Upper Body Posture Keys (Video) - by Pete Styles
Upper Body Posture Keys (Video) - by Pete Styles

So when you’re setting on to a golf ball now we want to make sure we’ve got this good posture position. Here’s a good couple of checkpoints to make sure the upper body is doing the right thing. So the first thing we could do is where the camera is just there, let’s put a mirror or a patio door in that location. Then as we’re setting up to the golf ball and tilting forwards here, we’re going to make sure that spine angle is nice and straight. So from the hips to the chest, everything is nice and straight and we’ve lost the arch and the slump, so straight spine angle. Another great checkpoint here is to make sure that straight line carries on as high as it can into the neck by keeping the chin up. Anytime we pull the chin down, we’re going to start to arch the back of the neck and roll into it too much.

So ideally yes, we need to look down on the golf ball but we almost look down sort of through the bottom of our eyes rather than tilting down and looking at the top of our eyes. So we look down through the bottom of our nose here by keeping that spine angle up and the chest in a good position and the chin up. One more area to ensure that we have good posture is just relax the arms. I see a lot of golfers who – I guess they’re trying the right things; they’re working so hard, they’re thinking so much about their swing, they end up like this, just very tensed. Their grip pressure goes up; the tension through the forearm goes up. That manifests itself in shoulder tension, setting up to the golf ball there. You know bum out, chin up but your shoulders are up. We also need to just relax the shoulders back and down, keep the elbows tucked in as you’re doing this, shoulders come down to here, then we can tilt forwards and grab hold of the club and as long as the shoulders stay down and not up, we’d feel that was at a much more relaxed approach to gather upper body in a good postural position, ready to generate a lot of power during the swing. Work on those three elements to get your upper body posture right, you’ll be on the good way to hitting longer straighter golf shots. 2015-08-12

So when you’re setting on to a golf ball now we want to make sure we’ve got this good posture position. Here’s a good couple of checkpoints to make sure the upper body is doing the right thing. So the first thing we could do is where the camera is just there, let’s put a mirror or a patio door in that location. Then as we’re setting up to the golf ball and tilting forwards here, we’re going to make sure that spine angle is nice and straight. So from the hips to the chest, everything is nice and straight and we’ve lost the arch and the slump, so straight spine angle. Another great checkpoint here is to make sure that straight line carries on as high as it can into the neck by keeping the chin up. Anytime we pull the chin down, we’re going to start to arch the back of the neck and roll into it too much.

So ideally yes, we need to look down on the golf ball but we almost look down sort of through the bottom of our eyes rather than tilting down and looking at the top of our eyes. So we look down through the bottom of our nose here by keeping that spine angle up and the chest in a good position and the chin up. One more area to ensure that we have good posture is just relax the arms. I see a lot of golfers who – I guess they’re trying the right things; they’re working so hard, they’re thinking so much about their swing, they end up like this, just very tensed. Their grip pressure goes up; the tension through the forearm goes up. That manifests itself in shoulder tension, setting up to the golf ball there.

You know bum out, chin up but your shoulders are up. We also need to just relax the shoulders back and down, keep the elbows tucked in as you’re doing this, shoulders come down to here, then we can tilt forwards and grab hold of the club and as long as the shoulders stay down and not up, we’d feel that was at a much more relaxed approach to gather upper body in a good postural position, ready to generate a lot of power during the swing. Work on those three elements to get your upper body posture right, you’ll be on the good way to hitting longer straighter golf shots.