Why You Need This:

Stop standing up in your downswing!

One of the most common problems with golfers is losing their posture in the downswing…

And this causes all sorts of problems like topping the ball and losing distance.

So what exactly does it mean to stand up in your downswing?

Well here’s what you don’t want to see in your downswing:

• hips moving up and forward towards the ball
• upper body shifting back away from the ball

Those movements will tend to force you to cast your club which kills your distance.

In this video, you’ll get an explanation of how bad posture can hurt your swing…

And also a great drill you can practice to make sure you’re hitting through the ball with all of your power.

Watch this video now!

What's Covered: Methods on how to stop standing up in the downswing.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:13

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to Top Speed Golf. In this section we’re going to talk about one of the most common problems that are out there in the golf swing.

We’re going to talk about standing up out of the shot, losing your posture, early extension.

Those are all the same way of basically saying as you’re making your downswing, instead of staying down and in your posture as you can see on my screen, you can see how my hips are staying back, my spine angle is staying in posture, my shoulders are staying in alignment and swinging o through the shot.

That’s the good way, that’s the way you want to do it to be consistent. The other way is to stand up out of that, so that means my hips are actually moving forward toward the ball on the downswing, my upper body’s moving back.

I have a tendency to kind of cast to lose some lag, almost flip the club a little bit to be able to reach that ball. That’s a very common problem, a lot of people struggle with this.

We’re going to break it down for you step by step. We have a few videos in this series that are going to go over everything that is related to coming out of your posture.

I’m going to give you drills on how to fix this, and if you follow along with these, it’s going to make the most sense you’ve ever seen as far as why you’re coming out of posture and how to fix that.

You get these reps in, you’re going to be staying in posture for the rest of your life, and you’re going to have a lot more fun playing golf.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so for this first video, let me talk about the most common things. We’re going to go over the overall shape of the body. We’re going to get the overall picture of what’s going on. This is really going to help a lot of you guys out there.

So when I’m doing this incorrectly, usually what’s happening – there can be a variety of ways that this is happening – but you probably notice that maybe in the backswing you start to come down a little bit too much.

Maybe you get a little too close to the ball as you’re going back. Then as you start your downswing, your hips feel like they kind of slide forward and tuck under your body, and your chest feels like it moves away from the ball.

What that allows you to do, the reason this feels pretty good for a lot of you guys, is that it keeps you away from the ground, for one, keeps you away from chunking the ball.

Number two is, you back up, now you feel like you can really swing your arms at the golf ball.

As I start to let my hips go towards the ball and my chest backs up away from it, I feel like I can really throw my hands at the golf ball.

It feels very powerful, the problem is there I start flipping and start pushing the club a little bit too much with my right hand.

Usually what’s happening, along with this is that my hip is bumping too far toward the target.

So if I’m hitting the ball this direction, instead of having that good compression line like we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System where my left ankle, my left hip, my left shoulder, that’s one of the five fundamentals we need to get correct in the swing.

Instead of having those nice and lined up, we tend to get that left hip bumping out in front, and now all of a sudden I can feel some pain in here, and it really makes me want to stand up out of it, because my hips cannot rotate anymore.

Let’s address some of those issues here at first. We’ll start from the most common thing.

What I want you to do, is to stand a little bit taller as you’re at address. So a lot of times if were kind of slouched over at address, as we go back we want to back away.

We’re going to stand nice and tall. The way I’m going to do this, I’m going to stand straight up and down, have my shoulders down and back, my chest up, my chin high.

I’m going to take my club here, and I’m going to let my hips kind of drop back until my chest is nice and high, and I’m basically as tall as I can be while letting my arms reach down to the golf ball. It’s a nice high position.

As I go to the top of my swing, now from her as I start down, that’s when I’m going to start moving closer and closer to the golf ball.

Then as I come on through the golf ball, I’m going to be in my posture, as you see as I come all the way around, my shoulders are going to be in my posture.

We want to feel like my hips are actually moving this way back behind my body. All right, so as I stand taller, that first move down, I’m going to feel like my left foot is almost pushing out this way.

Now if Newton’s law talks about for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So when I push into the ground this way, that’s going to start my hips, the ground pushes back up into me, that’s going to start my hips moving out in the way.

They’re going to feel like they move behind me, and it’s also going to get my hips to open up more.

A lot of you guys that are struggling with early extension, you probably look a little something more like this, where you’re doing here at impact, there at impact, and now my hips haven’t rotated open.

Not only is it going to help you to stay in your posture, it’s going to help your hips to rotate a little bit more, and get you some more speed too.

As we’re looking at this from the face-on view, you want to make sure that if I draw that compression line, I’m going to draw that arrow, or that line, from my left ankle.

A straight line tilted slightly away from the target, go about 6° or 8°, that’s fine. Then from there, as I take that line, I want my hips to stay on that line as I’m coming into contact.

I don’t want my hip to do this and bump in front of it, now all of a sudden I’m going to want to stand up, because my hips can’t rotate out of the way. That’s a big key for this.

So when I put those two things together, now what I’m going to have – or those three things together, I should say – I’m standing up nice and tall as I’m at address.

As I go in my downswing, that’s when my hips are going to stat to open up. I want to make sure they don’t slide toward the target, so my hip’s going to feel like it’s moving back that way.

I want to feel like I’m pushing out with this front foot into the ground, that’s going to push this hip back up to allow it to stay back and rotate out of the way.

So I’ve got to really push into the ground with that lead foot to get that hip to clear out of the way.

Now you’ll see they’re open, and you’ll see that I’m much more in my posture.

So those three things, staying taller, making sure my hips don’t slide forward, I’m actually pushing my hip back. Then number three, going in to get that hip to go back this way also.

Now the last piece of this that I want you to work on today, as we’re doing these slow motion drills, let’s go ahead and get rid of this golf ball for a second.

Those are the first two moves. The last move is as you’re coming on through, when your hands are about chest high on the follow through, I want your shoulders to still be angled down to the ground.

So again, to do this, I have to…if I let my hips dothat, I have no room to get my shoulders down. I have to let my hips drop out of the way, let my hips rotate open, now I can extend my posture.

We’re going to do about another, or a total of 100 reps focusing in on all four of those pieces. I’ll go ahead and do that with my club across my shoulders here, which will make it easy to see.

Number one, nice and tall at address. Number two, the hips move back and start to rotate open.

Number three, as I come through the shot into my follow through, my shoulders are down, this would be this portion of the swing. Then as I come all the way on around, I’m going to go ahead and stand on up and be facing the target.

Do 100 repetitions, pausing in those pieces going nice and slow, checking each piece of that.

Once you feel comfortable with that, let’s go ahead and do another 100, just doing some slow-motion practice swings.

Again, you’re only going about 60 or 70 percent speed, no reason to rush those at all. Then once we do those, we’re ready to go ahead and hit a shot.

As long as we have those pieces down, we’re going to stay in our posture one heck of a lot better. Let’s try it out.

There we go, dead straight, right down the middle of the fairway. Work on those four keys, get in your reps. See you guys later.