Understanding Your Swing Metrics: Spine Stability Explained

Perfect your golf posture by understanding the pivotal role of spine angle throughout your swing. Our article sheds light on why maintaining the right posture is crucial for your game. With Swing Tune-Up, delve into the intricacies of your swing by exploring spine angles at key phases:

• P1 - Address
• P4 - Top
• P7 - Impact

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Spine Stability measures how much your shoulders, hips, and spine moved between key phases of your swing. 

The movement is calculated as a percentage of your address height and can be displayed in centimeters (cm), inches (in), or percentages (%) based on your preference (Settings → My Info).

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Grading Scheme

Your movement is evaluated against tour pro data and graded as follows:

Excellent – Falls within the top 90% of tour pro data.

Good – Within 1.2x the bounds of Excellent.

Okay – Within 1.5x the bounds of Excellent.

Caution – Outside the Okay bound, indicating excessive movement.

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Shoulder

Backswing

Tracks how much your shoulder center moves from the address position to the top of the backswing.

Downswing

Tracks how much your shoulder center moves from the top of the backswing to impact.

Example

• If the backswing metric shows “Forward 1.0%, Downward 4.0%”, the center of your shoulder moved 1.0% forward of your height and 4.0% downward during the backswing.

• If the downswing metric shows “Backward 2.4%, Upward 1.9%”, the center of your shoulder moved 2.4% backward of your address height (the vertical distance from your nose to your heel) and 1.9% upward at impact.

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Hip

Backswing

Tracks how much your hip center moves from the address position to the top of the backswing.

Downswing

Tracks how much your hip center moves from the top of the backswing to impact.

Example

• If the backswing shows “Forward 4.9%, Downward 1.6%”, the center point of your hip has shifted 1.0% forward of your height and 2.0% downward during the backswing.
• If the downswing metric shows “Backward 1.0%, Upward 0.9%”, the center of your hip moved 1.0% backward of your height and 0.9% upward at impact.

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Spine Angle

This section measures how much your spine is leaning relative to the ground at key phases of your swing, measured in degrees (relative to the y-axis).

Address

Tracks your spine angle at the address position. 

Top

Tracks your spine angle at the top of the backswing (when the hand reaches its highest point).

Impact

Tracks your spine angle at impact (when the club makes contact with the ball).

Example

• If the address metric shows 34°, your spine is tilted 34° towards the horizontal axis at address, with 0° representing a fully upright stance.
• If the impact metric shows 42°, your spine is tilted 42° towards the horizontal axis at impact, relative to a fully upright stance (0°).

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Spine Angle Delta

This section measures how much your spine angle changes between key swing phases, measured in degrees (relative to the y-axis).

Backswing

Tracks the difference in spine angle from address to the top of the backswing.

Downswing

Tracks the difference in spine angle from the top of the backswing to impact.

Example

• If the backswing metric shows -10.3°, your upper body has risen by 10.3° from the address position to the top of the backswing.
• If the downswing metric shows 1.9°, you have bent forward by 1.9° from the top of the backswing to impact.

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Progress Chart

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Swing Tune-Up automatically aggregates metrics calculated from your swing videos to show how you are improving over time! It currently shows the following stats.

• Swing Quality - Shows the percentage of swings within the target bound over time.
• Histogram with bounds - shows the distribution of each metric with its target bound.

Further reading

https://theleftrough.com/spine-angle-golf/

https://www.golfdistillery.com/swing-errors/reverse-pivot/