Why You Need This:

“If you’re trying to stay more in your posture than we’ve seen here… we’re probably trying to overdo it.”

Are you frustrated that your golf swing feels like a battle against your body? 

This video reveals the #1 reason most golfers misunderstand posture and shows you a surprising new fix that anyone can do.

This video busts the myth that you need to be super flexible or maintain a hunched-over position to stay in your posture. 

Instead, you’ll discover a simple, comfortable, and sustainable way to hit powerful shots…

This video reveals the simple truth that will set your swing free and finally protect your back!

Think of your golf swing like a squat exercise. If you try to stay hunched over all the way down, you’ll strain your back. Instead, you need to maintain a strong posture, but allow for some natural movement as you come back up.  Your golf swing is similar – learn the right posture and you’ll hit the ball further, more accurately, and with ease.

What's Covered:

Golf Pros Featured: Bernhard Langer    Fred Couples    Tiger Woods    Will Zalatoris    

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:12

Video Transcription:

Clay: Now, one of the questions that I get all the time is, do I have to be 20 years old and super flexible like a rubber band to be able to stay in my posture? Some of these positions look pretty crazy. Well, first, let me go through a test so that you'll know if you're flexible enough to do this. And if you're not, I'll give you some quick adjustments there.

And then I'm going to go into looking at some pros. Both very young pros. We're going to look at Tiger Woods when he was very young and talk about how his posture has changed over the years. We're going to look at some extreme examples. We're also going to look at some champions tour players that are a little bit older so that this will fit any player that's playing golf.

If you're playing golf, I will find something that's going to help you to stay in your posture the right way here. So first let's go over the test. What I want you to do is go ahead and put a ball on the ground. You can do this from your living room. You don't have to do it anywhere outside. If you're outside, that's fine.

Uh, and I'm going to put a ball in front. If you're familiar with the top speed golf system, you know, the straight line release is where we're releasing the club. Put that ball in front about six feet in front of the ball that you're hitting. We're not going to hit a ball here. I just want you to feel this.

Now we're going to go ahead and put a club across our shoulders, get down in our posture. So we're really going to bend down in our posture. Like we've been kind of exaggerating and here I'm going to open my hips until they're facing this ball in front and I'm going to get my shoulders until they're facing that ball in front.

Now, if I'm comfortable in this type of a position, This would be level shoulders, level with the ground, parallel with the ground. This would be close to 90 degree shoulders where I'm really bent over there. I want you to be able to get about a 45 here. Now if I can do that, then I'm perfectly flexible to be able to do this course.

Now from there we do that again. I turn, open my hips, let that right heel start to come off the ground, shoulders toward the golf ball or shirt buttons. Toward the golf ball in front in that 45 degree angle. That's all I have to be able to do to stay in my posture. And then from there, I'm going to go ahead and come out of my posture to my finish.

Now, a great finish position is going to be my weight stacked over my front foot. You'll see that every single spike on my back foot is off the ground. I don't want to have this at all. If my foot's staying on the ground and I rotate through, I'm going to kind of lose my posture, lose my balance. I'm going to be in my posture.

Then come up where I'm stacked and balanced over my front foot. Now notice here, my shoulders are level. And when I'm facing the target, I'm trying to get this right shoulder pointing a little bit more down into the right rough, and I'm just balanced. It's very similar to if I just took this right foot and brought it forward.

Obviously my feet are a little cockeyed because I've still got my front foot the same as it would be in a golf swing. I'm just standing here talking to somebody. The only difference is if I have my spine angle here. I'm going to be slightly tilted until my head is over my right foot or a little bit to the right of standing straight up and down.

Let's go ahead and do that one more time here. Going to the straight line release, 45 degree tilt with my shoulders. Coming to the full finish, I'm stacked over my front foot. I'm balanced just like I was standing on my front foot. My head, if I dropped a line from it would be just kind of outside my right foot or outside.

my body to the right. And that's all there is to stay in posture. I don't have to stay in my posture all the way down through the swing. If you're not super flexible, what's going to end up happening. If I try to stay down past this straight line release, my body's not going to be able to rotate. I'm going to hang back on this right foot and my arms are going to completely collapse like this.

If you've seen somebody ever swing kind of like that, that's what's going on. They're trying to stay down in their posture too long. All right. So now let's take a look at some of the pros. To see good and bad examples. All right. So let's take a look at a few pros here. Now, first, we're going to go over Tiger Woods.

This is back in 1993. Uh, this video is, and this is what I would say is the most beautiful, perfectly in posture looks fantastic, but not actually what I'm asking players to do. I just don't think it's feasible unless you're really hyper mobile. So here we're going to see, and I'm not sure who the instructor is.

It doesn't look like Butch. It's probably before Butch Harmon. Um, but as he's coming through impact, you'll see just what we talked about in the last court or the last part of the video as he comes into what would be the straight line release. You see those shoulders are very tilted. So here these shoulders are really tilted down a little more than 45 degrees.

And this is fantastic. If you want to tilt more than 45 degrees, that's really nice. So if the shoulders were perpendicular to the ground or straight up and down, that would be 90 degrees. level with the ground would be zero or flat. You can see he's really maintained his posture here. Head is well outside, uh, the right foot or the feet line.

And you know, just a fantastic position. Now, as he goes on to the finish, this is what is something that I'm not asking people to do is as the chest gets to the target, look how he's still really in that, what would be called right side bend. or his body is tilted to the right, almost like he's taking his hand right hand and trying to reach down toward his toes.

The spine is really curved here and especially into the finish. He maintains that all the way into the finish. Now you're gonna see at this point his spine is really tilted over to the right. That's too much for most players. That's not what I want people to do. And the reason is in the low back, you can see that the pelvis is basically straight up and down.

And then you have this big angle. And that's tough on the low back. Now, if I go to the different angle here, you're really going to see this. And I just think this is not a position, even though it looks beautiful. It looks so good on camera, because the posture is maintained, the spine angle is maintained all the way into the finish.

Looks great, but really just not realistic for what most players can do, and it can really put a strain on the back. Okay, so now let's look at Something that would be more along the lines of what I'd actually want players to do. So here, this is a newer video of Tiger. We obviously know he's had many back problems.

I'm not going to say it's from that severe extension of the spine, but it probably certainly didn't help. But we'll see here, all the way into the downswing, maintains his posture. Out into the straight line release. Really good tilt of the spine here. But then as he comes through to the finish, he doesn't keep that big bend to the right.

You'll notice that the spine stays almost straight up and down into the finish. And now we're going to see the position more along the lines of what I just went over. So the, the head is just barely kind of on the right side of the leg. spine straight up and down. You don't see this big curvature. So the pelvis now is pretty straight up and down.

The spine is just barely at a different angle than that. This is the type of move that any player can emulate. Obviously he's got multiple fusions here and he's doing this perfectly. This is just how his swing has gravitated this over the years. Um, most undoubtedly to protect the back and make it much easier on his back.

Now here, we're going to look at who I say is one of the worst offenders on tour of this. One of the things I wouldn't want you to try to do to stay in your posture because it could put some strain on your back is Will's alatorris. So again, we're going to see all the way in that straight line release, really tilted shoulders.

This is more than I would like. So he's well past 45 degrees, 45 degrees. It'd be like this. He's probably closer to say 70 degrees with the angle of his shoulders here. So that's a little bit extreme. I wouldn't recommend going that crazy. If you're really flexible, this is a great way to hit the ball, but at least from here, I want you to stand up in a more vertical position.

Now, we all know Will Zalatouris back problems, and we can see in the follow through, this makes me, I get uncomfortable just looking at this. So pelvis straight up and down, this big tilt to the right all the way into the finish where the spine angle is much different. Well, when you have that much curvature of the spine with rotation, I just think it's a little bit of a recipe for disaster.

So I'm guessing with his recent back troubles, you're going to see him start finishing in a much more upright position in years to come, but we'll have to see. So now let's take a look at Freddy Couples. Now this is early 1984 and we're going to see that he stays in his posture really well. Again, a little bit extreme for what I'd recommend.

Pretty steep angle of the shoulders. This is much steeper than 45 degrees. I'd say this is probably 65 degrees, something like that, or it's very vertical shoulders. Again, a great way to hit the golf ball, but a little bit tougher on the back. Now, as he comes through to his follow through, We're going to see just like Tiger Woods from early years and Zalatoris, uh, here recently, big angle difference between his hips and the spine.

So the pelvis is straight up and down and there's this big, what's called extension of the spine and that tilting to the right, the head well outside the right leg. And in my opinion, that's just way too much. Now let's take a look at Freddie here from recent years, 2020. So almost 40 years later, and we're going to see that he stays in his posture very well.

into that straight line release. Again, let's go one frame sooner than that. So right here, straight line release shoulders are pretty tilted again, a little steeper than 45. So a little more than you really need to do to play great golf. And as he comes through to his finish, you're going to see a much different position where the spine is much more up and down.

So it's not this big, huge tilt to the right. And again, It's just not possible to do that. If you're trying to get this huge tilt to the right. Yes, it looks beautiful. Yes, it looks great, but it's too much strain on the back and there's no reason to do that to stay in your posture. This is a pretty good model of what should be done.

It's still a little bit extreme. Let's look at who I would say is a great model, a fantastic player that anybody can emulate. All right. So here's Bernard Longer. We all know his, of his longevity. We all know that he's remained relatively injury free after hitting millions and millions of golf balls. And I think he does a fantastic job of what good posture looks like that's repeatable and is going to stand up for the test of time.

So again, into the straight line release, this is much closer to that 45 degree angle. He stayed in his posture here. He hasn't popped way up out of it, but as he comes to the finish, we're going to notice that now The pelvis and the spine are not that different angles. He's basically standing up over his right foot.

The shoulders are fairly level here. That right shoulders toward the target, like I just talked about earlier in this video. And if I drew a line down from his head, it's just barely outside the right part of his leg. That's a great thing to mimic. And I'll show that a few times here. If you're trying to have great posture, in a really repeatable way that's easy on the back.

All right, doesn't get much better than that. So keep a really clear mental image of what this looks like. If we're trying to stay more in our posture than what we've seen here with Bernhard Longer, we're probably trying to overdo it. This is picture perfect staying in your posture. If we're trying to stay way bent over, We're really going to end up hurting our back or really just a misconception of what a great golf swing when you stay in posture is.

So keep a really clean mental image of what this looks like. This is what you're trying to recreate. And let's jump right back into the course.