To have an efficient swing you want your upper and lower body to be disassociated. True or False? (The answer is at the bottom)
If we want to maximize our own individual power/speed during the golf swing we need to be able to rotate our torso separately from our pelvis during the backswing and then be able to rotate (unwind) our pelvis separately from our torso beginning with the downswing and on through the impact position. The disassociation doesn’t have to be huge but it does need to be present in order to create speed in our swing.
Play along here……You are having an out-of-body-experience….You are ready to hit a golf ball…..Standing in the set up position perfectly aligned to the target….You are viewing yourself from the down-the-line angle (you’re behind yourself) take a snapshot in your mind.
Now…..let’s pretend (since it’s make believe) that you’ve made the best swing of your life and your golf club is a millimetre from hitting the golf ball…….take a snapshot in your mind.
When you view yourself at set up, assuming you are square to the target, it’s likely you only see one side of your body (for right handers, if you were behind yourself looking down the line, …..right leg, right glute, right shoulder). If you’re lower and upper body are ‘associated’ during the swing you would look exactly the same at impact or very close to the same. If you were DISASSOCIATED……it’s likely you would see that your lower body has begun unwinding…..you would likely see both legs, both glutes and your shoulders would be slightly behind on the rotation. That’s how you want to picture yourself at impact.
PHOTOS NOTE: You can see the difference in impact positions between Paula Creamer (disassociation example with lots of speed to her swing) and the poor fellow Google Images put on my computer screen who is painfully associated and is likely exerting a lot of effort with little success.)
Answer: TRUE.
Take a look at the video where I demonstrate a simple screen I perform during a TPI Golf Fitness Assessment. It’s called the Torso Rotation test.
