Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn about your golf swing posture in crazy detail.

You'll get answers to questions such as...

When do you stay in your posture?

How much do you bend forward?

And...

How does your posture change throughout the golf swing?

There are 2 basic posture moves to focus on in your swing...

And this video will help you nail your posture for solid, consistent golf shots.

Flexion

This is when you create a sharp angle between your upper legs and torso.

Essentially this refers to you bending over a bit and bending the knees during your setup.

Later in the swing, you begin to stand up which is extension.

Note that you don't want early extension or getting out of your posture too soon.

Side bend

If you stay in posture through contact, you'll need side bend to the right.

In the video, I demonstrate how much flexion, extension, and side bend that you want.

There's no exact rule for how much flexion you need, but you'll get some general tips in the video.

Watch this video now to learn about your posture in the golf swing.

Get the details you need for making more consistent contact with your shots!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:50

Video Transcription:

Hi guys. It’s absolutely great to have you back here today. I’m going to go with another crazy detail video. It seems that a lot of people like these videos, I’m going to talk in a lot of detail everything that’s happening with posture in our golf swing.

When we stay in our posture, how much do we bend forward, how do we move throughout the golf swing, and there’s two different things that are happening as we’re changing posture throughout the swing.

It’s constantly changing, but once we understand the basic idea, it’s going to be pretty simple to stay in your posture and hit some really good clean, consistent golf shots.

I’m also going to hit a few golf balls. A lot of times I get questions, people wanting to see my swing, or wanting to see me hit shots.

I know there’s a lot of instructors out there, some of them can hit it very well, some of them can’t hit it very well at all, but it’s just good to see that it’s not just me sitting up here talking about ideas.

This is something that we can actually do, we can put it to use, and we can play some good golf doing this.

Before we start out, when I get to hitting the golf balls, what I have is my FlightScope radar, X2 Elite. It’s a $12,000 radar that actually tacks the ball, and it’s going to tell us how far we hit it and the direction that we’re hitting the ball.

I’ve got it lined up right for my target in the distance, and I’ll make some swings on that. Then I’ll show you guys the live feedback on there. Then before we do that though, I want to talk about our posture and the two different things that we have with our posture.

When I’m talking about posture, I’m talking about our legs, our hips, and our upper body. Anything from the shoulders down, excluding the arms, excluding the club, I’m not worried about that at all in this video.

Now a couple things that would happen when we lose our posture. The most popular one is what’s called early extension. That means that as we come into the downswing, our hips go forward, our upper body goes back.

We end up kind of casting, flipping the club, and we look something like this at impact rather than what you’d see with the pros would be more down in their posture as they’re coming on through.

If we’re looking from this angle, that would be my hips coming forward and me casting the club. That’s a loss of posture and what we call early extension.

There’s two things that are happening, two different ways you can move your body. There’s flexion and extension from your hips, which would be, this would be flexion.

What that means is my upper legs, my femur, the bone that’s in there and my pelvis are at a different angle. I’m creating a sharper angle between my legs and my torso.

You can see my spine angle here is leaning forward, my legs are slightly bent, that would be flexion. Later in the swing as I’m coming through contact, I’m going to get what’s called extension which means I’m straightening this up.

We call that early extension, that means I was standing up, that means I was doing that too early in my swing. My hips are moving forward, and now the line between my femur and my spine is one straight line, that’s full extension.

I go into hyper extension, I could do this which is going even farther. That’s the first way of talking about it in the swing.

Then we also have side bend. Side bend to the right would basically mean when I take my shoulders, and I bend them to the right like this.

In the downswing, for example, in the follow through, my right side is bent. I’m bent over to the right and I have a lot of side bend, right-side bend. Opposite of that would be left-side bend, going this way.

Side bend to the right, side bend to the left, this would be neutral, and then we have flexion meaning I’m going forward, and extension, meaning I’m coming up out of that.

As we’re at address, what’s happening is, we’re going to stand nice and tall. As I walk into this golf ball, I’m going to go ahead and let my hips drop back and my upper body, my torso, hinge forward pretty naturally.

There’s not an exact amount that we want to do here. We want to make sure that my head’s nice and high.

I don’t want to be standing up so tall that I have to crank my head down like this to see the golf ball. I see that sometimes from beginners.

I’m going to tilt forward until my upper body just looks nice and relaxed. If you look at my arms, they’re going to hang down pretty naturally to where I would be gripping the club.

If I’m too far away from the ball, and maybe too bent over, if my arms hung down naturally, well then I wouldn’t be able to reach the ball. I’d have to have my arms way out away from my body.

Or if I’m here, too close, well now all of a sudden I’m going to be standing kind of straight up and down to make room. I just want to set up, I’m going to bend forward into flexion until I get comfortable.

We don’t have to memorize any of these terms either. Just feel like your hips drop back, if you were to let your arms hang down about right here, that’s about where we’re going to be gripping the club.

If you like to stand a little farther away from it, Moe Norman stood pretty far away from it, that was completely fine. Jim Furyk stands pretty close to it, that’s completely fine. You can win $65 million, swinging like Jim Furyk.

There’s things in the golf swing that are important, and there’s things that aren’t as important. It’s important just to get comfortable and have a little bit of bend forward at address.

Now as we go to the top -- actually let’s go ahead and hit our first shot here and see how it goes.

There we go, that one was dead straight. Just a few yards to the right of the flag, and let’s see what that one says. That was probably two to three yards to the right of the flag. That was a 7 iron, 176 carry, almost dead straight, a little bit of a fade.

That’s our proper hinge forward. On that one I just hinged forward until I got comfortable.

Now at the top of the swing, we’re actually going to have side bend to the left. We’re going to go ahead and bend this way a little bit. That’s going to keep our shoulders in the posture.

What I mean by that is, as I go to the top of the swing here – let me go ahead and pause for you – I’m staying in my posture. If I was to put a club across my shoulders, this club should be pointing out somewhere between four to eight feet outside the ball.

With a driver it would be a little bit more, pitching wedge it will be a little bit less, or a little bit more tilt, but I’m staying in the tilt.

There I’m actually losing a little bit of this flexion, I’m keeping some of my flexion which means I’m not doing this. If I was to stand up and do that, that would be your reverse pivot.

So I’ve got to keep a little bit of this forward bend from my body, that’s flexion. If I was to have a lot flexion I would look like this, that would be a reverse weight shift.

If I had no flexion, that would look like this, that’s a reverse pivot, so your body’s leaning back. I’ve got to keep a little bit of flexion, and I’m going to add in to that some side bend.

As I go to the top, that’s staying in my posture. Everything looks really good. I’m basically rotating around my body, keeping my spine at an overall forward angle.

You’ll notice when I make this swing, my left shoulders stays down, my right shoulder goes up. I keep a little flexion in my hips, and I’m going to the top of the swing keeping really, really nice posture. Let’s try that one out.

There we go, same thing. Cut that one a little bit more. Didn’t hit it quite as good, let’s see what it says on the machine here. Just a little bit more of a fade. That one was 171, and again, just probably 10-12 feet right of the target.

That’s the top of the swing. We had left side bend, we kept a little bit of flexion. Now as we come through impact, let’s go – what we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System is going right into the straight line release.

That’s when if this is my golf ball that I’m hitting, I’m going to get a lot of lag halfway down, and then as I come through this golf ball into the release, that angle of lag – watch the club, the club’s pointing outside my forearms, big angle.

Then as I come through, that club is releasing until it’s going to split my forearms when my club’s about 45° in front. We could also put a golf ball about four feet in front of the golf ball you’re hitting, and you’d be releasing that angle to there.

So when I get to that angle, this is kind of confusing to a lot of people, what I’m actually doing, I’m getting right side bend, and I’m also getting extension. So my hips are moving forward. Again, extension is when I do this, and then right side bend.

When I put those together – let’s go to my straight line release here. Again, I’m in my posture. As I start down and go to the straight line release, I’m still in my posture.

Look how my shoulders are down, but to do that I went from left side bend to right side bend. Now my right side is bent forward. As I went through there, through the release, now I’ve lost all that.

If I turned to a 45, let’s actually go this way. If go to my straight line release, now you can see this is extended. I was flexed, I extended my hips to get some power through the shot.

The reason that’s so important, and it makes sense in the golf swing, we talk about this, we call it impact glide in the System, in the Top Speed Golf System.

My club as I’m coming down, is going to get a log of lag and it’s going to reach the lowest point. If you look at the butt end of the grip, it reaches the lowest point here.

As I extend up, that grip is actually going to turn up and that’s going to get the club to whip through contact and it’s fully released when it gets to the straight line release on out in front.

So I’m having at the top, again, we’re going to recap. I’m flexed at address, a bit forward. At the top I have left side bend, and I’m keeping a little bit of flexion.

As I come through to the straight line release, I’m extending my hips, and I’m going ahead and getting some right side bend. Shoulders tilting to the right.

When I do that together, you’ll notice how it’s here. I’m going to go ahead and go all the way through this, and you’ll see as I continue on around, now look how my shoulders are staying in their posture.

So they’re in posture here, they’re in posture there, now I have a lot of right side bend. My hips have flexed, or have extended forward and now I’ve come all the way on through the straight line release.

If you watch that on this full swing, you’re going to see that overall my spine angle, my posture, is staying pretty consistent as I’m moving through these different positions.

There we go, that one was also pretty dag-gone straight. Maybe eight feet left of the flag. That one had a little bit of a draw, almost dead straight, just barely to the left.

Yeah, so probably eight feet left of the flag, and we did 169, so about 170 again. Hit that one slightly off the toe. But I’m staying in my posture as I’m coming on through there.

Now last piece of this is when I make my full finish, here I am at the top in my posture, here I am in the downswing in my posture.

As I come all the way on around, notice that my spine is still tilted a little bit to the right. So even after I come all the way on through, my spine is still slightly over to that side and my hip is actually a little bit this way.

Basically all I’m doing there, as I make my full finish, I’m here. I’m like this. The only difference is so I’m kind of tilted to the right, only difference is I’m rotated all the way on around.

What that means when I put all these – this is kind of a confusing video, it’s a lot of detail, a lot of things that are going on, but overall the main idea here is if I put a club across my shoulders, and my spine is tilted forward.

I’m going to go to the top of the swing, my shoulders are going to rotate around my spine. I’m going to come all the way down to impact on through the shot. My shoulders are still staying in that same angle, rotating around my spine.

As I come all the way on through, I’m still slightly in that angle. If we do these things right, we’re going to stay in our posture every time, we’re going to be very consistent with our golf swing.

I’m going to finish this up by making another three swings, and I just want you to watch the overall spine angles and posture, and we’ll see how straight I can hit these.

That one was a little bit to the left. Again, that one was probably maybe 15 feet left of the pin. We can see the difference there, or distance there. That was 169 again, 94.5 club head speed.

So watch my shoulders on this one, I’ll stay in my posture all the way on through until after I’ve hit the golf ball.

That one is just barely to the right. I’m probably 10 feet to the right, overcompensated, I had a few to the left, trying to straighten it out. Let’s see if we can end up with one right on the flag.

Work on keeping my posture all the way through the shot. There we go, hit that one well. That’s about five feet right of the flag. Hit that one a little harder than the last two. Let’s check out the numbers there. There we go, so 174.2.

If I look at all those together, all those shots, we’re within maybe 15-20 feet of each other. The only way that I’m able to do that is by staying in my posture so I don’t have a lot of moving pieces.

If I ever get to where I have a reverse pivot and all of a sudden my spine’s going this way and that way, we talk about that in the stable fluid spine, that’s the number one fundamental in golf, in my opinion.

Or if I’m having, if I’m coming up out of my posture, there’s just no way that I can consistently put the club on the ball the same way every time.

Work on these drills, work through these. If you have any questions, if you’re a member of the website, post them in the comments below, I’ll be sure to answer those.

Good luck to you guys, work on your posture, and you’re going to be hitting that ball dead straight.