Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Use the Hips and Legs Correctly | Really Simple Tips!"

Make sure you check out today’s lesson…

…where you’ll discover how your lower body could be keeping you from being a consistent golfer (along with the secret to unlocking it)…

…and Top Speed Golf certified instructor Quentin Patterson will go over a drill that’ll teach you how to use the ground for more power and consistency!

Let me know how much this helps after you give it a try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:56

Video Transcription:

If you are swaying your hips in the back swing or maybe you're sliding in the downswing, not getting any hip rotation, that means that you're not using your legs in your hips correctly. And there's a really easy drill that's going to make this very simple for you. So one thing we have to understand is we need to use the ground correctly.

If we're going to use our legs in our hips correctly and specifically ground reaction forces. Now, I know that sounds like a fancy scientific term, but really it's quite simple. All it really means is that you're pushing into the ground and the ground is pushing back up at you an equal and opposite direction. So this drill is going to make it really simple to understand that.

So grab a cup of clubs. Doesn't matter what clubs. And what I want you to do is I want you to get in your stance here and place a ball, you know, directly in front of you. And that ball, if you're standing on top of a clock, that ball would be standing or would be sitting at 12:00 O' clock on the clock.

And you're going to place one club in front of your trail foot pointed toward 130 on the clock and you're going to take another club and place it in front of your lead foot pointed toward 10.30 on the clock. And what I want you to imagine here and again, remember, ground reaction forces are equal and opposite forces that the ground is exerting on you.

Right. So if I imagine I was trying to jump, right? I was squatting down, I'd be trying to put as much force into the ground as I possibly could. And then I would pushing be pushing everything away and straightening my body out, trying to get everything away from the ground as much as I possibly could to be able to jump as high as I possibly could.

Right. So that's an equal and opposite force that the ground is putting on me straight back up in the air. Now, I'm going to spare you from watching me jump. I probably have as much hops as Phil Mickelson, but that's that's an example of ground reaction force. So in the golf swing, we don't want to do exactly that.

We don't want to push straight up, because if I do that right there, my hips is going to go up. Right. And what I want my hip to do, I want my hip to go up and back because that's going to allow the hip to rotate. So these clubs on the ground are going to be some imagery that's going to allow us to imagine, OK, I'm pushing away from the direction of that club in the back swing and I'm pushing away from the direction of that club in the downswing.

All right. So get in your stance here. And just simply what I want you to do is with your trail foot here, I want you to push into the ground and then take a step back directly away from that club. All right. So if that club is going in a straight line, I'd be standing in a club or in the line that the club is is going through.

OK, so push into the ground and push straight back. So that's the same kind of sensation that you're going to have in the backswing the rotate the hip back and away. Now, on the downswing, same kind of thing, I want you to push into the ground and then push and take a step back directly away from that club.

So if this club if this was extended out, I'd be I'd be sitting my foot would be directly on that line. All right. So do that a few times to kind of get the sensation of, OK, this these are the kinds of forces that I want to be putting into the ground to be able to rotate my body like we see the tour players doing because they're staying nice in center.

You know, if I'm sliding my hips that way, then that means that I'm actually the ground's actually exerting a force in this direction. Right. That's making me go this way. And then if I'm sliding my hips that way, right, then I'm exerting a force into the ground in that direction. And the ground's exerting a force that's going in this direction.

And we want it to be equal and opposite that way. That's what's going to allow us to turn our body and stay very centered like we see all the best players doing. So do that a few times a step acts to get a feeling for that. Now, once you have a good feeling for that, now let's get the club in the hands.

And what I want you to do is I want you to have that same sensation. But now we're going to keep our feet on the ground. And pushing the ground and draw the hip back. So what's going to be happening there and what you may feel on your feet is almost like a sheer force. So it's almost like if I'm standing here, my foot is pushing that way.

So it's kind of sliding that way. Now, it's not going to slide because you're going to be pushing into the ground. But that's the sensation that you want to have, and that's going to help you to draw that hip back. And when you do that, your ankle and your lower leg and your ankle that's going to straighten out.

Your knee is going to straighten out. It's going to lose flex and then your hip is going to draw back All right. So we want to get that feeling in the back swing. And then the downswing I want before I start my arms coming down, I want to apply that pressure here. Some might call this the Snead squat.

And that's exactly what they're doing, the snead the tiger squat. I've heard it called several things, but that's exactly what they're doing. They're applying more force in the ground. If you can kind of squat down. That helps you to apply force. You're going to jump a lot higher if you really squat down and jump back up than if you just squat a little bit and jump up.

Right. So that's exactly what's happening in the Tiger Anthony's squat. But the thing that a lot of people get wrong with that is they just do the squat part, right? So they're just pushing straight down the ground and they kind of just jump straight up. Well, that doesn't help you rotate. That helps you jump the body up and early extend in, you know, flip the club through impact and add a lot loft.

And you may get a lot more speed from doing that, but that's not going to help you to get that good compression by getting shuffling and getting there by virtue of getting the body to rotate open. So to do this need squat the tiger squat correctly. I have to flex down into the ground and then push in with my lead leg.

I need to push down in a way toward that 10.30 position on the clock to be able to get the body to rotate open. All right. So again, the same thing with with the lead leg. I want to feel like I'm going like that right A lot of times you'll see very, very powerful players. So players like Justin Thomas, for example, right?

Justin Thomas, you'll often see when he really tries to get into one like a drive, you'll see he'll actually his foot will kind of go like that because he's pushing so hard into the ground and down and out away from him that his his body rotates and his body talks open so quickly and with so much force, the actually becomes airborne.

And he moves this way. If he was going straight up then his foot wouldn't go backwards. It would just go up like that. But what he's actually doing, his foot actually goes that way. If you watch them very closely. And if you look at a lot of long drive guys, same kind of thing. I'm not saying you need to be trying to go out there and really pushing the ground, start with with going about it in this way.

But when you get the feel for it, you can kind of work toward creating a lot of power like they do. That's more of an advanced level, but you can work toward creating power like that and a lot of power like those guys are doing. So push into the ground, squat down to the ground, draw the hip back and then squat down in the ground, push down on the ground, draw the hip back by pushing down and out away from you toward that 10.30 to rotate the body over.

And so do that a couple of times we go to the top, pause, push into the ground, turn the hip away and go through, do a few of those, push back pressure, push through. So remember, we want to get that pressure into the ground with the lead foot before the arms start down. That's really, really important because otherwise the downswing is going to start with the arms, right?

And you're not going to be able to get that that rotation from the body opening. If you're if you're starting the downswing with all arms. So make sure you're getting that pressure into the ground with the lead foot first. So now that you got a feeling with the pauses, now I want you to add some flow to it.

So put the club in front, apply the pressure into the trail foot, push away from that, from that club on the ground to draw the hip back and then do the same thing on the lead leg, push down to the ground. So this is going to look something like this. Push back away. Push back away. Push back away.

Push back away. Push back away. Push back away. And you can see that sliding my hips for, you know, away from the target and way too much toward the target. My hips aren't getting outside of my ankles right now. There is some lateral movement in the swing. We're not staying dead center the entire time. If you look at tour player swings, you're going to see there is some lateral movement forward typically.

But we push into the ground, draw the hip this way. The hips move forward a little bit, and then we push into the ground and push the hips that way. Right. That's what we want to do to be able to use the ground correctly and use the legs in the hips correctly. So this is the beginning stages of what we call the power turn.

This is really one of the fundamentals of the top speed golf system. So in the power turn, we want to make sure that we're doing is we're using our legs and our hips correctly. But next we want to make sure that we're getting separation between our shoulders, you know, our rib cage here and our hips and that's going to come mostly from your upper spine area, your t spine, your thoracic spine.

So there's a great drill for you in the power turn course, which is included with your membership so go to the power turn course after you've worked on this. So that way you can get that full separation, get that big, big shoulder turn. You know, I see a lot of players working on things that sure can get you a little bit more distance and speed.

But it's not the low hanging fruit. This is the low hanging fruit. This is the really easy stuff to do. That gets instant distance. I think you'll be really, really surprised on how much speed and distance you can gain just by getting a good hip turn, getting a good shoulder turn. So much more from doing some of the other kind of novelty things that I see out there.

So go to the power turn course and specifically the wall drill. The wall drill is a really great one. Isolates your hips and it really helps you to feel that stretch in your in your t spine, which allows you to get that shoulder turn. So if I add that stretch in there, with my hips and now I can get a really, really nice big shoulder turn, I can create a lot of space and time to accelerate that club, and that's going help me get a lot of distance.

So go to that power turn course work through that wall drill and really the rest of the course as well and start hitting the ball further. It's much easier to play golf when you do that. Play well and I'll talk to you soon.