Post Up

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Proper lower body engagement enables consistent contact. Above all, learn to get the weight to the front side.

On the downswing, begin by flexing both knees a bit, while covering the ball with your chest “clamshell”. Using the Drill, as your lag is at a maximum, hands over right thigh. Post up or straighten your left knee. Don’t hyper extend it just straighten it. Can you feel the club head whip around the body from the centripetal force?

There are two types of rotational forces: centrifugal and centripetal. The difference in these forces is exemplified in pulling a trailer behind a truck. Backing or pushing (centrifugal) a trailer into it’s parking spot is infinitely more difficult than pulling (centripetal) a trailer down the road.

It is the same with the golf swing. It is more predictable to pull the club into place in the backswing and downswing (centripetal). Technically speaking we should be using our big muscles to do so: our back muscles, and leg muscles as appropriate. The same is true if we pull the club into place in the downswing. Again, using our big muscles to transfer weight, and continuing to use our big muscles to pull the club into contact.

In a rotational sense of centripetal force, if we want the club-head down to the ball we need to pull away from the ball with our legs. Try it. Using The Drill, as the club shaft starts to pass parallel on the downswing, straighten your left knee. This straightening is called posting up. We only want to post up in our left leg. Not the right leg too! We also don’t want to hyper extend the knee. The optimal position is maintaining a fraction of flex in the left knee. Did you feel an increase in speed in the club-head? This move is akin to whipping something. To cause a high speed “whip” action at the intended object, we make and abrupt and hard opposing move from the target. In the swing that hard move is away from the ball.

If you have succeeded in this move, please note, that being able to control all of this new found speed in your swing is not easy. Can you handle increased speed? Yes! Can you handle all the speed you can generate? Maybe. It is up to your ability and golfing acuity. The pros can but I am no pro. So I do what I can.

Additionally, the post up is a move that opens the hips without hip whipping! The post up move with the glut engaged, moves the hip back and out of the way. Clearing the hips is desirable but whipping the hips is difficult to control and fraught with side effects. Better to post up and move the left butt back.

Also, this move should be done with the hip in a joint neutral position. The transfer of weight does go laterally from right to left but the body should not slide. Sliding results in the hip extending beyond neutral.

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