How To Rotate Your Hips For More Power

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How to rotate your hips for more power

While it’s easy to say that you need to rotate your hips if you want to hit the ball further, it’s vitally important that you do it the right way. In the video and article below, PGA pro Gareth Lewis shares his tips on how to rotate your hips properly in the golf swing to generate more power and hit longer drives… 

Yes, you need to rotate your hips, but it’s vital you do it in sequence. For example, when you get to the top of your driver backswing, it’s no good to just hit through the shot before turning your hips. It might look pretty, but it’s pretty inefficient. 

We want you to create power, so you need to get the golf downswing sequenced correctly. To do that, from the top you almost want to feel like your hands are staying pretty still, with your left or lead hip moving forward and clearing out the way to trigger the beginning of the downswing.

With the hips clearing, the shoulders should start to turn, followed by the hands and arms, which bring the club through the hitting zone and into a powerful impact position.

Of course, this is easier said than done, so here is a drill to help. If you've ever wondered how to use alignment sticks, this is one of the best ways. That's because this drill provides a great visual to understand what your hips are doing during your swing. So, take an alignment stick and pop it through your front-facing belt loops, leaving most of it sticking out on your lead side as Gareth demonstrates in the video above.

Then, get into your driver address position and turn to the top. If you’ve made a nice, full shoulder turn, you’ll notice the stick will be pointing roughly towards your ball. From here, try and keep your hands as still as possible while you begin to open up the hips. You’ll see the stick starts to move towards your target.

As you work through a proper downswing sequence, the alignment aid will continue to move, and by the time the club has reached impact, the hips will have completely cleared and the stick should be pointing way left of target.

While it’s fine to do this at full speed, we would recommend rehearsing this move in slow motion first when you’re practising. Maybe do five exaggerated rehearsals before upping the pace. The more you do this, the more you’ll start to hone this move, which will enable you to swing the club faster and generate more power.