Golf Hip Turn, How To Best Turn Your Hips (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Hip Turn, How To Best Turn Your Hips (Video) - by Pete Styles

We’re now going to spend some time looking at the hip rotation and how important hip rotation is in a correct swing. Now we don’t specifically need to do a great deal with the hips in the back swing, the hips do move but that’s more of a function of what the upper body is doing. So we’d like to create a big turn in the backswing where the shoulders rotate round about 90 degrees. So I’m turning my left shoulder here, trying to turn it round behind the golf ball. Now when my upper body moves, my bottom half is connected, so we’ll try and move as well. To get as much power as I possibly can, I want to limit my hip and my leg action to a minimal degree.

However, if you feel that physically you struggle with this movement and you can’t turn your shoulders enough therefore you can’t generate enough power, you might actually encourage a little bit of hip movement to get that turn going. So to start with, place the club over your shoulders, turn your shoulders back and when you get stuck, just have a little bit of a go with the hips and see whether you can continue that movement round. So you do want to try and get as close to 90 degree shoulder rotation as possible. Now if we look at the legs here it’s quite important that we don’t use the knees to do the rotation. If my right knee locks back and my right knee snaps forward I’ve had a little bit of a wobbly bottom half here and there’s no real power stored in this movement to get back to the ball it’s just very inconsistent.

So from a nice set up position, we want to turn the upper half as much as we can, resisting with the legs as much as we can. Then the hips have got a lot of stored power. So the stored power is going to be utilized in the down swing. The start of the down swing is a big lateral movement back to the left hand side. The hips release first followed by the shoulders and that generates a lot of power. Now the hips moving laterally, moves power but also then the rotation releases the golf club at the right timing to the ball. So my body weight shifts to the left, I then release at the golf ball and I get a lot of power from using my hips. So if you are not considering what your hips are doing in the golf swing, go ahead and have a little think about how they move back, how they move through again and see whether that will improve the quality of your shots.

2013-04-01

We’re now going to spend some time looking at the hip rotation and how important hip rotation is in a correct swing. Now we don’t specifically need to do a great deal with the hips in the back swing, the hips do move but that’s more of a function of what the upper body is doing. So we’d like to create a big turn in the backswing where the shoulders rotate round about 90 degrees. So I’m turning my left shoulder here, trying to turn it round behind the golf ball. Now when my upper body moves, my bottom half is connected, so we’ll try and move as well. To get as much power as I possibly can, I want to limit my hip and my leg action to a minimal degree.

However, if you feel that physically you struggle with this movement and you can’t turn your shoulders enough therefore you can’t generate enough power, you might actually encourage a little bit of hip movement to get that turn going. So to start with, place the club over your shoulders, turn your shoulders back and when you get stuck, just have a little bit of a go with the hips and see whether you can continue that movement round. So you do want to try and get as close to 90 degree shoulder rotation as possible. Now if we look at the legs here it’s quite important that we don’t use the knees to do the rotation. If my right knee locks back and my right knee snaps forward I’ve had a little bit of a wobbly bottom half here and there’s no real power stored in this movement to get back to the ball it’s just very inconsistent.

So from a nice set up position, we want to turn the upper half as much as we can, resisting with the legs as much as we can. Then the hips have got a lot of stored power. So the stored power is going to be utilized in the down swing. The start of the down swing is a big lateral movement back to the left hand side. The hips release first followed by the shoulders and that generates a lot of power. Now the hips moving laterally, moves power but also then the rotation releases the golf club at the right timing to the ball. So my body weight shifts to the left, I then release at the golf ball and I get a lot of power from using my hips. So if you are not considering what your hips are doing in the golf swing, go ahead and have a little think about how they move back, how they move through again and see whether that will improve the quality of your shots.