Golf Beginner – Keep Your Head Down
The most common reason I see golfers not able to keep their “head down” (i.e. stable spine angle), is that their body motion is often almost non-existent, the motion being “all arms”, the cause usually being “dead legs” , i.e. “flat footed” or “locked up” knees.
If a (relatively) forceful swing of the arms is made through the ball, and the body and legs do not turn out of the way, then *some part* of the body has to absorb the momentum built up.
There are two schools of thought regarding arm / body motion, 1) that the body follows the motion of the arms or 2) that the motion of the body causes the arms to swing. Which one you believe doesn’t matter but the fact is that the body does have to turn while the arms swing.
When I see a golfer who has an obvious lack of body motion, I find it’s easier for them to learn by having them use the “body leads the arms” method. You can progress through a few stages to learn this.
(For a R.H. golfer) 1) Stand straight up, hold your arms out in front of you comfortably at chest level, then while keeping right foot stationary (allowing the left heel to rise if necessary), turn the chest and shoulders to the right and observe that (quite naturally) the arms follow and are still in front of the chest as you face to the “right”. Then reverse the turn, so that your chest and hips end up facing “left”, allow the right heel to come off the round.
Then just bend from the hips into a “golf stance”, still with the arms in front of you, and do the “turn-turn” drill again, and because of the tilt of the body, the arms will now be moving on a tilted “plane”.
Finally take a golf club and repeat the motion, to feel how the body turn carries the arms and club back and forth.
When you get the feel of the body rotating, you can then adjust your personal motion where it feels like the arms and shoulders/ chest are turning back together, or your arms mainly motivating the movement, or you might stay with the chest/torso feeling of initiating the motion. The end result should all look the same.
With the torso and legs now rotating throughout the swing, you should find it easy to keep the upper spine (and head) in place throughout the backswing and early stages of the followthrough.
The “modern” swing has the spine and head “releasing” the angle in the followthrough, so that you’ll end up standing straight up, balanced on the forward foot. When that occurs in the followthrough varies depending on a player’s flexibility.
Mike
4 Comments
Great information. I tend to pick my head through my swing and top the ball. Will give it a try. Do you have any advice for swings with lower back injury?
Hi John,
Lower back injuries and golf don’t go together very well
I should know as I have a lower back problem, …possibly contributed to by my 1980’s “reverse C” swing
Of course I would recommend that you consult with a doctor / physio expert .. but in my own case, I found that regular exercise, including leg lifts (lie on back on floor lift legs), and situps, greatly help to strengthen the surrounding back muscles and enhance flexibility.
The first thing I would say is that a “swinging” type of motion takes far less effort and toil on your body than a “hitting” motion. Swinging the club and *letting* it swing through the ball, and taking advantage of the centrifugal force is way to get “free” energy into the ball, rather than trying to force the clubhead through the ball with brute strength.
A swinging type motion also works better with relaxed muscles, and relaxed muscles will also tend to help prevent injuries. (Though even relaxed muscles can be overdone ! … I actually tore/pulled a muscle once by being *too* relaxed .. believe it or not
The simple answer is to hold the club only firmly enough so that it doesn’t fall out of your hands while you swing smoothly .. i.e with a practice swing.
That being said, you might have to alter your swing to “go with it” / “release the body “, earlier in the downswing, that you might otherwise want to if you’re 100% healthy. Ever seen how Gary Player “walks through” his follow through with his right leg?
A lot of the “snap” / power in the swing comes from the torsion and resistance of the upper and lower body parts working against each other, i.e. in a normal throwing motion.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to “resist” with the lower body on the backswing. Johnny Miller advocates what he calls a “minimum tension” swing, meaning that the lower body freely turns on the backswing, and the tension between it and the upper body is only developed during the downswing, by “holding back” the shoulders, while the lower body starts moving. How much of that you can do will depend on your physical condition.
An easy way to test that is simply how “hard” you can throw a ball .. or make a practice swing for that matter.
With a weak lower body / bad back, you might just have to forego some of that torsion / power.
Or, you might work out more with the upper body to enhance hand /arm strength, to shift your swing to a more upper body dominated type of motion.
Finally, in today’s age of more and more power and distance, don’t forget that if scoring is your goal, guys like Corey Pavin, who are extremely short in distance by pro standards, can still shoot under par
Also if you’re using long irons (what are they?) .. i.e. a 4 or 3 iron, you might replace those with hybrids or “fairway metals” as they require much less effort to achieve equivalent long-iron distance.
Mike
I’ll add one more thing.
Many golfer’s are “slicers”, or “natural” faders of the ball, or hit the ball shorter than “normal”, or hit their longer irons all the same distance.
All of these symptoms have the same root cause, that is, an incorrect “blocking” release of the forearms and wrists through the ball.
The cause is the golfer’s desire to both hit the ball hard, while “controlling” the clubface to either make square contact or prevent hooks and slices.
When the golfer “grabs” the club at impact, by increasing the tension in the right hand (for a r.h. golfer), the sudden decleration of the club gets transmitted up through the body, and can cause back problems.
Instead .. and what better strikers of the ball do, is that they rotate the forearms very quickly and freely through the ball, which *releases* the club, and therefore (if the body is then allowed to release afterwards), the sudden deceleration is not present, therefore no stress is transmited to the body.
A very quick rotation of the forearms will NOT cause a hook, providing that the arms also continue to swing “forward” (along the arm swing plane), as they are rotated. If the arms stop their forward momentum, however a hook will result, which is sometimes advantageous if you were *trying* to hook the ball
Mike
Get yourself a plastic `hard hat`, construction type, helmet preferably bright yellow. Drill a hole in the middle of the peak. Adjust the internal straps so the hat fits very tightly on your head. Attach a steel hook, preferably with a very sharp point, to a strong length of twine. Push the hook down the front of your trousers & adjust the point till it is just touching your anus. Now, taking great care, take your usual stance & address the ball. Push the twine through the hole in the helmet & adjust the twine till it is taut. Make your shot
Using this method you maybe may move your head the first time you use it BUT I GUARANTEE YOU WILL NEVER MOVE YOUR HEAD AGAIN.