squeeze it together as hard as possible at impact. When you are in this position, your muscles are activated and your lower body becomes very quiet.
That gives you the ability to release the club with speed and aggression when you need to hit the ball far, or just to have precision control when you are trying to execute a specific shot.
The opposite of that is having your legs relaxed, your glutes disengaged, and you will see that everything just wants to spin through together. You will look flowy, loose, and soft because your muscles are not engaged — and that is what allows the hips to spin uncontrolled. For real-time feedback on your hip stability and impact mechanics, try a free AI golf lesson.
I want to do the exact opposite at impact. I want to use muscles that counteract rotation — muscles that create stability and stop the spinning.
Obviously, as I am moving my body during the downswing by pushing the lead leg into the ground, my glutes are starting to engage. I want to squeeze them at that point so I can release the club with tremendous speed and control, rather than allowing my hips to spin and trying to time the release at the exact same point over and over again.
As a simple drill, go and hit a lot of half-shots. Preset yourself into your impact position. You are going to be stacked over the lead leg. Squeeze your cheeks together as hard as you can. Then as you come down, just start releasing the club. Keep that trail heel on the ground as long as possible.
Then do a couple where you let your legs relax, and you will feel how you spin. Your ball flight will typically go up because you will create a lot of secondary axis tilt, and you will not be able to hit the ball as solidly, compress it, or feel like you are on top of the ball as much as when you squeeze your cheeks and feel like your hips stop at impact so you can release the club properly.
You want to slowly start integrating this into your swing so that as you come down at impact, you squeeze the cheeks, release the club, and you will notice that your trail foot will stay on the ground. If you are a hip spinner, this will feel completely different. You will have a really difficult time spinning your hips.
Just stand up while I am performing these drills. Keep your legs really soft, let the club release around — you will feel it is kind of soft and flowy. Then squeeze your cheeks and release the club with your arms and hands and you will see your lower body is much more quiet into the follow-through.
Work on this drill and you will be able to lower your ball flight and compress the ball better than you ever have before.
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Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
The video teaches you a drill to use your glutes correctly and improve impact.
The golfer in the middle severely lacks lower body stability and needs to engage his glutes to reduce his secondary axis tilt, like the other two are demonstrating.
The lower body is stable
Relaxed, the lower body provides no stability
Preset the impact position
Follow through
