The Warrior Posture
Intro
Most of us realise at least intellectually that having a good posture will benefit our golf game, but very little is written on why and how to specifically achieve the optimum posture. In this article I will guide you on how to achieve the most effective posture for your own golf game, and also expose you to why you will experience challenges with your posture and what you can do to reduce those challenges over time.
The first thing we must respect, there is a bio-mechanical optimum posture what does that mean? The human body has an ideal structural alignment, I can hear you thinking, bio – mechanical; structural alignment, I just want to set up to the ball properly!! Stay with me and all will become clear. In a healthy and structurally aligned body, your joints have a certain posture/alignment that keeps you balanced and your spine has a specific shape that allows maximum rotation, so the question is how many of us are still in this structural alignment and ideal posture? Answer: Not many! Now that is not intended to make you feel bad there is a very real reason why most of us have developed poor standing posture therefore leading to poor golfing posture. Lets first look at a structurally aligned posture
You will see in this posture (ideally run a line with an arrow from my ear going straight through my shoulder; hip; knee and into my ankle) how my key joints are inline, from my ear through to my ankle. You will also notice a slight ‘S’ shape to my spine starting with a small curve in my lower back. Just practising this posture in a mirror will do wonders for awareness of your own posture, and of course this won’t just help your golf but also your general health.
No if you can apply these principles into the golf set up you will look something like this (See Instructional Photo)
So back to the question why is it so challenging for us to maintain this good standing posture? Well think of all the things you do in a general day that pull you out of this posture
- Working at a desk whether it be on a computer, writing or on the phone we assume a hunched over position.
- Just prolonged sitting down causes our spine to curve the wrong way, add sitting down to steering a car and you are bringing your shoulders forward and out of alignment.
- Picking up items by regularly bending from the waist and not squatting through our legs to keep our back straight and supported will gradually affect our posture for the long term.
So I am sure you can now see we spend most of our day practising poor posture and we don’t even realise.
Why do I tell you these challenges up front? Well I want you to understand the ideal yet not get frustrated when you can’t achieve it! You see as I mentioned at the beginning there is an ideal but for most of us due to the reasons described above we will find it difficult to achieve, but here is the GOOD NEWS!…at last you are thinking, some good news! By understanding the ideal if you can improve your posture just 10% you will move your body at least 10% more efficiently and that will show up in your golf shots, you see it was worth waiting for! And there’s more. The posture is something you can work on by yourself with just the use of a mirror, plus work on your standing and sitting posture in everyday life and this will further benefit your golf game as well as your health.
So let’s get to work on finding your ideal posture oh before we do one final word of caution many of you may find you can get close to the ideal posture but feel very tense and rigid doing so – this is NOT GOOD! Good golf does not come from tension even if the technique is good, so as we work together on this do the best you can but never exert yourself so much that you become rigid. See working on your posture as a year long plan, make a small but ‘playable’ improvement now and continue to make small incremental improvements until you reach the ideal.
Step 1: Awareness of Good Balance
In a good posture your weight should go straight through the middle of your feet so there is an even spread from your heel to the ball of your feet. In fact you should be able to gently lift your toes without affecting your balance. Once you have better awareness of standing correctly balanced move onto step 2.
Step 2: Awareness of Good Spinal Position
Take your normal standing position ideally with a mirror to the side of you or a colleague to give feedback and place a club down your spine, starting at the base and going up to the back of your head.
Ideally you will have 3 points in contact with the shaft;
- the base of your spine
- middle of your back
- back of your head (with your chin tucked in)
The most common challenge here is the head position which is normally a long way forward and the only way of touching the shat is to tilt your head, which must NEVER be done. If this is true for you follow this exercise to re position your shoulders correctly and you will find your head moving back closer to the shaft. Remember we are not after perfection just steady and constant improvement.
From a relaxed position lift your shoulders up to your ears, (See Instructional Photo) Nest roll your shoulders back behind your body still keeping them up (See Instructional Photo) and finally let them drop (See Instructional Photo) Welcome Back�this is where your shoulders belong! You now probably feel quite strange with a very broad and puffed out chest,. Again keep practising this exercise to improve your general posture.
Step 3: From Standing to Golf!
There is a quick version and a slightly more detailed version; I will give you both
From your standing position keep you knees soft and over the middle of your feet (See Instructional Photo) next squat down at the same time as keeping your butt tilted up so as to keep the arch in your lower back. Doing this with the club still down your spine can help you feel the correct position (See Instructional Photo) but under no circumstances must you achieve it by tilting your head back as this could seriously injure your neck ((See Instructional Photo) with a big cross ‘x’) however as previously discussed perfection is NOT your goal, just gradual improvements so for most people having your head slightly forward is normal and acceptable. (See Instructional Photo) . Again without straining this is a good time to feel your shoulders sitting correctly as we did in the exercise above, do this and your arms will be hanging more to the side of your body where they should be, this in turn will keep your arms and grip more relaxed (See Instructional Photo) compare this to a poor shoulder position causing the arms to rotate inwards and tense up (See Instructional Photo) Very often golfers try to relax their arms and yet the shoulder position is the source of the problem.
Now for the quick version, this can actually be quite easy if you are familiar with the gym exercise of how to squat with weights on your back (back squat) practise this and you will move straight into a great golf posture, take a look at the photo below of me at the beginning stage of performing a squat (See Instructional Photo) and you will see all the characteristics we need; straight back; knees over middle of feet; weight through the centre of the feet. Practise this and bring your arms in front as if to hold a golf club and you will be very close to your own personal best posture.
Step 4: An overall Balance Check
Once you feel you have a good balanced posture perform this fun check, If you are balanced correctly and poised ready to hit a golf shot (See Instructional Photo) you should be able to jump straight up and land back in the same position balanced! (See Instructional Photo) (See Instructional Photo)if you start out of balance you will jump out of balance particularly when you land look at the photos where I start with my weight too much onto the balls of my feet (See Instructional Photo) (See Instructional Photo) (See Instructional Photo) (See Instructional Photo)So the lesson is you must feel balanced and poised ‘ready’ to play every shot.
Clearly the emphasis of this lesson has been aimed at the long game and full swing, the key principle you can take into the short game is feeling balanced and poised ‘ready’ to play every shot, having a straight back wont be as relevant due to the shorter swing required.
I hope this article has given you some specific check points for your posture but more importantly some whole feelings you can use to achieve a better posture in one simple move such as the squat, because as mentioned before too much tension or over thinking will often destroy a golf shot! If you are really serious about taking your golf further and improving your posture I strongly advise you to begin a stretching programme under the supervision of a specialist. More than anything else I strongly believe a good posture is the foundation of a good golf swing that is why all my coaches at Cranfield Golf Academy are trained to advice on stretching programmes to help their clients. For your nearest Cranfield centre visit. www.cga-golf.com
I hope you have found this article useful and remember go for small incremental improvement over a period of time NOT immediate perfection! Good Luck – Scott Cranfield
