Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The Best Golf Rotation Drill - The '90-90 Golf Stretch'"

Do you feel like you’d have more distance if you were a just a little more flexible?

Today, I’m joined by certified personal trainer and fitness coach, Joe Yoon, to show you some simple stretches that can help you hit the ball longer.

These tips will help you, no matter what your level of flexibility is.

And don’t worry, you can do all of these stretches without expensive equipment or yoga pants!

This is such a simple solution that you’ll ask, "Why didn't I learn this sooner?"

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Joe Yoon    

Video Duration: 21:51

Video Transcription:

All right, pretty good there. 306, nice little draw on it. Definitely happy with that shot. Now, if you're struggling to get the distance that you want, a big piece of that is going to come from being able to rotate from your shoulders and separate those from your hips. Now I'm going to give you a test here in a minute to figure out if you're deficient there and a surefire way to fix it.

Another piece of being able to have a great golf swing is I need to be able to turn into my right leg on the backswing. And if you feel like you're. Sliding with this hip here, it actually may not be a technique move, it may not, it may be more likely that you have a limitation in your right hip that allows you not to rotate and turn into it, and you start to get this little hip bump this way, and all of a sudden I'm leaning back there, and then I stand up out of my posture and I fall to the right on the downswing, causes a lot of inconsistency.

And again, you try and try and try, work on it all day long. If your hip isn't in good working order, you're not going to be able to do it. Then the downswing, our left hip is really important to where when I feel like I can't rotate or if I can't turn into this lead leg, you may feel a little pain in your left hip when you're playing golf.

If that sounds like you, you have trouble rotating into that leg and keeping the foot kind of facing this way, you may have a limitation in your left hip and that one is really common. For standing up in the downswing, feeling like the hips stall and then the arms and hands take over and you end up with either a chicken wing with the left arm or you start to flip the club and lose kind of all your lag in the downswing.

So if you have any of those problems, let me run you through a screening with one of my good friends, uh, Joe Yoon. He's going to walk through right hip, left hip, spine, see if we're in good working order. That way you don't bang your head against the wall for months trying to fix something that's impossible to fix.

If you don't have the range of motion, let's go and get started out. I'm joined here with my good buddy, Joe Yoon. He's got joetherapy. com. I've known him for years, great guy, and really, really knowledgeable. He's got 1. 3 million subscribers on Instagram and a bunch of other social media, uh, platforms, but let's go ahead and go jump into it.

What should I do if I want to test to see are my hips in good working order? Can I rotate for my spine? What do I need to do? Yeah. Hip super important. We were just talking about all of the benefits of having a great backswing, but also the things that can happen. When you are deficient in your hips, so I love to do a couple screens for the hips really concentrating on the internal and external Rotation golf is a rotational sport.

So we need to make sure that that is working correctly So I'm gonna have clay down on the ground and we're gonna run through that hip assessment this one Oh, sorry first one here. So what we're talking about. We're trying to screen if if I can rotate my hips And still keep my foot facing somewhere forward, right?

So, so essentially my hips are turning 45 degrees this way in the backswing, if I'm going to stay in my posture and have a good backswing. My leg is still facing that way, so if I put my hips back square, my leg is almost doing that in the backswing. So you start here, your leg is rotating this way, and if I can't do that, I can't have a good backswing.

So, let's jump into the, what's the screen you want me to do? Exactly, so this is going to be called the 90 90 golf hip stretch. So we're going to be seated on the floor. Good. And let's start off with the left leg out in front and then the right leg is going to be over to the side. So we're on this driving range mat.

So if you have a yoga mat at home, that works perfect for a reference. We want this shin to be parallel with the front portion of the mat. And then this shin is going to be parallel with the side of the mat. And then if we can actually bring this knee back just a little bit. Try, I don't know if I can or not.

This is a perfect screen. So this is what's emulating your backswing. It might not look like it when we're in this position, but this is exactly what the hip is doing from anatomical positioning from a seated position. So this is in that hip. internal rotation, and then this hip is an external rotation.

So think of this as your backswing for, uh, for your body and your hips. And one of the key kind of goals here is to just be able to sit up with your hands out in front of you. That's going to show you that you have some good stability, but then also a good amount of range of motion in your hip. So this should allow you to, uh, you know, maybe not easily get into your backswing, but efficiently.

enough to have a proper golf swing. And I kind of feel like when I'm doing this, I'm facing forward here. My hip is fairly tight and I feel like I struggle a little bit to get that kind of rotation from my legs. So again, if I stand up into a golf posture, what's going on here when you're sitting down that way is your leg is actually getting turned out to the side like that, which again would be the same thing as.

I'm rotating into my, uh, into my swing here. Like this pelvis would be, um, rotating into my right leg, correct? Exactly. So when you're in this position, it's emulating that right leg is in the back. And this is an extreme. So when you're on the floor in that position, that should make sure that you have adequate range of motion.

So if you can get into that position, you're pretty good. So we're probably not going to be turning super far with our hip in our golf swing, our normal golf swing. But if we can get. around the average or maybe halfway there, that's going to help a ton. Okay, so once I get in this, what should I do? So if I have a tough time, one of the first tests I should do is if I'm leaning over here like this.

Yep. Then that means i'm definitely not getting enough rotation from there, correct? Yeah, so the majority of people that i've screened amateurs and pros It's usually this back leg almost the trail hip when you're in this position Maybe you start cramping up a little bit. Maybe you can't even get into that position But a lot of the times it's going to be this trail hip.

And if you feel like you're going to fall over, there's an easy solution just to start off. So it's a little bit more comfortable. I'm just going to grab a little pad is to put something right underneath your butt cheek. So let me just grab his pad. Well, I'll sit like this or I'll try to lean a certain way to get the stretcher.

Uh, so first, if this is very uncomfortable and you can't even get close to, put this just right underneath your left butt cheek. And then that should make it a little bit easier. Yeah, definitely easier on that one. I thought it relieved a lot of my, my right hip for sure. Exactly. So if you're a little bit on the tighter side, and it's totally normal to be a little bit on the tighter side, this is why we're doing this assessment.

We can always prop up our hips and butt off the ground a little bit so it doesn't take as much range of motion. But let's say you want to improve this. We can start off with the pad underneath the hip and then really just sit up nice and straight. And then really just try to keep the knees and try to push them down towards the floor a little bit and trying to get that stretch.

So we can hold this for about 30 seconds or so, and then we can run through a quick progression. So for you, let's put your hands just right down in the front of you, just like this. Sit up nice and tall. Really try to get some really good posture. Maintain that posture and then then shift and hinge forward almost like if you were going into a Set up for a golf swing.

Yeah, I can really feel it in my left Like I said left butt cheek exactly getting it there for sure and for clay that one's a little bit on the tighter side So I should be able if I'm doing great on this. I should be able to put this knee flat on the ground And I lean forward a little bit in an ideal world.

Again, everyone has different, uh, anatomical landmarks and differences, but in general, if we can get the knees a little bit closer to the ground, that's going to be optimal. So if my knees way up here like this, I can't get anything. That's probably a good sign. I'm not going to be able to make a good backswing.

I'm probably not going to be able to hit it nearly as far, or if it, I feel like I have to use a lot more hands and arms if I'm doing it that way. If I can get my knee closer to the ground like that. Probably on the borderline of being able to play, you know, what you want to do, make a good looking golf swing.

If my knee gets further than that, then that's just great. And the farther it goes, the easier it will be. But this is kind of like, would you say like right there? It's kind of, if I'm not getting this. I probably need to do this stretch every day until I can pretty much. Yeah. If the knees are popping up off the floor or you're struggling to sit up in a good position, then it's a good idea to hang out in this position.

Try to improve it a little bit. Okay. So then one of them would be lean forward. That's mostly going to get my left glute. You have anything for the external rotation or the, I guess it'd be internal rotation, internal rotation. Exactly. So after we do 30 seconds here, holding that position, I want you to sit up again, nice and tall.

And then arms out in front and then rotate your upper body towards this trail hip I'm gonna say like golf club like this and try to get it to go exactly perfect So now when we're rotating our upper body, we're actually rotating a little bit more into that hip. So we're bringing that hip into rotation a little bit more and really biasing this stretch right here.

Again, a lot of people struggle with internal rotation. So just hanging out here for 30 seconds is going to really help stretch out that hip. Is it a good idea to try to lean? I know when I do that, it feels a lot tighter, but it feels like it's kind of. I don't know if that's really stretching it that much more.

Do you feel like that could do anything or does that stay away from that? So when I'm telling people how to stretch, there's no real right way to do it. There's a lot of people, again, with different types of shapes of their bones and their muscles are different. So sometimes I like to freestyle it a little bit.

So in general, I'll sit up nice and tall, rotate, but if you need a little bit of an extra stretch, you can explore around a little bit. You can maybe bend over a little bit. You can lean over to the side a little bit. I definitely feel if I go toward this foot. It starts to get a lot tougher and I probably, you know, what kind of pain level should I go?

You know, if I'm experiencing a 10 in pain, is that good? Cause I'm just doing it more. Yeah. So the pain, no pain, no gain. It's kind of a old school mentality. So when it comes to stretching, it's really been shown in science and evidence that saying you don't have to stretch out too much. You can maybe go to about a two or three on that discomfort level.

So right when you start feeling that stretch, that's a great place to just hang out. You don't have to push it too hard. So stay at a three. If I get above a three, if you want to calm down, that's when you can get injured, when you're going to like eight, nine, 10 on the pain, you know, so, so then this is the backswing.

Essentially, if I go back again in my, in my actual swing, what's going on there is that, that was turning my knee inwards like this. So basically that would be me being able to stay in my posture, keep this knee fairly forward. We know that that knee will be straightening a little bit to let my hips turn.

That's keeping me from doing this and sliding to the right. That's also with this left knee, that's rotating out a little bit. So as I rotate, my knee is kind of staying facing forward, instead of kicking in like that. Alright, so that's going to hit both of those with this 90 90. And then if I'm going to be doing the downswing, you know, rotating into this, I'm basically just doing the opposite with, I just want to flip my legs the other way, right?

Exactly. So if I'm going to sit down here, I'm going to put this one under my right butt cheek instead of my left. I'm going to go ahead and get my right foot. At the 90 there, my left foot on the 90 back and then do the same things. Try to lean forward a little bit. I can feel it in my right glute or lean to rotate this way.

Maybe lean back toward my foot. I feel on my left side. So if you're feeling it, those your knees are way off the ground. You probably better do that. What do you think? 30 seconds, few reps of that a day, something like that. Yeah, 30 seconds in each position. Maybe just try to sit up nice and tall for 30 seconds.

And then go into that first position where you're leaning over that front leg for 30 seconds and then go into that internal rotation where you're rotating your upper body towards that rear hip and hold that for 30 seconds. You can do that once, twice, three times a day, you know, in a couple of minutes.

And if I'm already hit my ranges, then I should probably just do something else, right? Like if I'm already flexible, I'll sit down. I'm like, yeah, this is easy. I can knees are on the ground. Probably spend that time practicing something else is a little more limited, right? Exactly. So this is a great just warmup too.

So if you are on the more mobile side and you don't have any issues here, you can just maybe just touch on it, do it one rep or one set and you'll be good. And then yeah, concentrate on something that maybe you might not be as good at. So the big one I think is even probably more important to getting some power.

We always talk about this as the power turn. I got to be able to rotate my shoulders to at least 90. Again, if my hips are locked up, that's going to be tough. Cause I'm not going to be able to rotate those. Assuming that my hips are good, I'm still not able to get to 90. Then I got to go more my, my spine rotation.

You want me to grab this bench and we'll go over kind of what we looked at earlier today. Yeah. Let's grab the bench. And when it comes to upper body rotation, you know, that's a very popular area for golf. If we don't have that good rotation, a lot of funky things can start happening with the upper body.

And if we can clear up this rotation and this, middle portion of the back, we like to call it the T spine. Then a lot of the other problems kind of fix itself. And then both of these, if you are good at it, it's actually going to be just really good in general. It's going to take a lot of the pressure off of certain joints, like your low back, your knees, and your neck.

So in this position, we're going to do this in steps. So first thing we're going to do is place the club right over the shoulders. Okay. And then why don't you just bring the knees in a little bit close together. Yeah. And then we'll keep that pretty consistent and now we'll go into that backswing. So we'll head over to the right side.

Yep. And basically we're just trying to see where the butt of the club is rotating and that's about 45, 50 degrees. So pretty good here. And then we can check the other side as well. This will be more on the follow through, making sure I'm finishing my swing, right? Exactly. So. So this is part one. I'm going to take it up a little bit here and take it to the next level.

Sometimes when people's low backs are starting to bother them, or maybe they're trying to get that super big backswing, the low back can actually rotate a little too much and put some extra pressure there. So what we're going to do is really isolate this mid portion of this back. So what I'm going to do to start is place that pad right underneath the right side of the butt.

Almost think like you're sitting on a nice fat wallet full of 100 bills. That'd be nice. Exactly, exactly. And then what we're going to do is redo that test. So what's happening... So this is tilting my, my pelvis? Yeah, so it's tilting your pelvis and what it's doing is really isolating and locking out that low back so you can't move from the low back.

It kind of comes with this dissociation move where you're trying to get some separation in the upper body. In that backswing. So what's happening here is low back is locked out. Now, in theory, only the upper body in that T spine can move. Yeah. I can still get about 45 there roughly. Yeah. So Clay's pretty good here.

You know, he's a great golfer. He's been doing this motion for a long time. If you are struggling with your backswing in that, uh, And that big turn then for some people, let's just emulate this one more time. I was doing that. Not very well. So where, where should I start to be concerned if I'm rotating here?

This is one thing I'm pretty good at rotating my mid spine, thoracic spine. I'm stiff in other places, but again, that's why I'm able to play some decent golf is because I can rotate well and probably the most important places. Right? So if I'm, if I'm doing this one and I'm getting to say here, Where it's barely moving at all.

Like where would you say where this starts to become a problem? I can hit almost 45 degrees. Would you say 30, 15? Like where should I really start to be concerned? Yeah, so we want to start being concerned when there's a big discrepancy, big difference between the range of motion. So if Clay is at 45 right here, and then we place the pad underneath his butt, and then he gets to maybe halfway, then we're starting to get a little concerned here, thinking maybe the low back's doing a little bit too much of the movement then.

The actual places should be moving. And again, this can cause things like lower back discomfort. And when you're playing golf and you're swinging over and over again, that those reps can add up. Yeah. So if I'm, if I'm hitting 45 sitting normal, then I put this under my, my right butt cheek and I'm getting 15.

Then I probably ought to work on it because in the real swing, you're going to be in tilt, you're going to be tilting, you're going to be moving a little bit different than you would be sitting on the bench. Putting this under your, your, your right butt cheek is probably going to be more indicative of like actual golf swing.

Then exactly. Gotcha. So what should I do if I, if I'm terrible at this? Yeah. So one of, one of the things we can do again, we'd do both sides, but for now what we can do is some rotational exercises too. So I'll just give you a couple of variation, one that's a little bit more beginner friendly. And then if you want to, uh, you know, kind of take it up a notch a little bit and really make sure that you have some stability added with that flexibility, we can.

Uh, do another exercise. So let's actually get rid of this bench. We'll roll it over to the side. Cool Yeah, so let's get started with a thoracic rotation and we'll do it on all fours. So we'll get down onto the mat So this is going to be the beginner friendly version where knees are under the hips Hands are going to be underneath the shoulders, really good tabletop position.

And then all I'm going to have Clay do is just bring one arm and bring it straight up towards the sky, just like that. And what we're concentrating and looking for here is lower body is very steady. So try not to move the lower body too much. And we're just rotating from this upper body, getting that good rotation in that thoracic spine, that mid back.

So basically I'm separating my, my shoulders from my Pelvis. So in the golf swing, you want your hips to turn 45 degrees, but if I don't separate my shoulders, my shoulders only turn in 45 degrees. Also every single PGA tour player, every great player at your club, anybody that hits it really far, they're getting to that 90 degrees of shoulder turn, at least to their PGA tour.

Guys are actually getting to 120 or so, meaning that their hips are turning 45. This is really separating quite a bit. Don't have to be able to get that far to hit it good, but you definitely want to be in the ballpark of 90, which is the power turn. In the top speed golf system. So let's say that I'm doing that one.

If I want to kick it up a notch, you mentioned there was a tougher one. Yeah. So maybe run through about 10 reps there, three sets, depending on where you're at, but let's grab a band and then now we can add some resistance. to that movement. So we're going to add some stability to that mobility and flexibility.

So all we have is a nice little band here. And depending on your fitness level, it could be a little bit more resistance, a little bit more tight. Um, this one's kind of right in the middle and then just anchor the band down with that hand. And then just grab it and then do that same rotation. So now this band is adding a little bit of resistance to the movement.

And this is going to be great to really carry over and be strong and stable in that backswing. Yeah, I like this one because it's actually, you know, the club provides some resistance when you're making a backswing. You really need to feel like you're stable in your right shoulder and your right side of your body needs to be able to rotate.

Like the stronger you are there, it actually applies to golf. Whereas like a lot of drills I don't like that much because They don't really apply to a golf swing, whereas this would apply directly to, you know, create more speed in golf swing. So I'm going to do the same thing, maybe 10 reps here. Exactly.

I'm just going to go real slow, you know, a couple seconds on the way back. Pause a little bit, then slowly go back down. I like your, a lot of your drills are, you know, one to two minutes. It's not like we're doing this for 45 minutes. I mean, yeah, I'd like to stretch for an hour a day. Wouldn't really like to stretch for an hour a day, to be honest with you.

I'd rather do a couple minutes here or there if I can get by with it. So this stuff actually works even if you're kind of time restricted, I guess, right? Yeah, it's I even think sometimes it's better because if you do a little bit of less of a routine You'll be more consistent with it too because I've seen these routines where there's 30 45 minutes long and that's just on the stretching Like that doesn't even count the the technical stuff You're trying to work on your golf drills your strength training all that other stuff and then we're just busy in general Yeah families and jobs that we have to get to So just doing a few minutes a day, five, six, seven minutes a day, and you can do bore if you have time, it's going to really benefit you in the long run.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, so the way I would do that is test yourself out. If you can hit the ranges that we talked about, and these are on the ground when you're doing the 90 90 drill. If you can get 45 degrees with your shoulders, 45 degrees with the mat under there. You don't really need to work on this, right?

Like, it might be nice to get a little extra range of motion, but you probably already have the range of motion you need to play great golf. If you are struggling, that's when you're going to want to do these drills. That way you don't waste your time doing things that aren't going to pay off as much.

But if you're, you're limited, it's going to be, it's going to be tough. Now, the reason this is so important is this is the power turn. So it's one of the five real fundamentals that every single great golfer does. It doesn't matter if it's at your local club or the PGA tour, you look at them, like I said, they're going to get that power turn.

or meaning that the shoulders are going to turn at least 90 degrees in the backswing. So part of that is physical limitation. Like we talked about here, if you did these tests and you can hit the limit, you can hit the ranges of motion. You can make a good power turn backswing, but you're still not turning.

That means it's a technique issue. Now, if it's a technique issue, you're going to want to head over to the power turn section. If you're a member of Top Speed Golf, click on the instruction tab, Top Speed Golf System, power turn section, and you're going to want to start on level one. Go through the drills there and I will get you some real secrets on how you set your wrist, how you move in the backswing that's going to cause those shoulders to turn rather than picking it up with your hands and arms.

You're going to get introduced to it in level one. It's going to start to feel a little bit awkward, but you're going to see the ball flying farther. You're going to see your scores start coming down. As you get to level two, it becomes more natural. You still got to think about it a little bit, but you're seeing the scores improve.

You're seeing your distance go up. Like I mentioned in level three, once you go there, it becomes completely ingrained. So that's what you really want. This does not have to think about it at all for your swing to be baked in there. It's in your kind of swing DNA, you know, and you're going to make that great turn every single time.

So if you can physically do it. Head on over, get through the levels of power turn one, two, and three, and you'll never have to worry about it again because you'll just naturally turn without even thinking about it. Let's go and get started.