Great Posture Starts with a Solid Base (Video) - by Pete Styles
Great Posture Starts with a Solid Base (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if we’ve established how important posture is, now let’s look at how we can get good posture. Well, I’ll start down the line from this angle here. Starting down the line, we want to get a good address position, a decent distance away from the ball. I like to use this club down just above my knee to check how far back away from the ball I am. That’s quite important for good posture. Then we can look at knee flex. If we lock the knees right out and then make a small knee flex, I just get enough flex to take the bodyweight from my heels to the middle of my toes or middle of my feet. And therefore, I’ve already got the right knee flex and the right bodyweight distribution. I wouldn’t want to be leaning back on my heels too much but also we don’t want the balls or the feet taking all the weight. We want a nice comfortable everything straight through the middle of the foot and kind of stance with a good knee flex.

And the last part of retaining a good address position is really the most – I guess it’s sort of where the people are conscious about, they’re aware of what they’re doing, is sticking the hips and therefore sticking the backside out a little bit. We really need to stick the hips and the backside out to create a good straight line but some people feel a bit self-conscious you know they go to the driving range, they don’t really want to be sticking their bum out and wiggling around here incase people stood behind and talking about them. So they end up sort of tucking their ends and nobody notices, but that really ruins the curve or the straightness of the spine. So I would encourage you to take the right distance away from the ball, create the right posture but then bring the golf club right out in front of you and hold it nice and high and then the only way that club can now get to the floor is by tilting of the hips and in turn sticking the backside out. And in this position, the hips are pushed backwards, the chest is still lifted up, the head is up nice and tall and we’ve retained good posture rather than getting scared of the backside and bringing it in here and therefore having that poor posture. So don’t be afraid of sticking the backside out, good knee flex, bodyweight nice and in middle of the feet and that should improve your posture right away through the back. Now other people ask me, “Well, how does my posture change when I have longer clubs and shorter clubs?” Well, if you have the club in front of you, you just have to keep tilting until the club hits the floor. So if I have a very short iron like this and I have to keep tilting, I just tilt forwards more until the club hits the ground. I don’t have to bend my knees to do that necessarily. I jut bend over more so I have a nice tilted spine angle. If I had a very long club for example with my driver, I just bend over a bit less and the club will be setting on the ground already, so the spine angle still tilts from the hips, it just tilts more or less depending on the club. It isn’t bending at the hips or bending at the waist more or less, it’s tilting at the hips more or less. And hopefully you can use that idea to make sure you get good posture every time.
2015-08-12

So if we’ve established how important posture is, now let’s look at how we can get good posture. Well, I’ll start down the line from this angle here. Starting down the line, we want to get a good address position, a decent distance away from the ball. I like to use this club down just above my knee to check how far back away from the ball I am. That’s quite important for good posture. Then we can look at knee flex. If we lock the knees right out and then make a small knee flex, I just get enough flex to take the bodyweight from my heels to the middle of my toes or middle of my feet. And therefore, I’ve already got the right knee flex and the right bodyweight distribution. I wouldn’t want to be leaning back on my heels too much but also we don’t want the balls or the feet taking all the weight. We want a nice comfortable everything straight through the middle of the foot and kind of stance with a good knee flex.

And the last part of retaining a good address position is really the most – I guess it’s sort of where the people are conscious about, they’re aware of what they’re doing, is sticking the hips and therefore sticking the backside out a little bit. We really need to stick the hips and the backside out to create a good straight line but some people feel a bit self-conscious you know they go to the driving range, they don’t really want to be sticking their bum out and wiggling around here incase people stood behind and talking about them. So they end up sort of tucking their ends and nobody notices, but that really ruins the curve or the straightness of the spine.

So I would encourage you to take the right distance away from the ball, create the right posture but then bring the golf club right out in front of you and hold it nice and high and then the only way that club can now get to the floor is by tilting of the hips and in turn sticking the backside out. And in this position, the hips are pushed backwards, the chest is still lifted up, the head is up nice and tall and we’ve retained good posture rather than getting scared of the backside and bringing it in here and therefore having that poor posture. So don’t be afraid of sticking the backside out, good knee flex, bodyweight nice and in middle of the feet and that should improve your posture right away through the back. Now other people ask me, “Well, how does my posture change when I have longer clubs and shorter clubs?”

Well, if you have the club in front of you, you just have to keep tilting until the club hits the floor. So if I have a very short iron like this and I have to keep tilting, I just tilt forwards more until the club hits the ground. I don’t have to bend my knees to do that necessarily. I jut bend over more so I have a nice tilted spine angle. If I had a very long club for example with my driver, I just bend over a bit less and the club will be setting on the ground already, so the spine angle still tilts from the hips, it just tilts more or less depending on the club. It isn’t bending at the hips or bending at the waist more or less, it’s tilting at the hips more or less. And hopefully you can use that idea to make sure you get good posture every time.