Why You Need This:

In this video, you’ll discover a fitness exercise to create a stable golf swing with a tennis ball.

This exercise will stretch your upper spine and help you swing with a more Stable & Fluid Spine, which I emphasize in the Top Speed Golf System.

Posture is really important in the golf swing.

If you struggle with your posture, your spine won’t be nearly be as stable as it needs to be…

And you’ll have a tough time trying to rotate fully.

Most of us do have poor posture because we’re either sitting at work or sitting while driving.

Unfortunately, that entire time sitting contributes to poor posture.

The exercise in this video will help you get your posture back.

Not only will it help you rotate in your swing, but over time, you’ll likely feel better from all the stretching.

Watch this video now to improve your posture and swing with a more stable rotation!

What's Covered: How to stabilize your swing with a tennis ball

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Joe Yoon    

Video Duration: 5:32

Video Transcription:

Clay: All right guys, welcome back. We’re joined here again with Joe Yoon, he’s going to work through a great drill, a great way to stretch the upper spine to work on your Stable, Fluid Spine in the Golf System.

We talk about this, that’s one of our five keys in the Top Speed Golf System. We want to have a stable spine, so we don’t want to be sliding all over the place. We also want it to be fluid so we can rotate.

We’re going to do a great test, and then a really good stretch you can do right from your living room again, turn on the TV, and you’re going to improve your golf game.

What’ve you got for us today, Joe?

Joe: The first drill, and again, posture is so important in the golf swing. If you’re in poor posture, your spine isn’t stable, it’s going to be tough to rotate.

The first thing I’m going to have you do, is have Clay put this club on the back of his body. I’m going to one arm under, one hand over, and stand up nice and straight and tall. Why don’t you turn over this way, just so we can see.

We’re going to try to get pretty much his whole body touching this club. That will show us that he’s in a great posture, and that his spine is in a very neutral position.

From this position I’m going to have Clay drive his hips back, and then bend his knees just slightly. So a lot of people, because we sit at desks a lot, we drive a lot, we get kind of hunched over.

If that’s an issue, then Clay can go always just go ahead and relax his head just a little bit.

Clay: That’s a big key. A lot of times we get our posture, over the years, gets more and more rounded forward. That happens with, you can imagine the pelvis, this would be kind of tilted back to the anterior tilt, this would be the posterior tilt with the pelvis tucked under.

A lot of times we have the pelvis kind of rounded under, and we get those shoulders rounded forward, and then from there the big thing is, we’re going to do one of two things.

We either number one, we try to rotate a lot and we end up sliding way off the ball, or number two, we don’t want to rotate our spine very much and we end up picking up the club.  In one of my other videos from the Top Speed Golf System, I’ve talked about how when you get that spine rounded, those vertebrae start kind of crunching in on each other, you can’t get the full rotation, so there goes your Stable, Fluid Spine, there goes your Power Turn, and you’re really struggling with that. He’s got a great workout that he’s going to show us that can do. Again, throw on the TV, two-minute workout, and it’s going to help you stay in your posture a lot better.

Joe: We talked about posture and how poor posture can affect our stable and fluid spine, and how we can rotate.

What I’m going to have Clay do is just kind of demonstrate what most of us look like because of our sitting in cars and at a desk all the time. So I’m just going to have Clay kind of show us what poor posture looks like.

What happens is these muscles get super tight, and we get all these knots in there. I’m going to show you an exercise, or a kind of mobility exercise that you can do just with a tennis ball and right at your home, right on the ground.

I’m going to have Clay lay on the ground here, and all we’re going to do is, we’re going to have Clay just put this tennis ball and kind of pin it right on his back. One of the most popular spots that I like to do is put that tennis ball right between the shoulder blade and the spine.

Just make sure you’re not on the actual spine, because that’s not good. I’m going to have Clay lay down, and kind of pin that tennis ball right into the ground and then right into his back.

What I’m going to also have Clay do is kind of give himself a hug. This is going to pull the shoulder blades apart, and a little bit easier to get into the muscles of the back.

Then from here, just kind of roll around and try to find some hot spots, so some tender spots so we can loosen up the muscles.

Clay: I just want to work all along the back. Same thing as last time, we can set the two-minute timer, throw on a TV show, a football game, something like that, and I can just roll around and make sure I spend two minutes on each side, or two minutes for the whole thing?

Joe: I like to do two minutes on each side here, and then again, just finding those tender spots. If it hurts, it usually means that it’s tight. Hang out on those spots, if it hurts maybe hang out in that spot for a just a little bit longer, for maybe 10-20 seconds until it doesn’t hurt as much.

Two minutes is up, so Clay why don’t you show us a little bit more about posture and how it improved it.

Clay: Whenever we’re set up here, you can definitely feel a big difference in your spine after you do that for a couple minutes.

What we’re really trying guard against is making sure that we’re not rounding our shoulders forward, getting a lot of what would be protraction of the shoulders, the upper body really rounded.  You were showing me this, and I wasn’t there for two minutes.

I would loosen up for 15-20 second per sides, and do a whole bunch of other stretches, but I just wasn’t holding it long enough. So when I started to really pick it up and I could go a little bit longer, I could really tell a big difference.

Again, we’re trying to get into our good posture, go ahead and put this club across our back. Then as you bend forward, you’re going to feel that it’s easier to keep your shoulders kind of down and back as you’re going there.

So the last thing I’ll leave you with her, as far a golf standpoint, is let’s not over do it. Find that range where if I feel like I’m really straight with my back, and I’m in great posture but it feels very uncomfortable, just relax just a little bit from that so that you feel fairly comfortable in your golf set up.

As you do this over time, you’re going to feel comfortable getting a little bit straighter and a little bit straighter.

Don’t feel like you have to get it all textbook perfect on day one, especially for those of you guys who are getting a little bit older, and sitting at a desk for a long time. I think it’s a great workout, Joe.

Joe: All right, thank you.