You can spend hours on the range trying to fix your slice, but your technical issue might actually be caused by a physical limitation in your shoulder. If you don’t have proper mobility in your trail shoulder (right for righties), then you’ll fight a slice no matter how hard you try and swing down into the ball from inside the target line, a move that helps correct the weak, curving shot.
On a recent Golf Digest Happy Hour with Top 50 Golf Fitness Trainer Darin Hovis, we talked about the most common movement deficiencies that Hovis sees with clients at his studio in Southwest Florida. Golf Digest+ members can watch the complete hour-long webinar right here.
“I would say hips and shoulders are the biggest thing,” Hovis said when asked about the most common limitations he sees in everyday golfers. “You’ll see amateurs try to move too far in their backswing, outside of the range of motion in their hips and shoulders. It ends up throwing off their posture throughout the swing. Maybe they’ll stand up and early extend.”
Trail-shoulder mobility is particularly important in the golf swing because it allows players to properly shallow the club in transition to hit the ball from the inside, as Hovis explains in the video below. From the top of the swing, many good ball-strikers move their trail elbow down and toward the ball. This puts the shoulder in external rotation, which is key to being able to hit draws.
If you’re not able to get enough external rotation, however, you’ll struggle with pulls and slices. Before you should work on improving your shoulder mobility, the first step is assessing whether you have enough to begin with, Hovis says.
External Rotation Test
To test your shoulder mobility, Hovis says to sit down in front of a mirror with the trail arm bent 90 degrees at the elbow. Lift your arm up so that your upper arm is parallel with the floor and your hand is pointed to the sky, keeping that 90-degree angle at the elbow. From there, see if you’re able to move your hand back behind you without moving your elbow.
“Assess whether you can get past 90 degrees without cheating with your lumbar spine,” Hovis says, explaining that your back should be straight throughout the test. “I’ll see players can’t get to or past 90 degrees. A history of rotator-cuff injuries or other things that come up throughout the course of our lives can cause that limited mobility.”
If you struggle to get past 90 degrees, you should work to improve this external shoulder rotation. Hovis shares his favorite exercise to do that.
External Rotation Stretches
At your gym, find a cable machine and put it to the highest setting. Add a little bit of weight—about 20 pounds, Hovis says—to provide a bit of an anchor. Then, getting into that same positon with your arm 90 degrees away from your chest and a 90-degree bend at the elbow, step forward into a stretch.
“I’m just trying to get a feeling of a pull through my chest, and I’m trying to max out my shoulder rotation,” Hovis says. Allow the weight to slightly pull your upper arm behind you as you step forward, which externally rotates your shoulder. Hold this stretch for only a few seconds, Hovis says, then step back and repeat a few times.
After that, Hovis says to get into your golf stance and try to replicate that feeling in transition. “Oftentimes players will have good range of motion in the stretch, but then I get them into the golf stance and they can’t move past 90 again,” he says. By reinforcing the movement while in your golf posture, you’re further increasing the shoulder mobility and training your body to feel the external rotation that will help fix your slice.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
