THE CORE TURN
What does “core turn” it really mean ? We use the term ‘core turn’ quite often yet a lot of folks don’t really understand it. Even when we say the ‘core’ is the abdomen, chest and shoulders together as a unit most people nod their heads and realize it has something to with the body but most don’t really understand what a ‘core turn’ is.
FREEZE THE BUTT CHIPPING DRILL
We’ve come up with a little drill that should help. It’s designed to teach you the feeling of ‘Turning the Core’ while chipping.
You start by finding an open wall where you can stand with your back to the wall with your butt up against the wall and your feet together. You will be bent over at the waist in a chipping address position. Depending on your body size your feet will likely be 4-6 inches away from the wall. As normal keep your feet together with most of your weight on your front leg.
Your goal is to make your chipping motion without any CONSCIOUS arm or wrist power just by turning your upper body. Your arms should be loose so your core can actually swing your arms. Your goal is to make your chipping motion with your ‘core’ not with your hands and arms. Your arm, wrist and the club will lag a split second behind your core. There is some “thumb cock” (cocking of the wrist in the direction of your lead thumb) but that cocking is a reaction with the loose arms not a conscious hitting at the ball.
You should feel your stomach, chest and shoulders turning as a unit. Your bellybutton turns a little bit, your chest turns a little more and your shoulders turn the most. Although your hips shouldn’t be turning much (because your butt is up against the wall) you should feel a small turn of the stomach. On longer chipping motions, if you look at your belly button you should it turn just a little bit.
Your ‘Triangle’ (the triangular space formed by your chest and the your two are should remain intact throughout the whole chipping stroke even the longer strokes. Review ‘Power Triangle’ http://simplegolf.com/blog/?s=power+triangle The inside of your upper arms should be glued to the sides of your chest so your chest, shoulders and upper arms turn as a unit (but your arms should be loose).
You won’t be able to make a long chipping motion in this position but that’s a good thing. Your chipping motion should have a short backswing and an accelerating downswing that continues through the ball. Your chipping follow through should be longer than your backswing. Make some practice chipping strokes gradually lengthening your stroke.
Here the key point: You should NOT feel any CONSCIOUS arm motion or wrist motion doing this drill. There is arm and wrist motion but that motion should be in reaction to the turning of the core. (That why your arms and wrist should not be tense.) Try chipping some balls in this position. You should have a good appreciation of ‘Turning the Core’ now. If you think you’ve got it here’s the next step.
WE ARE NOT SAYING DON’T TURN THE HIPS AT ALL WHEN CHIPPING
We’re just trying to reduce the amount of hip motion to give you more consistent and more accuracy shots. On really, really short chips you may not need any hip motion but on longer chips some hip motion is normal. The purpose of the hips against the wall drill is to teach you what reduced hip motion feels like not to have you hit without any hip motion at all. All too often golfer chip by turning their hips instead of turning there core (torso).
Practice this same core chipping motion with one arm. Hold the club in your lead hand. Then take your trail hand and grab your lead hand wrapping your finger over and around your lead hand. All of the fingers of your trail hand should be wrapped about your lead hand rather than on the club. Then keeping your lead upper arm against your side make a one arm chipping motion again using your core not your arm as the power of the chipping motion. When you chip with one arm you should feel the arms being swung by the core (shoulders, chest & abdomen).
When you think you’ve got it, then take this swing outside and make some practice swings. Start with shorter chipping motions. Then gradually lengthen your swing. As your swings get longer you will feel your hips turning a bit which is normal and exactly what we want. However you should watch to make sure that the hips are turning synchronously with the core.
By now you should see that the chipping motion is the heart of the Symple Swing method. The beginning of chipping motion is identical to the beginning driver backswing. The downswing of the chipping motion is a main component of the downswing of the full swing.
The full swing is longer but it’s actually the same basic swing motion as the chip. We say you hit the ball with the same swing from the chip to the driver because the same basic ‘Core Turn’ is the heart of every Symple Swing motion. On the longer swing the backswing is started with the core but then as the backswing get about to horizontal the “core” start to pull the back hip away from the ball initiating the turning of the hips. See The Symple Turn – A simplied lower body motion for the golf swing. http://simplegolf.com/blog/full-swing/lower-body-action/the-symple-turn-a-simplied-lower-body-motion-for-the-golf-swing/
Joe Davidson
Simple Golf
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
ok, now this make sense.
I belive I lift the shoulders up, and dissconnected from the core.
So, I made swings at home with a shorter backswing but making sure I tucked the arms down to the chest and made half swings.
Range tomorow.
heh
Hi Joe,
During the backswing, I can maintain the tri-angle and feeling the connection of my arms to the body being a unit until it comes to the horizontal position of my front arm, then I lose this connection when my arms are moving upward and I feel my arms are seperated from my body. How can I still being connected?
Thomas
I suspect at that point you are lifting the arms rather than continuing to turn your core (shoulders, chest & abdomen) and your hips.
I’d be happy to review a video of your swing and check that out. (Didn’t you send me a video clip before?) If you have access to a digital still camera take some video clips of your swing and send them to me. (Most recent digital still camera can take video clips too. If you don’t have one ask around because one of your friends or family probably have one.) Does your cell phone take video clips. Even video clips with a cell phone can be very useful. Tape a couple of swings from behind the ball (facing the target and from the other side of the ball (facing you). You can also upload small or medium sized files (up to 50 megs) by using our http://simplegolf.com/helpdesk/ See Attachments on the bottom of the page. If you need to send larger files contact me for directions.
Joe Davidson
Simple Golf
Hi Joe,
You are right that I do lift my arms up after my front arm has reached the 9 o’clock position. After this point, I do have difficulty to keep on rotate my core more as my shoulder has turned to 90 degrees the most. I have seen many golfers who can swing their arms up to even over 11 o’clock position with a shoulder turn of 90 degrees. Are they lift their arms up and lose the connection for a while , then they will re-esteblish the connection when their arms drop down to 9 o’clock position on the down swing. Is this the right way to lift the arms up or I should never lift my arms up if my physical conditions do not allow me to rotate my core unit further and I should just stop there.
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
The question is what do you gain vs what do you lose if you do lift your arms. It is possible to gain a very small amount of power but that comes at the need of increased coordination and timing that is also needed. I strongly advise against losing your “connection”.
Power comes from turning the core (shoulders, chest & abdomen) . Review the video clip on this page about generating power. See Power Tips Video Clip http://www.simplegolf.com/pp-powertips.htm
.s2
Hi Joe,
This may be a mental game: In order to gain the speed, should I focus on speeding my arms and hands up and let the body rotate accordingly to support, or should I focus on speeding up my core by rotating my hips faster that my arms and hands are taking a ride accordingly with a good connection to the body.
I appreciate your valuable instruction because the above actions confuse me a lot !
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
This is not a mental game. It’s physics. It’s about how to most effectively generate power in this case club head speed. In Karate I use to love to fight guys who tried to generate power with their arms. However I had a Sensei who was a couple of inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter than I was, yet he could hit me so hard with either his arms or his legs that he could lift me up in the air and drive me backwards. Let me assure you it was because he could effectively use his core.
Focus on speeding the core!!!
The left side should control the swing (for a right handed golfer). The left side of the core (shoulders, chest & abdomen), the left upper arm, the left forearm and the club essentially function like a segmented whip (Like a bull whip).
NOTE: The are two ways to swing a club.
1. Be a left side (front side) swinger like Jack Nicklaus.
2. Be a right side hitter like Arnold Palmer.
Over the years the left side swingers have proven to be longer and more consistent. These days most of the PGA pros are predominately”swinger” instead of “hitters”.
If you try to supply conscious power with your arms (especially your back arm) you will be in effect trying to “push the whip”. You can not “push a whip” as fast as you can “whip a whip”. Now I am NOT saying that the arms and wrists don’t supply some power to the swing. They do. However in order to be effective that power has to be reactive rather than conscious.
They Power Tips Video Clip http://www.simplegolf.com/pp-powertips.htm drill teaches you to whip. Notice in that drill we weren’t focusing on arm and wrist power. We were focusing on the core turn.
I would like to see you turn your core faster BUT you should be careful about “whipping your hips. Please double check the The Symple Turn – A simplified lower body motion for the golf swing. http://simplegolf.com/blog/full-swing/lower-body-action/the-symple-turn-a-simplied-lower-body-motion-for-the-golf-swing/ If you whip your hips too much with a traditional hip movement you can very easily start pulling everything to the left.
Joe Davidson
Simple Golf
Hi Joe,
Thans so much for your detailed explanation on this topic.
I wonder why Mr Palmer did not use his left side to whip the club, he was such an exellent golfer in the histry. There must be a reason for him to do so. If you happen to know the anwer, please share with us, I think all of us are very interested to know.
Thanks once more.
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
People can make the same motions different ways. Look at sidearm pitchers versus regular pitchers in baseball. Palmer learned one way and stuck with it because he had success with it.
It wasn’t until the last 20 years or so that the golf swing was analyzed well enough to really figure out the most efficient ways to do things. The technology to figure that stuff out (computers and high speed video) wasn’t available to analyze the golf swing when Palmer started golf. When I went to golf tournaments in the 60′s you could tell who was hitting two fairways away because of their swing. Pretty much everybody had a “homemade swing”.
Joe Davidson
Simple Golf