The Biggest Secret? Slide Your Hips

[mvmac]

Someone said, way back in the thread, that it wasn't a problem having the head move away from target in BS, so long as the hips don't sway with it. Is that the case or is it important to keep both my head and hips from swaying back on BS, and if so, why and how can i learn to keep my head from swaying forward with my hips?

Ideally you want to keep your head steady and not have the hips sway back to the right on the backswing.  Having said that I would rather have a player move their head a little to the right (hips centered) rather than towards the target on the backswing.

Check out these drills to help keep the head steady on the downswing but the weight forward.

[Robersk]

Thanks for the quick response. Those drills, although good for getting your weight fwd, don't address where the head should be and how to keep it back while sliding the hips fwd. The guy from the first vid actually has his head move fwd quite a bit it seems. When I try to keep my head behind the ball on the DS (assuming my head was still on BS) feels extremely awkward and I end up falling back after impact. Any ideas?

[mvmac]

Thanks for the quick response. Those drills, although good for getting your weight fwd, don't address where the head should be and how to keep it back while sliding the hips fwd. The guy from the first vid actually has his head move fwd quite a bit it seems. When I try to keep my head behind the ball on the DS (assuming my head was still on BS) feels extremely awkward and I end up falling back after impact. Any ideas?

Well the head doesn't have to stay perfectly still, reason why we say steady.  The feeling of "crushing" the ball gets the lower center forward and keeps the head steady.  If the head is still moving too far forward I would suggest posting a video in the member swing forum.

[bendport]

Totally agree with you.  If you can bump your hips laterally then they will naturally rotate open on the throughswing.  A lot of golfers try to rotate their hips open to start the downswing causing them to swing over the top.  Here is a nice simple drill to help you get the move you are describing.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Totally agree with you.  If you can bump your hips laterally then they will naturally rotate open on the throughswing.  A lot of golfers try to rotate their hips open to start the downswing causing them to swing over the top.  Here is a nice simple drill to help you get the move you are describing.

For many people this may be true. Having the hips and shoulders more open is something I'm actively trying to work on at the moment though as I've always had a hip slide but no "natural rotation" prior to impact where the slide has always been the priority (along with "spinners are never winners" brain conditioning regularly lol).

From a recent swing before I started actively working on it:

[bendport]

Try the throwing drill as it will give you the feeling of the bump and the natural rotation at the same time

[MiniBlueDragon]

Try the throwing drill as it will give you the feeling of the bump and the natural rotation at the same time

Yep absolutely and that's my focus at the moment, thanks. :)

I was only suggesting that the rotating open part of the hip rotation prior to impact isn't always "natural" to some. :)

[bplewis24]

So, starting 2 weeks ago I began hitting the ball well again for the first time in about 6 months.  For whatever reason I decided to put more emphasis on transitioning my weight forward on the downswing (as well as changing my posture slightly), and after about 50-100 swings I started hitting the ball pretty solidly.  My last two rounds have been the best scores I've had in a long time.

Of course, one of the primary challenges for me is to prevent my head from moving forward at the same time.  It's pretty easy to tell when it happens

[JetFan1983]

WOW! My first ever post on this thread. I can't believe it. I better make this a good one.

OK, someone needs to delve more into the extension of the pelvis because I know how much it helped me to learn about this aspect of the golf swing. Thanks to @james_hirshfield for teaching me this very important piece.

---

So we all know about the lateral move the hips have to make on the downswing aka the slide (or "bump" if you're a Hogan disciple). And obviously we have our rotary component, but everyone knows that one. All well and good. But, the third major component that can often be overlooked is understanding that the pelvis goes from 1) flexed forward at address to 2) varying levels of extension on the backswing to 3) back to flexed forward in the early downswing to 4) extending through the strike and finally 5) fully extended at the golfer's finish.

Many good instructors refer to this piece as "tucking the butt."

Check out the two ends of this spectrum. @Mulligan Jeff on the left, Gorilla James on the right (a long drive guy):

Hopefully the difference in the hips/pelvis of these two golfers is clear as day. Gorilla James hits like 300 yards 2-irons BTW.

Here's a video Mark Crossfield did that talks about this stuff:

Here's @james_hirshfield talking about this as well. This vid is for those of you who love to know exactly what's happening biomechanically:

Pelvic thrust or tucking the butt is a major component in allowing the hips to continue to rotate. This is also massively important to getting one's weight forward.

People who do this incorrectly do it towards the golf ball, so a major key in learning this is doing it along your tush line, so keep that in mind here.

Here's an old @Beachcomber swing from 2012. He's TST's resident "goat humper" (slang for someone who extends the pelvis incorrectly), which he's done a lot to fix over the past couple years, so kudos to him, but I'm using this old swing as an example of how people can get this wrong:

You can see how his butt comes off "the wall" or red line here. Beach still played to a 3.0 so obviously this very much so tends to be a better player's mistake. Still, his swing exaggerates this piece so much, it's a good one to look at to learn the general basic motion -- the only difference is you should do this along your "tush line," not out towards the ball, or in this case, to his right.

From face-on, we can clearly see how much he's doing this, so again, it's a great swing to learn this piece from:

Again, the red line represents where his hips were at address and the top of his backswing.

Watch Zach Johnson do this while keeping his "butt on the wall:"

From face-on this should be clear as well. The pelvis is not staying in its flexed forward position. Often times, you'll actually see high handicappers increase the amount their pelvis is flexed forward through impact and to their finish.

Zach certainly does not do that:

---

As you can imagine, extending the pelvis to allow the hips to continue rotating AND getting one's weight forward is obviously super critical to overall downswing sequencing. It's a piece that is completely absent in high handicap golfers by and large.

So if you've seen your swing on video and you think this information applies to you, try it out.

I hope this post was helpful in some way to someone out there.

PS- There's a reason people refer to it sometimes as "goat humping," the key word here being "humping." Yes, they're joking when they use that term, but "hump" is pretty darn descriptive over what's happening here. Think about that one for a sec, so I don't have to get too graphic here. But this is something every guy should know how to do instinctually

Cheers, guys

[Jakester23]

WOW! My first ever post on this thread. I can't believe it. I better make this a good one.

OK, someone needs to delve more into the extension of the pelvis because I know how much it helped me to learn about this aspect of the golf swing. Thanks to @james_hirshfield for teaching me this very important piece.

So we all know about the lateral move the hips have to make on the downswing aka the slide (or "bump" if you're a Hogan disciple). And obviously we have our rotary component, but everyone knows that one. All well and good. But, the third major component that can often be overlooked is understanding that the pelvis goes from 1) flexed forward at address to 2) varying levels of extension on the backswing to 3) back to flexed forward in the early downswing to 4) extending through the strike and finally 5) fully extended at the golfer's finish.

Many good instructors refer to this piece as "tucking the butt."

Check out the two ends of this spectrum. @Mulligan Jeff on the left, Gorilla James on the right (a long drive guy):

Hopefully the difference in the hips/pelvis of these two golfers is clear as day. Gorilla James hits like 300 yards 2-irons BTW.

Here's a video Mark Crossfield did that talks about this stuff:

Here's @james_hirshfield talking about this as well. This vid is for those of you who love to know exactly what's happening biomechanically:

Pelvic thrust or tucking the butt is a major component in allowing the hips to continue to rotate. This is also massively important to getting one's weight forward.

People who do this incorrectly do it towards the golf ball, so a major key in learning this is doing it along your tush line, so keep that in mind here.

Here's an old @Beachcomber swing from 2012. He's TST's resident "goat humper" (slang for someone who extends the pelvis incorrectly), which he's done a lot to fix over the past couple years, so kudos to him, but I'm using this old swing as an example of how people can get this wrong:

You can see how his butt comes off "the wall" or red line here. Beach still played to a 3.0 so obviously this very much so tends to be a better player's mistake. Still, his swing exaggerates this piece so much, it's a good one to look at to learn the general basic motion -- the only difference is you should do this along your "tush line," not out towards the ball, or in this case, to his right.

From face-on, we can clearly see how much he's doing this, so again, it's a great swing to learn this piece from:

Again, the red line represents where his hips were at address and the top of his backswing.

Watch Zach Johnson do this while keeping his "butt on the wall:"

From face-on this should be clear as well. The pelvis is not staying in its flexed forward position. Often times, you'll actually see high handicappers increase the amount their pelvis is flexed forward through impact and to their finish.

Zach certainly does not do that:

As you can imagine, extending the pelvis to allow the hips to continue rotating AND getting one's weight forward is obviously super critical to overall downswing sequencing. It's a piece that is completely absent in high handicap golfers by and large.

So if you've seen your swing on video and you think this information applies to you, try it out.

I hope this post was helpful in some way to someone out there.

PS- There's a reason people refer to it sometimes as "goat humping," the key word here being "humping." Yes, they're joking when they use that term, but "hump" is pretty darn descriptive over what's happening here. Think about that one for a sec, so I don't have to get too graphic here. But this is something every guy should know how to do instinctually

Cheers, guys

So whats the drill to stop goat humping and start looking like Zach?

[JetFan1983]

@Jakester23 :

1) Mirror work. Get in front of a full length mirror and just try to watch yourself doing it keeping your butt along an imaginary tush line.

2) The chair drill. You put the back of a chair against your butt at address and you try to feel like some part of your butt -- or at the end of the swing, your left hip -- touches the chair the whole time.

For me, I never used the chair drill, but a lot of people like it. I just learned the theory behind it and used a mirror or camera to monitor what I was doing... plus, I had an instructor present, so his set of eyes were all I needed at the time.

Oh yea, 5SK has this video for Key no.1 Steady head, but this works great for this too. There's an upward component here as well where a good feel is the belt buckle rising thru the finish position:

Kind of unrelated to maintaining the tush line effectively, but still a good thing to add to this topic so people can clearly see the difference in lack of pelvic thrust vs. doing it right.

[Vinsk]

Criminey....what a mess of a post for left handers! It's like trying to read a geometry book backwards. Lol.

[iacas]

Criminey....what a mess of a post for left handers! It's like trying to read a geometry book backwards. Lol.

Most lefties tell me they're used to mentally "flipping" everything.

I've even had lefties who will say "so my left knee should…" when they mean their right knee, almost as if they've flipped left and right themselves (but just for their body - it's not like they say a putt breaks right when it breaks left).

[Vinsk]

Absolutely. Just feeling lazy...btw....that was a great explanation of hip use. Just solidifies my confidence in the 5sk system I'm ordering today....

[nevets88]

Most lefties tell me they're used to mentally "flipping" everything.

I've even had lefties who will say "so my left knee should…" when they mean their right knee, almost as if they've flipped left and right themselves (but just for their body - it's not like they say a putt breaks right when it breaks left).

Also, it's so easy nowadays to literally horizontal flip photos. On most editors, it's just a tap away. On computers and mobiles. Videos are easier to h-flip as well.

[smasri]

I tried so many ways but never get it right or consistent. My Pro told me that the real secret is to keep practicing and playing. Hitting 100 balls at the range is not a practice he said.Hip is just one factor. There are many more others that need to be made good.

[iacas]

I tried so many ways but never get it right or consistent. My Pro told me that the real secret is to keep practicing and playing. Hitting 100 balls at the range is not a practice he said.Hip is just one factor. There are many more others that need to be made good.

I agree that there are other factors.

Five, even. :)

[mvmac]

Just came across this pic, Hunter Mahan