Lifting Your Head? I Don’t Think So

Maintaining Posture in the Forward Swing
(After a discussion with an old friend, I brought this out of the archives)

Lifting Up, Peaking, Not staying “in the shot.”  These are terms I hear students use when they lose posture in the forward swing.  It is not an issue of the player’s head raising during the forward swing, but rather, that the spine has changed angles or straightened during the forward swing.

This motion causes problems for two main reasons.

1. If the spine moves towards vertical, they player is no longer aimed at the ball and will have to manipulate the club to find the ball.
2. In order to avoid topping the ball, the player will instinctively use the hands and arms to force the club down towards the ball.  This action makes the posture worse and topping the ball more of a possibility.  Let me explain.

Back in school we all studied a little bit of physics.  Most of us will remember the term “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”  This is the Third Law of Motion.  How does this impact the golf swing?  If the arms and hands attempt to force the club down towards the ball, all of that energy is being directed towards the ground in quite a vertical path.  Because the Third Law of Motion exists, the same amount of energy will correspondingly be sent from the ground directly at the player’s chest.  This force will move the player to a more upright spine angle.  The worst part of the whole mess is that it makes perfect sense to the player to force the hands down.  With each subsequent topped shot, that instinct grows.

The proper motion in the forward swing is a rotation.  The forward swing must start from the ground and work in sequence up the body.  At the top of the swing a slight shift to the forward leg will establish that leg as the axis for the forward swing.  Once that has occurred the pelvis and mid-section begin to rotate.  This combination of body rotation and arm swing creates centripetal force as well as adequate counter-balance  Not only does this allow a player to stay in balance and posture, this proper sequence will transfer the most energy to the ball resulting in longer shots with less exertion.