Set Up for a Successful Shoulder Turn (Video) - by Pete Styles
Set Up for a Successful Shoulder Turn (Video) - by Pete Styles

So after we’ve established that a good shoulder rotation is important for a good golf swing, we now need to establish how we can help that happen by maintaining a good athletic address position. So there’s three real key points here that we want to address. The first is going to be correcting the right knee flex. So when we set up to the golf ball, having the correct knee flex. When we set up to the ball, if there’s too much knee bend here this can make it very unstable and that would not allow us to turn with any stability. But likewise if the legs are very straight and locked, it acts as a bit rigid, a bit wooded.

We need a little bit of flex in there. So to get the right knee flex, you can start by locking your legs out fully and then take the weight off the backs of your foot onto the middle of your foot, little bit of knee flex and that should be enough. So it’s locked, flexed and that would be enough. We don’t need to over-bend the knees here. That’s not going to help us. So that’s how to get the correct knee flex. The second element that we want to look at is correcting a nice straight spine angle. So when we set up from the side on here, you’re looking at my posture, we want a nice straight spine angle. If we find that we’ve got the traditional sort of rolled and curved and arched position of the hips being under and the chin being locked down, it doesn’t put the spine in a very athletic position. The spine therefore finds it very difficult to fully rotate and to turn; we’ll end up with a slight reduction in the shoulder rotation possibilities, so a straighter, flatter spine angle. So then to work on chest being up and out, hips being pushed back and that should straighten the spine angle out, rather than having the hips in and the chest in which bends over too much. And the last checkpoint to make sure you can rotate your shoulders correctly is to keep that chin up. There’s no way the shoulders can fit underneath the chin if the chin doesn’t provide any room. So if during the setup phase you drop your chin down so you can look at the ball, we then find the shoulder has nowhere to go, it can’t fit under that space. So as I’m setting up to my golf ball here, I’m actually keeping my chin up. I’m looking down at the ball but I’m looking down through the bottom of my nose and hopefully that will help me have a really good high head position, allow the shoulder to come underneath with the correct knee flex, with a nice flat back angle. And if you can work on those three principles, that shoulder rotation should feel a lot easier to do. 2015-08-11

So after we’ve established that a good shoulder rotation is important for a good golf swing, we now need to establish how we can help that happen by maintaining a good athletic address position. So there’s three real key points here that we want to address. The first is going to be correcting the right knee flex. So when we set up to the golf ball, having the correct knee flex. When we set up to the ball, if there’s too much knee bend here this can make it very unstable and that would not allow us to turn with any stability. But likewise if the legs are very straight and locked, it acts as a bit rigid, a bit wooded.

We need a little bit of flex in there. So to get the right knee flex, you can start by locking your legs out fully and then take the weight off the backs of your foot onto the middle of your foot, little bit of knee flex and that should be enough. So it’s locked, flexed and that would be enough. We don’t need to over-bend the knees here. That’s not going to help us. So that’s how to get the correct knee flex. The second element that we want to look at is correcting a nice straight spine angle. So when we set up from the side on here, you’re looking at my posture, we want a nice straight spine angle.

If we find that we’ve got the traditional sort of rolled and curved and arched position of the hips being under and the chin being locked down, it doesn’t put the spine in a very athletic position. The spine therefore finds it very difficult to fully rotate and to turn; we’ll end up with a slight reduction in the shoulder rotation possibilities, so a straighter, flatter spine angle. So then to work on chest being up and out, hips being pushed back and that should straighten the spine angle out, rather than having the hips in and the chest in which bends over too much. And the last checkpoint to make sure you can rotate your shoulders correctly is to keep that chin up.

There’s no way the shoulders can fit underneath the chin if the chin doesn’t provide any room. So if during the setup phase you drop your chin down so you can look at the ball, we then find the shoulder has nowhere to go, it can’t fit under that space. So as I’m setting up to my golf ball here, I’m actually keeping my chin up. I’m looking down at the ball but I’m looking down through the bottom of my nose and hopefully that will help me have a really good high head position, allow the shoulder to come underneath with the correct knee flex, with a nice flat back angle. And if you can work on those three principles, that shoulder rotation should feel a lot easier to do.