Learning to lead your downswing with your hips is one of the most powerful moves you can make in golf, transforming a weak, arm-driven swing into an athletic and consistent source of power. This guide will break down how your hips should work, identify common mistakes, and give you practical drills to feel the right sequence. Forget the confusion - we're going to build your body-led swing and unlock the power hiding in your lower half.
Many amateur golfers think of the swing as primarily an "arms and hands" motion. You take the club back with your arms, and you hit the ball with your arms. This instinct, while understandable, is what holds most players back from gaining serious distance and consistency. The real power in a golf swing comes from the ground up, with your hips acting as the critical transmission between your powerful leg muscles and your upper body.
Think of any powerful athletic motion. A baseball player doesn't throw a fastball just by flicking their wrist, they plant their foot, drive their hips around, and their arm comes whipping through at the end of that sequence. A boxer generates knockout power not from their shoulder, but from rotating their hips and torso into the punch. The golf swing is no different. It’s part of a what’s known as a Kinematic Sequence: ground, hips, torso, arms, club. The speed builds and transfers up that chain.
When you learn to lead with your hips correctly, a few amazing things happen:
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To understand the correct hip motion, it’s helpful to first understand the two most common ways golfers get it wrong. Seeing yourself in one of these descriptions is the first step to fixing the problem.
This is what many players think "leading with the hips" means. From the top of the backswing, their first move is a violent, rotational spin of the hips toward the target. Their belt buckle points well left of the target before the club even gets halfway down. While it feels fast and powerful, it completely disconnects the lower body from the upper body.
The Result: The arms get left behind, stuck trailing the body. To have any hope of hitting the ball, the player is forced to throw the club "over the top" and swing across the ball from out-to-in. This leads to weak, high slices that drift to the right, or sharp pull-hooks as the player tries to save the shot with their hands. You feel like you're putting a ton of effort in but the ball goes nowhere.
This fault is the opposite of the spin-out. The player starts the downswing correctly with a slight move toward the target, but then the hip rotation stops right around impact. The hips essentially "stall" and stop turning through the shot. All momentum from the lower body ceases.
The Result: With the hips stopped, there's no space for the arms to swing through. Everything gets jammed up. The only way to get the club to the ball is to flip your hands at it. This flip destroys your power and robs you of consistent contact and a stable clubface. This fault is a primary cause of topped shots, heavy "fat" shots, and a general lack of compression on the golf ball. You get a high, weak flight with very little power.
The correct hip sequence isn’t a wild spin or a sudden stop, it's a smooth, powerful unwinding that starts methodically from the ground up. I like to teach it as a simple three-step process: Shift, Turn, and Clear.
The very first move when you transition from backswing to downswing should not be rotational. It should be a small, subtle lateral shift of pressure into your lead foot. Imagine you have a pressure plate under your feet. At the top of your backswing, about 60-70% of your pressure is on your trail foot. Your first move down should be to smoothly transfer that pressure into the heel and ball of your lead foot.
A good feeling is to think about "re-planting" your lead foot into the ground. It’s a quiet move that sets the foundation for the explosion that follows. It is not a big lunge or sway of the hips past your front foot. Your head should remain stable, this is a pressure shift, not a body shift.
Once your pressure has established on your lead side, now the rotation begins. The movement is led by your lead hip turning open and away from the ball. If you’re a right-handed golfer, imagine your left hip pocket is being pulled directly behind you.
This is the move that defines "leading with the hips." This rotational pull from the hip and glute creates a chain reaction. It begins to pull your torso, which pulls your lead arm, which in turn pulls the club down from the inside. It should feel like your hips are initiating the motion and your arms are just coming along for the ride. You aren't actively trying to pull the club down with your hands at all.
"Clearing the hips" is the outcome of a proper turn. As your lead hip turns back and open, it creates a massive amount of open space for your arms and the club to accelerate through the impact zone without getting blocked or jammed. This is what allows you to swing from the inside and deliver the clubhead squarely and powerfully into the back of the ball.
By impact, your belt buckle should be facing the golf ball or slightly ahead of it, a clear sign your lower body has led the way but hasn't spun out of control. Your hips continue to rotate all the way through to a full, balanced finish where your chest and hips are facing well left of the target (for a righty).
Understanding the concept is one thing, feeling it is everything. Here are a few drills you can do on the range or even at home without a ball to bake this sequence into your muscle memory.
This is a an all-time classic for timing and sequencing.
This drill forces you to shift your weight before you rotate, perfectly instilling the "shift-then-turn" sequence.
This one is more of a mental cue, but incredibly effective.
This drill exaggerates the feeling of your body leading your arms.
With your hands separated, any attempt to fire the club with just your arms will feel incredibly weak and awkward. Your body will naturally learn to engage and pull the handle through to create any semblance of a smooth motion.
Leading with the hips isn't about wildly accelerating them out of control, it's a disciplined sequence of shifting your pressure, then turning and clearing your lower body to create space and pull the club down. Mastering this move is the difference between an armsy, inconsistent swing and a powerful, body-driven one that delivers speed and reliability on every shot.
We know just how hard it can be to tell if you're actually doing what you think you're doing. A feeling in your head doesn’t always translate to reality on the course. That's why we built our app, Caddie AI, to be a training partner in your pocket. You can ask for feedback on your sequencing by describing your swing or even shooting a quick video. Our platform gives you immediate, expert-level analysis and personalized drills to correct your specific faults - it’s like having a top coach on-call 24/7 to help you bridge that gap between feeling and real.
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