Sean Foley Explains How Footwork Is Key to a Good Golf Swing | Fitness Friday

Tiger Woods’ swing coach Sean Foley explains how footwork is a major key to a good golf swing.

Transcript
An extremely important part of someone’s function
and how it leads into the form of their golf swing
is the relationship that your feet have between the ground.
So when people get ready to hit a shot
and they’re in their setup,
you can see here I’m just in my socks,
you can use bare feet as well
and what I want you to start to do is
feel like you get into the point where
you’re almost in a sand bunker,
where you feel like you’re
gripping the ground with your feet.
It’s very important to be able
to create friction with the ground,
which is what allows us to create ground reaction forces
which then allow the ground reaction forces
to return into the body
and start all the segments and all the accelerations
and decelerations in the kinematic sequence
which is the way you create club head speed.
So it all starts from the ground up.
So sometimes when we get in shoes
and we’re wearing spikes or the shoes have
a lot of ability to help us be stable,
we wanna lose those inhibitors
and get to where we have to depend on our own feet.
We have to depend on all the muscles in the feet,
as well in the calf and the tibia and quads and the gluts.
So from here,
as I’m in this position,
I’m gonna increase my proprioception.
Proprioception is the brain’s awareness of where we are
in an unstable environment.
So if you wanna be able to use your core,
which starts pretty much from the mid-quad
up to the top of the intercostal,
if you’re using your core,
the only way to use it is to create two stable bases.
So one stable base here,
one stable base here.
When you create a better association
of your feet on the ground,
you’ll find that you’ll be creating
more speed and accuracy as you get better at it.
So all that being said,
if you can practice in your socks
or in your bare feet,
you’re gonna learn to develop a better relationship
in connection to the ground
and look at one of the greatest most effortless
swings of all time in Sam Snead.
Sam Snead virtually practiced in bare feet
almost to the age of and Sam Snead was always known
from the top of his swing for this beautiful squat that he
would make and in that squat,
he had knee flection firing the quad,
hip flection firing the glut
and from there everything would move into extension.
If he practiced in shoes,
I don’t know if he would ever learn that same leg action.