Another newbie - Early Extension and Early Release Issues

[PresTex]

Picked the game up about 3 months ago after years of doing nothing but "powerlifting" and olympic lifting. Have had to take a step back from it due to injuries and pain so I picked up golf to replace the gym. Largely ignored mobility and coordination exercises for most of those years so Im having trouble overcoming some issues in my swing. Mainly my tendency to extend my hips into the ball and releasing the club early. My hips really do not like the rotation needed to get through the ball so Im trying to figure out how to get some consistency while I work on loosening up the hips, rotating, and not extending the hips.

 

Here are a few clips for reference. Would love to hear any thoughts on things I can do to address these issues to make my game better and if anyone has some exercises/stretches that will help with rotation and hip mobility im all ears.

 

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[PresTex]

7i

 

 

 

 

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[Valtiel]

You're right in that the hip action is the main issue here. You have a severe loss of depth/position that starts in transition, the downstream effects of which will be a steepening of your shaft plane and the extension issues that you mentioned. 



Your butt should be pretty close to, if not on the red line at impact, and you can see you've pulled away from it a significant amount. 

The idea of the "correct" hip sequence is sort of a right hip back (backswing) -> left hip back (transition) to keep the axis of your hip rotation more centered around your spine/core. This keeps the hips more or less rotating within a bit of a box. You have the very common problem though of right hip back -> right hip forward which instead shifts your axis to be more around your left hip. This swings you out towards the ball like a gate and creates all the other problems. 



We can see that here, with the majority of your downswing action is being driven by the right hip shooting out towards the ball with your left hip doing much less by comparison. 

One of my favorite examples of the correct "in the box" hip rotation is Billy Horschel:



This is basically the opposite of your current action. The left hip does the lion's share of the movement in transition, pulling back to create all that space in the downswing for his hands and arms to do their thing. 

AMG has IMO the best visualization of this in their Pros vs. Ams hip rotation video, definitely recommended viewing:
 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Valtiel

[PresTex]

18 hours ago, Valtiel said:

AMG has IMO the best visualization of this in their Pros vs. Ams hip rotation video, definitely recommended viewing:
 

 

 

Appreciate your thoughts man. This video was extremely helpful to help visualize. If you have any suggestions on drills to help get this into muscle memory let me know. Im gonna work on just the basic wall drill in the mean time.

 

[Valtiel]

9 minutes ago, PresTex said:

 

Appreciate your thoughts man. This video was extremely helpful to help visualize. If you have any suggestions on drills to help get this into muscle memory let me know. Im gonna work on just the basic wall drill in the mean time.

 

 

I prefer the chair drill over the wall drill since it doesn't stop you from gaining depth in the backswing and is also easier to swing a club with:

 

 

The idea being to bump the chair with your right hip going back and with your left hip coming into impact.

 

Exaggerating this feeling is fine since going too far likely won't actually translate to your real swing, you'll just want to make sure you aren't leaning back away from the ball or getting into your heels too much. You'll want to feel like your weight starts in that athletic, bouncy position slightly on the balls of your feet, shifts slightly back to be more centered in the backswing, and stays centered and maybe moves *slightly* towards your heels in transition as your left hip drives back and you get up into your front leg. This will likely feel strange since your weight is moving in the opposite direction right now.