Click here and enter your email address to watch the full video
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

Subscribe now to watch the full video.

Presetting Spine Rotation

The "presetting" drills are a great starting point for feeling the differences between setup and impact; golfers who struggle to get their lower-body open during the downswing will often benefit most from this version. That is, if we use a bit of 3D data from the PGA Tour, we can "preset" a pelvis-torso relationship that is both efficient and powerful. Ultimately, this should heighten our awareness for any upper-body dominant patterns AND encourage a more dynamic transition.

Playlists: Fix Your Cast, Keys To Transition, Fix Your Early Extension

Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Early Extension, Cast, Impact, Transition, Drill, Intermediate

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000
This drill is pre-setting spin rotation.

00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,000
So the pre-setting drills are to help you feel what things are going to be like it, the

00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:14,000
impact when they're different from what they might be it set up.

00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:21,000
So this drill I commonly use for golfers who look at it from the downline video and basically

00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000
their body isn't very open.

00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:29,000
So when I'm hitting a golf wall, if my body isn't very open, it looks a little bit more

00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:35,000
like this where my hip surfacing the camera and you can't really see any lower body rotation,

00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:40,000
then essentially at impact my hips and my chest are pointing in the same direction.

00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:46,000
So if I'm going to get my hips open and still have my shoulders facing the golf ball, then

00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,000
my spine isn't going to be somewhat rotated to the right.

00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:54,000
So what we're going to do in this drill is we're going to pre-set that right spine rotation.

00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:01,000
I've got one club across or club across my shoulders and the sticker across my hips and basically

00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,000
what I'm going to do is I'm going to pre-set my spine position and impact.

00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:09,000
So I'm going to rotate my upper body to the right and then I'm going to side bend my upper

00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:11,000
body to the right just like this.

00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000
So now I'm kind of in this what feels almost like a locked position.

00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:17,000
Now I'm going to flex from the hips.

00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:22,000
I didn't bend from the spine, I flexed from the hips and now I'm going to turn my hips,

00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,000
keeping this same angle between my upper body and my lower body.

00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:31,000
I'm going to turn my hips until my shoulders are basically parallel to the target.

00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:36,000
So if I broke this down my hips are open, my chest is a little less open,

00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:42,000
my shoulders are facing the golf ball, but as a whole my spine is rotated to the right

00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:43,000
kind of like this.

00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:48,000
If you are not used to seeing your lower body open at impact,

00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:54,000
then that means that your hips and your shoulders would be very close to even with each other.

00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000
This commonly happens from golfers who get really active with their arms,

00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:03,000
either from really pulling with the left shoulder or really throwing and going into internal

00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:05,000
rotation with the trail shoulder.

00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:08,000
So if I have more of a power source where I'm kind of doing this,

00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:15,000
you'll see that my brain would reflexively stop my pelvis to make the arm pull a little bit stronger.

00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:17,000
Whether it's coming from the left arm or the right arm.

00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:22,000
So in order to get this right spine rotation feel,

00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:28,000
I have to feel like I'm using more of my hips in my core in order to bring the club down the impact.

00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:33,000
So now in just like most of the pre-setting drills,

00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,000
we're going to hit some 9 to 3s with this pre-set position.

00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:43,000
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to rotate to the right side bend to the right,

00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:51,000
flex from the hips and now from here I'm just going to turn my hips to bring the club through.

00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:56,000
And hopefully I still have a little bit of right rotation.

00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:04,000
If I do it one of very short shot, then I can actually keep the exact same right rotation

00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:05,000
and pretty much stop it impact.

00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:11,000
So I'm going to stand up, rotate my upper body to the right, side bend to the right,

00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:17,000
flex from the hips and now from here I'm just going to turn my hips just like so.

00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:22,000
And I did very little with my arms and you can see that my shoulders are still

00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:26,000
to the right of where my pelvis is.

00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:29,000
It hasn't totally caught up just like that.

00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:33,000
So if you struggle with getting your hips open,

00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:41,000
this is one of the common kind of aha drills where many golfers get the experience

00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,000
of basically having the hips more open than the upper body for the first time.

00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,000
When you really highlight how your body is going to be rotated to the right.

00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:54,000
Some golfers feel like this is I'm hitting the ball more with at the side of my body instead of

00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:59,000
front of it. Some people just feel like the club is getting left behind me for a long time.

00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:03,000
There's lots of common descriptions for this, but ultimately it's just getting used to my spine

00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:07,000
being rotated to the right somewhere in the 15 degree range.

00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:11,000
That's pretty much the tour average of where the chest would be compared to the pelvis.

00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:15,000
And the shoulders would be close to square, but typically especially with the longer clubs

00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:20,000
you're going to see the chest more rotated the right than the pelvis is a great drill for feeling that.

Subscribe now for full access to our video library.