Thin Golf Shot Drill 5: Maintain spine angle face on to mirror (Video) - by Pete Styles
Thin Golf Shot Drill 5: Maintain spine angle face on to mirror (Video) - by Pete Styles

Another really good exercise to make sure your spine angle has been maintained, is getting the feeling that you can rotate your body on an axis tilted forwards. Lots of people are quite happy to turn their body when they are standing up straight. But as soon as you tilt them forward, you start to feel a little bit more awkward. So here’s a great exercise for that. I'm going to turn face on here and where the camera is. I would actually place a mirror or a patio window or door where I can actually see myself reflected in the glass. So I'm going to tilt myself forwards to my normal posture cross my hands over my shoulders and now turn back and turn through. And as I come through to see myself in the mirror, I still want to see that I'm tilted forwards, possibly the same spine angle I had at the start. I want to turn through this way. My front leg is going to straighten out but effectively my right leg would drop down a little bit to keep my posture tilted. If my hip came up and my body came up, this could result in me standing up too early to swing and topping the golf ball.

So face on into a mirror, start by turning back, and turn through and looking that your spine angle has been maintained. Then you can actually incorporate your hands and your arms and you would stay down through this and then up at the end. So you might finish perfectly vertical, stood up watching the golf ball fly. But it doesn't happen through the impact phase. I'm not standing up at this phase into my follow through position that would result in some really awkward top shots and possibly even some slices as well. I want to really stay down through the impact, the hitting area down until I can see myself in the mirror still tilted and then I can come up with a secondary phase.

So if you can practice at home without your golf clubs with a patio door or a mirror where the camera is here. Imagine I'm setting up, turn through, look for my spine angle to be down and then up to the big finish. You stay down through the impact area. Your strike will crispen up really nicely and you will stop topping and thinning the golf ball.

 2012-11-28

Another really good exercise to make sure your spine angle has been maintained, is getting the feeling that you can rotate your body on an axis tilted forwards. Lots of people are quite happy to turn their body when they are standing up straight. But as soon as you tilt them forward, you start to feel a little bit more awkward.
So here’s a great exercise for that. I'm going to turn face on here and where the camera is. I would actually place a mirror or a patio window or door where I can actually see myself reflected in the glass. So I'm going to tilt myself forwards to my normal posture cross my hands over my shoulders and now turn back and turn through. And as I come through to see myself in the mirror, I still want to see that I'm tilted forwards, possibly the same spine angle I had at the start. I want to turn through this way. My front leg is going to straighten out but effectively my right leg would drop down a little bit to keep my posture tilted. If my hip came up and my body came up, this could result in me standing up too early to swing and topping the golf ball.

So face on into a mirror, start by turning back, and turn through and looking that your spine angle has been maintained. Then you can actually incorporate your hands and your arms and you would stay down through this and then up at the end. So you might finish perfectly vertical, stood up watching the golf ball fly. But it doesn't happen through the impact phase. I'm not standing up at this phase into my follow through position that would result in some really awkward top shots and possibly even some slices as well. I want to really stay down through the impact, the hitting area down until I can see myself in the mirror still tilted and then I can come up with a secondary phase.

So if you can practice at home without your golf clubs with a patio door or a mirror where the camera is here. Imagine I'm setting up, turn through, look for my spine angle to be down and then up to the big finish. You stay down through the impact area. Your strike will crispen up really nicely and you will stop topping and thinning the golf ball.