Perform Better Golf Blog

If you’re looking for a more powerful golf swing you must use your hips. Look at how much Tiger Woods uses his hips in the downswing? In fact, most of the touring professionals utilize their hips to create more power, especially with their driver. On tour, hitting it at least 275-280 is a must, as most of the golf courses play well over 7100 yards, making even a standard par 4 over 440 yards.

In my golf swing, I connect my upper body and hips together (one plane golf swing) to generate a HIGH amount of clubhead speed. For many senior golfers having the strength and flexibility to generate hip rotation separate from the upper body is almost a physical impossibility. You have got to have a level of hip flexibility that will allow you to powerfully rotate them first at the initial part of the downswing.

Many golfers can’t get the sequence right coming down. Usually they fire the upper body first, getting the golf club off-plane, creating a steep, out-to-in swing resulting in a big slice. Being able to initiate the downswing with the lower body first is critical to longer golf drives.

Look at the picture to your left. You can see the golfer has definitely fired his hips first, while keeping his upper body back to apply a powerful blow behind the golf ball.
If you’re like me, I have struggled for years trying to get my hips to clear, but not from lack of strength or flexibility, but from the wrong move coming down. Once I figure it out, and now swing around my body, my hips clear easily allowing me to really fire my right side through impact.

So if you want more power and distance, you need to use your hips in your downswing. If you can’t physically do it, you might want to look at my Effortless Golf Training System to improve your golf swing biomechanics through muscle and joint mobility training with EASY golf swing exercises and stretches right in the comfort of your own home.

In continuing with my new golf swing which is more around my body, I have come to the conclusion it’s a one plane golf swing. All I am trying to do is turn back with my shoulders, and turn through with them as well. My arms are following my shoulders almost in a passive mode, although I am one that uses my arms very aggressively, so I am working on that part.

The one plane swing totally fits my belief in what my body does more comfortably, which is a more upper body move than a lower body one. Since converting only days ago, I thought I might hit some wicked pulls and hooks, but to my surprise I have only hit a couple of pulls out of over 500 balls I’ve hit at the range so far.

I no longer have a hard time clearing my hips, as I am now swinging so around my body instead of vertically ‘down’ that it’s natural for my hips to clear. All those golf lessons that did not help…ugh!

So far it seems so easy to swing with a tilted circle in my mind. I am not trying to drop it in the slot, as for me that NEVER worked! All I think about is turn back and turn through in a more rounded fashion. I love it!

After all these years of struggling to take my game to the next level (low single digit) I had a HUGE revelation yesterday, so of course I ran to the range to try it. Wow! This could truly change my game forever. Let me explain, and maybe it can help you with your golf swing.

I have been a student of the golf swing for over 15 years now, and have studied every inch of the swing. I own every instruction book ever written, and I have golf swing sequences of all the greats in the game.

I am a VERY analytical person, so I tend to “over-analyze” everything, which for golf is not typically a good thing.

Well…one flaw I had in my studies of the swing was to try to mimic the downswing from the front angle. So looking straight into the mirror. I found out yesterday that it has been misleading me for ALL these years! You see…the golf swing is NOT just a down movement, but more importantly an “around” movement. The golf swing is a BIG continuous circle around your body.

The HUGE mistake I was making was focusing on “coming down” and not around! This was an epiphany for me. This down motion all these years was not allowing me to clear my hips and swing to the left after impact. I would come down steep on the ball, my left shoulder (and hips) would get jammed up, making me come up at impact, then I would just muscle it through to “hit” the ball not swing through.

And another very exciting thing is I hit the ball a LONG way with that BIG technique flaw. Once I’m able to FREELY swing around my body, I can confidently predict my drives will be over 330 yards, as I now drive it 300 quite a bit of the time.

You can bet one thing for sure!

I’ll be banging balls for the next few days ingraining this AROUND feeling. In fact, yesterday after I had this epiphany, I went out and hit 100 balls with my wedge and it was AMAZING! It was working. It was such a different feeling for me after all these years swinging the OTHER way.

I am SO EXCITED about this and I hope you can take something away from this as well.

The journey continues!

Your golf swing transition is one of the MOST important aspects of your golf swing. Many golfers (including me sometimes) get this wrong. The sequence of motion that occurs from the top of your backswing going into the downswing is critical to maximizing optimal golf swing power and distance.

As seen in the picture above with Ben Hogan, you can see a big emphasis on the lower body from the top. I don’t really like the angle of his shoulders in the second picture, or his right elbow so “stuck” to his right side, but I think you get the idea.
Many golf swing faults like over the top (slice), casting and a “hit” mentality are a result of an improper transition from the top of your golf swing.

One very important move is the transfer of weight from the right side at the top to approximately center very quickly. This is nearly a 50/50 balance of weight at this point. As you can see with hogan, there is not a big lateral slide of the hips from the top, but a little bump and then an aggressive rotation of the left hip to get out of the way so the right side can fire as hard as it wants coming into impact.

This golf swing transition move is one I work on daily in front of a mirror, and still have a hard time doing it correctly on the course.

Golfers want the silver bullet to longer drives. Golf weight training is your ticket to more distance. But the kind I’m speaking of is simple exercises done in the privacy and convenience of your home. They are actually fun to do and are really effective! The more golf-specific you can make them the faster your results will be. You’ll be bombing your driver past all your golfing buddies.

I don’t want you to think of going to the gym and lifting heavy weights. That’s too much work right? I only want you to do as much as you need, and not an ounce more to see massive improvement in your distance and accuracy. Lifting weights in your home is done by using dumbbells, an exercise ball, exercise tubing with handles and that’s it. If you get adventerous you can get a weighted medicine ball and REALLY speed up your distance output.

Either way, I’m ONLY talking about 15 minutes a day to see FAST improvement on the course! Isn’t your game worth that much? If not, you might want to think about a different recreation. Seriously though! To improve in golf takes a little bit of effort, just like anything else in life. You can’t expect improvement if you don’t put that effort in right?

Golfers don’t want to go to a gym. Golfers don’t even want to exercise, but most of them are realizing their bodies are falling apart rapidly. Your body swings the club, so if it’s broken your swing is broken. Make sense? With that being said, how about in-home golf exercises and stretches?

You don’t have to go to a gym and fight the crowds and embarrassment. No one wants to deal with all those young hard-bodies in there. Do you? The answer is simple, in home golf improvement programs that work! Spending 15 minutes on your body in the privacy of your own home will do wonders for your golf swing.

When I designed all my golf-specific improvement programs, I thought of you first. I wanted to make it so simple and easy, any golfer could do it…and do it privately. No driving or showering at a gym. Just throw on some comfortable clothes and have some fun.

Just think of all the time you’ll save, which is time you can put back into your game with more practice or rounds. Being efficient with your time will greatly improve your game.

Take a look at a sample in-home golf exercise below.

You don’t even have to get out of your chair for this one!

If you want to save time and money, you should look at the Effortless Golf Training System.

Getting a breakdown of the golf swing might not be the best thing to do if you want to SIMPLY improve your game. Breaking down every aspect of your golf swing can get overwhelming. Many golfers and instructors get too mechanical with swing technique and actually get worse not better.

The golf swing should be kept as simple as possible. 

Just think of playing baseball and swinging the bat. Would you ever think of each and every bodypart and what it should do to hit the ball? NO! Then why would you do it with your golf swing?

If you want to break it down, you can cover:

• Grip
• Stance
• Posture
• Ball Position
• Takeaway
• At The Top
• Transition
• Downswing
• Impact
• Post Impact
• Finish

That would be more than enough to think about, but if you can have one or two thoughts or drills for each area, you might be okay. On the other hand, this golf swing breakdown might completely ruin your game.

What is a long drive golf swing?

Is it some magical technique that instantly gets golfers to hit it ________ yards longer? Or is it using some extra long shaft, nuked driver head club to accomplish it?

Most golfers I know don’t dream of being a long drive king, but most of them sure would like to hit it a little further. There is a definite advantage to the golfer who hits their drives longer (but you have to keep it in the fairway). Getting to most greens in regulation gives you a great chance at par on EVERY hole.

That’s all you can ask is to give yourself a chance to make par, and if the occasional birdie falls in, it’s icing on the cake right?

There are several critical elements to a long golf drive, and one of the most important is core rotational torque. This means the differential between your hip turn and your upper body at the top of the backswing. If you lack the required core strength and flexibility, you will have minimal chance to reach your true driving distance potential.

The more you can turn your shoulders while keeping your hips relatively still, the greater the torque and clubhead speed you’ll develop. This in turn creates more power at impact for longer drives. So the next step is doing simple golf stretching exercises for your core area. These are not difficult, but critical to you achieving maximum driving distance.

Here’s an example of a VERY simple stretch you can do from my Effortless Golf Training Manual, right in your office, in your chair. No excuses not to do this one several times a day.

So much is made of your golf backswing. So much so, I created a backswing report to help you make your biggest backswing possible. Now I am a huge advocate of working on your body to make a bigger backswing, but getting to the top of your backswing is also critical.

If you can’t get to the top in the correct position within a stable base, you will have no chance making a good downswing that is on the correct path from the inside, nor will you get to impact in a position to maximize your power.

Let’s take a look at Tigers top of the backswing position.

So what do you think about lift arms and turn golf swing? If you read the title I hope you don’ completely believe it, as the title is a bit misleading, but I achieved my goal of getting you here, and now it is my duty to explain this so you have a better understanding of how to quickly improve your golf swing.

There is definitely a turning of your upper body combined with a lifting of the arms, but they are in a certain sequence that is critical to swinging on plane. Most golfers, including the older ones lift the arms first because they physically can’t turn their upper bodies.

You NEVER want to lift your arms at the start of your golf swing takeaway. This will quickly throw off your golf swing sequence which will take your club off plane and make it very difficult to make a full shoulder turn to maximize your distance with every club.

The turning of your body starts your swing off in a one-piece takeaway which is powerful and very easy to do. Once you’ve gotten back to the 9:00 o’clock position your arms will start to lift but only with the turning of the body and not independently. This is a very connected feeling.

If you can remember one thing, the initial move in your takeaway is SO important, you MUST get it right, so it’s worth doing some drills and mirror work to get it right.