Downswing Exercise

A drill to help you start your downswing from the ground up

Hi, Robin here. Okay, here’s a drill to help anybody who is struggling using their lower body correctly in the downswing, using the ground, getting that little bit of hip rotation, getting that little bit of thrust, that little bit of force from the ground to create some speed. What I want you to do is pick up one of these Thera-Bands. They’re very useful. You probably see me use them in other drills. You can get them in supermarkets, online very easily. They’re different colors for different strength levels, so you can match it to your own strength level. But what I want you to do is fix it to something, as I said before: golf cart, a post in the wall, or even an alignment stick here stuck in the ground at an angle.

What I want you to do, ideally for this drill, you can actually tie it up, make a loop, but I’m not going to do that because I use this for other purposes with this band. What I’m going to do is I’m going to bring it around my waist, so that could be tied off, but for this purpose I’ll just hold it. And all I want you to do really is then make some rotations and thrusts to the left with that resistance. Now, just in doing that, you’ll start to sense how you’re using the ground, how you’re pushing off your back foot. Perhaps the correct footwork, you’ll start to feel maybe the weight going back towards your left heel.

You’ll start to feel the weight going towards the front of your right foot as you’re pushing off it. You’ll start to feel your pelvis, having that little bit of a thrust upwards from using the ground, and the rotation, getting your pelvis looking more at the target. Hopefully, that’s looking like the movement you want to create in your golf swing. Anybody struggling with hanging back, not using the ground, not getting enough speed from your lower body, number of different faults. I think you get the idea. This could be a great drill for you to give you the sense of under-load of how you need to use your lower body correctly.

So, once you’ve repeated that a lot, gained that sense, now we take away the load, you should feel a little lot easier to gain a sense of that movement during your swing.

So, as I  say, a good drill, to gain a sense of using the ground correctly, getting your hips rotating, getting that little bit of a thrust to create some speed. Get a Thera-Band, create some load. I think once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll start to gain the sense of the benefits of the drill, and hopefully that can get you on track to using your lower body better in a golf swing. It’s really a key move in a good golf swing.