Fixing Common Golf Swing Hip Problems (Video) - by Pete Styles
Fixing Common Golf Swing Hip Problems (Video) - by Pete Styles

Let’s look at a few different swing faults now that could be affecting what the hips are doing during the swing. The first one we’re going to tackle is overactive hips on the back swing. So hips that are doing too much work during the backswing phase. So we set up to the golf ball everything pointing down the line. If we find that the hips are turning too much on the backswing, you know they are almost turning 90 degrees here, that’s clearly going to cause us some problems; lack of power, lack of consistency. The main issue here is actually too much knee action. In that my rear leg locks out and my front leg massively dives forward which also lifts my front heel. So too much hip rotation. Sometimes this happens because the shoulders are desperately trying to rotate to 90 degrees. But if there’s no flexibility through the core or through the lower back, it almost forces the hips to do the same thing.

When my shoulders rotate back, my hips have rotated back, but really in this phase, I’ve got no power. You can almost here in my voice, there’s no tension, there’s no coil. Because if my hips do the correct thing my open body turns, I feel there’s much more tension, much more coil within there, and you can almost hear that in my voice. So overactive hips on the backswing are going to be a little bit of a problem. Try and work on stabilizing the knees and not letting the hips do too much. Then we got to make sure we check the downswing; the timing of the downswing. First we have the top of the back swing here. We want the hips to start moving down and across. It’s important the hips don’t go too quickly. If I’m still going up and I’ve not reached anywhere near the top of my swing and they start coming down, I could end up with a very short back swing. So if you feel like you’ve got a short backswing, just make sure the hips that are actually starting too soon. The hips should start the backswing...Sorry, should start the downswing, but only when the backswing is reaching towards the top, so, when the backswing is going towards the completed phase I can then start down. That works well. But also I want to make sure my hips don’t go too slowly. I shouldn’t be swinging up to the top, hitting, and then using my hips to follow through. That would look like a bit of an afterthought, bit of a secondary idea. And that’s obviously going to affect the ball striking and the power. And then one last thing to consider is just to make sure we follow through correctly. We get all around that front leg. We’ve seen an awful lot of golfers; they hit the ball and then stand in their back like, and watch the ball fly. The problem with that is all the power went out of the backdoor, as their hips stayed on the back foot as well. So hitting the ball and not following through is a bit of a problem. Maybe likewise hitting the ball and wandering off too far forward. After balance is a problem. The key thought here is get that belt buckle, turn that belt buckle all the way round to the finish, and just hold your balance. Nice and posed, looking down the fairway, making sure those hips have worked correctly. And if you can improve on those three hip areas, you should be swinging the club like Hunter Mahan in no time. 2016-07-19

Let’s look at a few different swing faults now that could be affecting what the hips are doing during the swing. The first one we’re going to tackle is overactive hips on the back swing. So hips that are doing too much work during the backswing phase. So we set up to the golf ball everything pointing down the line. If we find that the hips are turning too much on the backswing, you know they are almost turning 90 degrees here, that’s clearly going to cause us some problems; lack of power, lack of consistency. The main issue here is actually too much knee action. In that my rear leg locks out and my front leg massively dives forward which also lifts my front heel. So too much hip rotation. Sometimes this happens because the shoulders are desperately trying to rotate to 90 degrees. But if there’s no flexibility through the core or through the lower back, it almost forces the hips to do the same thing.

When my shoulders rotate back, my hips have rotated back, but really in this phase, I’ve got no power. You can almost here in my voice, there’s no tension, there’s no coil. Because if my hips do the correct thing my open body turns, I feel there’s much more tension, much more coil within there, and you can almost hear that in my voice. So overactive hips on the backswing are going to be a little bit of a problem. Try and work on stabilizing the knees and not letting the hips do too much. Then we got to make sure we check the downswing; the timing of the downswing. First we have the top of the back swing here. We want the hips to start moving down and across. It’s important the hips don’t go too quickly. If I’m still going up and I’ve not reached anywhere near the top of my swing and they start coming down, I could end up with a very short back swing.

So if you feel like you’ve got a short backswing, just make sure the hips that are actually starting too soon. The hips should start the backswing…Sorry, should start the downswing, but only when the backswing is reaching towards the top, so, when the backswing is going towards the completed phase I can then start down. That works well. But also I want to make sure my hips don’t go too slowly. I shouldn’t be swinging up to the top, hitting, and then using my hips to follow through. That would look like a bit of an afterthought, bit of a secondary idea. And that’s obviously going to affect the ball striking and the power. And then one last thing to consider is just to make sure we follow through correctly. We get all around that front leg.

We’ve seen an awful lot of golfers; they hit the ball and then stand in their back like, and watch the ball fly. The problem with that is all the power went out of the backdoor, as their hips stayed on the back foot as well. So hitting the ball and not following through is a bit of a problem. Maybe likewise hitting the ball and wandering off too far forward. After balance is a problem. The key thought here is get that belt buckle, turn that belt buckle all the way round to the finish, and just hold your balance. Nice and posed, looking down the fairway, making sure those hips have worked correctly. And if you can improve on those three hip areas, you should be swinging the club like Hunter Mahan in no time.