Should You Splay Your Feet At Setup
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In a perfect golf setup, should your feet point out or be square to the target? This premium video answers the question and tells you why. I'll discuss certain ways to make adjustments for those of you that struggle with mobility of the hips or struggle with pain.
- Keep the trail foot perpendicular to the target
- Allow the lead foot to turn outward ONLY if you have mobility issues or you tend to over rotate in the backswing.
Hey guys, Chuck Quinton here, founder of RotarySwing.
com.
One of the questions that get asked frequently in emails and questions on the forum is, should my feet be splayed out at a dress? It's a great question and it has, as you would imagine, Rotary Swing to a biomechanical foundations for why it should be a certain way.
So let's first start with the right foot.
During the backswing, particular is what we're going to be focusing on, because what we're trying to do in the backswing is.
Load up and torque the body and give a firm foundation for this right hip to get some load into this right leg so that we can then use the left to drive off.
And as you get more experience, you can use the right side for power a little bit.
Be careful with that one.
That's one we don't talk about a whole lot because people tend to really overdo it.
But it is available there as you get more and more experienced and skilled at using the left side.
But if your right foot is splayed out at a dress, What you end up doing is you tend to over rotate the pelvis, and you don't really get any stored energy between your pelvis and your core, your trunk here, because your hips over rotate.
So now I have very little separation here.
And I also don't have any load in my hip because I haven't twisted on it.
I need to stretch those muscles.
And so to exaggerate this feeling, I want you to practice putting your right foot splayed really in and try and rotate back.
You're going to feel right away that you're not going to have very much mobility here.
So it's going to keep your hips from over rotating.
We need some hip rotation about 45 degrees or so.
But if you're one of those people that tends to kind of let their knee buckle out at a dress, We see this all the time, where the knee externally rotates a lot and the golfer rolls to the outside of the right foot.
And all of a sudden they look like this at the top of their swing.
There's no power or stability here to come back down.
So the goal is that that right foot should be relatively square to the target line, about 90 degrees or perpendicular.
So that's the answer for the right foot.
Now the left foot, a little bit more, shall we say a variable, because what this is going to do is two things.
One, if your foot is splayed out a little bit at a dress, let's just, I'm going to exaggerate it for a second so it's easier to see.
I'm going to put it out about 60 degrees here.
As I start to rotate back and my right foot is square, it's very hard for my hips to turn much more than this.
Kind of a good thing.
Again, your hips need to turn, but what I see most amateur golfers do is overturn the hips going back.
So as this foot is splayed out, it keeps your knee from kind of doing this number and buckling in, which keeps this knee from doing this and this hip from sliding out and so on.
So having it splayed out actually acts a little bit as a restrictor for your hips going back.
It's a good thing.
But at the same point, what it's also going to do is it can keep you from turning enough.
We see that happen every now and then.
So what we use is we really focus on in the downswing how much internal rotational mobility you have in that left leg.
And so a simple way to do that, figure this out, this is oversimplified, but stand up, Put all your weight on your right foot and take your left leg and just try and twist it in and see if you can get your foot to turn in.
About 45 degrees in relationship to the right one.
If you do, That means that you can probably set your foot up just a little bit open and get your hips fully turned toward the target.
And be completely comfortable and experience no pain or discomfort in your left hip.
Now, Some people just from different injuries or restrictions or what have, you can't really internally rotate their left foot very much.
So for them to get into a follow through, if they can't, if they don't have a lot of internal rotation, They are not allowed to really release.
And they kind of stop here.
And they end up kind of using their upper body to get through the ball because their hips can't work correctly.
So for them, we'll let their hips or their left leg externally rotate a little bit more to dress.
And so that allows them to get into a balanced, relaxed and stable follow through position on the left leg.
So the right foot, keep it square.
Again, if you have very limited mobility on this right leg, it's okay to have it externally rotated a little bit, assuming you've got some issues on your right hip.
But if you don't, keep the right foot square.
The left foot will use a range of typically between zero and about 30 degrees.
30 degrees tends to be kind of on the maximum side that will allow because that any more than that, and it really restricts the hip turn going back.
So zero to 30 degrees is fine.
If you keep it dead square, If you're really flexible in your hips and you can still get it, a full hip, turn in the follow through, that's perfectly fine.
Zero is perfect.
It's going to give you kind of the maximum range, but again, zero to 30 degrees or so is perfectly fine at setup.
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