Are your hips doing enough?
A Physical Therapist's perspective on where your power — and your pain — really comes from.
Jon Grygalonis, PT, DPT, Cert. DN, C-PS, TPI certified
9/1/20262 min read
Every golfer wants more distance. Most look for it in a new driver, a swing tip, or a stronger grip.
But often, the missing yardage isn't in your equipment or your technique — it's in your hips.
Where Rotation Should Come From
A powerful, repeatable golf swing depends on your hips being able to rotate freely — roughly 45 degrees of internal and external rotation on each side is the benchmark we look for.
That rotation is what allows your pelvis to turn back on your backswing and fire through on your downswing, creating the separation between hips and shoulders that generates real clubhead speed.
When the hips can do their job, the lower back barely has to rotate at all. It's built to provide stability, not generate turn.
What Happens When the Hips Can't Rotate
Here's the problem: if your hips are restricted, your body doesn't just give up on making the turn — it finds the rotation somewhere else. And the somewhere else is almost always your lower back.
The low back isn't designed for repeated, forceful rotation. It's a stabilizer, built for small amounts of movement — not the primary rotational engine of your swing.
When it's asked to do the hips' job over and over, a few things start to happen:
Power leaks out of the swing — instead of a clean transfer of energy from the ground up through the hips, some of that force gets lost in the low back before it ever reaches the club.
Distance drops off — less efficient rotation typically means less clubhead speed, which shows up as lost yardage on your irons and woods.
Mis-hits become more common — inconsistent hip rotation leads to inconsistent club path and face angle at impact.
The arms feel "stuck" — golfers often describe this as their arms getting caught behind them right before impact, because the lower body has stalled and the upper body is trying to catch up.
A Quick Self-Check
Want a rough idea of where you stand? Try this:
Stand with your feet together, holding onto something stable for balance if needed.
Lift one knee to hip height.
Rotate that thigh outward, then inward, keeping your hips level.
Notice how far it moves each direction before you feel your low back or pelvis start to shift to make up the difference.
If your leg runs out of rotation well before you'd expect — and your torso or low back starts compensating to keep going — that's a sign your hips may be limiting your swing more than your technique is.
What You Can Do About It
The good news is that hip rotation is trainable. A few starting points:
Mobility work for hip internal and external rotation — think 90/90 stretches and controlled rotational drills, not just static stretching.
Strengthening the muscles that control rotation, not just the ones that move you forward and back.
Addressing asymmetries — most golfers have more rotation on one side than the other, which itself can create swing inconsistencies.
Long-term, this isn't about a single stretch before your round — it's about improving your baseline hip mobility so your low back can go back to its actual job.
The Takeaway
Your swing is only as good as your body's ability to support it. If your hips can't rotate the way your swing demands, your lower back will try to pick up the slack — and that trade-off usually costs you both distance and consistency, and eventually, comfort.
If you've noticed a power leak, more mis-hits than usual, or that "stuck" feeling before impact, a movement screen with a golf-literate physical therapist can pinpoint exactly where your rotation is coming up short — and what to do about it.
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