WEBVTT

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This drill is calibrating spine rotation. So this is more of a awareness drill

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or

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proprioception drill that you can do at home to calibrate your spine rotation

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because there there are times where as a golf instructor I'm going to tell you

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I

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want you to rotate and unfortunately your brain is not always going to

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interpret that as rotation. It may interpret that as a secondary movement.

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You may go into more side bend, you may go into more extension, you may have a

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little bit of sway to it, you might not totally just be rotating. So we're

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going

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to do this one without a club. There are two different ways that I like to

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coach

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rotation. One is you're going to take your arms and place them across your

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shoulders, kind of like the classic TPI disassociation test. And then from here

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I'm going to rotate my upper body and my lower body into a backswing and I'm

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going to rotate my upper body and my lower body into a downswing. You'll see

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that I have a little bit of kind of natural golf movements in my lower body

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but my upper body stayed pretty centered as it rotates. Many golfers when I

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first

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ask them to rotate what they'll end up doing is they'll have more of a lateral

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movement with their upper body while they rotate. So it's a blended movement to

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get this kind of golf rotation around your spine axis. So if you have a hard

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time feeling, if you have a hard time feeling rotation while kind of staying

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centered, if you do it more like this, then I'm going to show you another drill

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that I use using the arms. So now if I get into my golf posture with my arms

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kind of pointing out at the golf ball, I'm going to use them almost like train

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tracks and I'm going to reach one arm away or one arm towards the golf ball

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and I'm going to reach the other arm away. So I'm basically going to go just

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like this. Now if I put my arms across my chest, you can see that I rotated

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there.

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Many golfers won't feel the spine rotation when the upper body stays centered

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like

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that. They'll say, "No, I just moved my arms. I didn't really rotate my spine

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but

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you can see clearly from this face-on-camera angle that I'm rotating my spine a

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good

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amount. From the down the line, if I do that same thing, what you'll see is

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that

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my chest is kind of opening up and facing the camera just like so. So there

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are two times where this is critical in your golf swing practice. One is in the

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backswing and two is in the downswing. Those are the two times where we need to

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rotate our spine. This one pretty much mirrors a drill that we use here for

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kind

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of feeling that backswing rotation. But many golfers when they try to first

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start rotating into the backswing, they're going to have a little bit more of

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an

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upper body shift or go into more of a side bend movement. You can see neither

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of

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those would really match that pure spine rotation where the arms are

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working on those train tracks. The opposite would be or the other side would

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be in the downswing. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a

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little bit of the Jackson 5, a little pressure shift where my upper body is

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getting into kind of that good flex posture. And now I'm going to do the

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same thing. I can either rotate my upper body while my hips continue rotating

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or

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moving in the direction of the target. So kind of like so. Or I can do the

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train

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tracks. So I'm going to get into that left side and now I'm going to reach the

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right arm towards the golf ball and I'm going to pull that left arm away. Now

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if

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I was to then kind of lock this in place and bring my arms together, that's the

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same thing as rotating my spine correctly. Many golfers when they get into this

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downswing move, if it's not calibrated, they'll either go into excessive side

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bend or they'll tend to go into more of an upper body shift. So many times when

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I'll

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say rotate your upper body, you know, getting into that left side and then

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rotate your upper body, they will tend to drift the whole center of their upper

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body forward which can cause angle of attack issues. So if you're struggling

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with feeling pure rotation, here are a couple awareness drills that you can do

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at home to calibrate more of a rotation of the spine and your goal is to get it

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so that these two movements, whether I'm using my arms to help the rotation or

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I'm just using my rib cage and my shoulders, those two movements should

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match up. It's helpful if you use a mirror or videotape yourself. If you're

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doing it at home, I recommend, you know, doing it in front of a mirror so that

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you

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can really check and make sure that when you rotate, you're doing pure spine

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rotation.