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!

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.

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.

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.

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.