How To Stabilize Your Body Rotation

In this video, PGA Professional, Alex Elliott offers a great drill for how to stabilize your body rotation and hit better golf shots!

how to stabilize your body rotation
(Image credit: Kevin Murray)

In this video, PGA Professional, Alex Elliott offers a great drill for how to stabilize your body rotation and hit better golf shots!

Hopefully Alex Elliott's video (above) has given you a great idea for how to stabilize your body rotation. However, there are a few other ways to improve this area of your game - below Golf monthly Top 25 Coach Ged Walters offers his view on how to stabilize your body rotation in the golf swing!

 

How to stabilize your body rotation checklist * The centre of your shoulders and hips should stay in line * A club across the shoulders highlights how you’re rotating * Half a tennis ball under your right heel and left toes will help you rotate properly

1) Common faults Good golf swing rotation is essential for strike, power, distance and control. If anything is out of sync, any or all of the above will suffer.

Watch: GM Top 25 Coach Rick Shiels explains how to use your body for power in the golf swing...

The most common faults would be the upper body and spine swaying away from the ball to the right rather than turning effectively against the hips, or the classic reverse pivot, where the weight moves on to the left leg on the backswing resulting in the spine and upper body shifting to the left too. Neither of these upper body movements is efficient or powerful.

The classic reverse pivot will rob you of power

2) Good rotation With the sway to the right, yes, you’ve turned the upper body, but you haven’t extended your spine angle to retain position and thus control your rotation. What you actually need to do is keep the centre of your shoulders and the centre of your hips as closely aligned as possible throughout.

Watch: GM Top 25 Coach Neil Plimmer talks you through some great rotation drills...

If you rotate correctly, you can then simply unwind on the downswing to create real power. The most powerful muscles in your golf swing are your glutes and quads, followed by your core. If they’re not getting into the right positions, you will struggle for consistency as you’ll be relying on your hands and arms too much.

3) Shoulder drill This shoulder drill is a great aid in how to stabilize your body rotation. Place a club across the top of your shoulders, with the clubhead over your left shoulder. Get in the address position, then turn so the clubhead goes down towards the ground, almost towards the inside of your trailing foot.

This club across the shoulder drill will help you to feel proper rotation in your swing

In the downswing, your belt buckle should rotate towards the target, with the grip end of the club moving down and then up to the finish position shown here. The turn away is just a turn – no swaying or movement of the upper body other than around its axis of the belt buckle.

Five minutes of this a day will really help - you could even place your head on a door frame to start with to get used to the movement.

4) Tennis ball drill Here’s another great drill for how to stabilize your body rotation. Take a tennis ball, and cut it in half. Place one half under the heel of your right foot, and the other under the toes of your left foot.

Rotate properly and you'll feel your right heel compress the half tennis ball as your left toes keep the other half in place

If you rotate properly with no sway or reverse pivot, you will feel your right heel compressing the tennis ball beneath it on your backswing, while keeping the other ball gently in place.

Your left toes should then keep the ball beneath them more firmly in place as you transfer your weight, and turn through the ball.

Jeremy Ellwood
Contributing Editor

Jeremy Ellwood has worked in the golf industry since 1993 and for Golf Monthly since 2002 when he started out as equipment editor. He is now a freelance journalist writing mainly for Golf Monthly. He is an expert on the Rules of Golf having qualified through an R&A course to become a golf referee. He is a senior panelist for Golf Monthly's Top 100 UK & Ireland Course Rankings and has played all of the Top 100 plus 91 of the Next 100, making him well-qualified when it comes to assessing and comparing our premier golf courses. He has now played 1,000 golf courses worldwide in 35 countries, from the humblest of nine-holers in the Scottish Highlands to the very grandest of international golf resorts. He reached the 1,000 mark on his 60th birthday in October 2023 on Vale do Lobo's Ocean course. Put him on a links course anywhere and he will be blissfully content.

Jezz can be contacted via Twitter - @JezzEllwoodGolf


Jeremy is currently playing...

Driver: Ping G425 LST 10.5˚ (draw setting), Mitsubishi Tensei AV Orange 55 S shaft

3 wood: Ping G425 Max 15˚ (set to flat +1), Mitsubishi Tensei AV Orange 65 S shaft

Hybrid: Ping G425 17˚, Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro Orange 80 S shaft

Irons 3-PW: Ping i525, True Temper Dynamic Gold 105 R300 shafts

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Ball: Varies but mostly now TaylorMade Tour Response