Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover the proper golf swing left knee movement.

Your left knee is crucial, not only for rotating your hips, but also for consistent contact.

Move your left knee correctly and you'll get a great golf swing that's nice and effortless.

First, you'll learn how your hips need to rotate throughout the golf swing.

What you don't want to do is bump your hips toward the target in the downswing.

This makes it difficult to rotate your hips and bumping may lead to unnecessary hip pain.

To avoid bumping your hips, I want you to start by rotating your hips back by about 45 degrees in your backswing.

As you start down, turn your left leg out a bit towards the target.

(Rory McIlroy is a great example for how your left knee should move in the downswing.)

You'll find that this left leg movement will allow you to easily rotate your hips.

Quick tip...

To avoid bumping your hips, focus on your belt buckle and make sure it's not sliding towards the target.

Your belt buckle should be rotating, not sliding much.

Next, you'll discover how to improve your "impact glide."

The "impact glide" refers to shallowing out your club head near impact which gives you a longer, more consistent, impact zone.

There are a few drills I want you to work on...

First, in the downswing, get your left leg to move out and bend your legs.

Then rotate your hips and straighten out your left leg through impact.

Do a hundred reps while pausing to check your movements, then do a hundred reps with a nice, fluid swing.

Watch this video now to discover how the correct golf swing left knee movement can help you get much more consistent ball striking!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:02

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, and welcome back. In today’s video we’re going to talk about some of the secrets of the left leg, what the left knee needs to do. It’s really important, in not only rotating your hips, but also being able to get consistent contact.

I’m going to go over in a step-by-step drill that you can do, get better contact, and to get those hips rotating on through so you can feel like your swing is nice and effortless.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so first let’s talk about the hip rotation. This is something that a lot of people struggle with. A lot of times I’ll see people that I’d say almost half of students I see, almost tend to slide the hips forward too much this way. We’ve been told to bump our hips for years and years.

Instead of getting rotation and clearing those hips out of the way, we tend to bump the hips forward and then we end up standing up out of the shot.

If you’re looking from this angle, what that looks like as I’m bumping my hips, they’re not opening, and then I’m standing up out of the shot like this, which is called early extension. A lot of times I’ll start casting or flipping the club when I’m doing this.

This is really going to help you out if we can get this left knee motion a lot better in the golf swing. So as you go to the top of the swing, we’re going to rotate those hips and shoulders. It’s what we call the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System.

All that means is that my hips are going to rotate about 45°, my shoulders are going to get at 90° or a little bit more. Now I’m really loaded up, I feel nice and powerful in the golf swing.

Then as I start down, what I want to have happen is this left knee is going to start to turn out a little bit. I’ll tell you a great player to look at for this, is if you look at Rory McIlroy. He does a really good job of turning that left knee out.

Now if you look at the upper part of my leg here, it’s angled back and as I start to press into the ground as I’m coming through, I can rotate my hips through very easily.

If I’m sliding on the other hand, if I’m bumping my hips forward and doing this, now you’ll see my leg is angled forward. If I push into the ground like I’m going to be doing in my downswing, I really can’t rotate my hips. I’m feeling like I’m kind of jammed up or locked up there.

I’ve got to get that left knee going out, that’s going to put my hip back. As I come on through, now I’m going to be able to rotate through that shot much more easily.

Another way of feeling this, making sure that you turn that left knee out, make sure that your belt buckle doesn’t slide way to the left. So my belt buckle won’t be moving this way very far.

I’m going to go ahead and get a little shift to the left, that left knee’s going to come out, and then from there, my belt buckle’s only going to get a little small shift to the left. Then it’s going to stay there as it rotates.

So I don’t want to see this motion, it’s going to be more this turns out as I push into the ground. That’s pushing this hip back, and I can rotate on through really, really nicely.

That’s really key in feeling very effortless. As you get some momentum in the swing, I want to be able to turn back very nicely, and then rotate on through very nicely and not have to feel like I’m fighting against my lower body.

Another piece with this, is going to be getting what’s called a flat spot as you’re coming through contact. I like to call this impact glide, and let me explain what this means.

If you look at all the really good ball strikers, if you’re going to be really consistent, hit the center of the face time and time again, we can’t have a circular swing.

A circular swing means that the club, like a pendulum, is going down, bottoming out, and then immediately coming back up.

What’s really happening in the golf swing, is that as I start my downswing, I’m actually working down toward the ground. My legs are bending, my chest is working down toward the ground, my hands are getting fairly low, and as this club starts to work back up, my club releases.

So if you can imagine this kind of exaggerated, if I had a lot of forward shaft lean, my hands are really low, I’m coming down on a circular arc, but as the butt end of the club starts to work back up, the head of the club works down and we get this flat spot.

The club comes down into the ground, shallows out, it’s level through impact, and then it comes back up again. Another way of visualizing this is really easy to see, if I grab the middle of the club, what this should look like is as I start my downswing, this butt end of the club’s nice and low.

Then it’s going to start to work back up as the club works down. So you can see how the butt end’s working up as the club head is still moving down. That’s what gets it that flat spot.

Now in order to be able to do this, we have to use this left leg correctly to be able to get that motion coming back up, to get the butt end of the club to start turning back up correctly. As I start down here, I’m going to pause with a bunch of lag.

Left wrist is nice and bowing there, and then from here, this is when my knee is out, and I’m going to start to push into the ground. You’ll see my left hip starts to rise up as it’s opening up. That’s going to allow my left shoulder as I rotate on through to rise up.

Then as I release the club, the butt end of the club’s turning up and releasing as the head is feeling like it’s got momentum kicking out and turning on over, and then everything can whip on through there. I can get that nice, shallow angle of attack, compress the golf ball.

I could hit an inch behind the golf ball, two inches behind the golf ball, it’s coming in so nice and smooth, it’s still going to be a pretty solid shot. But again, that comes down to that left knee, that’s a big part of this.

The practice drills I want you guys to work on, number one, we’re going to set up here. The first move down is going to be to get this knee out and my legs to bend. This is going to be my lag position. Then as I come on through, I’m going to be straightening that leg and letting the hips rotate on through.

As I get through to my straight line release, like we talk about in the system, I want to check to make sure my hips have rotated and that my hip has worked up. So I’m pushing into the ground, I feel like I’m pushing down and out to get that club to whip on through there.

Go ahead and do about 100 repetitions pausing, do another 100 repetitions nice, fluid swing. Then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to make a full swing. I’m going to see if I can get this nice flat spot, compress the heck out of this golf ball, and feel like my hips are nice and effortless.

There we go. Hit that one well, hips felt really good, effortless swing. Didn’t slide, got them to rotate. Good luck to you guys, get in the drills. I’ll see you all soon.