Hip Action

[nicklin]

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.

[MizunoJoe]

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.

[vj]

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.

[MizunoJoe]

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

[MizunoJoe]

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

Like this

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

[DDL]

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.

[vj]

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.

[EdZ]

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

[hue]

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

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

[fjbattaglia]

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?