How To Use Your Legs: Part I
By Jack Moorehouse
Next to your hands and feet your legs are the most influential contributors to a correct swing, equal to your arms and legs. Using your legs properly contributes to both consistency and power, and enhances your ballstriking. Yet when it comes to golf instruction session, the legs don’t get much respect. In fact, most teachers seldom talk about them when giving golf lessons. And not much is said about them in written golf tips.
In this article we talk about the legs. We’ll discuss the purpose, function, and movement of the legs during your swing. In Part II, which will appear in next week’s newsletter, we’ll review how the legs work when swinging and provide some drills to help improve your leg work. Understanding leg movement helps knock that golf handicap down to size.
Functions of the Legs
The legs have three functions. They provide support, balance, and speed to the centrifugal force created by your hands and arms. Without your legs’ support your body gets out of sync, you lose your balance, and you lack a foundation from which to push off, robbing you of power. You need your legs to swing with consistency, balance, and coordination.
These three functions—support, balance, and speed— are incorporated in two types of movement: rotary and lateral. Put another way, the legs cause you to both turn and slide during your swing. Most teachers emphasize the turning aspect during their golf lessons or in their golf tips. But few highlight the sliding aspect. That’s because too much sliding leads to swaying—a major swing fault.
Complementary Movement
These two movements complement each other in a good swing. Leg movement (and your hip movement) is predominately rotary during the backswing, and mainly lateral, that is, side-to-side, on the downswing. Both need to come together for your swing to work well.
Unfortunately, golf teachers and golf instruction articles place a lot of emphasis on rotary movement, and little on lateral movement. Players eventually pick up on this. In the absence of much discussion of lateral movement, players tend to overemphasize rotary motion in their swings, and ignore lateral movement’s contribution.
Problem of Overemphasis
Overemphasis on rotary motion creates two problems. It fails to acknowledge the need for lateral movement during the swing, and it takes the knees out of the swing. Both are necessary ingredients of a good swing.
“Spinning out”, for example, is a common problem among golfers who misuse their legs. It occurs at impact when the lower body turns too quickly or too much, moving the hips off the line of play and eliminating support for your downswing. When a player spins out, it’s as if someone pulled the rug out from under him or her. It’s a common fault among golfers who over emphasize turn and underestimate slide.
Spinning out often occurs because the golfer is afraid to allow lateral movement on either the backswing or the downswing. In an effort to prevent swaying, golfers prevent themselves from turning. Then, on the downswing, they over compensate and spin out. The post-impact turn during the swing, however, is more like a twist than a turn. The correct amount of turning happens naturally if you first allow your legs to slide forward.
Getting a Feel For Leg Movement
To get a feel for how your legs should work during the swing, try this drill. Holding a club vertically with your left hand, and with the club touching the ground, throw a ball under it with your right hand. When you do this, you’re forced to support the motion of your arm. If you make hard throws or increase the speed of your delivery, and don’t move your legs to support the throw, you’ll end up losing your balance.
Or try this, take a tennis ball and throw it sidearm at a spot on a wall or at another ball lying on the ground. Notice how you naturally stride forward to balance yourself or to support the throw. Try it a few times. Then try it again, but add some zip to your throw. You should be able to feel your legs contributing to the additional speed. That’s how they should feel during your golf swing.
The legs are key elements of your swing that are seldom talked about during golf instruction sessions or in golf tips. Without the legs’ help you’ll end up taking a weak, awkward swing or you’ll experience a problem like spinning out. Either way, you’ll inhibit swing consistency and rob yourself of power. Poor leg movement, which I see a lot when giving golf lessons, hurts your golf handicap.
Jack
Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How
To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros.” He is NOT a golf pro, rather a
working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower
their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest
golf tips, golf lessons and
golf instruction.
