Strike the Golf Ball Better. Drive The Hips, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Strike the Golf Ball Better. Drive The Hips, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here's a really lovely exercise to make sure you’re generating enough power by coiling correctly in your back swing and then releasing that coil in your down swing. One thing that we often see that saps power for golfers is when they sway their body weight. They’re desperately trying to move their body weight around because they’ve been told that they shouldn't stand still they've got to move back and then got forwards. But they do it in the wrong fashion they do it with a swaying action. So swaying action would normally look like the hips are sliding sideways and the knees sliding sideways, quite crucially you'll see that the body weight goes on to a little tow on the outside of the rear foot. From there I've swayed across but I can't really drive off there's nothing to push off to get me back going forwards again.

So it's a gentle sway back and a slow sway forward not enough power in that motion. There’s a really nice way to make sure that you’re not swaying but you are coiling correctly. What I would suggest is you set yourself up with a mirror or maybe a patio door or something that’s reflective that you can see yourself in. Then get yourself a tour stick and jam it in the ground or position it in something like I've got here, the basket and it's going to be sitting right next to my right hip. So I position my foot really close back to it and I move my golf ball into position.

As I set up here I want to now look up into the mirror and see how my hips should move towards this stick on the right but only slightly and I load up and create power into my right hip but I haven’t crucially slid my near cross or slid my hip in and actually nudged it. I don’t want to bump into it on the back swing that would have too much body weight going on to the outside of my foot as I feel like I've swayed across. It's actually keeping me in position, I can see if I look in the mirror my hip moved towards it slightly but crucially it doesn’t knock into it.

Now from there I do want to move away from it, I want to feel like I'm pushing off the stick driving the body weight off the inside of my right leg turning into my left side and getting a lot of body weight going forwards. So it's a case of loading the power in the back swing and then driving away from it in the down swing. And if I can practice setting up in front of the mirror watching myself make this movement loading up slightly but moving away from it in the down swing. It's a great way of generating loads of power if I go ahead and hit this one you see how that should look at full speed.

 2013-06-27

Here's a really lovely exercise to make sure you’re generating enough power by coiling correctly in your back swing and then releasing that coil in your down swing. One thing that we often see that saps power for golfers is when they sway their body weight. They’re desperately trying to move their body weight around because they’ve been told that they shouldn't stand still they've got to move back and then got forwards. But they do it in the wrong fashion they do it with a swaying action. So swaying action would normally look like the hips are sliding sideways and the knees sliding sideways, quite crucially you'll see that the body weight goes on to a little tow on the outside of the rear foot. From there I've swayed across but I can't really drive off there's nothing to push off to get me back going forwards again.

So it's a gentle sway back and a slow sway forward not enough power in that motion. There’s a really nice way to make sure that you’re not swaying but you are coiling correctly. What I would suggest is you set yourself up with a mirror or maybe a patio door or something that’s reflective that you can see yourself in. Then get yourself a tour stick and jam it in the ground or position it in something like I've got here, the basket and it's going to be sitting right next to my right hip. So I position my foot really close back to it and I move my golf ball into position.

As I set up here I want to now look up into the mirror and see how my hips should move towards this stick on the right but only slightly and I load up and create power into my right hip but I haven’t crucially slid my near cross or slid my hip in and actually nudged it. I don’t want to bump into it on the back swing that would have too much body weight going on to the outside of my foot as I feel like I've swayed across. It's actually keeping me in position, I can see if I look in the mirror my hip moved towards it slightly but crucially it doesn’t knock into it.

Now from there I do want to move away from it, I want to feel like I'm pushing off the stick driving the body weight off the inside of my right leg turning into my left side and getting a lot of body weight going forwards. So it's a case of loading the power in the back swing and then driving away from it in the down swing. And if I can practice setting up in front of the mirror watching myself make this movement loading up slightly but moving away from it in the down swing. It's a great way of generating loads of power if I go ahead and hit this one you see how that should look at full speed.