Many golfers, baseball players, tennis players, and other athletes who must swing and hit an implement or throw a ball or implement for distance or force believe that rotation of the hips shifts weight onto the forward leg. As a result, they concentrate on body rotation to produce most of the power in the throw.
Because of this they miss out on the power that can be generated and transferred to the hips and shoulders for greater power. Understand that rotation of the hips, trunk or total body does not shift weight. It can only redistribute the body weight supported by different parts of the feet.
The reason for this is that when you rotate with the axis in the spine you have as much weight moving backward as there is moving forward. Thus the amount of weight remaining on the left or right leg remains basically the same. If you rotate the hips (and shoulders) using the spine as the axis of rotation, you will not get forward weight shift, but you will produce force to hit the ball.
Weight shift is a very distinct action and contributes additional force. When sequenced with hip and shoulder rotation, it produces much greater force — up to 20-30%! To shift your weight forward you must move the pelvis (the hips) forward since this is where your center of mass is located, i.e. , the point where all your weight is considered c to be oncentrated.
When you put this body part into motion, your body is considered to be in motion. You can have as much force generated in moving the hips forward as when you move your entire body forward as a unit. This is a tremendous amount of force that can be produced with a relatively simple action – right hip joint abduction for the right-handed athlete.
Shifting the hips forward to move your weight onto the front leg is also important for setting up a new axis for rotation of hips. When the axis is in the front leg, the entire hip rotates forward, creating twice the amount of force generated by the hips when the axis is in the spine.
By first shifting the hips forward and then rotating the hips in sequence you will be able to generate much more force than simply rotating the trunk without the weight shift. This action also helps set up a smooth transition into the remaining body actions in the total kinetic chain.
In addition, when this is done you will find that the weight shift and the hip and shoulder rotation produces so much power that you can then rely on the arm action for greater accuracy in the hit or throw. As I tell many athletes (and as they find out when they learn these actions) let your body to supply the power and your arms and hands the accuracy.
To learn and to improve the weight shift action to generate more force in the swing or hit, do the side lunge with Active Cords. This exercise strengthens the hip abductor muscles with the hips in motion to duplicate the action of shifting the hips forward as occurs in an effective swing or throw.
To learn more about the weight shift and hip rotation actions read Build a Better Athlete, Explosive Golf or Biomechanics and Kinesiology of Exercise.