- Welcome, Adam Bazalgette back here in Naples, Florida,
two-time PGA Teacher of the Year award winner.
Today's subject: the role of the legs in the golf swing.
Pretty important, stay tuned.
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What role do the legs play?
Well, there's at least three things
that I'm gonna show you today
and you'll see a carryover to other sports as well.
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So let's say the first thing that they do is
that they provide a platform for your core to work.
Now, if you know anything about boxing- and I'll confess
I don't know a lot about boxing- but any of those
martial arts type sports, it's your core
that generates the energy out to the punch or
if it's baseball, out to the bat.
It comes from the core.
So your legs have to provide a platform
which is stable enough for you to be able to do that.
Let's have a look at one of the best in action here,
Adam Scott.
So there's Adam hitting a short iron.
Now you'll see his legs are moving, it's not
that they're rigid, but round numbers.
They're not doing much more than reacting
to the pivot of the body if you watch that.
And you'll see his hips stay nice and level,
just a little gentle weight transfer there.
He's more on his front leg now.
Again, legs have moved but it's really
the energies coming from the core and
the hips stay nice and level, good platform
for the core there.
Let's have a look at him from this view here.
And again, if you look at his knees, they're certainly
not rigid, but under control.
The legs are providing stability and you
can see his core really delivering the hit there
as he goes into impact.
So in addition to providing a platform, the legs have
to help you use the ground.
I was lucky enough to work with Swing Catalyst
that makes the top of the line force plates
for a while when they were in their development,
got to see the numbers of a lot of really elite golfers,
how they use ground, etc.
One of the things Swing Catalyst measures
is how much pressure you put against the ground
and I promise you some of these elite young players
that maybe weighed 155 lbs, at key moments
in the down swing, have as much as 250 to 300 pounds
of pressure against the ground.
In short, not only have you got to provide a platform,
but you've got to squeeze into it
and use the ground a little bit.
Let's have a look at Tiger Woods, the ultimate squat there
of Tiger and how he did that to perfection.
Here's Tiger about to bomb a driver of the tee.
Now watch as he gets to the top of he back swing.
Watch his face and his upper body squat a little bit there.
Really where that's coming from is his lower body
is squeezing into the ground.
Just watch that angle there, watch that squeeze,
and you can tell the pressure's going down into the ground,
pressure into the glutes and, as he does that,
once you've squeezed into the ground like that,
you're really in a position to be able
to really fire the middle and fire at it that way.
He's drawn so much criticism over the years for that,
that squat, but I think it's a great move and
it's where he develops a lot of power from there
as he goes to hit the ball.
Pretty impressive stuff there.
So now you've got a platform for your core to work on,
you've used the ground to create potential energy.
Now of course the third thing that we need to talk about,
and this is a critical thing the legs help with,
is now you've got to transfer that energy
from the ground and your core out to the golf club.
If you're gonna hit it a long way, the golf club
has to snap down there.
Now this is really where you see similarities
and I'm gonna show you a professional field goal kicker
from the NFL and then a golfer and you will be amazed
how similar this works and the principle
in field goal kicking really makes this easy to understand.
So there goes the ball been placed, now watch
the role the legs play here.
That lead leg will come in, use the ground,
but watch how it stabilizes and as that lead leg,
the left leg, stabilizes, whip around comes the foot.
And against that stabilization, speed can be transferred.
Now in the case of golf, of course, you're trying
to transfer energy not to the right foot,
but to the golf club.
So watch Rory McIlroy here in shorts, he drives it
longer than this guy.
There's the activity, the driving into the ground
of the lower body, but as he gets near impact,
watch that left leg stabilize and, against that,
the core can also stabilize and whip.
Out goes the energy to the golf club
like the field goal kicker's right foot.
And, pow, the energy goes out there.
So the legs have to stabilize around impact,
at least momentarily, in order to transfer energy.
Then a little later, in the follow through,
they'll go again and you'll have normal finish.
Well I hope you found that helpful.
I think you can see that great athletes,
whether they're golfers, field goal kickers,
or whatnot, all know how to use their legs
not only to provide support, but to help them create
and transfer energy as well.
It's not that difficult to do if you just practice it.
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Thanks.
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