View "Losing Spine Angle in Golf Swing" Video

It's not uncommon for golfers learning the rotary swing to lose their spine angle through impact. No matter how hard they work at it, they always end up coming out of the shot and struggle with making solid contact. With atleast half the golfers I work with, the problem is NOT technique, but a matter of fitness. I'm not talking about how fast you can run a mile, rather I am referring to your golf-specific fitness level.

Golf is a unique sport in that it is extremely repetitive and places unique demands on the body throughout the entire swing. Unfortunately, many of the muscles needed in the golf swing to be active, strong and supple are the exact opposite muscles we use on a daily basis. In particular, the muscles we activate while sitting down.

Because we spend a great deal of time behind a computer these days, we are training our bodies to move and work in a certain way, no different than if we sat on the driving range for 8 hours and hit balls. I can think of very few things that are more damaging to a golfer's body and swing than sitting in front of a computer all day. Not only do you deal with the shoulders rolling forward as we reach for the keyboard to type and click, but the entire back side of the body is completely deactivated while sitting. These muscles, hips, glutes, and hamstrings are very critical for stabilizing the golf swing and if they don't work, your swing won't work, no matter how much you practice technique.

In this video, I show you a very simple exercise that can be done everyday while watching TV. It is a superb exercise for showing you to activate and strengthen the muscles in the hip area that are vital for helping you maintain your spine angle.

Note the red circle in the photo above. That is the area that we are targeting with these exercises. You should feel a stretching in this area as these muscles work to stablize the body into the followthrough. If you do not, you likely came out of your spine angle.

From the face on view, you can see how the left leg must be stable in order to support the rotation of the body during the backswing as well as into and through impact.

Lastly, you can see here again how the outside of the left hip is bearing most of the load of the swing while the spine angle is maintained.