How Swing Speed Affects Compression
Sorry, you need to be a member to access this video.
You Are Just Seconds Away - Become a member here!
Already a member? Log in now
Club head speed is the #1 determinant of player handicaps. Find out how speed affects compression for solid and powerful shots. In this video, I cover where club head speed comes from and the 4 main keys to improve it.
- Torso Rotation: Getting Seperation Between Hips and Shoulders
- Arm Elevation: Higher Hands for More Speed
- Arm Leverage: Keeping Arm Bend Till Late in the Downswing
- Wrist Angle: Lag and Release of the Wrists for Speed
As I mentioned in the intro video, you're not going to compress the ball without speed.
Everybody wants more clubhead speed, But it's all about putting that speed into play and getting it to directly transfer energy to the ball.
That's the key, and that's what this Compression series is about.
But first, we've got to get that speed.
Where does speed come from?
Now I've covered this in depth on my video on the three primary sources of clubhead speed.
If you search for how to not lose clubhead speed as you get older on the site, you'll see that video.
So I'm not going to go in depth on that stuff because it's already been covered in depth.
But what I want to do is give you a practical, Simple drill that's going to allow you to put speed into your swing without having to stress your body out.
Because that's the worst thing you can do is go out and try to swing harder and just end up injuring yourself and sitting on the sidelines for the next two months.
You've got to learn how to produce speed correctly.
And And so, if you recall from the video on how to not lose Clubhead Speed as you get older, and three sources of Clubhead speed, one of the things we talk about is how much speed your hips produce.
We've got to get power from our hips.
And so many amateur golfers just try to do everything from the top with their right hand.
And while it feels powerful, it's actually doing the opposite.
It's costing you clubhead speed.
It's changing your path, which I'm going to talk about in an upcoming video.
And it's changing your angle of attack and the clubface angle so that you cannot compress the golf ball.
You're just getting this weak slapping strike.
So this is really, Really important that you understand that the first thing we've got to do is get this separation going back.
And use our weight shift and our hip rotation to bring the arms down into the ball.
That is key.
If you do not shift your weight and rotate your hips, you'll have nothing left to swing with but your arms.
So if you haven't trained yourself to work your body and use your legs and your hips authoritatively to produce speed, you're going to look like this with your legs and just do this.
And this is a very weak way to hit a golf ball.
You'll never compress it because the dynamics will not allow you to produce enough clubhead speed on a proper path with a proper clubface angle.
It's a triple whammy.
So it's really important that you start working on shifting and pivoting on this left hip and getting posted up here so that we can get to the release.
And that's what I want to give you a drill for.
Here is two different ways to start training yourself how to get speed at the right time.
The first drill I want you to do using an impact cube is I want you to take your left hand only and your left three fingers, last three fingers only on the club.
So take your thumb and forefinger off and then I want you to go to the top, come down and release.
And I want you to check the position of your hand at impact.
What you should notice is as you rotate to the top, A, we should have separation.
My hips are turning about 45 degrees.
My shoulders are about 90.
Left arm is nice and straight.
You're going to find it's a little bit difficult to hold the club at the top because you're not having your thumb and forefinger on there.
That's normal.
But the thing that I want you to feel, and I want you to video yourself doing this drill is as you come down without your thumb and forefinger.
The club should, like, look like you have a ton of lag.
This is one of my best drills that I use with students all the time is if I take that off.
All of a sudden they come down, they look like Sergio Garcia, and what they then do if they post up properly?
On this left leg, pushing that left ankle on the ground, it snaps the left wrist down.
As the body moves up, the club is forced to move down.
What I want you to do is start learning how to do this with some speed and check a couple critical things.
One as you check on video I want you to make sure that that club down cocks on the way down.
If you're just holding on to it with the last three fingers, it shouldn't be a problem.
It's going to do this automatically.
You're not trying to throw the club out, you're trying to just shift your weight and start to post up to get that release.
So that's the first thing I want you to check is is the club down cocking on the way down.
Now, the second thing I want you to check is that at impact, your shoulders are square and your hand stops moving.
Now, what I mean by that is for most golfers, if they start doing this drill, they start trying to pull the left arm really hard, trying to create power with their shoulders.
It's not what we're trying to do here.
If you do that you're going to look like this.
This is not the proper impact position.
Notice that the club face is still open.
My chest is wide open.
That's another way to get the club face working across the ball, to get that weak, slappy strike across the ball.
And we want a nice, solid thwack at it and to do that, our shoulders have got to stay closed.
Now notice that my chest is facing you and my hand didn't keep getting pulled way out here.
I released that wrist angle that I created by taking my thumb and forefinger off the shaft and then snapped my wrist as I posted up.
That alone produces a ton of club head speed.
Now the difficult thing is because you're just using leverage, you're putting physics to work for you.
It doesn't feel really powerful, especially because it's your non-dominant hand.
That's okay.
The golf swing is supposed to feel effortless.
How is it going to feel effortless unless you stop putting so much effort into it?
So this is going to feel like way less work to you.
That's a good thing.
If it feels like you're working really hard and you're breaking a sweat, hitting this impact bag, you're doing something wrong.
So that's the first drill I want you to use to start putting some speed into your swing.
The second one is using the right hand and doing the same thing.
But now it's going to be a little bit different.
Because now you have the potential to straighten your right arm up and your right wrist and start losing all this lag.
So your goal coming down is to start feeling as your right elbow starts getting back in front of your body.
The club shaft is still parallel to the ground.
And from there, you do the same thing and release that wrist angle, but notice that my chest is still square, pointing and looking at you.
So as I put this in same thing separation from my upper and lower half shift post up release.
Now, same thing I don't want to see is this stuff there's no, you have no business looking down the fairway.
That's going to cost you speed and put a ton more strain on your body, but it's also going to cost you compression.
Because as you keep rotating through, imagine if you were trying to smack somebody with your hand.
If you keep doing this, you're just going to slap across it.
I want you to hit into it.
That's what you're trying to feel here is that you're hitting into the bag to release it properly.
So you put these two drills together and these are going to be two great, simple drills that you can do indoors and out.
To start putting more club head speed into your swing.
Asle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Kevin
Kevin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Giap
Dean
Larry
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
kris
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Rich
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mary
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Steve
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Todd
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
WIL
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
bradford
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Loran
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jonathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Loran
Caleb
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Brian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Brian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)