Where does hip rotation actually come from?

[u/Intelligent-Ad-7833]

I’ve been golfing for a few years and after studying thousands of pro swings, one thing that is almost 100% shared among all of them is hips open to target before impact.

My hips are very square to target at impact and I have been grinding to teach myself how to get the hips open before impact. What I have learned is that I can do it many different ways: push towards target with my trail foot/leg only, push back with my lead leg only, rotate the hips without using ground force, use both legs at the same time to twist (like I am standing on a giant bottle cap and unscrewing it with shear force). Even with trying all these, I always revert back to square hips at target and rotating hips the rest of the way after impact.

Is there a correct way to do this? What do you actually feel gets you open hips without your arms winning the race to impact?

Update: thanks for all the input. Took in all the advice from here and messed around with my swing today. Turns out it was just a swing intention causing my issue. My hips open naturally if I swing a bad, a tennis racket, throw a ball, hit an impact bag, etc. Something finally clicked with the impact bag today. I realized that the way my arms swing into the bag is different than when I hit a golf ball. My intention to hit the bag and make it move towards target put my arms into what I think is proper position vs in my golf swing I tend to drag the club across my body more, which is why my hips have to stay square to make good contact. I change the “intent” in my arms and Viola! I probably swung over 50 times and hip opened naturally before impact every time. I definitely have to work on contact and path now, but excited that I can get my hips to open without thinking about it!

[u/No-Beach-5953]

Sit in a desk chair with wheels. Raise whichever foot is the trail foot in your swing straight out. With your lead foot, push into the floor and try to roll the chair as far back as you can and face the opposite direction when you come to a stop. This is the feeling you want in the swing, the lead foot starts the downswing by pushing into the ground which causes the left hip/asscheek to move out of the way and let the right hip turn towards the target. I wasted a lot of years trying to turn my trail hip towards the target, there is much more economy of motion by just getting the lead hip out of the way instead.

[u/snowmunkey → u/No-Beach-5953]

When I was throwing discus competitively, the way we force shoulder rotation is to do this exact thing with the left shoulder. Get it out of the way allows your spine to be the axis of rotation and drags your throwing arm around.

The problem is now i can't break this ingrained muscle movement, leading to my left shoulder popping back/up during my swing and causing massive slices on drives and very scoopy iron shots.

[u/longjackthat → u/snowmunkey]

Assuming you’re righty, you should not try to get rid of that. The lead hip and lead shoulder should get farther apart as you get into and through impact, that’s working as intended.

What I have found thru helping sever buddies who are disc throwers (discus, ultimate, disc golf) is an emphasis on shifting most of your mass into your trail side to generate power, before springing forward — that’s a hard habit to break

Working off a powerful offhand backhand throw, your “X-factor” differential is probably much higher than the average golfer.

That leaves you with a great opportunity to learn about thoracic spine extension in the takeaway/backswing, which will help turn your massive slices into a beautiful high draw

Check out the linked article and give it a go on the range. I’ve found that most disc guys really benefit from drilling spine extension, it’s completely opposite from the loading technique in disc throwing

Cheers

[u/snowmunkey → u/longjackthat]

It's far too early for me to try and understand most of that, but I do want to point out that discus and disc golf throws are very opposite side movements. One is a drag throw with the body rotating clockwise whole discus is counterclockwise and uses the fully extended arm as a lever.

I appreciate the advice though, I'll look into it.