What are stable legs Golf Drill 4 Mirror check points (Video) - by Pete Styles
What are stable legs Golf Drill 4 Mirror check points (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here's a great little tip when you're practicing at home and you want to check on the stability in your legs. All you need here, a couple of canes or a golf club even and a mirror in front of you. So, imagining where the mirror is, where the camera is. Now, you take your normal set up position here looking straight forward. Then, I want you to imagine that there's a cane sticking out to the side of this foot. We want to make a back swing without nudging against the cane, so, if you were to turn back and push the knee above the shoelaces.

So, there's the knee, if it crosses over the shoe laces, you've lost control of your body weight in your back swing, creating that unstable leg position. The body weight would go too much onto the little toe of the rear foot. So, the cane sticks down from the knee cap. If we were to turn back and lose the knee sideways, you've lost a lot of your power, a lot of your control through your rear foot, your right foot.

Turning back correctly, your body weight should stay much more through the center of your right foot. So, as I make a back swing here, I load up and now the cane would drop down and it would be on the inside of my rear foot, not on the outside of my rear foot. That's one little great checkpoint for looking at your leg position.

Next one now, I'm going to be relating to the left leg coming through the golf ball, making sure the leg doesn't get too out of position here. Again, similar checkpoint, we want to make sure the knee doesn't cross the shoelaces. Once the knee crosses the shoelaces here, the body weight is out of control, you're spinning through the shot and the left foot can collapse into the wrong area. So, at the setup position there, the knee goes through the middle of shoelaces. I turn into my left side, snapping my left leg but my knee hasn't lost its position and hasn't gone onto the outside of my foot too much. So, looking at your left knee in the mirror, turn, snap, make sure the knee hasn't gone over.

Another little checkpoint from the mirror again, this time from side on, imagine you're holding your golf club as normal, turn it back to the top, look into the mirror. As the camera lens looks at me, there's no gap between my knees, between my right knee and my rear knee and my left knee. If my legs have rotated too much, there would have been a gap visible here. Anytime you look in the mirror and see there's a gap between your knees, you know there's too much leg action, too much instability.

The right knee stays forward, the left knee stays back a bit more to the top. If you can see half of your left knee, that would be allowable. If you can see all of your left knee, it's close. If you can see a gap between your knees, we're starting to get some problems.

So, three great little exercises to look head-on to a mirror, right knee stability, left knee stability and a combined drill to make sure there's not too much rotation of hips and knees, to make sure stable legs, stable ball flight, better golf.

 2012-11-30

Here's a great little tip when you're practicing at home and you want to check on the stability in your legs. All you need here, a couple of canes or a golf club even and a mirror in front of you. So, imagining where the mirror is, where the camera is. Now, you take your normal set up position here looking straight forward. Then, I want you to imagine that there's a cane sticking out to the side of this foot. We want to make a back swing without nudging against the cane, so, if you were to turn back and push the knee above the shoelaces.

So, there's the knee, if it crosses over the shoe laces, you've lost control of your body weight in your back swing, creating that unstable leg position. The body weight would go too much onto the little toe of the rear foot. So, the cane sticks down from the knee cap. If we were to turn back and lose the knee sideways, you've lost a lot of your power, a lot of your control through your rear foot, your right foot.

Turning back correctly, your body weight should stay much more through the center of your right foot. So, as I make a back swing here, I load up and now the cane would drop down and it would be on the inside of my rear foot, not on the outside of my rear foot. That's one little great checkpoint for looking at your leg position.

Next one now, I'm going to be relating to the left leg coming through the golf ball, making sure the leg doesn't get too out of position here. Again, similar checkpoint, we want to make sure the knee doesn't cross the shoelaces. Once the knee crosses the shoelaces here, the body weight is out of control, you're spinning through the shot and the left foot can collapse into the wrong area. So, at the setup position there, the knee goes through the middle of shoelaces. I turn into my left side, snapping my left leg but my knee hasn't lost its position and hasn't gone onto the outside of my foot too much. So, looking at your left knee in the mirror, turn, snap, make sure the knee hasn't gone over.

Another little checkpoint from the mirror again, this time from side on, imagine you're holding your golf club as normal, turn it back to the top, look into the mirror. As the camera lens looks at me, there's no gap between my knees, between my right knee and my rear knee and my left knee. If my legs have rotated too much, there would have been a gap visible here. Anytime you look in the mirror and see there's a gap between your knees, you know there's too much leg action, too much instability.

The right knee stays forward, the left knee stays back a bit more to the top. If you can see half of your left knee, that would be allowable. If you can see all of your left knee, it's close. If you can see a gap between your knees, we're starting to get some problems.

So, three great little exercises to look head-on to a mirror, right knee stability, left knee stability and a combined drill to make sure there's not too much rotation of hips and knees, to make sure stable legs, stable ball flight, better golf.