Stability In Your Body Leads to a Better Swing

The Player’s Championship is a week away and the drive down Magnolia Lane at Augusta National is not far behind. Many of you I imagine are getting all “revved up” for the first Major of the year and the golf season in general. For some of us the winter months have kept us away from the courses and we are just itching to get for our first round. Others of us live in a climate that permits us to play year around, a luxury in my mind. Regardless if you have been playing golf the last couple of months or are just dusting off the clubs. I would like to discuss stability training and how it can help your game.

We have talked about how important balance is to the swing, but what about stabilization? Stabilization is what I like to call a “close cousin” to balance training. These terms are often intermixed in discussion. Balance is the ability to control the body during movement, and our movement is the golf swing.

Stabilization can be defined as the ability of the body to stabilize (i.e. not allow to move) certain body parts while other body parts are moving. Take the swing for example. When energy is being translated up through the body into the club head, parts of the core (mid-section of the body) must be stable as contact with the ball is made. This is what I like to call the sequential transfer of energy through the kinetic energy chain into the club head.

The kinetic energy chain of the body can work efficiently and allow for the greatest amount of energy to be delivered into the club. If your body has the ability to stabilize and allow energy to move from one muscle to the next until it reaches the club. The greatest amount of energy will be transferred into club head speed. If the body is unable to stabilize efficiently and not move energy correctly to the club, a less than optimal amount of energy will reach the club head.

Now, think about this for a moment. What if I have a few muscles that are unable to stabilize themselves and efficiently transfer energy to the club? Obviously you are going to loose some of the energy you are working so hard to get into the club head. This is essentially why stabilization is so important to the swing. It allows for the platform of proper swing mechanics to occur. In addition it allows the body to efficiently transfer energy through the muscular system into the club.

Sean