When we look at different golf swings and try to understand what has allowed certain people to swing the club fast and control the golf ball there is a particularly strong common denominator – pelvic movement. At the Golf Performance Center we refer to the pelvis as the hub of the golf swing. Let’s look at what that means.
Director of GEARS Golf, Michael Neff, has captured many of the best players in the world and found a striking similarity in their pelvic movement. Almost every single PGA Tour player had their pelvic center slightly farther away from the ball at impact than at address. On the contrary almost every player that we have captured on GEARS here has their pelvic center closer to the ball at impact. This is an aspect of losing dynamic posture, in fact could be considered the cause, so understanding the physical limitations which lead to this is very important if you are going to make a change.
Just today someone asked me about the pelvic movement in the golf swing and I explained that the most efficient way to move the pelvis through the swing is to start in a neutral pelvis position and maintain that into the backswing. Where the best players set themselves apart is in starting the downswing with an anterior tilt of the pelvis which sets them up to leverage the ground to rotate and extend to transfer the energy in to the clubhead. Anterior tilt means to tilt the pelvis belt buckle down.
A great way to start learning this movement is through body swings with arms crossed and hands on the shoulders. This will allow you to focus on just the pelvic movement and truly learn the swing from the inside out.
