Now having a good shoulder rotation is always going to be easier for those that have more flexibility than those that have less flexibility. Now people may have less flexibility, maybe older golfers or golfers that suffer with injuries or golfers that are very sedentary in their day-to-day lives. But in the golf swing, we know we want to try and create some rotation. So here’s a couple of ways we can achieve that. The first thing is to test how much you actually have already, how much rotational flexibility you already have.

So go ahead, make a little dummy swing so you grip your fingers as if you’re holding onto a golf club. Set the club in front of you and then where the camera is maybe we’d have a mirror or a patio door that we can see a reflection in, and go ahead now make a backswing. So looking up into the mirror, go on to make a backswing and I’m turning around, I can feel it tight enough but I can’t get my shoulder underneath my chin pointing 90 degrees to my intended target straight to the mirror.

Now if I can achieve that level of rotation without having too much going on downstairs with my knees and my legs, I would say I’ve passed the test. However, if you haven’t passed the test and you swing back to here and it gets a bit stiff a bit too early and we feel like we haven’t created the full rotation, we need to try and either work on your flexibility or build in a little bit of a cheat into your golf swing to help encourage you bigger turn.

So specifically with golfers who are injured or older golfers where just increasing flexibility isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds, we might build in that little cheat. So as we get around to the top of the swing and it gets tight, if I allow my left heel just to pop off the floor, I can turn around an awful lot further. So if I just a couple of inches with the left, it allows our left heel to turn a lot more and create a bigger backswing turn.

So go to set up, turn around, can’t quite get around fully, pop the left heel up into the air and I can now fully complete my turn. So specifically for golfers injured or elderly golfers who can’t have more flexibility easily, that’s a nice little work and movement that can help you. Now we want to avoid really lifting the foot up and ending up like this. We don’t need that. I’m talking just a little bit of a rise up here.

One other area that might just help create a bit more turn is allowing that right leg, just to shift back slightly and let the right knee straighten. Now I would avoid locking it. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do but I think if you were to turn back and get stuck but then take the right knee back a little bit that’s going to help us get the right leg into a better position, allow the shoulder rotation to happen and allow us to complete that 90 degree shoulder rotation. So if you’re struggling to complete the turn and you didn’t pass the test, maybe those two little movements will help you create more shoulder rotation and hit longer straighter golf shots.