Do You Start Backswing w/ Hips or Shoulders?

To start the golf swing with the upper or lower body, that is the question! I think Shakespeare first posed the question, now let me answer it once and for all!

Juan.

Hey Chuck, how are you? I'm doing great.

How are you? I'm doing good.

Thank you.

Yeah, good to see you again.

I've seen your online swing reviews.

So I've seen your swing reviews.

Obviously, I've seen some of the stuff you post in the Facebook group.

So I have a pretty good idea kind of what's going on in your swing.

But just from your own words, what do you feel like is the biggest thing that you're struggling with? Well, I actually don't know right now because I mean, for two months, I have been in lockdown.

So I haven't played.

I haven't even hit a single ball.

But I have been working on basically not losing the touchline, trying to get rid of my sway.

And basically, I'm getting a little bit stuck on the downswing.

So I'm losing a lot of lag and releasing the club too early.

Okay, those are like the main issues that I'm struggling with.

Okay.

So I remember what I remember most about your swing was that, you know, you're very flexible.

And so you're able to make a pretty big turn and get kind of an all.

You've got longer along arms, and kind of, your arms can kind of get away from you a little bit.

So what I wanted to what I was thinking I was going to focus on is getting your body to kind of be in control a little bit more, because that's really when you're losing your touchline, there's something incorrect going on with your body.

When your arms get a little bit long, your lower body is generally not loaded correctly.

And so when you're losing lag, you're tending to fire your arms.

And that's typically tied back to the body not loading correctly.

So those are the things I was kind of thinking we were going to focus on.

But I want a video, I'll do a screen capture.

Okay.

And then we'll walk through it quickly.

And then we're going to get to drilling and get you on the right path to get you heading the right direction.

Okay, one quick question, Chuck, can I connect with my laptop and record the lesson? Yeah, you're all you're gonna it's recording right now.

So you'll receive an email when it's done that it will.

Okay, if you want to record a local copy, you're welcome to as well, you'll get one either way.

Oh, that's fine then.

So let me put the phone here on my tripod and we can get started.

Okay.

Where are you at, Juan? Where do you live? I live in Colombia in Bogotá.

In Bogotá? Yes, yes.

So face on first? Yeah, that'd be great.

So I'm going to go over here and get the screen captured on.

Yeah, that's perfect there.

Okay.

And whenever you're ready, go ahead.

Okay, can you do one down the line real quick? Yes.

We'll capture both.

All right.

Swing looks pretty good, but there's definitely a couple things that we're going to focus on here.

I'm going to share my screen real quick.

Do you see that okay? Yes.

Okay.

So first off, it's set up.

Do you see how your head is kind of way back? What I mean by that, I don't know if you can see me up in the corner of your screen, but when you tend to set up, you tend to set with your head way back like this.

You see how that's happening? I'm exaggerating this a little bit so it's more obvious.

So first things first, when this happens, it's going to put you where you're going to want to really pivot a lot and it's going to make you kind of loose in your swing.

We're going to get you a little bit more centered so that you don't get your head so far back off the ball.

It's obviously changing the alignment of your spine as well.

So first things first, we're thinking in a more neutral setup position.

Okay.

So that's relatively minor, but this is going to help with what's going on here.

So right now when you go back, the only thing really getting engaged is more your shoulders and your lower body.

While it looks good, the muscles aren't really activated there at the level that they need to be.

So we're going to change that.

We're going to get your lower body to increase the amount of load and healthy tension you feel there by a hundred percent.

It's going to be a dramatic difference because right now your lower body, again, the positions of it look fine, but it's clear that the muscles aren't really engaged.

So when you start down, they're just going to be kind of soft.

And again, the positions look fine, but there's no power there.

And so to make up for it, you have to kind of swing the arms pretty fast.

And even though you get into a great position here, your lower body is just kind of being pulled around by the upper body.

At this point, there's no real power in your lower body.

And that's what I want to change.

And that's the one, and I want to change that right from, you know, set up the way that you're set up.

I want to get your lower body engaged and then going back a lot more tension in your, in your trunk and what you're feeling now.

Okay.

Yeah.

So again, positions wise, you look great.

But now a lot of times what I've seen in your swing reviews is that the club gets a lot longer.

Your arms get a lot deeper.

I know that you've been working on that, but the reason that tends, like you can make a really nice looking practice swing where these positions look really just about spot on perfect.

But when you go to hit a ball, they get a little bit more loose.

Your arms get a little bit longer.

They get a little bit deeper.

They get, you tend to get across the line.

And that's again, because you don't have muscular load in your lower body.

So when you go to hit a ball, your subconscious kind of takes over, like I need more power.

And so it starts loading up these muscles.

And that's why you can't hit this position with any power in your swing.

Does that make sense? Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

So again, you know, positions wise, the stuff all looks great, but it's how you get there that is far more important than anything else because there's just not the power that we need there.

So what we're going to do first is help you understand what it feels like to really be loaded up.

Because right now you have what looks like a beautiful, you know, almost picture perfect golf swing in your practice swing.

But again, if you get there and it's, it's kind of like faking it, like you have all these great positions, but when the legs aren't loaded up and the core isn't loaded up, you can't fake it when the ball is there.

And then everything's going to start to break down because we start trying to get power from the wrong places.

So to fix that, we have to wake up the trunk.

We have to wake up your lower body.

So we're going to do some drills to exaggerate it a little bit.

But the biggest thing is really shifting your focus because you know where the club's supposed to be.

You know where your arms are supposed to be.

And they're going to be a lot easier to consistently hit those positions when this starts waking up.

So you're not going to think about that.

In fact, I don't want you to think about it at all.

I want you to start to think about and feel what we're going to talk about now.

So when you set up, first of all, we've got to get out of this because this is going to put you in this weak position.

So we're just going to get you set up the normal setup so that you feel a lot more stacked over your hips instead of kind of being lean back way over here.

And then as you go back, the biggest thing is that you're going to start to feel, and I'm going to have you do some drills to exaggerate this, so much more muscular tension in your right hip, that it's going to feel like it's on fire.

In fact, by the time you're done with this lesson, you're probably going to feel sore.

If you're sore, then we get a good thing.

So we're going to pivot on this.

I'm going to give you a drill to literally pick up your leg and get all of your weight over here.

And then you're going to do the same thing in the downswing.

You're going to shift all of your weight, stomp your foot to the ground and squat down, and then push that up off that left leg.

Those are going to be the two big drills that you're going to feel first is picking this right, this left foot up, getting all your weight over here and squatting down slightly.

This is again, these are exaggerations, but this is going to help you start to feel your glute engaged.

Because right now when you go to the top, you're not, you probably don't feel it much at all.

You're going to feel it 10 times more today.

So this is the first thing you're going to go up.

You're going to squat a little bit.

Then you're going to, while your foot's picked up, you're going to feel really balanced on this right foot.

You're going to pick this foot up and stomp it and put all your weight on the left foot.

And actually get to the point where you can basically pick your right foot up.

So we're just going to get you feeling your glutes engaged.

That's the most important thing for you to feel right now.

Does that make sense? Yes.

Yes.

Perfect.

So you want to see face on or down the line? Face on first is fine.

Okay.

So what I want to do is literally get all your weight onto your right foot, literally pick your left foot up and tell me what you feel.

You're going to pivot on the hip a little bit.

Yeah.

I feel like my quadriceps is really tense.

Okay.

Now move your weight back towards your ankle instead of toward the front of your foot and tell me what you feel.

Okay.

Now I feel it on my glutes.

Okay.

So that's the first thing that you've got to start to monitor because if you feel it in your quad, what that's going to tend to do is just cause you to push forward and that's going to cause you to lose your tush line, right? What you said you already tend to struggle with.

When people get their weight on the ball of their foot going back and they engage the quad, the front part of your leg, the only thing that that thing can really do is straighten up and push forward this way and that's what causes you to lose your posture.

So I want you to concentrate on getting your weight back over your ankle further.

Okay.

Now watch me for a second.

What you did was this.

We're not moving our upper body, right? Our upper body is going to stay still and you know, you're not going to change your spine angle to lean it this way.

That's what you did.

And so that's kind of the cheating way to put pressure over here.

I want you to literally lift your left foot up and move your hip socket over your ankle.

Okay.

There you go.

Now what do you, and put your weight on your ankle and tell me what you feel.

I feel all of my weight here on my right glute.

Let your hip turn just a little bit.

Tiny, not as much as I'm used to.

Yeah, but go ahead and let your hip turn more.

I was going to ask you a question about that because on my last review, I think Craig was the one that did that review.

And he told me that my hips were very active at the very start of my swing.

They were.

And I should just make them turn by my shoulders turning and not by me actively trying to turn them.

But I also saw that on one life lesson that you uploaded to the website, you were telling your students just to do the opposite.

And I know maybe every case is obviously different, but I think that that student was maybe struggling a little bit with the same issue that I am.

That was that his arms were going too deep and he was very arm dominant on the swing.

So I just wanted maybe if you could clarify me what's the difference or what or in my case, what should I be feeling? Because for me to like, not moving the hips at the beginning, almost every time causes me to reverse pivot because of me not trying to like to turn them.

Yeah, no, great question.

So there's two ways of understanding that.

One, most people that we see, the typical average golfer who's a higher handicap golfer, they tend to allow their hips to move all over the place, very loosey-goosey.

So they just kind of do this all over the place and their hips are kind of going all over.

And then it's impossible to control.

If your lower body is unstable in the backswing and you're just doing this, the club's going to go all over the place and you're going to have no power, right? So a lot of the content on the site is really targeted to the average person who does that.

Now at the same point, when you get better, a lot of people kind of, once they realize that's like a high handicap thing, like 20 handicap kind of deal where they're just kind of all over the place, have no idea what they're doing with their lower body.

As the golfers get better, they kind of tend to quiet their lower body a little bit too much.

They make the mistake of swinging the pendulum to the other side.

And that's Jason is the guy you're referring to.

And he was kind of keeping his right leg frozen.

And then that forced him to just use his arms and shoulders because he didn't have anything else to move the club.

I remember in some of your old swings that you were pretty active with your lower body.

And so you're, you know, your hips returning quite a bit.

And so it makes everything too loosey goosey.

And so that's where you kind of have to find the balance, right? But think of it this way.

It's not so much, you know, whether or not you, you know, move the club back with your hips or move the club back with your shoulders or what have you.

That's more like specific instruction of helping you understand how to overcome a problem.

What you really have to think about and focus on is creating muscular engagement, engaging your legs, engaging your glutes, the right parts of your body.

Because remember, what's the first thing you're going to do in the downswing? It's not fire your arms.

It's not turn your shoulders.

It's move your hips, right? And if your hips aren't engaged in the backswing, well, it's really impossible to try and just wake them up all of a sudden to then use them in the downswing.

So it's more about muscular engagement rather than thinking about sequencing per se.

I personally, obviously, when you're talking about really getting into the nuts and bolts, the true sequencing of the swing, the hips and the upper body tend to kind of move together to start the swing, but the shoulders are moving at a faster rate because they've got to turn twice as far, right? So they're going back, hips and shoulders are going together.

But what I'm really focused on is less about the timing and sequence of that.

And I'm focused more on, am I loading my hips so that I can then use them in the downswing.

Does that make sense? Okay.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

So this is what you're talking, right? No, because that's this.

You're changing your spine angle, right? But should I turn my shoulders or are just, or just, uh.

.

.

Yeah, turn your shoulders and your hips.

You can let that left foot literally come up in the air.

There you go.

So now what you did was this.

So now your spine angle is staying the same before you did this.

You obviously know that you wouldn't do that in a golf swing.

Okay.

So that's why I want you to feel all of your weight.

There you go.

Now it becomes more natural and you should still feel it in your glute.

If not, move your weight back over the ankle.

Yes.

Yes.

I feel it in my glute.

Good.

Now, once you've got that foot up there and you've turned on that hip socket a little bit, it becomes natural for that hip to use the left side to unwind and shift you back to the left.

There you go.

So now as you're doing this, I want you to exaggerate it.

I want you to feel that your legs are on fire, that you're using them as much as you can.

You're engaging them as much as you can.

There you go.

And when you post that left leg up, stomp it into the ground.

There you go.

Literally stomp it.

There you go.

Good.

So when you go into the left side, I want you to still feel the same thing.

That transition move, when you're just shifting back to the left and you're not really turning a lot.

I want you to feel that left glute engage just as much or more so than the right one.

But am I not swaying to the right? Right now you are because we're lifting the foot up.

Once we take that out and your foot doesn't come up in the air, you can't slide your hips like that anymore.

I mean, you could, but you reverse pivot.

So this is an exaggeration.

This is more about don't think so much about, you know, the position of your head and spine and all and swaying and all that.

It's about getting these muscles to wake up.

It's about getting you to be able to feel them again.

There you go.

Yeah, but it feels very clunky, like very unnatural.

Like I'm forcing the movement.

It probably will at first because you're so used to just use this being really quiet in your swing, right? You don't feel the same muscular engagement in your real swing that you are right now, I'm assuming, right? Okay.

Good.

So this is, again, this is an exaggeration.

So then you just start making this smaller.

Instead of lifting your foot up, you know, as you take your normal setup, now you just maybe let your left heel come up in the air just a little bit, just so you can still feel your lower body waking up.

There you go.

Stomp that left foot.

Good.

There you go.

Now, as you're doing this, try to do it from your normal setup.

So hinge forward a little bit more.

That will help you feel your glutes and hamstrings a little bit more as you hinge forward from your hip socket.

Is my head okay there? Yeah, way better.

Way better.

Okay.

Not so much head movement off the ball.

Now we're going to tighten we're going to tighten this movement up a little bit.

So now you're doing this a little too much or your head's moving off.

I think now it's just going to be just feeling the same glute load without your head moving.

Better? So keep, keep going.

Okay.

Okay.

So now let me walk you through this real quick.

Okay.

that's your head at setup.

You see how your head just looks nice and neutral now? Yes.

I know it probably feels a little different, but it looks normal, right? Whereas before now it would make sense how offset it was to the, to the right side.

Now, as you go back, watch how you're initiating the swing here.

You see how your hips aren't really turning that much? Yes.

We want to wake them up a little bit more, right? We're trying to get your hips to really, your lower body, your core to really be the driver in the swing.

And right now we still have a little bit too much shoulder movement.

And so that left knee is not allowed to come in.

And so that's going to keep you from being loading up on your hips as much as you could.

So we're going to change this just a little bit, but it's way better.

And that lower body movement looks way better.

Now you're actually using that left hip and getting posted up on it properly.

Whereas before it was just kind of your arms and shoulders turning that moved your hips.

Now your hips are moving your arms and shoulders.

So we're getting there.

Okay.

But let me, uh, can you, you can see my swing there in the background on the screen there? Yes.

Yes.

So watch as I go back.

Watch my left knee.

And it comes forward.

Well, during the backswing though, it was allowed to go back.

Your left knee barely moved at all in the backswing just now.

Do you see what I'm saying? Okay.

And I'll show it to you again if you need it.

That's hip turn.

You're not allowing that hip to turn and load on that right hip socket enough.

Whereas what I'm doing, I'm turning a lot more and then it makes it really easy to use the left side coming down.

But what you did, I'll put it up here again real quick.

Now watch your left knee in the backswing.

See how it kind of just goes out toward the camera, but it doesn't go in towards the right knee at all.

Oh, I see.

I see.

I see.

You see the difference? Yes.

It's look, it doesn't really move toward the right knee at all.

Right.

And then you get, if you look at mine.

Yeah, it goes inside.

But that's not, that's not me doing this with my knee, right? It's because if I turn and get all this weight on this hip socket and I'm pivoting on it, my hips turning move this knee in.

But it's really just me making a really powerful move into my right side to have a really stable base.

Not let the left knee come in.

More.

More.

Yeah.

And it's going to come in more by you turning more on this hip socket.

And that's what that drill was for earlier, where we kind of exaggerated.

Like if you pretend like you're a base, there you go.

Now you're turning.

Yeah.

But then my hips aren't going to be turning like 90 degrees in the back swing? Well, if you picked your foot up like this in the golf swing, it could, but you can't, right? So remember, your foot's going to be planted on the ground, but you still need to turn and load on that right hip.

There, that was better.

You feel like you kind of initiated it back that time with that hip loading, turning your hips.

I mean, I'm feeling more tension in my, in my glute now.

There you go.

Remember I said, I want you to be sore by the time this lesson's done.

Yeah.

So we got to exaggerate a little bit.

So your brain starts to activate these muscles again.

There you go.

Now your head's moving on the ball again.

I feel like I'm moving my hip.

Like I said, at the same rate, maybe it's lower, but at the same time, I'm rotating my, my shoulders.

That's totally fine.

And as I mentioned in the swing, again, if you look at, look at my swing on the screen, watch my hips and shoulders.

My hips move immediately, right? Yeah.

But do they overturn? Yeah.

So I think you're, you're afraid of something that's not going to happen.

You know, you're afraid that your hips are going to start to overturn because you're letting them turn immediately off the ball.

But reality is that by the time, if you're loading up on this hip socket properly, you're going to have so much tension by the time your arms parallel to the ground, that your body's already getting ready to go back the other direction.

Now do that without your head moving though.

Your head's still moving off the ball.

Still moving.

Getting better there.

Do you feel more tension there? Yes.

A lot more tension.

Yeah.

Now that's where the power is coming from is from your glutes, your hamstrings, the back.

That's what you're trying to load in the golf swing, not your arms and shoulders.

So once that's loaded up, what would it, it's going to be almost automatic to get you back to the left to do that downswing transition.

But if this isn't loaded up in the backswing, then the arms and hands are going to be the first thing to fire.

And that's again, why you can make these beautiful, perfect practice swings.

But when the rubber meets the road, you got to put power into it.

It falls apart because you're getting the power, not from here, but from here.

Okay.

So what I want you to start to focus on feeling is loading, overdo it for a little bit, turn and pivot and get your hips really feel that right.

We really woke up really loaded.

That's what you're going to start to focus on without your head moving.

There you can feel difference.

Yes.

I feel like my, a lot of my body is moving.

And that's one thing that I was afraid maybe at the beginning, because I used to be in, how do you call it? The, over the hip.

I think you have a, like a name for that.

The hip spinners, hip spinner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so do this a couple of times for me.

Show me your big hip, hip turn.

And I'm going to show your hips actually start still aren't moving enough.

Believe it or not.

Really? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

But you know, this is going to be, this is going to be fun because you get to start really feeling power in your swing.

So take a look at your screen.

This is you just now making a big hip turn.

Your left knee is barely moved.

Your hips have barely turned at all.

But my head's still moving a lot.

Yeah, your head's, you use the wall drill.

Put your head up against the wall so it can't move.

Okay.

And then that will help.

But you can see you're still not letting your hips turn enough.

Yeah.

So again, it's a, it's a, it's a common thing when people, if you tend to be overactive with your lower body at one point, your swing, you swing the pendulum back to the side, don't move them enough at all.

And now you've got to come back to the middle.

There you go.

There you go.

That's way better.

Much better.

I feel a lot of movement in my legs.

Yeah.

And make sure you're feeling your glutes being loaded the most.

One more for me.

Okay.

Now, let me show you that.

All right.

So here's your huge hip turn.

That's it.

Yeah, it doesn't look that, that much.

I feel like it's moving a lot, but it's actually known.

Feeling real, right? They're not the same.

Yeah.

So now you can see by that point, how loaded up your hips feel, but you've only made like a 30, 30 degree hip turn.

So if I have, if I, if I have all the weight in my right side, it's not going to be able to rotate anymore unless I lift, lift my left leg, left foot up.

Right.

Yeah.

If you lift your left foot up, that could allow you to turn.

If you straighten your right knee up, that would allow you to overturn.

But if you're maintaining some knee flex and this puts on the ground and these muscles are loaded, you can't, you can't overturn.

And that's why there's a video on the site called load the right hip to shorten your backswing or something like that.

Yes.

Your brain is going to use tension.

If this is tense and I'll show you on my swing, watch where my hips stop moving.

So we know that they start right off the ball, right there.

My hips are no longer turning.

Look where my left arm is.

I'm about 10 o 'clock.

So I can't turn anymore because that right hip is screaming at me.

My hips are screaming at me.

And so they're loading up and getting ready to go back to this, to the left before I finish my backswing.

In order for that to ever happen.

Okay.

I have to begin loading them up immediately off the ball.

Otherwise it's not enough time.

If I wait to try and load my hip up when my arms are up here, well, I'm going to overswing.

So I'm trying to load that right hip up.

As soon as that club starts moving off the ball, I'm loading up my trunk and then my arms don't get loaded up until they get yanked down by my lower body.

So you don't have to fear over rotating.

As long as you're following these simple fundamentals, this right knee can't straighten up, foot stays down.

And you're trying to not just turn your hips for no point.

You're trying to actually load that right glute that you're never going to overturn.

Okay.

Does that make sense? Great.

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect sense.

And wow.

This was like an eye opener because I always thought that the backswing was more the upper body trying to move.

And then on the downswing, you just forget about the upper body and just start moving your lower, your lower body.

But for me to start moving or actively trying to move my hips and rotate them was something I didn't know I have, I had to do.

Well, again, it's probably my fault because I've focused more on the 90th percentile golfer, the majority of members on the site, who are the guys who do this stuff, right? Yes.

And so when you get to a better player like yourself, you have to kind of change the way that you're thinking about things, even though it's still technically the same.

But the reality is like people who rotate their upper body really well during the backswing, their lower bodies tend to be moving correctly, but yours has just been taken out to or just didn't have any power.

So Okay.

But now, now you know what you're really, what you're really trying to do is load muscles, right? You're just trying to engage muscles in your lower body.

And if that's your focus, you don't have to worry so much about, you know, the timing and sequence of all those things, because it'll happen naturally.

Those muscles are loaded up, they're going to tell you when it's time to go the other way.

Okay.

Okay.

One last quick question.

When I'm hitting like a 80 or 70 yard pitch shot, should I be focusing on the same thing, loading my right hip first? Yes and no.

Yes, but to a far lesser degree, right? Because you don't need that power now.

This is going to create a lot of power in your swing where you've got a lot of access to leverage from the ground, leverage from your legs.

You don't need that on these little knockdown wedge shots.

But the sequence is still basically always the same, but you certainly don't need to create that type of length, you know, that type of load in your hips.

So you can be a lot more relaxed about it.

It's probably going to be a little bit smaller turn and, you know, not trying to drive so hard with your, with your legs.

Okay, great.

Well, I have a pretty good homework to do.

All right.

Well, it was great again, just keep focusing on that stuff and you're going to be on the right track.

Thank you, Chuck.

I'll send you a video maybe in two weeks to see if we, if I have improved.

All right.

Perfect.

Talk to you soon.