The Secret To Leading With Your Hips In The Downswing

Unlock the secret to leading with your hips in the downswing with Eric Cogorno and JT Thomas from Performance Golf. In this lesson, you’ll learn how proper sequencing of your hips and arms creates effortless power, consistency, and ball-striking.

We’ll show you:
✅ Why your hips must lead the downswing for better contact
✅ The simple sequencing move that separates pros from amateurs
✅ A step-by-step drill (inspired by sports like baseball, tennis, and cornhole) to feel the correct motion
✅ How to shift pressure into your lead leg while your arms are still working back
✅ Real swing examples from PGA Tour players like Jon Rahm

Whether you struggle with early arm movement, slices, or inconsistent ball striking, this drill will help you sync your lower and upper body for a more powerful, repeatable swing.

If you’ve ever thrown a ball, swung a bat, or played tennis, you already know this move—you just need to apply it to your golf swing.

👉 Try this drill on the range, then take it to the course to finally feel your hips leading the downswing like the pros.

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Hey guys, Eric Agorno with Mr. JT Thomas with Performance Golf. In today’s video, we’re talking about the secret to leading with your hips in the down swing. We’re going to give you a way to do that in today’s video. If you’ve been struggling with this, we’ve got solutions for you, things you’ve done in the past that are going to help you in today’s video. But JT, in terms of the secret to the hips leading on the way down, we know we see great ball strikers. They certainly have the hips leading. We want to have them leading. They want that as well. The secret to getting those hips leading the way is really in the sequencing. Yes. Right. It’s how we sequence the hips relative to the arms. And so at like a very fundamental level before we’re going to get into a drill later in this video that we love from a fundamental perspective. If we want those hips leading, what do we need to do with that sequencing? Yeah. So, it’s really important to understand if we want the hips to lead, there has to be a reason for them to kind of really want to start, right? Um, and you know what’s cool is, uh, how we play golf is really how we should do a lot of other things. Um, but a lot of times, like how we’ve done a lot of other things, how we’ve done a lot of other things, how we do it all the time. Um, but a lot of times we get a golf club in our hand, we get our hands tied together, it makes it to where it’s much more difficult to do that. Um, but you know, a big key to understanding is that the the reason that our hips would want to start is if our arms are still going or kind of trailing back, that gives us an incentive to actually start with our hips. Okay? Obviously, if the club moves first, if our arms move first, no way we’re going to try and get our hips to open even more. That would be the worst thing. If something’s going back, we need something to go forward. If something’s going back, we need something to go forward. Yeah. So, like with a golf swing, if we were to show a good golfer on the screen, or we were to show someone uh throwing a baseball, uh hitting a baseball with a bat, tennis, anything, they would never swing the arms and the body at the same exact time, right? Never. There’s always be like a change of direction going on. Exactly. And so, if we see that with other sports, that means for someone who’s watching, if they can throw a ball well, if they can swing a tennis racket, baseball, if they’ve done that before, their brain knows how to do this movement. Yes. We’ve just got to get it with that golf club. Yeah, for sure. And so that’s that would be a big key to really encourage you is like, hey, if you can throw a ball, if you can hit something, if you play tennis, if you play pickle ball, whatever it may be, you can do the same thing with a golf club. Um, and so the understanding of that is very simple. You know, I think even doing something like, you know, cornhole is what I tell people. But, you know, if I were going to toss something or throw something, I would step forward and pull my arm back. Okay? And so that’s the same way, the same feeling that we want to have with a golf swing is that we want to be shifting or moving forward as our arms are going back. So we want to be shifting or moving forward as our arms are going back. So if if we think about like the hips and the body and club maybe as they’re racing each other. Yes. And we wanted the hips to win the race. You’re saying in that race, it’s almost like not only are we having the hips get a head start, but we’re also having the arms work the opposite way. Exactly. They got a huge head start. Huge head start. Gotcha. Okay. All right, guys. Quick break from today’s video. Look, if you want to make massive improvements with your game and actually get way better in 2025, you got to do something different than you’ve done before. And one of those things that I highly recommend is checking out these two-day schools that my friends at Performance Golf are hosting. These are with the best coaches in the world. people you see me in videos with all the time like Martin Chuck, Angie Rice, Erica Lark, and many more of the top coaches at awesome, awesome places all around the United States. We’re seeing great results with these schools because what we’re able to do when we see you in person is really find and fix the main root issue. Most all of us have like four or five things wrong with our swing. You can’t do them all at one time, but you can find and fix the main one thing, which we can do in person like that, we’re able to make massive improvements. I’m talking like maybe 2 years of improvements in only 2 days. So, if you’re looking for something to really fast track your improvement, this could be the thing that could take you to the next level. We’ll put a link in the description down below. Check it out. See if there’s a spot available in a location that works for you. So, we want to feel the lower body going as the arms go back. So, as we were to let’s say we put that into something into a golf swing. Yes. Like, how do we start to feel that with a club in our hands? So what we what we like to do for understanding this is we like to take the club you know to about lead arm parallel. Okay. This is when we can start to feel we start to get some stretch u between our hips and our arms. Yep. Um right around that point. So we go back to where about left arm parallel. Now the goal here is we have a lot of space to finish the back swing which is a lot of room to run the race with my arms. That’s what we want, right? So we want our arms to get farther away as we can shift forward. So, we just start here. You know, we can start even lower. The more room we have, if you really struggle with this, you can start even lower to give you the most amount of room. Maybe even like hip high, maybe even hip high. Um, again, the goal is we want to have the ability to pull our arms back as we start that process of shifting, moving laterally, rotating, all those things. Yeah. And I like that cornhole toss. That’s such a simple example. So simple. Like if you’re watching this and you could have your I’ll do it from this way. And you could have your arm goes back as the foot goes forward. How do I make that same motion but in this way? Right. So as I mean I’m assuming we’re going to do this without a ball in the beginning just to kind of get a feel for the motion. Right. For sure. So how do we do that? We go back to kind of arms and then you do you do a full stop to feel that? Yeah. I would do kind of a full stop. So I would go about you know literally just going to go let’s say hip height. Okay. What we’re going to try and do is we’re going to move the arms back. It doesn’t really matter how far you move them. We’re just going to try and move them. Give them some energy. And as soon as we start moving the arms back, we start shifting the body forward. And then we just kind of do a small swing in the follow through. But we should feel like, man, that that actually feels pretty similar to me doing other things, other sports. Feels a lot more intuitive. Um, and that’s what we want. And so in terms of the shifting for someone who’s maybe never done this before, as you’re pulling the arms back, are you just kind of like, hey, I’m feeling more weight into the left foot, pressing the left foot. Yeah, feeling more weight in the left foot. Maybe more flex in the in the lead leg. Um, again, really just trying to push down and put again push laterally or shifting I think is really important. Yeah. And so not and we’re not doing that where the arms are here and the body’s going at the same time. Those arms are going back as we’re doing that. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Let’s see one without a ball, JT. Maybe like in motion. Yeah, for sure. So, just going to go back hip height here. Stop. Move my arms and shift. Yeah. Awesome. And then again, notice my low point was ahead there. Really good contact. Again, moving that that shift always helps with the low point as well. Yeah. Let’s let’s hit one, JT, when you feel ready. Yeah. And then with these guys, you would start maybe a little shorter and slower. Gradually ramp up swing length and speed. Yeah. Feel the arms going back as the weight and pressure is working forward. Yeah. Beautiful job. And on the first couple when you do this, right, you do a couple without the ball, start to hit the ground and feel what that feels like and then put that golf ball in. And when JT and I have done this with students in the past, you know, your first practice session, you’re doing this on a range, you’re getting a feel for it, but pretty quickly, again, because you’ve likely done this if you played any sport before already, you would start to take that pause out. You start to swing a little longer, swing a little faster, and you’re trying to retain the feel in your normal swing when you go play or practice. With a real swing of as those arms keep working back above the shoulder, I’m going to get that pressure working forward. You could see really good examples of this from guys like John Rom. If we put John Rom from face on, you can clearly see as that butt of the club and hands go up and back, that lower body is working forward. And with all uh things here, we don’t need to swing as good as John Rom to be better, right? It’s like the closer we get, the better that we’ll hit with it. And so if we were to take that, let’s do a full swing now, JT, not the drill, but kind of still feeling the same things to transfer that in your full swing. So just from left arm parallel to the top, those hands are going up and back and the pressure is working forward. Is that kind of what you would feel? Yes. Yeah, for sure. I’m just trying to be hyper aware of the timing of when I shift, right? That’s what we’re trying to do. Start with the hips, how to, you know, really leave with the hips in the down swing. Just trying to be cognizant of where my arms are in space and relative to when I start that down swing. Got it. Love it. Yeah. Let’s do a full swing with that. We want the hips to lead the way. We got to give them every advantage possible. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s so good. Gosh, does that sound good. That was so pure. So, we’re giving the hips I guess to say it’s a different way, like there’s no way that your hips are going to lead the way if everything is just working in one unit. Now, maybe that could be a nice simplistic feel for you for certain things, but not for leading with the hips. Okay? If we want the hips to win the race, we got to get them going sooner and we got to pull those arms back. It’s like you’re holding on the arms, not letting them start the race, right? pulling them away from the start line at the same time. This works so darn good. We’ve seen it time and time again. If you’ve thrown a ball, you’ve hit a baseball, you played tennis, pickle ball, any sort of toss motion, you’ve done this before, do those same things. If you guys are interested in a two-day in-person golf school, performancegolf.com, the link will be down below. Highly recommend working with coaches like JT for that. Any questions about how to lead with the hips, leave a comment down below. Thanks for watching.