Better Golf Swing

Do you have difficulty getting your golf ball to land where you want it? Are your drives frequently too short? Do you randomly top, hook or slice the golf ball? If you are like any golfer I know of, you have probably tried dozens, if not hundreds of different golf swing tips. You may even have forked out the cash for special golf driving instruction. But if you are here reading this article, that means you have not found the solution to your problem, have you? Quite possibly you already know that maintaining the correct golf swing spine angles is critical to playing good golf. But knowing and doing are two very different things, aren’t they?

So how do you keep the right golf swing spine angle throughout your swing? You have likely already tried some of the special harnesses, restraints or golf jackets that claim to hold your spine at the correct angle to force you to have a better golf swing. They certainly work for some people or these companies would not still be in business, but it is true that not everyone can be helped in the same way.

The problem is that different people have different bodies – different levels of strength and different levels of flexibility. Your wife can almost certainly carry a baby or toddler for hours at a time without getting tired. However, she probably can’t lift that same child above her head. On the other hand, you can probably lift that child over your head but very likely cannot carry him for long periods of time. Your daughter, who practices yoga to stay thin, has a flexible body and can bend her limbs at various awkward angles. Your son, who lifts weights and can easily lift your daughter, is nowhere near as flexible despite his youth.

Having the right body for playing golf is the basic foundation on which good golf swing techniques are built. If your joints are too stiff, if your muscles are too weak, your body cannot support the correct golf swing mechanics. So the first step to improve your golf swing is to go through a regime of fitness and flexibility training. Specialized golf fitness training is good if you can afford it, but even general strength and flexibility training will work wonders for many weekend golfers.

So what is a good set of general purpose strength training exercises? The simplest are just body-weight training – push-ups, squats, lunges and curls. Maintaining the correct form will get you stronger faster than trying for more repetitions. Once you can achieve 3 sets of 10 repetitions of each strength exercise while maintaining proper form throughout, your body should be ready for proper golf swing instruction. At least, from the perspective of strength.

But you do not get a powerful golf swing just by having strong muscles. You also need flexibility. Before doing your strength training, you should warm up with stretches. After you complete your strength training, you should cool down with stretches. But what kind of stretches? Any kind of stretching exercises will do, actually. What matters is that all your joints are gently stretched and the ligaments are slowly lengthened. You will know all your stretching is bearing fruit when you can bend your body and limbs through angles you could only achieve in your prime.

Once you have enough strength and flexibility, keeping the right golf swing spine angles becomes a simple matter of practice. You will find that swinging the golf club at the ball feels much better than before. You will finally feel a sense of rightness when you find and go through the correct motions.

The next foundation for correct golf swing technique is to learn how to grip your golf clubs correctly. There are golf swing instructors who tell you to grip it as tight as you can. But they are wrong, or they may be simplifying things to help their weaker students achieve decent results faster. The fact is – golf is a physical activity where power generation is critical. In that respect, it is very similar to martial arts.

Successful martial artists have mastered the art of generating power. This ability is the reason why a frail-looking 90-year old man can knock down a 200-pound giant. At its extremes, it finds its ultimate expression in Bruce Lee’s famous one-inch punch. But don’t think that this is only a secret of oriental martial arts. Some of the classic boxing champions also knew the secret. For example, the post-WW2 American champion, Jack Dempsey, wrote an excellent description of it in his book, “Championship Fighting – Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense”. We repeat it below:

1. Shoot your loose, half-opened left hand straight along the power line at a chin-high spot on the bag.

2. But, as the relaxed left hand speeds toward the bag, suddenly close the hand with a convulsive, grabbing snap. Close it with such a terrific grab that when the second knuckle of the upright fist smashes into the bag, the fist and the arm and the shoulder will be “frozen” steel-hard by the terrific grabbing tension.

That convulsive, freezing grab is the explosion.

In the same manner as Jack Dempsey’s explosive punch, your grip on the golf club should be relaxed. It needs to be firm enough that your club won’t fly off when you swing it, but it needs to be as relaxed as you can make it. At the moment of impact, you then tighten your grip explosively to generate more power in your golf swing. Your grip is just a microcosm of your entire body as you swing your golf club. Not just your wrist but your head and neck, your arms and shoulders and wrists, you body and waist, your legs and ankles and feet need to be relaxed when you swing your golf club, but explosively tighten up when the club head hits the golf ball.

When you first try this explosive tightening, your golf swing will be very inaccurate. That’s fine – it’s something that practice will fix. But if you want a better golf swing, you will need all three of these factors working together – strength and flexibility as the first layer of the foundation to help you keep the correct golf swing spine angle, the correct grip as the next layer of the foundation, and finally the building of your golf swing technique.