Today’s instruction we talk about a huge part of the system and that is the femur. The key is aligning the femur correctly, so the muscles fire to move other bones like the hips and spine. The femurs help create posture and stance for correct alignment and address. With out good posture and stance, you won’t be able to generate the full potential energy there. Thus, ending in low distance and power.
What's Covered: How to align the femur properly to stay in your posture.
Golf Pros Featured:
Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard
Video Duration: 4:01
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Hi guys, and welcome back. Hope your lessons are going great. Hope you guys are making tons of money out there.
Today’s video we’re going to talk about something that’s very, very common. You’re going to see this time and time again, and we’re talking to talk about how the femur plays its role in this, and aligning the femur properly so that when you fire those muscles, you’re going to be able to clear those hips, stay down in your posture, and really get some powerful shots.
If the femur is basically the bone, the biggest bone that’s in our upper leg here. If we align this properly, we’re going to be able to move correctly in the golf swing, but most people don’t
The common thing that I see time and time again, for people to have what’s called early extension, or when they’re coming in the downswing, they start to raise up and their hips are moving toward the target like this.
You’ll often see sometimes at contact they tend to be like this, where the hips aren’t very open. So you see my hips aren’t really opening up enough. I should be closer to about 45° open as I’m coming into contact.
This has a lot to do with how your femur, especially the femur in the left leg is aligned. So when you’re sliding too far forward, your hips won’t rotate. So as I’m hitting a shot, let’s imagine that I’m going to drill this shot right into my bag.
If I make the downswing, let’s imagine that I’m bumping my hips to the left. So instead of opening my hips, my hips are just sliding, you’ll hear a lot of people talk about bumping the hips to the left.
There is a weight shift to the left, but if I just bumped these hips and don’t open, what’ll happen is a lot of times I’ll stand up. So I’m going to bump the hip, I’ll stand up as I’m coming through contact, and my hips won’t be able to rotate out of the way.
The reason is at the top of my femur into my hip socket here, as this goes forward it gets very difficult to rotate. That’s feeling really, really tight in the outside of that socket. I’m not going to be able to rotate them at all.
So if we’re looking at this from down the line, I’m going to bump my hips, and now you’ll see that as I come in at contact, I’m not really opening my hips at all. I’m tending to get my hips coming toward the ball a little bit too much. You’ll also see people flipping when they do this.
Well two things we can do that are going to combat this for you, and make it a lot easier for your students to get rid of this move once and for all.
Number one, we know that if we slide the hips too far forward we can’t rotate, so now as I’m making my downswing, as my legs start to bend a little bit, my upper femur.
If you look at all the top players, you look at a Rory McIlroy, you look at Jason Day, you look at all these great ball strikers, Adam Scott, you’re going to see this angled back toward my body a little bit.
So even though I’m shifting to the left, my upper femur is angled back so that now as I push into the ground instead of sliding, I’m going to rotate that out of the way.
Then if you’re looking from this direction, if I was going to hit the ball towards you, I want to have a little bit of bend in the femur going this way. So if I start to slide my hips, now you’ll see that straightening up, and then I have my hips come forward.
Well now this is straight up and down, and as I’m hitting the shot, I’m not going to get any kind of rotation there, I’m not really going to get any power from my legs. The proper way to do this is as I’m coming down, I’m going to let my legs open up and start to rotate, and now you can see that I have some bend in this femur.
So it’s kind of angled back, and now when I drive into the ground with my left leg, that’s going to clear this hip back out of the way because my femur is angled back that way.
That’s going to help me to rotate my hips and as I get into that straight line release, you’re going to see I’ve stayed in my posture and this hip has cleared out of the way in the straight line release.
So if you’re struggling with that, your players’ got early extension, their hips are moving toward the ball, make sure that that femur is angled back as they start down, and make sure that it has some flex in it, so that it can clear that hip out of the way.
It’s really going to help you guys out. This is a good one, because it’s very, very common. People will think you’re a genius even though it’s just some basic alignments of the leg, not too complicated.
So good luck to you guys. Work hard, learn this femur motion inside and out, it’s going to really help your instruction.
