Alright golfers, let’s tee off!
Frustrated that you can’t produce any power! Maybe you slide during your golf swing?
What is a slide? What causes a golfer to slide? How do you fix it?
What is a slide?
A slide is any excessive lower body lateral (side to side) movement toward the target during your down swing.
This type of movement by your body makes it extremely difficult to stabilize your lower body during the down swing. This action takes away the power and speed from your upper body through impact of the ball. It’s critical that the lead hip internal rotation has full rotational capability without the lateral sway. The golfers’ upper body needs the lower body to be stable during the down swing to assure proper transfer of energy to the upper body. Lower body stabilization is also important during the fast rotary motion from the torso and arms during the down swing motion of your golf swing. What the golfer ends up doing with a slide motion is creating an inefficient pattern to try and generate more speed and power.
Video Of Golf Swing “Slide”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l25g3I4C5Ic#
What causes the golfer to slide?
The main culprit is the inability of the golfer’s lead hip to internally rotate…this lack of internal rotation, will cause you to produce a slide action. It is also important to be able to separate your upper body movement from your lower body. The ability to do this will allow the lower body to stabilize while your shoulders and arms move through the swing to ball impact. Limited trunk to torso separation is usually caused by the lack of middle back rotation and tight Lats.
The most valuable player, with out a doubt is the Glute Maximus (your butt). The Glute is also referred to as the “King” in power production. This muscle is the main stabilizer of the pelvis along with the Glute Medius. Pelvic stabilization is imperative in eliminating the bodies need to “slide” to generate power.
Photo of Glutes
How do I fix it?
First step would be to locate a Titleist Level 2 Golf Fitness Professional! Link to Mytpi.com.http://www.mytpi.com/
The fix is to get the glutes to fire (work at maximum strength), no pun intended! Doing squats is probably not the best place to start. If the Glutes aren’t working properly, squatting probably won’t help. What you need to start with is corrective exercises and patterning movements to recreate communication between brain and butt. Next step would be to work on corrective exercises (Patterning) to establish separation of the upper body from the lower body. The last step would be to increase your middle back rotation. This is accomplished by increasing mobility, stability and strength though the thoracic spine.
Photo of Thoracic Spine
I will be providing great corrective exercise in the near future. You will have to stay tuned in!!
If you have questions, or think I’m completely off track, I welcome your input!