Why Locking Your Head is Wrecking Your Golf Swing (Do This Instead)

“Stop trying to keep your head still—you’re ruining your swing.”

That’s what Mike Granato & Shaun Webb from Athletic Motion Golf had to tell a student who walked into AMG Golf this week. For months, he’d been trying to follow a popular swing cue: “keep your head still.” But what actually happened? He was reverse pivoting, dropping his left shoulder unnaturally, and tilting his head like he was pouring water from his ear. Sound familiar?

In this video, we break down why the “head still” cue is one of the worst bits of advice for golfers and what actually happens in a proper pivot. We’ll show you drills to train better body movement, how your head should move during a swing, and how mobility affects everything. Using tools like the Swing Coach app, we analyze real-time feedback to fix swing issues at the source.

If you’ve ever been confused by “keep your head still,” or you’ve found yourself tilting, bobbing, or reverse pivoting—this is your wake-up call.

We’re diving deep into functional movement, real biomechanics, and giving you actionable drills to finally stop the guesswork and start improving.

🏌️‍♂️ No fluff. No gimmicks. Just real solutions that transform your swing.

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Make your BEST swing your NORMAL swing with our #1 Consistency Drill: https://athleticmotiongolf.com/consistency

YouTube Chapters:
0:00 – Why “Keep Your Head Still” Doesn’t Work
0:44 – The Reverse Pivot Trap
1:35 – Common Mistakes from Bad Swing Cues
2:11 – Golf Swing Biomechanics: What’s Actually Happening
3:04 – The Mirror Drill for Head and Shoulder Movement
4:29 – Shoulder Plane and Head Flow Explained
5:51 – Training Good Pivot Mechanics
6:31 – Swing Coach App Demo & Feedback
7:30 – Recap: Fix the Body First, Then the Head
8:08 – Next Steps

#golf #pga #athleticmotiongolf #amg #golftips #improvegolfswing

On Monday, we had a golfer came in for a lesson who’s told us one of his swing cues the last several months was to keep his head still when he was swinging. So, he got in a habit of flopping his head all around. Someone told him he needs to try to keep it still. When he was swinging, he was actually taking his left side down, kind of pouring water out of the ear. And you’re like, “So, how how you been hitting it?” “Well, I’m hitting it terrible. That’s why I’m in.” So his feel for what he was doing was so far off from the reality that his idea of keeping the head still was tilting it way to the left. And come to find out a few minutes into the lesson, he also was told this horrid idea of driving the left shoulder down. So that those two things together were really putting him behind the eightball with a reverse pivot. But as a swing cue, keeping your head still is not a good cue because the head needs to move in order for it to look like it’s not doing much. Yeah. You want the the head movements to be corresponding just to good pivot motion, right? Good good body movements will allow the head movements to be good. And what happens is when you tell someone to lock their head or just say head still at all costs, they’ll usually do one of two things. They’ll either Mr. have in camp, you know, my all-time favorite movie where I first see it on Catty Jack and they have this motion because they’re trying to keep their head locked or the idea of keeping the head locked as you start to move this club in this plane of motion and the body will usually make the head like Mike said, it’ll go toward the target, they’ll start almost pouring water too much out of their left ear, tilt the the head to the left too much, and it puts them in a kind of a bad spot here to start the down swing. So instead, we just like to teach people good body movements. And then depending on your the mobility, flexibility, how your build is, your head will will have the correct movement too for you. Yeah. If you’ve ever seen like a cheetah run where it’s locked in on the prey, the body’s moving all over, cutting left and right, but the head’s like it’s still, but it’s not. The head’s moving everywhere, or a bird of prey flying when it’s locked in on his prey. The same thing with the the head in the golf swing. Like we’ve talked so much about if I don’t move my body, this is basically what the arms do. Well, if I don’t move my body, this is what the head’s doing. It’s not staying still. It’s responding to the body movement. It’s like a a gimbal on a camera that the motors in those cameras make the camera appear to be still, but it’s moving everywhere. Give credit to Greg Rose and those guys at TPI. They have a a mobility test that, you know, you take their level one course, you get like bunch of movement screens, and I always like that one. you know, if you don’t have good mobility left to right here, uh, as you swing, you’re going to be restricted and your head’s going to move a little different, even with the same body movements as as the next guy. And if you are restricted, the solution isn’t to keep my head still because now I’m got the hammer camp going or I’m getting this kind of rocking and blocking going. Yeah. A good drill that we like to do to train this and we’ll have Sean set up to it here face on and we’ll use this camera as a mirror at your house. Right. You can use the edge of a mirror or put a piece of tape on the mirror, which is what I did growing up, like just to train this movement. So, we’ll have him put the club across his shoulders. Yeah. Club across your shoulders. Getting your natural kind of setup. And you want to put the piece of tape on the mirror or a line. We’ll have Laz put a line beside Shod’s head. He’s going to make sure his shoulders rotate. Move his left shoulder across without his head floating over with it. Okay. Yeah. So, if I do that, the shoulder is going to move from where it is. Now, if Mike puts his finger there and just doesn’t move it when I move, it’s going to move from where it is now out towards the front of my chin here out this way. Now, you see a lot of motion there, but you don’t see a lot of movement of my rib cage and my head moving away. And that that’s the trick. It’s the plane that these shoulders move in. That’s important. If you can learn how to do that and then unwind the hips into the finish, you start training in a pretty, you know, if I put my arm down here, you start to see, you see a nice flow of the head without these big movements or trying to lock it in. And that’s a great way to start training it. And if you have poor neck mobility and you move the shoulder correctly, make sure you don’t touch the microphone, you may see about a half a heads worth of movement. That’s fine. You you’re never going to see this much. Like that’s just beginner golfer 101 of never seen that golf lesson given would never want that golf lesson. But to say no movement if there’s a mobility issue is not good advice. And just to tell somebody, you mentioned it before, just these swing cues, left shoulder or lead shoulder down, the golfer a lot of times because he knows he only has, you know, 3/4 of a second to get the club to the top, they’re going to cheat that and it gives them the opposite problem. they’re they’re too far low and left with their lead shoulder as they start back instead of letting it flow across into a good pivot motion where they can have nice width at the top and their spine’s in a good spot. Do it down the line or like to the target with this angle right here. Yeah, perfect. So Sean’s back angle is somewhere on this, right? So if I you can move it out of the way now. So if I just move this like it’s rotating around my spine, this is going to move farther across than it does down. The only way it moves one to one is if he was to position his back 90 degrees like a Michelle Wii. Like no one swings like that, nor would you want to. That’s the only time you’re going to see equal amounts of down and across unless you’re trying to really add some down to it, which again is a terrible idea. Yeah. So just thinking across, obviously there’s some there is some down to it because I’m bent forward here. But if you just let it go out in front of your face here, you’ll you’ll create some space between that initial line that Mike had there and the head’s fairly steady and that puts you in a great spot to start to unwind the hips to start the down swing. So, the first drill is just to plop yourself in front of a mirror, your video camera, and make that movement without the arms. You’ve got to the body’s got to be able to do its thing correctly so the head can learn how to move. Again, Sean’s doing this as he’s rotating his body. The next movement, we’ve got our swing coach app set up here with the head movement on the top of the swing and at impact. And I’m going to step out of the way so Sean can hit a couple. Just trying to make sure he pivoted correctly to keep his head in the window at the top and the same in the down swing. Yeah. So, this swing coach app is great. It keeps you honest. It’s like having Mike, your teacher standing back there. So, I’m going to do one now where I try to do it the right way first and I’ll show you kind of what happens. kind of get out of the way so I can cuz I don’t think it’s going to you’re going to hear it with the screen recorder on. Go ahead. All right. I’ll try to do my best effort first to see if I can get a good swing feedback. All right. Good. Green. We got green at the top. We got green at impact. So, you know, it may take you some time to get that, but a lot of you are going to make this move right here. I’ll do the the first one where it’s almost too flat and my head starts to to pop out of the zone. So if I go up and away and then I end up staying too tall. Yeah. So the the pivot in the back swing pulled your head out of motion. So you didn’t have a head issue, you had a pivot issue. Trying to fix that by not moving the head would have result in a terrible motion. And having the app running while you’re hitting ball is just so smart because it gives you the feedback on every swing and you can make the adjustment. So, if I heard that the next swing, okay, I just to make sure this shoulder goes across and doesn’t kind of travel upwards as I make the back swing and I’ll be in good shape. If you got a Apple device, it’ll be on Android soon. Get a two free two free week trial. We’ll get that out in a second to give it a try. Use it. It’s the best practice app we’ve ever seen for golf. You can use if you have an Android, you could use your phone, obviously, Mirror, any of those things. You just need feedback to confirm or disprove what you’re feeling is actually what you’re doing. And then, you know, once you make the swing, if you did it incorrectly, there’ll be a coaching video pop up in the right. You can click that. It’s got a coach there showing you, some of them are me showing you the right movements. You can apply that to your very next swing. Start to make a true swing change without just guessing every time you go to the range. Shed the idea. If your head’s moving around too much, shed the idea of trying to keep your head still. Look at what the body’s doing because the head’s always going to or should respond to what the body’s doing. Fix it with that movement first. Then allow your head to learn how to move correctly. You’ll be have you’ll build a better swing because of