THE MOVEMENT WHICH ALLOWS HIP SWAY

Years ago a friend told me that my hips wandered erratically during my golf swing. He also said that there was no pattern in the hip movements from swing to swing.

We did not have a golf pro to turn to for help on this. I had to solve the problem on my own.

I used to teach physical education from Grades 1 to 9. I recalled the various age groups of young people trying to learn athletic movements for some of the sports.

Why were my hips moving? I could stop them from doing this but I had to give too much attention to them during my swing. Even tightening my hip muscles did not solve the problem.

I stood in front of a floor length mirror and did my impression of Elvis Presley (uh, the late rock and roll guy who could really sway his hips.)

OK! At least I wiggled my hips around while watching what was happening in the mirror.

If I moved my hips in any direction my back would arch out of its natural upright position. This is not good to have golf swing movements with your back out of position. Golf’s ‘bad back cemetery’ is too full of former golfers who succumbed to injured backs. (By the way, the techniques which I teach for basic swing movements and control did bring one man out of this back injury. He was able to golf with his grandson and his former golf buddies.)

If I tightened my hip muscles and made my hips move then my whole body swayed back and forth like a tree. You do not want this change of positioning of your upper body during your swing movements. It becomes very difficult to re-align yourself to the ball as the club is hitting the golf ball.

Somewhere, an area of my body was collapsing to permit this unwanted hip movement.

The answer came from observing my movements in the floor-length mirror while keeping my hip muscles firm. My body was swaying like a tree but my feet were not moving.

The only part of me which could allow this ‘tree-like’ sway was my ankle joints. I yanked up my pant legs (what a ghastly sight!) I swayed some more.

Sure enough there was a lot of movement in my ankle joints.

In the 2 clips above I am exaggerating hip and leg movements to show how much bending of the ankles there can be. Note how far away my legs and hips move from their start position.

Can you imagine how hard it would be to push a car out of a snow bank or mud puddle if your hips were wandering or swaying?

I experimented with this in various ways. The solution became obvious.

Continued

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My golf students frequently comment that they have never heard some of the golf tips I give them in their lessons. They frequently give me a bonus or come for additional lessons beyond the package deal of the Parks & Rec. program.