Ever have the feeling like your golf shot is lost before you ever make your backswing? Or have you taken swings that felt great only to have that feeling of the golf club thudding into the turf? For most beginning and high handicap golfers, the biggest threat to their golf swing is their posture.
The threat doesn’t just come in the form of bad golf shots, but also in terms of physical problems. For instance, RPM Therapy states that 35% of golf injuries are lower back problems and most of that is due to poor posture. Specifically, most beginning golfers bend far too much at the waist putting an enormous amount of torque and strain on the lower back. Hank Haney in many of his books talks about the ideal degree angle bend is somewhere between 20 to 23 degrees.
Basing what I see at my facility, most beginners 39 degree angle into the ball. Why does this matter in your golf swing? Primarily it will cause the swing to become far too steep which means the shaft of the club will never slot itself in the proper plane. To give you an example, a 7-iron swing becomes something like a lob wedge and a driver looks like an 9-iron. When the swing plane becomes too steep we tend to hit behind the ball and virtually lose all our power. Additionally, steep swings will also prohibit our arms from rotating over and closing the club face back up. This will cause our slices that we all fear as we approach our golf shots.
How in the world do we make our bad posture into a good one?
First anchor your club behind the ball to set up your stance
Second set those feet up according to the type of shot you want to hit
Third is to check your alignment and make sure the knees, hips, shoulders and eye line are all going the same direction, try using a club to make sure they are all lined up
Fourth is to imagine standing against a wall and bending at the waist to about 20 to 27 degrees or to the one on a clock
By setting up with less bend at the waist, you now can swing the club around your body and on plane which will help lessen the number of slices and fat shots you hit.
This picture from Golf Magazine demonstrates what our posture should look like:
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