The Left Hip In Transition

I like to try different things. Something new. You never know how it’s going to come out. So today I tried something new.

I thought to myself, one reason the golf swing is so hard is that it’s tilted. We don’t have any problem swinging something horizontally, like beating a rug (I know, that’s a dated concept, but its’ still a good image for this purpose).

So I had my 7-iron in hand, and started swing it like as if I were … beating a rug. I wanted to see how my body would move as I beat the rug in earnest. What would be moving, how, and when?

This is what I noticed. My hands and arms did not go first. To wind up my rug-beating backswing, my right hip went back first. That is the first thing that moved.

It took me a few swings to notice that, because I’ve never started a golf swing with my right hip moving back, so I wasn’t looking for it. But my unconscious mind felt that was what I had to do to get a good windup, so that’s what it made my body do.

Then on swinging forward to hit my imaginary rug, the left hip moved first. By a lot. And it moved backward. Straight backward–it did not turn. And it went back fast.

In his book, Five Lessons, Ben Hogan said of the hips in transition, “The faster the hips move, the better. They can’t go too fast.”

Actually, they can. If you throw your hips around by turning them, that puts a tremendous strain on your lower back. But if you throw your left hip straight back, you get the turn without the strain.

Back to beating the rug.

The movement of the right hip and left hip happened every time, not because I was trying to move them that way, but because that is the way my mind directed my body to move given the task it was preparing the body to perform.

So, I thought, that’s probably how my mind wants my body to move when I hit a golf ball. Why not try it like that?

So, I hit a few golf balls with my hips doing this new thing.

Result: much greater swing speed than normal with no effort at all, and a ball that went straight, high, and far. At least as far as Wiffle balls go.

Now the ball was on a tee. I tee up the ball when I have swing practice because I just want to work on club path and clubface angle. Trajectory is a skill all its own which I will practice using this technique later.

I’m not saying you should rush out and try this new idea because it would add 20 yards to your drives and lower your score by five strokes.

I’m saying I tried to find out how my body wants to move when I swing a stick at something in the most natural way possible and then try applying that to my golf swing. MY golf swing.

Make your own experiment to find out how your body wants to move and then apply that to YOUR golf swing.

2 thoughts on “The Left Hip In Transition”

  1. Hi Bob,

    There are those who’ve suggested I can be as dense as a golf ball, and this may be the case with my comments to follow.

    I take you to suggest you’re moving your right hip “back” — which in my mind I see as moving off the ball. Then you move your left hip ‘back” — which I see as moving back to the ball.

    You said you weren’t doing a “turn.”

    Don’t we fare better when we rotate our hips? That is, rotate (turn back) in the backswing, and rotate( “turn through”) in the downswing?

    That way, we don’t move off the ball, and the swing becomes the product of a simple rotation, without movement back and forth. As a side note, we should avoid movement “up” and/or “down,” too.

    Something tells me I didn’t understand your explanation, so sorry if I didn’t.

    1. Craig,
      Try this. Get into your stance, without a club. Now move your right hip straight back, and only your right hip. The left hip doesn’t go back with it. You will find your hips turning, but you didn’t turn. In the same way, now push your left hip straight back. Your hips turn to the left, but again, you didn’t do it with a turning motion. And, the whole time, you stayed centered over the ball. It’s somewhat like doing The Twist, if you remember that.

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