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Jackson 5 Drill - Bump The Hips For Axis Tilt

The lateral bump of the lower body is one of the critical moves for a solid golf swing. The tour average amount of shift during the downswing is 3 to 6 inches, and most of that shift happens before the arms drop below chest height. This movement is critical for getting a shallow angle of attack and a path that isn't too far to the left. Meaning, that this move is more critical for the longer clubs than it is for the shorter clubs.

How to do it

To execute the Jackson 5 move, place a club or alignment stick across your hips the same way you did in the find your hips drill. Practice bumping your hips laterally toward the target using a mirror to make sure that you don't make the common errors:

Rotating before you bump
Letting the upper body create the bump
Moving toward the golf ball as you bump, if anything, you want to let your chest drop down during this move

Progressing the move

Once you can do the basic move make a backswing pivot and try to recreate the same bump feeling. The image that has helped many golfers is the old Motown dance move where the backup singers would slide to the left and push their right hand down to the right. Once the left hip is sufficiently higher than the right hip, go ahead and begin rotating into the Merry go round position that you practiced in the impact section. When you feel proficient you may hit 9 to 3 shots or even full swing shots trying to recreate the Jackson 5 feeling.

For more ways to understand this movement, check out the Jackson 5 progressions in the related video section.

Tags: Draw vs Fade, Driver, Fairway Wood, Transition, Drill, Beginner

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This drill is the Jackson 5 drill.

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So the Jackson 5 drill is our term for the hip bump.

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Many golfers have talked about a little lateral movement and 3D has shown that there's

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about a 4-to-6-inch movement during early transition to help shift the weight or pressure

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into that lead foot and help establish a shallow body position so that you can apply good

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release mechanics.

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So an easy way to start working on that lateral movement is with this drill we call the

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Jackson 5.

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And it got the name from an old student who was a dance instructor and he said it felt very

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much like the old Motown backup movement where they would basically do a little kind

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of slide movement where the upper body would lag behind.

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To do the movement, to do the Jackson 5 drill, you're going to take the club, place it across

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your hips.

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You're going to have to find your hips but here you're going to put your thumbs on the

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outside of your kind of the greater choke enders of the outside of your hip bones just like

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this.

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And you're just going to hold that in place.

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And then I want you to just kind of go back and forth a few times but you'll notice that

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there's no rotation.

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So what's common is as you go to rotate it'll look a little bit more like this.

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You want to either stay parallel to a mirror or have a stick on the ground so you can

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make sure that you're doing a pure lateral movement.

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Now we don't want to do this sway movement in the backswing but we're going to do a little

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bit of this slide movement during the downswing.

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So I'm going to get my normal golf posture and then I'm going to do this Jackson 5 movement

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until my hip joint is just on the inside of my ankle right there.

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So I'm going to do that little Jackson 5 movement like this.

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Now you notice that as I do this my head stays in place and that's where it feels more

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like that motown back up dancer movement.

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So I'm doing that Jackson 5 kind of just like this.

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Then what I can do is I can take the club and place it across my shoulders similar to what

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you do in the merry-go-round.

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So then I'm going to make a backswing but now that lateral movement isn't in the direction

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of my pelvis because that would be going that way.

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Still in the direction of the target which will feel like I'm going backwards.

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So I'm going up to the top of the swing and now I'm doing that little movement until

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I feel that same relationship where my hip is roughly over the inside of my ankle.

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So I'm basically doing that movement first and as I do that movement I'm trying not to

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consciously rotate my body but you'll see from the down the line that just by shifting

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I'm going to have some rotation.

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People in the amateurs face is they get to the top of the swing and they don't have

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this lateral movement first.

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They tend to spin both their lower body and their upper body.

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Quick from the top of the swing and you'll see that that creates a situation where my upper

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body is well on top of my lower body and that is going to create more of an outside in

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swing path.

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You can see from this down the line that if I just let my arms kind of fall when my body

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is on top like that it's going to be more outside in.

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As opposed to if I do this little Jackson 5 move then if I just let my arms kind of swing

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you'll see that they have a much more of a shallow or into out movement.

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So this Jackson 5 move is one of those really big key shallow movements for the full swing

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when you get below say a 7 iron.

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So when you start getting into 7 iron 6 iron all the way through driver but especially for

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the driver you'll tend to see a fair amount of this axis tilt and it's created by the

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sequencing of this lateral lower body movement during transition.

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The other thing that amateur tend to do is they tend to shift very kind of slowly and

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gradually where this is more of a movement that will happen during transition so it should

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really happen before that left arm is below your chest height or left arm parallel

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kind of somewhere in this zone.

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You got the feeling here you make some backswings and then you make some swings trying

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to get that same movement to happen early during transition and then you can start applying

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it into tempo drills full swing drills but getting that sequencing of the step before

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the body goes very similar to normal hitting or throwing mechanics where you're going to have

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that lateral movement before it goes rotary or that lateral movement before it goes rotary.

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So work on that Jackson 5 sequencing to help shallow out your movement and get your total body

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involved which is really key for the longer clubs.