It's extremely common for golfers working on a rotary swing to lose their spine angle through impact. No matter how diligently they practice, they keep coming out of the shot and struggle to make solid, consistent contact. For at least half the golfers I work with, the problem isn't technique at all — it's a matter of golf-specific fitness.
I'm not talking about cardiovascular endurance or how fast you can run a mile. I'm referring to the golf-specific muscle activation your body needs to maintain posture throughout the swing.
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Golf is a unique sport because it's extremely repetitive and places highly specific demands on the body through every phase of the swing. Unfortunately, many of the muscles that need to be active, strong, and supple during the golf swing are the exact opposite muscles we engage during daily life — particularly the muscles we deactivate while sitting.
Because most of us spend hours behind a desk each day, we're inadvertently training our bodies to move in patterns that directly conflict with an efficient golf swing. Prolonged sitting is one of the most damaging things a golfer can do to their body and their ball striking.
Not only do your shoulders roll forward as you reach for the keyboard, but the entire posterior chain — your hips, glutes, and hamstrings — becomes completely deactivated while seated. These muscles are critical for stabilizing the golf swing, and if they aren't functioning properly, your swing mechanics will break down regardless of how much you practice your technique.
In this video, I demonstrate a simple exercise you can perform every day while watching TV. It's an excellent movement for learning to activate and strengthen the muscles around the hip that are essential for maintaining your spine angle.
Notice the red circle in the photo above. That's the area we're targeting with these exercises. You should feel a distinct stretch and activation in this region as these muscles work to stabilize your body into the follow-through. If you don't feel it, you've likely lost your spine angle.
From the face-on view, you can clearly see how the lead leg must remain stable to support the rotation of the body — both during the backswing and into and through impact.
Finally, notice again how the outside of the lead hip bears the majority of the load during the swing while the spine angle stays maintained throughout the follow-through.
Video Transcription: Losing Spine Angle in the Golf Swing
Today's technology offers tremendous benefits, but spending the entire day sitting in front of a desk and typing at a keyboard is almost certainly damaging your golf game.
One of the fundamentals we emphasize constantly in the Rotary Swing is the ability to maintain your spine angle. Keeping your spine angle relatively constant throughout the golf swing is absolutely critical because it eliminates thin shots, fat shots, and the inconsistency that comes with constantly changing your posture.
The challenge is that certain muscles in your body must be properly activated for that to happen. What I want to explain today is how sitting — the default position of modern life — is directly hurting your golf swing.
The sitting position carries over into the golf swing
When you're seated all day, every muscle on the front side of your body — the hip flexors, the quadriceps, the entire anterior chain — stays activated and contracted. Meanwhile, the entire back side of your body is essentially deactivated. You're not engaging the muscles in the sides of your hips, the back of your hamstrings, or any of the posterior stabilizers.
For golfers, this is devastating. The muscles most critical for maintaining your spine angle are the outer hip muscles, the glutes, and the outside of the thighs — not the front-side muscles and hip flexors that sitting strengthens.
Those front-side muscles are already overly dominant. Sitting in a contracted position for eight hours daily encourages them to become shorter and tighter, overpowering everything else in your movement pattern.
That's why so many golfers exhibit poor posture at address — they look hunched and rounded. You're literally training your body, through eight hours of sitting each day, to default to that position. When you stand up and address a golf ball, that same pattern carries directly into your golf swing.
Rotating back
What needs to happen is that we must activate the muscles on the outside of the thigh and hip to provide the stability required to maintain spine angle. Here's why.
As I swing back and rotate through the shoulder rotation drills, the motion looks correct. But when many golfers actually swing a golf club, they do something entirely different.
They come out of the shot — losing their spine angle — then throw their arms at the ball trying to salvage contact. The result is wildly inconsistent ball striking.
When you can maintain your spine angle throughout the entire swing — rotating all the way back, down, and through — you stay in your posture through the shot and produce far more consistent impact.
Rotating back and then through
What most golfers don't realize is that executing this correctly produces a very specific physical sensation. You should feel a distinct stretch in certain parts of your body during the follow-through.
Watch as I rotate from the face-on view. I rotate back, stay centered, then drive through. I've rotated onto my lead leg and stayed fully braced. The muscles just behind my hip bone — on the outside of the hip — are actively firing and supporting my spine angle.
As I rotate back and drive through, it's these specific muscles that are bearing the load and preventing me from standing up out of the shot. If these muscles are deactivated or weak, they simply cannot support this position — where the hip is extended outward and the spine angle remains tilted forward.
These muscles have to perform significantly more work than they typically do during a normal day. Without that strength, you'll see a golfer's knees bow inward at address — a telltale sign that the outer hip muscles are weak while the front-side muscles are tight. You rarely see a golfer standing with their knees bowed outward.
Sitting muscles are used to being contracted
Bowed-out knees would indicate overactive outer hip muscles, and that almost never happens. Almost everyone is compressed inward because that's the position we sit in all day. We need to open up those muscles, open up the body, and allow the posterior chain to function properly.
To make a consistently good swing and maintain your spine angle all the way through, you must learn to activate these muscles and create balance between the anterior and posterior chains.
The first step is stretching the hip flexors. There are many excellent hip flexor stretches available, but that's not the focus of this video. What I want to concentrate on is activating the outer hip muscles.
I'm going to demonstrate two exercises that will reveal whether you have weakness in these muscles and teach you exactly how to strengthen them properly.
Extend your leg 90° in front of you
Lie down on a mat or on the carpet at home — you can do this while watching TV, so there's absolutely no excuse not to. Lie on your side with your arm extended for support and your legs straight. Take either your left or right leg and bring it out in front of you at 90 degrees to your spine.
From this position, lift your leg into the air — but not using your thigh muscles or any front-side muscles. Concentrate exclusively on using the muscles in the back of your hip.
As you perform this movement, you'll notice it takes considerable effort to raise your leg. The key is keeping your knee and ankle aligned — they should rise together, pointing toward the sky. Lift your leg all the way up, then lower it back down with control.
Raise the leg, using the muscles in the back of the hip
When done correctly, you should feel the activation specifically in the back of your glutes and the outer hip muscle area. You should not feel anything in the front of your thigh or in your groin. Those hip flexor muscles are already too dominant, so focus exclusively on isolating the posterior hip muscles.
Because the hip isn't a simple hinge joint — it moves in an orbital pattern — you should vary the angle of your leg throughout the exercise. This variation ensures you activate the muscles through their full range of motion.
Another variation: bring your legs back to a straight line, then move your thigh forward to 45 degrees and concentrate on using only those hip muscles to lift your leg.
Second position: Keep the leg straight and raise it from there
You'll likely discover that one leg is significantly stronger than the other. For a right-handed golfer, if your lead leg (left leg) is weaker than your trail leg, you'll experience considerable difficulty maintaining your spine angle — because if these stabilizing muscles aren't activated, it becomes physically impossible to hold your posture as you rotate through the shot.
These muscles must be proportionally strong relative to the rest of your lower body for your spine angle to remain constant throughout the swing.
Bring the leg forward 45° and repeat the lifts again
Perform three sets of 10 repetitions, varying the angles throughout. Start with three sets of 10 with your legs in a straight line, then three sets of 10 with your leg at 90 degrees to your body. These are the two foundational exercises. Then add variations at angles in between as needed.
The more consistently you work these outer hip muscles, the better you'll maintain your spine angle through the entire golf swing — leading to significantly more consistent ball striking. If you want real-time feedback on how well you're maintaining your spine angle during actual swings, try a free AI swing analysis that tracks your body positions and compares them to the elite model.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Many of us sit all day
