If you look at the top golfers in the world and you take a picture of them at address and at the top of their backswing. They do a great job of maintaining good posture throughout the entire swing. Rory does a good job of maintaining hips back, knees slightly bent, and he doesn’t stand up in the back swing.
One of the reasons they are able to maintain posture so well is because they possess the most foundational component which is proper joint range of motion. If we don’t have adequate joint motion our body will compensate and lose posture during the golf swing leading to power loss and poor ball striking.
The top 3 areas limiting rotation in the golf swing:
Neck (Cervical Spine) – believe it or not but you need approximately 70 degrees of rotation to maintain posture while maintaining vision on the golf ball in the back swing and follow through. This is because our shoulders are rotating underneath our head throughout the swing.
Mid Back (Thoracic Spine) – This seems to be the area I find the most restriction in clients. Normal motion should be around 45-70 degrees.
Hips
- Normal motion should be >60 degrees in both directions.
- Backswing (Right handed golfer) – Right hip rotates in and left hip rotates out
- Follow through (Right handed golfer) – Right hip rotates out and left hip rotates in.
By using the Titleist Performance Institute Screening Tool, this shows me the exact areas of limitation that we need to address. If we can normalize the motion of these areas, we will be off to a great start to building the bullet proof golf swing.
Check out my next article on “The Importance of the Training Hierarchy in Golf Performance”.