Test Your Stomach Muscles (your "obliques")

Sit in a chair and turn your shoulders back to your right (to the left if you play left handed).

Have someone stand behind you and grab the front of your right shoulder with their right hand and push against the back of your left shoulder with their left hand.

As you turn your shoulders back toward center, have them resist, as you see here.

If you're like most golfers, you can easily turn your shoulders back to center. This is because you use your stomach muscles to power your downswing. Your stomach muscles (obliques) are paper-thin, but with enough practice, they can become fairly strong.

Measure Your Hip Flexibility

Lie prone (on your stomach) on the floor. Keeping your knees together, bend your knees 90° so that the soles of your feet point straight up toward the ceiling.

Still keeping your knees together, move your feet away from each other. If you have enough flexibility in your hips for golf, you should be able to move your feet apart a total of 120°, that is, 60° on each side, as you see here.

A simple and accurate way to measure is to have someone videotape or photograph your legs in this position. Run the tape on your TV, or print the photo. As shown above, draw vertical lines through your knees, a line through the center of your lower leg, and measure the angle between the two lines with a protractor (available in any office supply store). Be sure to take the time to measure. Please don't guess!

Test Your Hip Strength

With your feet apart and knees together, have someone hold your feet apart as you try to bring them together (be sure to consult with your physician before doing this test, especially if you may have any knee problems).

The hip muscles that you use to bring your feet together are the gluteals: the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus.

These are the largest muscles in your body (that’s why the biggest of them is called 'maximus').

If you're like most golfers, you will not be able to bring your feet together at all. If you can bring them together, it's only with a lot of effort.

What should you be able to do?

If your hip muscles are strong, you'll be able to bring your feet together so powerfully that you can throw your friend back across the room. That's the power potential of your hip muscles!

How does hip muscle strength affect your game?

If you have discovered, with these 3 simple tests, that your obliques are stronger than your hips — that means you're using your obliques to power your downswing.

And that's poison to your handicap.

Research proves a direct relationship between hip strength and handicap.

 

When you contract your obliques, you also pull your head down during your downswing.

Aligning the body for a golf swing.

Pulling your head down makes good ball contact harder. The distance between your eyes and the ball changes, so that sometimes you hit the ball a little thin, other times you hit fat.

As you know, being just a little bit off center makes a big difference in how far your ball travels. You can’t lower your handicap if you're striking the ball with all parts of the club face. You have to hit it dead center.

What happens when you pull your head down?

• You attempt good ball contact by changing your spine angle.
• Some times you can change your spine angle just the right amount to hit the ball with the center of the sweet spot.
• Sometimes you change it too much and you hit thin.
• Sometimes you don’t change it enough, and you hit fat.
• Some days, you do all three.

When you contract your obliques, you also tilt your spine to the right before impact.

Increasing your front spine angle opens your club face just prior to impact, as you can see by holding your driver at address and tilting your upper body to your right.

An open club face pushes your ball to the right.

So what do you do with an open club face?

• You attempt to square your club face with your hands.
• This is why you have ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’ on the golf course, ‘good shots’ and ‘bad’ shots.
• Some days you can square the club face and the ball goes straight.
• Some days you overdo it, and the ball goes left.
• Some days you don’t square it up, and the ball goes right.
• Some days you do all three.

Since you don’t know that you are using your obliques to power your downswing, because your hips are too weak to get the job done, and because you don't know that your obliques are distorting your spine angle, you may blame your ball flight problems on your mind.

Your mind is not to blame.

We have a tendency to think that golf is mostly mental — but is it?

The hips are the heart of the golf swing, everything else is peripheral.

If your hips are stiff, or worse, weak, and you're not aware of it, you may think your golf problems are mental when your stiff, weak hips cause erratic swing problems. So, your problem may be stiff, weak hips.

If your hips were strong, wouldn't you use them to power your downswing? Yes, you would. You wouldn't have to use your paper-thin obliques.

Your strong hip muscles would enable you to make a powerful rotation without changing your spine angle or pulling your head down.

Imagine your result! Longer, straighter drives, woods and irons.

As your hips get stronger, you'll find that your mind really is OK, because now your shots go where you're aiming. All because you strengthened your hip rotators.

But how do you strengthen your hips? Should you lift weights?

Weights are not the answer.

Lifting weights won't strengthen your hip rotators.

We know, because we've done the hip strength test with many professional weight lifters. They turned red with embarrassment when they found we could keep their feet apart with just our finger tips! Worse yet, lifting weights creates scar tissue that makes your hips stiffer.

We know that too, because we've spent countless hours with professional golfers releasing scar tissue from their hips. This scar tissue was caused by running and lifting weights.

How do you strengthen your hips for golf?

Well, obviously, most golf training aids are not going to work. Heavy clubs, weighted sticks, clubs with air-resisting vanes — these all strengthen your arms and obliques, not your hips.

There is only one golf training aid that strengthens your hip muscles... the Somax Power Hip Trainer.

Designed with golfers in mind.

The developers of free weights, Nautilus and Pilates had no idea that scratch golfers owed much of their success to powerful hip rotator muscles.

It's only from our years of working with scratch and professional golfers, and using our extensive library of hip rotation strength measurements that we were able to develop a machine that enables every golfer to develop this powerful, hip strength secret.

Did you know that powerful, fast hips are the hallmark of dominance in sports?

• The fastest hips in boxing belonged to Muhammad Ali.
• The fastest hips in baseball belonged to Barry Bonds.
• The fastest hips in golf belong to — Tiger Woods.

The reason that hips are the key to sports dominance is that they generate the greatest force with the least effort.

As we learned in school, Force = Mass X Acceleration. The biggest, most massive muscles in your body are the hip muscles. The force you generate by accelerating the mass of your hips is transferred by your trunk and arms to the club — and then the ball.

By generating the power for your swing with your legs and hips, rather than your obliques, you're free to use the smaller muscles of your arms to keep your club on plane and square up the club face prior to impact. And you don’t have to compensate for a changing spine angle because you don’t have to use your obliques.

Big muscles for power. Small muscles for guidance.

It is as if nature designed the body for golf.

But abuse that design and you're asking for trouble.

When you use your upper body for power, you abuse that design. It's like driving a Ferrari off-road. The Ferrari is a beautiful car — but it wasn't designed for off-roading. The same with your obliques. They weren't designed to generate power. They were designed to transmit power.

Your hips were designed to generate power.

This is why I call my golf teaching aid the 'Power Hip Trainer'.

It trains your hips to be more powerful, so you have a more powerful, consistent and accurate swing.

Easy to set up. Easy to use.

Want to experience how easy it is to set up and use my Power Hip Trainer?
Just click the play button on this video (you may need to click twice in Internet Explorer):

 

The weaker the hips, the higher the handicap.

Last year at the PGA show, we tested the hip strength of more than 100 PGA professionals who visited our booth. Of those 100, only two had enough hip strength that we couldn't keep their feet from coming together.

To demonstrate that hip strength need not decline with age, one of those two was 65 years old.

Besides strong hips, these two PGA professionals had something else in common. They both had very low handicaps. One was a 1, the other a 2.

For the rest, we found that the weaker the hips, the higher the handicap.

Just turning your hips during your swing doesn't mean you're using them to power your downswing.

For 98% of golfers, the hips are just ‘going along for the ride’. Only if your hips test stronger than your obliques, are you using them to power your downswing.

When we need to score in baseball, we always go to the strongest batter in the line up.

We wouldn't go to the weakest batter for a home run. It's the same with your brain. your brain always goes to the strongest muscles to make the swing. This means that if your obliques are stronger than your hips — your brain will choose to use your obliques.

You have no conscious choice in the matter.

You can’t ‘will’ yourself to use your hips.

Therefore, you have to either make your hips stronger than your obliques, or else continue to ‘spray and pray’. You need a strength training routine for golf that's golf specific.

You can start your hip strength training routine right now by ordering your Power Hip Trainer here.

My Power Hip Trainer comes with a one-year warranty on parts and a 30-day money back guarantee. You'll have a home machine that gives you an aerobic workout while improving your golf game.

 

 

 

 

 

Quality construction backed by an iron-clad guarantee.

The Power Hip Trainer is designed for years of service.
It's made from the finest steel and finished with a baked-on rust-resistant coating. The base has a special non-slip surface. Finished entirely in black, it will make a handsome addition to your exercise room, or it can be quickly assembled and disassembled for every-other-day use.

Your Power Hip Trainer comes with a one-year warranty on all parts. If anything should break (nothing has so far), just return the part for a cheerful, prompt replacement.

It also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If, for any reason, you are not happy with the results from using your Power Hip Trainer, just contact us for a return authorization. Once we've received your hip trainer in resalable condition, we will issue a prompt refund, less shipping.

You need aerobic exercise.

I know, because I suffered a heart attack myself. I thought I was in good shape. I biked hard on the weekends, even taking my bike to Europe for a couple of weeks every summer. But I had a heart attack because I didn’t exercise every day.

If you're like me, you work long hours in order to enjoy playing golf. But walking the course isn't enough. You need aerobic exercise.

But where do you find the time? You could run at lunch, or take your bike to work. But, let’s face it, is that realistic?

And if you run, you should be aware that running creates scar tissue in your hips that will make them stiffer. And stiff hips don’t turn fast enough for golf.

What’s the answer?

The answer is our Power Hip Trainer. Your Power Hip Trainer comes with a DVD containing 26 drills for right and left-handers. The drills will combine into a vigorous 45 minute to one hour aerobic exercise workout.

Now, you can train the heart of your swing (the hips) while you train your heart!

Does it work?

You bet it does! By exercising every day, I've lost 40 lbs of fat. My triglycerides have dropped from 350 to 77. My cholesterol has dropped from 225 to 173. My top speed on my bike rose from 20 mph to 22 mph — a 10% improvement.

I’m in better shape than I was six years ago. I now have more endurance and more power.

My regimen is simple. I use my Power Hip Trainer every other day for an hour, and I walk the hills around my home with my dog for an hour every day that I don’t use my Power Hip Trainer.

Stronger hips. Stronger heart.

What a combination!

Special bonus #1

If you order today, I'll send you a $39.95 bonus, just for trying out my
Power Hip Trainer. Your bonus is The Efficient Golfer, the first golf book to show you how to use your home camcorder to videotape and measure your swing mechanics.

Now, at home, you can measure the changes in your spine angle, your downswing sequence, the speed of your hips, and your flexibility during your swing.

This book is a special bonus for ordering today. If, after 30 days, you decide to return your hip trainer for any reason, the book is yours to keep.

Order your Power Hip Trainer now and you'll soon have a home machine that gives you an aerobic workout while improving your golf game.

Special bonus #2

When you order my Power Hip Trainer, I'll send you, at no additional charge, bi-weekly emails to help you get the most out of your new machine.

I want you to be successful with your new Power Hip Trainer. I realize, from my own experience, that it's one thing to buy a new training aid, read the manual, watch the DVD, and then start working with it — but it's even better when someone with experience shows you how to use it.

The hip trainer is simple, but getting the most out of it is an ongoing process. My bi-weekly emails will help you.

P.S.
If you found that you have less than 60° of internal hip rotation on each side, then you'll be interested in my Microfiber Reduction program.

Microfiber Reduction is a special program that increases flexibility far beyond what stretching alone can do. Tour players who have completed my Microfiber Reduction program have won the US (as a rookie) and South African (beating Ernie Ells) Opens, improved their ranking in putting average from #113 to #1, increased their longest drive from 295 to 400, and quadrupled their tour income.

See how Microfiber Reduction can improve your flexibility.

             — Bob Prichard

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Research proves a direct relationship between hip strength and handicap.

A recent study of 82 golfers by researchers at the Neuromuscular Research Lab of the University of Pittsburgh found that players with the lowest handicaps had the strongest hips.

The 82 golfers were divided into three groups, based on their handicaps. Researchers found that greater hip strength was related to a better handicap. And the best players, those with a "scratch" or better handicap — were stronger in all hip movements.

Here is a link to this research about hip strength and handicap, which relates to any golf fitness program.

A recent clinical trial by the same group of researchers shows that improving strength and flexibility in the hips and torso can boost "torso velocity" during a golf swing — and add 20 yards to a golfer's driving distance.

Back to "How hip muscle strength affects your game"...