Why You Need This:

Today’s instruction we talk about getting proper rotation and shoulder turn. If you do not turn correctly and rotate your shoulders, you will lose all kinds of power and distance. It is most crucial to understand, not to only use the arms. Rotation is key for power in the golf swing. You don’t want to over rotate, but don’t under rotate either. The average PGA Tour pros rotate their shoulders to about 90 degrees and their hips 45 degrees out. Let’s get started!

What's Covered: N/A

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration:

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, hope you all are doing great. Now one of the common things you’ll see with your own students as you’re giving lessons, a lot of people don’t want to get the proper shoulder turn.

A lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll look like it’s mostly arms, they’ll pick the club up, you’ll see that I have very little shoulder turn going back, I have very little hip turn going back, and then I’ll just kind of throw my arms at it.

Those are the players that are usually hitting at the shortest, a lot of times older players do that, it’s very, very common, so it happens to a lot of people.

If we’re going to get more distance, we’re going to have to load up the body properly, we’re going to have to get a big turn going back. PGA average shoulder turn, we’re talking shoulder socket to socket is about 128°.

So they’re going well past 90° as they’re loading up, the hips are turning about 48°, could be a little bit more than that for players that aren’t quite as flexible as a typical tour player.

So big piece of this is posture, and making sure that your spine, the vertebrae that are lined up in your spine are nice and stretched out. You have good posture so you can rotate as you’re going back.

Because we want to get some separation between my hips and my shoulders, and to get that to rotate.

If you look at my spine, the vertebrae in the bottom or your lumbar spine, those don’t get a whole lot of rotation. So you can’t get a whole lot of rotation with your lumbar spine.

Where you have your cervical spine which is up at the top. That’s what’s going to allow you to rotate your head and your neck, but it doesn’t really help us to get the rotation between the shoulders and the hips.

So in the middle is what’s called your thoracic spine, this is where you’re going to get most of your rotation, it’s just in the mid-section of your spine. You can look it up on the picture if you want to get more detailed into exactly which vertebrae these are.

But the main thing here is that as I set up, let’s go ahead and stand straight up and down. I want to feel like my chest is out, I’m very tall, I’m really in good posture here. I don’t want to get – you’ll see people sometimes, they really want to stick their butt out, and this really gets rounded back.

That’s too much, it’s not going to really help you. Or you’ll see people a lot of times, they get rounded this way, that’s really going to hurt rotation because now my vertebrae are kind of crunching in on each other.

So what I want to do as I started there, is to get really nice and tall. Spread each of those vertebrae out, and then I’m just going to feel like I dropped my hips back, get a little bit of knee flex, and now I’m in a position here where I can really rotate my chest and get some separation from the hips and shoulders as I go back to get that really good shoulder turn back.

Then as I’m coming through, I’m going to be in my posture down into the straight line release. I’m definitely going to be in my posture, from there I want to feel like I’m nice and high with my follow through.

Let’s imagine I’m going this way. I want to feel like I’m nice and high as I’m coming through. I want to feel like my chest is up toward the sky, my nose is high, and I’m almost going to be kind of very slightly curved back.

I don’t want to exaggerate that obviously. I don’t want to get into an old school reverse C, but I want to be elongated there that way my shoulders should be pointing to the left about 45°, my hips are going to be toward the target.

So if you look at the best players in the world, spine is very long and tall, I’m going to go ahead and rotate about 50, slightly between 45° and 50° with my hips. I like to err on a little bit more.

Go as much as you can with the shoulders, PGA tour players about 128°, and then as you’re coming through, hips toward the target and my shoulders are going to be pointing over here to the left, and I’ve got to be nice and tall as I’m coming through also, to get that full range of motion.

So if we go back to our player that was struggling with rotation, the spine was kind of crunched as they went into their backswing, it’s all arms, and as I came there they were very low and crunched over versus being high and letting it rotate through.

So if you can show them this, you can align their spine, it’s going to free up their swing, they’re going to pick up some good miles per hour, and they’re going to think you’re a really smart person to even know it, it’s pretty basic stuff when it comes to aligning the spine, because a lot of people just don’t know this and they don’t teach this.

So I think it’s going to really help out your students, and it’s pretty simple to do so.

So good luck to you guys, good luck in your all’s lessons, and I’ll see you all soon.