Hip Action
 

:D

Guys thanks for having a place to learn and grow. I'm a G.S.E.M that has a question concerning the hips.

I Know and implement the down the line slide of the swinger and the crossline slide of the hitter. I have devices which keep the bottom of the spine out (no crossline slide) that I use a lot for juniors.

My question is what is the best way to teach the correct hip slide to juniors. I have so many that learned the game with a closed face grip and rotated the the pivot very aggressively to square the face. A real mess.

thanks

Perhaps hitting off the knees would be a good one here.

Re: Hip Action
 

It may help to have your junior train with an extremely flexible shafted club, helping the junior to match the arm speed to the pivot speed.

Congrats on Veazy's win.

Hope this helps,

:D

Thanks for the thought of using very flexible clubs. I will put it into effect immediately.

As a machiner at heart and mind, I utilize TGM in every golf lesson I give. Question though. How many of you guys follow the lanes (pivot, arms, hands)? In other words if Joe has a strong double action grip with a vertical hinge and you know he steers all over the golf course do you go to the hands or do you go to his sloppy knee and foot action.

Vj,

Great to see you at the show, hope everything went well.
I think that depends on the students level of commitment and the amount of time they want to put into improving. With your knowledge of the machine I think you would help this student immediately either way you went.
Mr. Kelley said to work on the first wobbly point of the pattern, grip is right at the top, always remember changing one component affects every other component. If I had this student, I would probably fix grip and go to basic motion and aquired motion to zero out pivot. Grip and hinge action could be trained together then adding pivot when ready.
Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3!

Todd

I agree with mbcpro about the first wobble point.
But I would be first concerned with the education of the hands.
I would reinforce the three impertatives and essentials, as well as the concept of the flying wedges before "fixing" any body action. And I would put a check on vertical hinge action outside lob or putting strokes.

6bMike I agree with what you are saying. Todd pointed out the first wobbly point which mr.kelley speaks of. At the same time Ben basically told me he starts every lesson with the pivot. In other words he is following the book.

I just want to make sure me grabbing the arms and hands isn't out of touch. Understand though, I am not talking about 5 handicaps, club champs, or tour players. I am talking about the other 700 people I teach each year. Pivot or zone #2,#3.

Thanks for the insight guys and gals.

trolio

The High School Hips
 

From my experience working at a driving range and watching thousands of people hit balls, one thing sticks out - and it is the overactive lower bodies of kids/teens. I was one of those people before I straightened it out, yes, but it's very hard to fix.

We like to call it the "high school hips." When I played high school golf, almost everyone I played with in tournaments is spinning their hips like crazy. First tee, straight shot. Second tee, big push. Third tee, snap hook. And so it goes on the whole round, as their hips continue to throw things out of alignment. Very rarely do you see someone with a quiet lower body. Why? Two reasons:

1) It certainly FEELS powerful to spin your hips.

2) There are instructors actively teaching you to spin your hips.

Combine these two, and you have a recipe for some very out of control lower bodies. It's very hard to get out of your swing if it's been ingraining itself since you were a child. You must realize that there is no power to be had by spinning your hips - it only disrupts the real power sources. A quiet lower body goes a long way towards getting not only a stable swing but also accurate power.

:D

Awesome Matt. Gives me some words to fight with.

:evil:

But I still need more drills, more exercises, I need to give these guys more incentive to make the change even though it will take time and energy. And I need to make sure I use TGM to do it in the simplist, most effiecient way.

How about this drill?

I think this comes from a famous instructor (Butch Harmon maybe).

Have the junior use his left wrist/hand to "hook" his bent right elbow at address. Make to and fro Basic Motions to help the junior see and feel the relationship of right forearm to the pivot through impact to follow through.

Simple and efficient?

Hope it helps,

:?

Correct me if I am wrong. THe right shoulder accelerates during start down. The arms exelerate during the downstroke. The hands accelerate during release and the clubhead acclerates during impact interval.

The whole point of the hips is to allow the right forearm to get into a pitch condition and to keep the right forearm on plane.

So "high school" hips are create by attempting to use the hips as an accelerator rather than a stabilizer.

vj,

Both Hogan and Nicklaus explicitly state that hip rotation helps accelerate the downplane Right Shoulder motion. Hogan said it "creates speed" and therefore doesn't just accomodate it.

Regardless, I still don't like spinning my hips in an attempt to create speed. And you have to agree it looks ridiculous when you see players trying to. You can pick them out of a lineup rather easily, or just watch the ballflights because they're the ones hitting big hooks as their misses.

Whether this is getting into my personal opinion or not...it's quite possible. But in the experience I've had, spinning your hips is not conducive to "mind in your hands" among other things. In the last couple years, I used to play with people every day who'd do. I could tell on the first tee that by the time the back nine rolled around they were going to be hitting some erratic drives. And they usually were. Their combination hip spin/wrist flip wasn't going to hold up for an entire round.

VJ, I agree with what you just said above based on what I've seen in my experience. Maybe there is a "right" way to spin your hips, but I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen who can make it work.

"I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen who can make it work."

How many tour players have you seen? That's a lot of fingers for one hand.

High School Hips
 

I was on the range last night with one other guy. A High School kids who is number 1 in the district. I've watched him develop since he was waist high to me. As I turned to watch him swing, I noticed his feet were severely pigeon toed as he swung.

I asked him if that was his "anti-hip turn" therapy. He said his pro has him doing that as a drill to quiet them down so he has time to drop his arms back to shoulder high before cranking the hips.

Bagger

Quite a few. Notwithstanding Tiger, (since nobody knows what he's doing) are you telling me you see Retief, Ernie, Toms, Vijay, etc. all madly spinning their hips?

There's a guy by the name of Mark Wilson playing the tour right now. His former instructor was a huge proponent of the hip spin. He would have Mark literally work on standing there and seeing how fast he could spin his hips. Spin the hips, let the club fall behind you, swing on a flat plane, and somehow not hit it fat WHILE aligning the clubface for impact.

I've know a couple other students of this instructor (teenagers) and the amount of hip action they have is crazy. Stop at the top, hip bump, then SPIN! Throwaway city. You couldn't imagine the problems they have trying to get that out of their strokes even with proper instruction. It's so ingrained into their habit system that even they can't quiet them down. You literally need to attach their feet to the ground so they can't spin and push up. Needless to say many students of this school of thought move on when they realize it's effect on their games.

Linkages
 

I think a lot of the problem, especially with teenagers, is too much flexibility. The problem occurs becasue there is too little linkage and their upper body elements "float" until all the flexibility slack (rib cage - to - hips, shoulders - to - rib cage) is exhausted. The hips can move very fast until this extra mass is engaged. It is best to show them how to take the shoulder slack out with a nice RFP and maintain linkage between upper and lower body by firming up the abs. The firmer abs will also flatten the lower back and prevent injury from the all-too-common junior reverse C.

Golfie

Matt,

It can be quite subtle, and I'm not advocating a whirling dervish move. I know what you're talking about because my club is the home for a local HS team. Most are out of control and overdo it. But, I would rather see that than a top down stroke.

Golfie,

Great points - they need to work on creating the proper tension so the chain reaction can happen without excess motion. But even then, as you say, they are so flexible that there will still be more motion than you see in older players.

MJ-would you agree that spinning your hips to fast does not allow for the right arm to fire the club out correctly?it also can ruin the plane of the swing.these two things to me wreck the swing the most.

I don't like the term "spin" in describing the hip turn. It suggests a premature rotation before moving to the left side. It's a question of when the hips start turning, and then how fast they rotate. Hogan said that you cannot turn the hips too fast. But it's clear that it must be done at the right time.

:D Thanks guys,

From the top the axis must tilt. Be so, the hips must slide either crossline or down the line before rotating. Possibly after the accident Hogan turned his hips as fast as he could but before that I find a hard time believing this from the video I have of him. In fact, I have some footage of hogan on VHS of him performing slow motion swings at Seminole. There is a distinctive sliding of the hips.

When working with juniors it is very difficult to get them to perform slow motion swings to incorporate the hip slide which enables the axis tilt which allows the proper sequence during the downswing.

For the life of me I can't figure out why some players grow up moving their arms and some grow up twisting and spinning. Unless the answer can be found in grip type. So that is where I am.

Flexible shafts, hitting balls off the knees, mirror work on the hip slide, hitting balls with a long dowel in the belt loops, Pivot drills keeping the bottom of the spine out are my basic defense for the throwing hips. I just need more medicine for these guys.

vj,

"From the top the axis must tilt. Be so, the hips must slide either crossline or down the line before rotating. Possibly after the accident Hogan turned his hips as fast as he could but before that I find a hard time believing this from the video I have of him. In fact, I have some footage of hogan on VHS of him performing slow motion swings at Seminole. There is a distinctive sliding of the hips."

When Hogan said "You can't turn the hips too fast", he meant the speed of the hip rotation and not when the turning starts.

The following video shows a slide to the left followed by the rotation.
http://www.megspace.com/sports/moeto...ide_clip2.html

"drop his arms back to shoulder high before cranking the hips."

Like this

http://www.megspace.com/sports/moeto...side_clip.html

People who have seen pros in person would have a much better perspective on the hip action and hip turn. On the computer screen, the golfer is only a few inches tall, so the lower body looks extremely quiet. I can barely detect a hip slide on a 5 inch tall golfer on the computer screen. Even on television , the golfer on a 27 inch tv may look only a foot tall, and the hip action doesn't look any more pronounced. I am assuming that those who have seen pros up close would detect much more pronounced and even 'exagerrated' ( compared to what one usually sees on the computer screen and tv)hip action from a 6 ft tall golfer. I could never wrap my mind around hip slide and hip rotation from teeny weeny pics and video.

I've never seen a pro up close, so I don't know. However, the 2 best ball strikers I have seen at the range have more hip motion than I normally see. One, who is a senior, uses more hip slide than the average hacker. The other, has very little hip slide, if at all, but roates the lower body much more quickly than us duffers. He doesn't look like he swings hard with his arms. looks like a drop and rotation.

:D

RWH,

The Dowel Drill. Place a dowel which is approximately 36 inches in length through the belt loops. The High School Hippers will smack the dowel with the right forearm. Here is another one: Get a bungie cord with hooks on it 20-24 inches long and a five foot piece of 1/2 pvc pipe. Attach the pvc to the front of your thighs with the bugie and get after it. Again, the highschool hipper will snap his shaft.

You can always try the Hogan "strap" around the knees and/or ball between the knees, harder to spin much with those.

Re: Hip Action
 

vj: vj: As a person who was badly taught and taught to turn the hips not bump and turn I can see where you are coming from with your question. Most grotty positional taught golf instruction is based on hitting certain check points and if you do it well everything goes swimmingly. We know that this is rubbish. For me the key for getting the hip bump was training and understanding a good impact . Knowing where I wanted to be at impact and training the impact feelings meant that I had a better understanding of where I wanted to be at impact at the top of the swing so I would find a way to get there in the downswing . Your article where you go into hip axis tilt helped a lot and I left a post on this subject in the Manzella forum. You can't get to a good impact by turning the hips from the top so for me training in impact by working on half swings and mashing the impact bag was key. Kids want to kill the ball so if you can get them into a good delivery position and get them thumping the hell out of an impact bag training in power where you want it they will WANT to find a way to reproduce this rather than just following good advice and bumping the hips from the top or even worse just exploding from the top with downswing blackout. I used to box as a kid and young adult and my coach used to train us to get power into short shots . Most kids can not throw good hooks and upper cuts using big loopy slappy moves. If you get kids working on short shots using close in work on the pads the loopy moves disappear when the kid has a real sense of power and has his mind is in the short movement. Then he just does not want to do the loopy slappy moves which are really a a sad attempt to create power . I think it is the same thing with golf.
I understand you are a super putting guru. My putting is dreadful. I average 36 putts a round. I will be leaving a post on the putting section where I would like you to go into your insights. Thanks

I recently purchased Lynn Blake's "Alignment Golf" DVD set and find it very informative. I tried VJ's "High School Hips" drills with a dowl in my belt loops because I felt that I may be spinning too much on my downswing. I found it impossible to take a full swing without hitting the dowl with my right forearm on the downswing, even when I tried slowing down my hips. I'd like to know what other TGM followers think of the drill. Maybe it isn't meant to be used for full swings, but VJ appeared to have taken a full swing in the demo. Do you think today's pros can play full shots with a dowl through their belt loops? Can you?

"High School Hips" drill
 

I recently purchased Lynn Blake's "Alignment Golf" DVD set and find it very informative. I tried VJ's "High School Hips" drills with a dowl in my belt loops because I felt that I may be spinning too much on my downswing. I found it impossible to take a full swing without hitting the dowl with my right forearm on the downswing, even when I tried slowing down my hips. I'd like to know what other TGM followers think of the drill. Maybe it isn't meant to be used for full swings, but VJ appeared to have taken a full swing in the demo. Do you think today's pros can play full shots with a dowl through their belt loops? Can you?

Hi VJ,
There was a teenage Thai boy at the range the other day that was spinning his hips like crazy. [It is an epidemic here in Asia.] He is a good player at single digits. His coach asked me to have a look and help if I could. [Cool coach from Sweden]

I like to ask a few questions before hand to see what's up. I asked him where he is getting his power from... he said his hips. OK, when doing this do you feel you are pulling or pushing? He said, pulling.

OK, when pulling, do you feel more of your right hand or left hand during the swing motion? He had to do a mock swing before answering... left hand, he said.

Alright then, would you like to do an experiment? Sure, he says. We then talked a bit about PP #2.

OK, on this next swing see if you can pull the shaft down with PP #2 as your only concern. He did and hit the ball like a rocket. He hit another and one more… super solid shots. Amazingly and immediately his hips became more quiet and his balance more pure.

I asked him what he thought.

He said, “Better impact”.

I asked, “Did you think about your hips?”

He said, “No.”

I asked, “Do you like that feeling?”

He said, with a big smile, “Yes!”

I then told him that his Pivot Study has now run its course and he can now focus on building other things into his swing such as Purpose and Power.