Match Your Shoulder Alignment To Your Feet In Your Golf Set Up (Video) - by Pete Styles
Match Your Shoulder Alignment To Your Feet In Your Golf Set Up (Video) - by Pete Styles

So you should now be aware that shoulder alignment is very important in the setup, and really a shoulder alignment should pretty much match your toes and your body alignment, your feet alignment. But one of the difficult things for a golfer to do is actually assess this for themselves. Because when you set up to the golf ball, yes you can look down and you can see your toes. But it's very difficult to really get a good view of what your shoulders are doing. So there's two little tips that I could give you here. One would be to use a couple of alignment sticks. You get yourself nicely set up.

You bring the first alignment stick down and put it on your toes. You bring the second alignment stick up and hold it across your shoulders. And then you should see whether those shoulder alignment is similar or the same as your foot alignment. And that’s a good one way of nicely checking that. But I think probably the best method is actually very similar to how I’m doing it today using a video camera. So you set your video camera or even use your mobile phone camera down the line at the back of the bay or the back of the practice ground. Now it might be helpful if you just got a mate to hold the camera. So he can move in line because it's quite important that you set it up exactly on your toe line. So where this toe line points back to the camera, you then have somebody holding your video camera. You can then go ahead, set up to your normal setup position, hold the club across your shoulders like this if you like as an extra guide. And then the person down the line can just take a quick snapshot on the video to check whether things are on line. What you might see is generally a sort of an open or closed position. So foot alignment, let’s trust it, we’ve got that at target, and then close shoulders, or open shoulders. And like we’ll discuss in further videos, if the shoulders don't match the feet, it has a problem with direction of the shot, but it also has a problem with the direction of the swing, the way you swing the club. So let's make sure that as with every time we’re setting up to the golf ball we've got our feet pointing in the right direction, but also we've got shoulders matching that. Use the alignment sticks to help you in the setup position or grab a mate. Get him to stand down the line exactly on the toe line with the video camera, catch a quick snapshot of how you're setting up to the golf ball. And hopefully with better shoulder alignment, you'll be on your way to hitting more accurate golf shots.
2016-07-08

So you should now be aware that shoulder alignment is very important in the setup, and really a shoulder alignment should pretty much match your toes and your body alignment, your feet alignment. But one of the difficult things for a golfer to do is actually assess this for themselves. Because when you set up to the golf ball, yes you can look down and you can see your toes. But it's very difficult to really get a good view of what your shoulders are doing. So there's two little tips that I could give you here. One would be to use a couple of alignment sticks. You get yourself nicely set up.

You bring the first alignment stick down and put it on your toes. You bring the second alignment stick up and hold it across your shoulders. And then you should see whether those shoulder alignment is similar or the same as your foot alignment. And that’s a good one way of nicely checking that. But I think probably the best method is actually very similar to how I’m doing it today using a video camera. So you set your video camera or even use your mobile phone camera down the line at the back of the bay or the back of the practice ground. Now it might be helpful if you just got a mate to hold the camera.

So he can move in line because it's quite important that you set it up exactly on your toe line. So where this toe line points back to the camera, you then have somebody holding your video camera. You can then go ahead, set up to your normal setup position, hold the club across your shoulders like this if you like as an extra guide. And then the person down the line can just take a quick snapshot on the video to check whether things are on line. What you might see is generally a sort of an open or closed position. So foot alignment, let’s trust it, we’ve got that at target, and then close shoulders, or open shoulders.

And like we’ll discuss in further videos, if the shoulders don't match the feet, it has a problem with direction of the shot, but it also has a problem with the direction of the swing, the way you swing the club. So let's make sure that as with every time we’re setting up to the golf ball we've got our feet pointing in the right direction, but also we've got shoulders matching that. Use the alignment sticks to help you in the setup position or grab a mate. Get him to stand down the line exactly on the toe line with the video camera, catch a quick snapshot of how you're setting up to the golf ball. And hopefully with better shoulder alignment, you'll be on your way to hitting more accurate golf shots.