Will restricting my hip turn increase my power? (Video) - by Pete Styles
Will restricting my hip turn increase my power? (Video) - by Pete Styles

Will restricting your hip turn increase the power that you have in your golf swing? It’s not an easy answer this one really because it applies very differently to different golfers. On the PGA Tour and the most flexible athletes in the world you’d probably say yes it would do. So as a flexible golfer you might be able to create the 90 degree shoulder rotation without the hip turn. You can actually hear my voice do that, that’s quite a tight stretch, to turn that round to 90 degrees, restricting the hip turn and what we are doing there is we are creating a bigger X angle, so the X angle is this term that we use to define the hip rotation, the shoulder rotation.

If the shoulder rotation you can go round along way and the hip rotation doesn’t we create an X and the bigger the X the more power you have for your downswing. So for example if I turned 90 degrees of my shoulders but my hips also follow to 90 degrees you don’t hear the strain in my voice there's very little tension here, resistance, there is very little power to hit the golf ball, if I turn my shoulders without my hips you can hear my voice starts to get tighter and tighter and tighter, then I’ve got power. But what if you’re not very flexible what if you don’t have the ability to create that X angle on your backswing? Restricting your hip turn then would purely restrict shoulder rotation. You get all the guys, less flexible guys, bad backs that sort of thing turning here we’ve only got 45 degrees of hip rotation -- sorry 45 degrees of shoulder rotation without the hips therefore massive loss of power so if you’ve got less flexibility, maybe an old injury, a bad back something like actually increasing hip rotation could be the key for more power. But if you are very young, very fit, very supple then restricting hip rotation could be a way of increasing power. It’s maybe worth trying both seeing which you are unless you already know whether you’re flexible or inflexible, so it’s not an easy answer sometimes restricting hip rotation can increase power. 2015-03-26

Will restricting your hip turn increase the power that you have in your golf swing? It’s not an easy answer this one really because it applies very differently to different golfers. On the PGA Tour and the most flexible athletes in the world you’d probably say yes it would do. So as a flexible golfer you might be able to create the 90 degree shoulder rotation without the hip turn. You can actually hear my voice do that, that’s quite a tight stretch, to turn that round to 90 degrees, restricting the hip turn and what we are doing there is we are creating a bigger X angle, so the X angle is this term that we use to define the hip rotation, the shoulder rotation.

If the shoulder rotation you can go round along way and the hip rotation doesn’t we create an X and the bigger the X the more power you have for your downswing. So for example if I turned 90 degrees of my shoulders but my hips also follow to 90 degrees you don’t hear the strain in my voice there's very little tension here, resistance, there is very little power to hit the golf ball, if I turn my shoulders without my hips you can hear my voice starts to get tighter and tighter and tighter, then I’ve got power.

But what if you’re not very flexible what if you don’t have the ability to create that X angle on your backswing? Restricting your hip turn then would purely restrict shoulder rotation. You get all the guys, less flexible guys, bad backs that sort of thing turning here we’ve only got 45 degrees of hip rotation — sorry 45 degrees of shoulder rotation without the hips therefore massive loss of power so if you’ve got less flexibility, maybe an old injury, a bad back something like actually increasing hip rotation could be the key for more power.

But if you are very young, very fit, very supple then restricting hip rotation could be a way of increasing power. It’s maybe worth trying both seeing which you are unless you already know whether you’re flexible or inflexible, so it’s not an easy answer sometimes restricting hip rotation can increase power.