A big issue with golfers is posture. Ted Frick from the Classic Swing Golf School is here to show you why proper posture is so important, and how a simple exercise can help you achieve it.
Ted Frick:
All right. I’ve got a really important tip for the generation right now that is hanging on the phones, sitting at the iPads and the desktops, because we know what's going on. We know we're starting to get this upper body hunch. My tip today is going to be on posture, but I promise you a gentle exercise. Just last month, I had a sports med doc, and he was watching me present and talk and do the setup routine, and he was loving it. I was covering our five fundamentals. At the Classic Swing Golf School, we use an acronym, GAPBS, to denote the five fundamentals. G is grip, A is aim, P is posture, B is ball position controlled by movement over your lead foot, and S is stance width. I'm going to highlight the letter P and the importance of a dollar band that you can get at Kmart, Walmart or whatever your favorite inexpensive sporting goods store is.
Take a look at this. He brought it right to my attention. I was sitting there talking to a classroom of 10, and then going through the routine. He said, “Coach, I'm going to give you a tip that's going to help you for the next 25 years while you're presenting and setting up to the golf ball.” He said, “You need to get your rhomboids.” I had no idea what a rhomboid was. He pointed down to the base of my shoulder blade, if you will. And he said, “You appear to be in great shape.” He said, “You look like you're working your traps. Good. You look like you're working your lats.” I'm like, “Doc, I love this. I want to do this for another 20 years.” He said, “You’ve got to work the rhomboids.”
He said, “You’ve got to start pulling those shoulder blades back.” And it is awesome for posture. And I'll tell you why. Watch what he had me do here in front of the class. With this little band, I had these bands in the classroom, he had me take the band and put it in front of my chest. They come in different weights. He had me take the band and open the band up across my chest and then pinch my shoulder blades back. I'm taking my elbows like a wing of a bird, and I'm just going back with them and I'm holding for three or four seconds and I come out and release. He said, “Ted, do that five times a day when you get the chance.”
And I'm telling you, for all of you that are sitting by the computers and sitting there with those iPads and those phones a lot, we need to help that upper part of the body. It's going to be good for your lifestyle. But it's also going to be great for the posture and the golf swing. I'll show you in a minute. One more time with this little band, I take it, I open it up, let it rest on my chest, and then from the elbows, I go shoulder blades and pinch, like I'm pinching a quarter right in between my shoulder blades and I hold it. Two, three, four, and immediately you feel those rhomboids getting flared up. Now watch this for posture. One of the big keys of the five fundamentals. I'm taking my longest golf club. The lightest golf club, my driver. I'm going to my shortest and heaviest wedge, my 58-degree.
Take a look here at posture. Some checkpoints in your setup. There's been a lot of talk about butt-back. I would say be careful with glutes-back. We more like to talk about the glutes up and the shoulders back. Take a look here. I'm going to go with my driver. Then I'm going to go with my 58-degree wedge. Notice you have total control of where you point the handle of the golf club. Try to get the handle with every golf club in between your point and as close to the belt buckle as possible. Watch, and you'll see why. Handle to the belt buckle and disbursement from the hips as a hinge, glutes go up and the shoulders and shoulder blades go back. It straightens out my spine. Notice the handle is approximately a fist-to-a-thumb relationship from my body line as I hinge from my hips. When they measure these angles in a biomechanics class, I did this with David Leadbetter. He said, “Ideal situation: spine vertical to the ground. There's approximately a 40-degree tilt with the spine.” 40 degrees approximately.
Boy, everybody's going to have variations due to flexibility and mobility. And then the knee break is only like a 20-degree knee break. He called it the “40-20.” What I want to highlight again is the importance of not just hinging from the hips and the glutes go up, but pay attention to your shoulders that they're back. And here's the reason why. When you take the axis, which is the spine for rotation, and we need to turn for power and longevity of the golf swing, when your access is curved, you are not going to rotate athletically at all. But when you have control of the axis and you straighten out the axis by getting those shoulders back, you're going to make much more of a dynamic pivot back or turn back and a dynamic turn coming through.
Use a band or a rubber tube or something, but work on getting the upper body back in your posture and it will help out your pivot in your golf swing.