How It All Connects

Movement in the body doesn’t happen in isolated pieces, everything works together as a chain. There’s a simple pattern in how the body is designed as you move up through the joints, alternating mobile and stable joints, and it’s not random. It’s organised.

This matters in golf because the swing is rotational and we know certain joints are meant to create movement, while others are meant to hold position so force can travel through the body.

But if a mobile joint starts losing movement your body still needs to complete the swing motion so the nearest stable joint often starts moving instead.

If your hips stop rotating well, the lower back often starts rotating more than it should. If your thoracic spine gets stiff, the lumbar spine or shoulders start picking up the slack. And if the ankle loses movement, the knee can start wobbling or collapsing to find the range that’s missing.

These are compensations where the body is simply finding another way to complete the movement with whatever movement it can find.

In the golf swing you still need to get the club back and you need rotation and somehow you need to create speed.But if the joints designed to move aren’t doing their job, the joints designed to stabilise quietly start moving instead.

Over time those patterns can show up as things like early extension, sway, loss of posture, or a lower back that feels irritated after a round. Although you’re moving through your swing that movement is necessarily coming from the right places.

This alternating pattern is the framework that helps explain why stretching the wrong thing doesn’t always help and why strengthening the wrong area can sometimes make things feel worse.

When you think about rotation in your swing, it’s not just about whether you have range. It’s about whether the right joints are moving — and the right joints are stabilising, that’s how it all connects.