Why Spine Angle Determines Your Swing Plane in Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Why Spine Angle Determines Your Swing Plane in Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

When you watch most good players set up to the golf ball, one of the things that you’ll notice is really good posture, for a lot of good players particularly young golfers when you see them on the TV, they stand to the golf ball with really good posture. And if you’re working on your posture, I would encourage you to do so with a mirror behind you, get good posture, good spine angle. But now let’s make sure we understand the relationship between the posture and the spine angle, and the swing plane. If you’ve got a long golf club, let’s say we’re swinging the drive and we’re standing a long way from the ball, and we’ve got the spine angle correct, upright here, we’re standing quite tall, your swing plot path and plane will naturally be a lot flatter, and you should allow that to happen. It’s not necessarily a conscious decision to change the plane or path, it’s just that the spine angle is more up, you generally going to swing more around.

Likewise as we go down to a shorter club and we’ve got a grip it maybe a little knocked down wedge on tilting way forwards over the ball, my swing path and plane now is going to be a lot steeper. And again that’s not necessarily a conscious decision, but I certainly couldn’t get here and then try and swing flat, that would be very, very awkward and likewise swinging my driver and then swinging steep is going to be very, very awkward. So just have a little practice and understanding how the path of plane of your swing can be dictated by your body posture. So you want the hips pushed back, the chest pushed up, that's my good spine angle for my seven iron. That’s going to be the right plane of swing as I go to a wedge, and as I go to my driver, my swing path and plane should and will alter.

 2013-04-03

When you watch most good players set up to the golf ball, one of the things that you’ll notice is really good posture, for a lot of good players particularly young golfers when you see them on the TV, they stand to the golf ball with really good posture. And if you’re working on your posture, I would encourage you to do so with a mirror behind you, get good posture, good spine angle. But now let’s make sure we understand the relationship between the posture and the spine angle, and the swing plane. If you’ve got a long golf club, let’s say we’re swinging the drive and we’re standing a long way from the ball, and we’ve got the spine angle correct, upright here, we’re standing quite tall, your swing plot path and plane will naturally be a lot flatter, and you should allow that to happen. It’s not necessarily a conscious decision to change the plane or path, it’s just that the spine angle is more up, you generally going to swing more around.

Likewise as we go down to a shorter club and we’ve got a grip it maybe a little knocked down wedge on tilting way forwards over the ball, my swing path and plane now is going to be a lot steeper. And again that’s not necessarily a conscious decision, but I certainly couldn’t get here and then try and swing flat, that would be very, very awkward and likewise swinging my driver and then swinging steep is going to be very, very awkward. So just have a little practice and understanding how the path of plane of your swing can be dictated by your body posture. So you want the hips pushed back, the chest pushed up, that's my good spine angle for my seven iron. That’s going to be the right plane of swing as I go to a wedge, and as I go to my driver, my swing path and plane should and will alter.