How To Stop Pushing

Feet Together Push Drill

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feet together golf drill

Players who tend to push the ball likely have an in to out swing path into impact. This is usually created by an over-active lower body, and a slower moving upper body.  A great drill to help reduce your lower body movement is the leg together drill:

With a 7 iron on the driving range, place your feet together as shown in the picture and set up to the ball in the middle of your stance. Make full swings, while focusing on trying to keep your balance and turning your hips through impact. I cannot stress this enough, focus on the turning of your upper body… and the turning of your hips.  If you can make solid swings, while turning your hips – you’ll help reduce your lower body movement, and start hitting straighter shots.

Also keep in mind the timing of your hips and your arm swing through impact. This drill helps with your swing tempo, balance, and upper body rotation. Give it a try!

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The Hip Coil Drill

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Coil

One of the most common power leaks in the golf swing is an over-active lower body. For some players, instead of coiling their body to generate power, they resort to sliding their hips laterally. This fault is a huge contributor to inconsistency at impact, and often big swooping block slices. If you’ve ever stepped up to a ball and let go a huge block fade – this drill is likely for you. Another term for this fault is called “getting ahead of the ball”. In a nutshell, as you swing back, your lower body slides back with the backswing laterally, and as you swing down into impact you often slide forward and clear your hips too early leaving the club wide open at impact. Some players (with wrists of steel) can even see a snap hook from this fault.

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Bucket in Knees Stabilization Drill

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Bucket Knees Golf DrillI myself have used this drill many times to help stabilize my lower body. It’s really is amazing how easily it helps to fix an over-active lower body. By placing a bucket between your thighs, right above your knees (as shown), you can really minimize the movement allowed by your lower body (remember to pinch your knees inwards to hold the bucket in place). Take a look at the picture to better understand what I mean. I personally focus on squeezing my knees inward, it helps to increase resistance and torque while preventing a slide, it’s a very effective combo.

If you tend to suffer from quick hips or you slide them through impact, try this golf drill. Hit balls with a short iron and focus on turning through impact. You’ll see a large difference in ball contact, direction and distance.

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Stop Sliding Drill ~ Cure your Push

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Sliding drills pushing golfSliding drills pushing golf

You reach a short par 5, you’re playing well but could really use another birdie. You address the ball and swing a little harder than normal, thinking about reaching the green in two.  You make your swing, you finish, and watch your tee-shot sail way into the trees on the right. Sound familiar? It does for me, especially when I was a junior golfer. I had the tendency to slide my hips into impact in attempts to get more distance. This fault lead to an in to out swing path, resulting in my blocked shot.

This was one of the drills I have used to help force my hips to stay stationary and turn instead of sliding to get those extra yards. You can clearly see in these two pictures that this student’s hips are moving horizontally. Timing the motions of the hands and sliding hips to create solid contact is nearly impossible with this swing problem. To help maximize consistency a player would ideally, want his hips to turn rather than slide.  This drill will help you reduce your hips from sliding.

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Chair Drill For Spine Stability & Blocks

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Problem:

Thousands of junior golfers can relate to this problem – in attempts to gain more distance, they all move their hips so forcefully into impact that they cannot maintain their spine angle. The result is often a block / push. Maintaining your spine angle throughout your swing is the key to unlocking your consistency. This simple drill using a chair is a great way to improve your consistency.

 

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Hitting Blocks? Check your Hips

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Often I find junior golfers have an issue with sliding their hips on the downswing in attempts to get extra distance.  Unfortunately this causes your spine angle to change leading to anything from pop-ups to big blocks.  The biggest problem with this fault is that after awhile, this fault becomes ingrained, and then very difficult to get rid of.

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