Good Golf Posture (How to Address the Golf Ball)

[MiuraMan]

8 hours ago, Tepi90 said:

Absolutely golden video, thank you!

I personally have my butt out at the address, coming from over ten years of ice skating in my youth. Would you say having your butt out can lead to early extension aswell, because your butt has to move off the wall to give freedom for your upper body to rotate?

Probably, but that is hard to confirm without a down the line picture of you at address.

What is really at issue here is whether or not you can hinge your hips properly with a neutral spine (i.e. without anterior pelvic tilt; the S shape OR posterior pelvic tilt; the C shape). If you have either posterior pelvic tilt or anterior pelvic tilt while standing upright, then you would want to address that issue first; lots of good information on youtube and other resources on the net. Use your favorite search tool. 

Here is an excellent video on learning the proper hip hinge.

 

[iacas]

11 hours ago, Tepi90 said:

I personally have my butt out at the address, coming from over ten years of ice skating in my youth. Would you say having your butt out can lead to early extension aswell, because your butt has to move off the wall to give freedom for your upper body to rotate?

It can, but as with almost everything, it won't necessarily lead to that. I don't even know that I could say it would the majority of the time.

[mvmac]

On 3/16/2020 at 9:42 PM, Tepi90 said:

Absolutely golden video, thank you!

I personally have my butt out at the address, coming from over ten years of ice skating in my youth. Would you say having your butt out can lead to early extension aswell, because your butt has to move off the wall to give freedom for your upper body to rotate?

It can, especially if the weight gets into your heels at address.

Having said that you can also early extend from a good address position.

[SEMI_Duffer]

I just discovered the OP while searching the web on terms like "golf setup back straight curved."  Interestingly: The majority of hits led to articles promoting straight back, head up.  This is what our golf class instructor taught us last summer--as well as butt out.  (I just started golfing last June.)

To make a summer-long story short: While I had successes, I never was able to develop a good, consistent swing.

I'm up here in cold country.  Not wishing to start at Ground Zero come spring, I decided to take off-season lessons from a place called True Motion.  The very first thing they're having me do, after I sent them front and down-line videos of my current swing, was a full week of drills doing nothing but fixing my setup stance--to include rounding my shoulders.

I don't know how good my golf swing will be, after all is said and done, but I can say this: I've been suffering from upper-back, shoulder, and neck discomfort for a while, now.  (This started before I took up golf.)  Doing various exercises to increase the flexibility in my upper back so as to allow me to round it in my golf stance has made all that disappear completely.

[iacas]

59 minutes ago, SEMI_Duffer said:

The majority of hits led to articles promoting straight back, head up.

Unfortunately, yeah. 😞

[Joe1]

So I got a lesson recently and this was the core message and flaw of my old swing. I had too much pelvic tilt previously. After adjusting to this new stance, the results have been tremendous, however I've consistently been feeling discomfort in my middle back. It's nothing that impacts me during my play, but I was curious if there's any obvious reason why this would occur. For context, I'm focusing on keeping my hips in an extremely neutral position at address, and sometimes my thought is to tighen the core so that my back begins to arch in the middle of my spine, continuing to arch up through my shoulders.

[boogielicious]

3 hours ago, Joe1 said:

So I got a lesson recently and this was the core message and flaw of my old swing. I had too much pelvic tilt previously. After adjusting to this new stance, the results have been tremendous, however I've consistently been feeling discomfort in my middle back. It's nothing that impacts me during my play, but I was curious if there's any obvious reason why this would occur. For context, I'm focusing on keeping my hips in an extremely neutral position at address, and sometimes my thought is to tighen the core so that my back begins to arch in the middle of my spine, continuing to arch up through my shoulders.

Do you do any back stretches? Without seeing your swing it will be hard to tell if what you are feeling is actually happening. Too much arch is not good as is too much tucking of the hips. I mentioned stretches because doing exercises like pelvic tilts (cat/cows) can help warm up the lower back before practice and playing.

[iacas]

Not this:

The foolproof way to ensure you have perfect posture every time

---

Here is the foolproof way to ensure you have perfect posture in your golf swing every time, according to Top 100 Teacher Trillium Rose.

I like… that the arms hang down nearly vertically. I don't like that her weight is in her heels or that her back is straight. It's not clear if her chin is up a little too much, but it looks like she lets her neck soften a bit so she can look more directly at the ball, at least.

[ChetlovesMer]

On 12/24/2022 at 6:27 PM, iacas said:

Not this:

The foolproof way to ensure you have perfect posture every time

---

Here is the foolproof way to ensure you have perfect posture in your golf swing every time, according to Top 100 Teacher Trillium Rose.

I like… that the arms hang down nearly vertically. I don't like that her weight is in her heels or that her back is straight. It's not clear if her chin is up a little too much, but it looks like she lets her neck soften a bit so she can look more directly at the ball, at least.

I like the pick up a puppy visual. 

Simple, easy to visualize, works for me. 

[ChetlovesMer]

So I'm at the range today and I saw two guys working together at the next hitting bay over from me. Both were young guys (by my standards) middle to late 20's. Both of them had what I thought was super exaggerated stances at address. They both stuck their rear ends out really far in an exaggerated S-shape. 

Is this still taught by some instructors? 

To me it looked like it was causing them to work a lot harder to hit the ball. 

I do remember in the past seeing articles that encouraged this kind of set up, but I thought this was a thing of the past. 

[billchao]

24 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

Is this still taught by some instructors?

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was. Even if it wasn’t, most people who play don’t take lessons anyway. I just played with someone recently who still believes that is the correct posture at address.

[ChetlovesMer]

46 minutes ago, billchao said:

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was. Even if it wasn’t, most people who play don’t take lessons anyway. I just played with someone recently who still believes that is the correct posture at address.

I have to say. To my eye, it just looks more difficult, like it's literally more work. 

[SEMI_Duffer]

20 hours ago, ChetlovesMer said:

So I'm at the range today and I saw two guys working together at the next hitting bay over from me. Both were young guys (by my standards) middle to late 20's. Both of them had what I thought was super exaggerated stances at address. They both stuck their rear ends out really far in an exaggerated S-shape. 

Is this still taught by some instructors? 

It is.  The PGA instructor from whom I first took lessons, when I started back in 2020, taught this.  It felt unnatural to me.  Awkward.  I hated it.

That was the very first thing my new (on-line) instructors ironed out of me.

It actually came back into my setup a bit as a side-effect of my weight training.  In barbell lifts (squats, deadlifts, presses) good form requires you do this to avoid/reduce shear force on your lumbar spine.  In restarting swing training a couple weeks back my coach noticed my lumbar spine was arched in a bit and told me I needed to fix that.

[ChetlovesMer]

I'm starting to think this is being taught again. 

The day before yesterday I was at the range and there was a young man (I say young, probably 25ish?) who was doing this and really exaggerating it. I heard him talking to another gentleman about the lessons he was taking. While he didn't mention the sticking his butt out thing, he was doing it so much I can't imagine that a swing coach wouldn't have noticed it. 

To my eye it just looked painful and difficult. I'm almost 53 and can hit a bucket of balls without being winded at all. This young guy seemed to be really working hard was breathing heavy. It also looked to me like it was forcing him to bring his hands in really close to his chest on his backswing. Again, I'm no swing coach, but it just looks like so much work to hit a ball from that posture. 

If I see the guy again, I'm tempted to ask him about his swing coach, his lessons, and see if posture comes up. I won't tell the guy what to do, especially if he already has a coach. But I am really curious if this is being taught.