A sway is too much lateral movement away from the target during your backswing, this sets you up poorly for your downswing, causes timing issues and forces your upper body to dominate the downswing, which results in a loss of power.
A slide is too much lateral movement towards the target during your downswing, this reduces your ability to rotate correctly, which reduces your power and contributes to inconsistent ball striking.
But what causes this lateral movement?
Pronation distortion syndrome (PDS) is a very common postural dysfunction and if you have it, it will be very difficult for your stop your sway or slide.
Somebody who has pronation distortion syndrome will have flat feet and knock-knees.
Now, as with all postural dysfunctions, sometimes it’s very easy to see PDS and sometimes it takes an assessment with a trained eye.
When it comes to fixing PDS the two most important joints to address are the hip and ankle
At the hip, PDS is characterized by excessive adduction.
So if we have too much adduction, that means we have an imbalance between the hip adductors and hip abductors.
The hip adductors are a group of muscles collectively referred to as the anterior adductors, and they have a propensity to become short and overactive
And when they become short and overactive they reciprocally inhibit the hip abductors.
The primary muscle for hip abduction is the gluteus medius.
So what that means is, if your have PDS your gluteus medius is inhibited.
And your gluteus medius isn’t just keeping your femur out, it’s also keeping your pelvis up.
It is your primary frontal plane stabilizer.
Which means it stabilizes your pelvis from moving side-to-side.
So your gluteus medius keeps your pelvis from moving laterally during your swing sequence.
It also keeps your femur in line so that everything around your hip can work efficiently and you can use the ground correctly and generate more power.
Performing the circuit I show you in this video will increase the firing rate of your gluteus medius and help restore balance around your hip.
In good health,
Thomas
