Stop that Over Swing !!

Thu May 16, 2013 by Dave Phillips

Firstly their are plenty of great players that Overswing, or take the club way past parrellel at the top of their backswing, perhaps the most famous is John Daly.  It can actually be a major power source as you lengthen your arc. The issue is that in order to control a back swing that is way past parrellel it requires great coordination and the ability to stabilize the lower body during your downswing so that you can benefit from this kind of swing. 

Most golfers that struggle with overswinging are either hyper mobile, which basically means they are very flexibile and often don't have the strength necessary to control their flexibility, or they don't have any range of motion in their throracic spine causing them to excessivley use their arms and shoulder range of motion to create some kind of an arc in their backswing. 

Both issues can be solved by simply controlling the core musculature and your forward flexion and side bend during your swing.  You see as a golfer sets up to the ball, they simply flex forward, and most golfers add a little side bend to the right. As they start their backswing they replace right side bend with left side bend as they start to turn and move their lead shoulder down and across their body.

A simple visual would be at the address postion the distance from your lower rib and your pubic bone is about 12 inches, as your start your backswing you need to try and maintain this 12 inch gap as your swing the club back, if the gap gets bigger then you will have too much left side bend and not enough forward flexion, this will cause something we call reverse spine angle, which can put you at risk of lower back injury, it will cause you to over rotate and get the club way past parrellel at the top of your swing. If you simply maintain the gap that you had at address, you will find that you can't swing very far back and you will feel more of a coil between your lower body and upper body. 

Take a look at the attached drills on the side of this article, also review our Swing Characteristics section and look up Reverse Spine Angle for some more exercises that will help control your backswing. 

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