Video Menu
My Favorite Videos
My Favorite Videos
Axis Tilt at Setup and Why It's So Important
Sorry, you need to be a member to access this video.
You Are Just Seconds Away - Become a member here!
Already a member? Log in now

The last key piece to understand how to get setup properly is to get the proper amount of axis tilt at address. The hip bump in this video will help you do just that.
- Axis tilt lets the right hand reach the club while maintaining good posture
- Get into setup position, then bump your hips slightly forward, toward the target
- Keep your head in place and drop your right shoulder
if you've taken a lesson with a rotary swing certified instructor you've probably heard one thing over and over again if you're not getting it right and that is you don't have enough axis tilt I could probably put that on record and just hit play every single golf lesson I give or every swing review I give because so many golfers set up out there without axis tilt now what is axis tilt why do you need it and why does it really matter well first let's talk about what it is and I'm going to explain to you why you need it and if you tend to come over the top or your swing plane is a little bit off this is the first thing that we always check that's how important it is having the spine angle set correctly from viewed face on is one of the most important setup fundamentals that you're ever going to work on in your golf swing the good thing is it's super easy to get right you're not moving when you do it so we just got to learn what it is and how to get there so once you determine your proper stance width if you're not sure what that is it's two inches outside of axis tilt so go back and look at the setup video if you're not sure but once you have that proper tilt you can take any club I got a seven iron here hold it against the buttons on your shirt and your belt buckle and then just slide your hips to the left until this club hits you in the leg you'll see here as I do that it hits me in the knee and all I did there was slide my hips where people make a mistake is instead of trying to move their hips they move their upper body now you can see my head has moved way back and I've shifted a lot of weight over here to the right I don't really want to shift any weight as I move my pelvis to the left my upper body tilts back in response to that that's counterbalance and that's keeping your weight distribution about the same at about 50 50 so as I do this I don't try to do anything with my head it's another common mistake people try to get tilt by just moving their head like this all you need to do is keep your spine in neutral your head in neutral your nose right in line with this shaft and just lean to the left this is all it takes to get set up properly and now when you go to set up to the ball you just reach under with your right hand don't reach across because now you're going to lose all your tilt again and you're going to be standing straight most amateur golfers set up with a weak right hand and a high right shoulder with no tilt because they're right hand dominant and so they want to get into this position you can see now this v formed by my thumb and forefingers either at my nose or even to my left ear and it has to be going more up the right forearm or towards this right ear and to do that you'll notice as I reach under part of my setup routine is to let my hips slide to the left and now you can see that thought that thumb and forefinger lines going right up the forearm now I don't have to do anything special at the bottom to try and square up the club face so getting axis tilt is really really simple the problem is most golfers just don't even bother they're so fixated on getting their right hand into a dominant position that they want to set it really upright and this is where a lot of problems come from so one of the biggest problems is the reverse pivot when you set up with no axis tilt and you start to turn your body as you start to stretch these muscles and tighten others your body just like if you started to stretch a towel you start to run out of room and it starts to pull you back this way so if you wanted to reverse pivot I would set up with no axis tilt now of course there's no reason that I can think of at least not in a good one why you'd want to set up with with no axis tilt and reverse pivot so but if you do and you tend to swing like this at the top your upper body's leaning toward the target the first thing that you check is your setup if your setup's right and you have axis tilt it'd be really hard for you to all of a sudden slide your hips this way enough for your upper body to lean toward the target and that's where that reverse pivot comes from so all you got to do to get rid of that is just a little hip slide to the left now people always ask well when should I do this doesn't really matter if you want to start standing straight up so you can check it every time hopefully you're not doing this on the course a lot it's going to take you forever but when you're practicing by yourself certainly you can go through this then get into your hip hinge then get your hand on the club and it's just a good way to get yourself to go through the whole routine but eventually you do this enough you get your repetitions in and it's just going to be all one motion you're not even going to think about it but you do need to practice it at first and that's why I love having this club here and just sliding my hips to the left until the club hits now you don't want to turn while you're doing this this is another mistake we see so golfers will tend to do this when they set up you don't need to turn your hips you just need to slide them laterally you'll notice I don't close them I don't open them they just move perfectly parallel and it's just a small amount it's just until that club hits you you only need about seven to ten degrees of tilt any more than that you're going to start affecting the swing plane in a negative way so one more thing to recap here a little bit of hip slide the big thing that you want to do from here is make sure that you maintain the axis tilt that you created so you don't want to all of a sudden go to the top and let your head go this way and you don't want to try and increase it you just keep it constant we're trying to remove variability in the swing so with axis tilt that's one of the key things once we have that tilt we're just going to rotate around that spine and maintain the tilt that we started with at address and then everything's very simple so if you've got swing plane problems you're swinging steep the first thing you need to check make sure you have axis tilt and go through your routine to get set up right every single time it's gonna feel strange at first you're gonna feel like your right eyes way back behind the ball or your right shoulders really low it's okay you have to get used to this feeling in order to make a proper swing plane
gordon
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
gordon
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Patrick
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jeremy
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
shulei
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Don
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
A J
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Brent
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dave
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Venkatesh
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Brian
Manny (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Manny (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joy
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joy
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Donald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steven
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steven
Gary C
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Terry
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Duc
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stuart
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stuart
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Jim
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Kyaw Thet
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kyaw Thet
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
M Augusto
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Allan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Lawrence
Michael (Certified RST Instructor)
Martin L
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joe
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Don
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Rick
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Shaun
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Shaun
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bernie
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Peter
Mikko-Pekka
Ray
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Florian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Adrian
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Adrian
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Michael K
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Gary C
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Gary C
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jesse
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jesse
Rob
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Eric
Eric
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Eric
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Eric
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Chris
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bernie
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Josephine
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Tram
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hugo
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Maxwell
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Vince
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Vince
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Patrick
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jeff
Dean
Joseph
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joseph
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kirk
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Barrie
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Terry
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Zubair
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Zubair
Steve
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Gerald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mark
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mark
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mark
Mark
Sonny
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Sonny
Sonny
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Sonny
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Michelle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Michelle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Michael
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Nolan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
A J
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
A J
Christopher
Christopher
Chris
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steve
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Glenn
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Glenn
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Glenn
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dave
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steve
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jeffrey
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Navid
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jeffrey
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Sam
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
A J
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
A J
Randy
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
blaine
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
charles
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dennis
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Asle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Asle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Asle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Anthony
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Anthony
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Barry
Barry
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Gerald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Chun Tat
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Donald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stephen
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stephen
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
shay
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jonathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
sambhu
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hector
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bud
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
gordon
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
gordon
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
gordon
Corby
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Corby
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Lance
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Greg
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Eric
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Andrew
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
anthony
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
anthony
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
anthony
anthony
Jennifer
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Roger
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Nick
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
nathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Wilson
anthony
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
laurabeth
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
laurabeth
Damien
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Damien
Ryan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Sebastien
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Loran
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Wilfred
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Wilfred
Nick
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Carole
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Carole
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Keith
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
john
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Nguyen
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joseph
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Taweesak
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Taweesak
Jay
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Grant
Steven (Certified RST Instructor)
dave
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
dave
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steve
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Alejandro
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Mark
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Alejandro
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Sujit
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Gary
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Gary
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Albert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Scott
Patrick (Certified RST Instructor)
Scott
Patrick (Certified RST Instructor)
Paul
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Blake
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Blake
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
glen
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
glen
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Rick