Dr. Tyler Standifird, professor of biomechanics at Utah Valley University, has great insight into how a golf swing works. In this video he shows details of what better golfers do as they use ground pressure to drive rotation and club head speed in their golf swing.
Tyler shows examples of what you can learn about ground force in swings from Tiger Woods, Hideki Matsuyama, and Justin Thomas. All three pro golfers show a very common pattern in terms of how they leverage ground forces in the swing. They load the lead leg early and they generate a great deal of vertical force that they convert into lead hip rotation.
You have to extend the lead leg using a motion patter that exerts torque (rotational force) on the lead hip socket to rotate the pelvis. The ground force has to be offset from the lead hip socket and you can learn in the video how the pressure moves through the right foot in the downswing to do this. Avoid using your lead leg to exert a ground force directly through the left hip socket. That doesn't provide rotational torque to the pelvis, it simply lifts the pelvis. Then you have the dreaded early hip extension.
A key point that you need to take advantage of using ground forces is understanding how the upper body body rotation works in conjunction with the lower body ground force. Rob Stanger has some great training on fixing some common faults on how people rotate. Click here as this will give you free access to one of the premium training videos from Rob on our Alta View training library.
Reach out to us at Alta View if you would like to setup a lesson that utilizes these pressure plates so you can get personalized feedback in your training.
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