Golf Swing Tip: A Powerful Golf Swing By Sitting on the Barstool?

Symptom: You want a powerful golf swing, but end up losing your balance quite often.

But, when you have a balanced golf swing, you lose your power.  Why can’t you seem to have both a balanced and powerful golf swing?

Description: Pretend you are about to sit down on a barstool before the takeaway, and hold this spine angle throughout the backswing.

Why it works: This tip is all about putting your body into a powerful, athletic, and stable position to execute your golf swing.  A barstool is a high chair that doesn’t require that you squat down very much, just a little bit.  But that little bit of sitting action is what makes the difference.

On the backswing, think of your spine as the axis around which your body turns. You need to keep this axis relatively still and at a consistent angle throughout your backswing.

Stillness matters because this stability allows you to put the clubhead in a known and consistent position at the top of the backswing, which is crucial for a repeatable downswing.  It also is a great help in keeping your head still as you swing.

A Powerful Golf Swing AND Balance From a Barstool

Brooks Koepka settles into his stance, as if sitting on a barstool, just before initiating his backswing.

Pretending to sit on a barstool helps you anchor your spine in just the right way for it to act as your axis.  Indeed, the tension in your big leg muscles needed to hold this “almost sitting” position is about the only “good” tension I know of in the golf swing.

Let’s have Brooks Koepka demonstrate for us.  Brooks has a simple and powerful swing that launches the ball straight and far.

Brooks has an excellent stance and setup position that surely help him swing the club so well.

The Barstool Sit Motion Enables a Powerful Golf Swing

As you run the video, you can watch Brooks hit a variety of shots.  In all his swings, just before initiating his backswing, he sits down just a bit to anchor himself to the ground.  This anchoring gives him the firm base to rotate against in the backswing, giving him both excellent balance and excellent power.   Have a look:

You will find that it is much easier to strike a pose in that perfect finish position when you do the bar stool setup.  If you are not used to this setup position, it will take some getting used to.

You may also find that sitting on the barstool before takeaway tends to limit the length of your backswing, but this is almost always a good thing for the Occasional Golfer.