How Should My Left Hip Move During The Golf Swing? (Video) - by Dean Butler
How Should My Left Hip Move During The Golf Swing? (Video) - by Dean Butler

So, how should my left hip move during the golf swing? Well, it’s a good question and it’s not a complicated one you’ll be happy to know. When you turn the club back the hips basically are a very, very important part of the actual golf swing. If you think about it, that’s half way between your feet and the top of your shoulders, so this part here you would say is the core. And they do a very, very important job. A job that people don’t recognize and people tend to ignore. They focus on more of the shoulders. But the hips are crucial. When you take the club back, I focus very, very strongly on just turning my hips through a roundabout 45 degrees. That’s all I’m working on, and you might think, well it’s a very fine line between doing that and actually going… and I say, "Yeah, you’re right". So, how do I work on turning my hips? As I set up to the ball I focus on my left knee. And this is very, very simple. When you go back, I want you to turn your left knee, which is now aiming here just in front of the ball, to a point just behind the ball. So, if take this club back and turn my left knee, you can see the hips have gone through 45 degrees.

I didn’t try and turn my hips, I simply got over that ball, and I moved this knee. And if you were to stand there in your golfing position, as you know the backbone should be over the ball, the weight forward, and I just moved that right knee, nothing else, that left knee rather, and you just go back and just do that. But what happens? It’s so simple, it’s so simple. So, the hips are very, very instrumental in what the golf swing does, and of course the golf swing is a mirror image. So if you can get that movement right on the take away, you can just imagine on the follow through, the hips are likely to be more in line with what you should be doing. So let’s do a normal swing and run you through it. So, over the ball, I’m going to turn my left knee to a point just behind the ball and do my normal swing. So, on top of the back swing, I’ve got my shoulder through 90 degrees, I’ve got my hips through 45 degrees, and I’ve got my weight transferred back here. As I pull the club back down to hit that ball, what happens naturally is that as I do that, can you see what happened? The weight is already transferred towards my left side and I haven’t had to think about it at all, okay? So, I go over to the ball here and I say to you turn your left knee, there's my left knee go back… and the weight is gone through. You can see how that weight’s gone through. I’ve not focused on trying to hit the ball far or long or straight. I focused on the hips. So from here, that’s your first movement. This is the most crucial movement that you've got to focus on this. Get into this position here and from here focus on hitting down… and look at the hips going through. The chances are when you got out and you put this into practice now you’ll think wow, I thought I was doing that but I actually wasn’t. And remember you can’t see yourself. So, go out and work on this and it would be really, really handy to have someone just mobile phone or IPad something like that just filming you so could actually see it you say well this is what I normally do Tom, and this is what I want to do now, and then look at what you were doing and what I’ve asked you to do, and you should see a tremendous difference not just in what you’re doing, which is number one, but with practice you should see a big difference in the consistency, accuracy and the distance that you’re hitting those golf shots. 2014-08-04

So, how should my left hip move during the golf swing? Well, it’s a good question and it’s not a complicated one you’ll be happy to know. When you turn the club back the hips basically are a very, very important part of the actual golf swing. If you think about it, that’s half way between your feet and the top of your shoulders, so this part here you would say is the core. And they do a very, very important job. A job that people don’t recognize and people tend to ignore. They focus on more of the shoulders. But the hips are crucial. When you take the club back, I focus very, very strongly on just turning my hips through a roundabout 45 degrees. That’s all I’m working on, and you might think, well it’s a very fine line between doing that and actually going… and I say, “Yeah, you’re right”. So, how do I work on turning my hips? As I set up to the ball I focus on my left knee. And this is very, very simple. When you go back, I want you to turn your left knee, which is now aiming here just in front of the ball, to a point just behind the ball. So, if take this club back and turn my left knee, you can see the hips have gone through 45 degrees.

I didn’t try and turn my hips, I simply got over that ball, and I moved this knee. And if you were to stand there in your golfing position, as you know the backbone should be over the ball, the weight forward, and I just moved that right knee, nothing else, that left knee rather, and you just go back and just do that. But what happens? It’s so simple, it’s so simple. So, the hips are very, very instrumental in what the golf swing does, and of course the golf swing is a mirror image. So if you can get that movement right on the take away, you can just imagine on the follow through, the hips are likely to be more in line with what you should be doing.

So let’s do a normal swing and run you through it. So, over the ball, I’m going to turn my left knee to a point just behind the ball and do my normal swing. So, on top of the back swing, I’ve got my shoulder through 90 degrees, I’ve got my hips through 45 degrees, and I’ve got my weight transferred back here. As I pull the club back down to hit that ball, what happens naturally is that as I do that, can you see what happened? The weight is already transferred towards my left side and I haven’t had to think about it at all, okay? So, I go over to the ball here and I say to you turn your left knee, there's my left knee go back… and the weight is gone through. You can see how that weight’s gone through. I’ve not focused on trying to hit the ball far or long or straight. I focused on the hips. So from here, that’s your first movement. This is the most crucial movement that you've got to focus on this. Get into this position here and from here focus on hitting down… and look at the hips going through.

The chances are when you got out and you put this into practice now you’ll think wow, I thought I was doing that but I actually wasn’t. And remember you can’t see yourself. So, go out and work on this and it would be really, really handy to have someone just mobile phone or IPad something like that just filming you so could actually see it you say well this is what I normally do Tom, and this is what I want to do now, and then look at what you were doing and what I’ve asked you to do, and you should see a tremendous difference not just in what you’re doing, which is number one, but with practice you should see a big difference in the consistency, accuracy and the distance that you’re hitting those golf shots.