Jason Day - Perfect Backswing
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Swing plane is a very common term used in golf and has become a primary focus point for a lot of players. Unfortunately, we should be focusing less on swing plane and directly on the body movements that affect the plane. In this video, I'll show you how to prioritize 4 simple steps that will guarantee you get the club on plane each and every time.
- Get properly setup first.
- Make sure you are shifting your weight properly to load the trailside up.
- Learn how to rotate without moving your head all over the place.
- Add small arm movements of elevation and flexion last.
Hey, what's up guys?
This is RST instructor Chris Tyler.
And we are back again with this week's tour analysis on the 2015 RBC Canadian Open champion Jason Day.
So congratulations to Jason.
He is a phenomenal swinger of the golf club.
Got a very good golf swing from beginning to end.
That's got a lot of good balance between width, leverage, and rotation.
And we've done a number of these videos on Jason in the past, and we're going to focus in on his backswing position specifically this week.
I'm going to talk to you guys about a good game plan, about how to prioritize things in a specific way.
Make sure that you get things that are most important into a very good environment first, and then you add your next piece in.
And that way you can get into a really good, strong, powerful, loaded backswing position that's going to help you hit the golf ball further and have more control.
So let's go ahead and get started.
Okay guys.
So as I said in the opener, We're going to be focusing in on backswing positions this week.
And talk to you guys about a good, detailed list of things to work on in your golf swing.
And make sure that you get things done in order.
That way, you can make things a lot easier on yourself when you're starting to rebuild your golf swing.
And I know that, you know, With a lot of the chitter chatter on TV or a lot of this stuff that we hear around magazines or forums, that, you know, Everybody's really kind of wrapped up in swing plane, and swing plane is an important part of the golf swing, for sure.
But if we focus on movements of the body first, then swing plane is completely consequential to what we're doing in our golf swing.
And in turn, You'll be able to have the golf club on plane and that really pretty looking position at the top of the swing, just like Jason Day.
So that's what our focus point is going to be this week.
We're going to be focusing out on a good game plan of things for you guys to focus on, to make sure things are in order first.
And everything's going to start right from your setup position.
Obviously we've got a driver setup position here.
So from a face on, you're going to see Jason sets up a little bit wider.
Ball position's going to be, you know, positioned a little bit more forward in your stance.
So if you've noticed that you had some kind of questions on stance width, we actually have some video videos on the site that can help you out with that.
There's one that's called determining proper stance width.
We talk about from an anatomic and a biomechanical standpoint.
And, you know, When you look at the overall requirements of stance, width and being able to use your lower body for stability, number one, And then also, we want to be able to shift our weight without having our head move all over the place.
If you can meet those requirements, then understanding what your stance width is supposed to be like becomes much easier.
It's there's no gray area.
It's very black and white.
All right.
So that's the first thing is you're going to make sure that you get a good setup position.
The next thing that you're going to work on in your golf swing is just what I've drawn here is what we call the right hip line.
Now, this is a line up from this center of the of the trail ankle.
All right.
So this is a line up from the center of the trail ankle and it's straight up.
And what you're going to notice here is if you notice that your leg doesn't move up against this right hip line.
Okay.
Or if you see that it goes through this line, or that you see that it moves away from this line at the top of your swing, then you're going to want to work on shifting your weight first and stabilizing your trail side.
That is absolutely critical that you get that down first, because if we look at it from an objective standpoint here, what do we want to start our downswing?
Well, we want our lower half to really start first.
And the first thing that we need to be able to load up is, is those glute muscles.
And it's really critical to do So you can see if you've, you've struggled with the right hip line, Then load your swing into the self analysis tool and draw a line up there and work on trying to get yourself to shift over there.
Now you're going to notice from, because we're looking at this from a two dimensional space and the hips are rotating, that the right hip can actually move away from this line.
Now, One of the big mistakes that we see is that people actually get too far shifted over to this trail side here, and they've got their right knee into what we would call neutral joint alignment.
That would have the center of the knee stacked right over the top of the center of the ankle.
So that's one of those things that you can actually look for in your own golf swing.
Is that if you've noticed that your right knee is right over the top of your ankle, then chances are you've shifted too far.
And what that's going to cause you to do, that's actually going to cause your head to move laterally off the golf ball too much.
And it's also going to make it very difficult for you to work in transition back over to your lead side.
All right, guys, So your first checkpoint here is just to make sure that you get the right hip line really kind of worked out.
You see Jason kind of get over there a little bit later, but in turn, he's still loaded into that right side.
And he's going to start his downward move with a big shift of his lower half here.
So that's just setting things off on the right tone.
All right, so right hip line, that's the first and foremost.
So shift your weight, load up that trail side.
And that that'll get things started off in the right tone.
Now, the next big thing that we need to focus on is centered rotation.
And again, you've probably heard me say this, and you're probably sick and tired of hearing me say it.
But the whole mantra behind the rotary swing is a big, big body turn, and a teeny tiny little arm movement.
So we've got to focus on the two critical areas of the golf swing that a lot of amateur golfers really tend to screw up, to be quite honest with you.
And that is load and rotation.
And those of you that have worked with me, either in the unlimited review group, or in the in a private environment, you know that I'm a big stickler when it comes to load and rotation.
And what we want to do here is we want to be able to, again, kind of going back to the head position here, we want to be able to rotate our body without our head moving all over the place.
It's okay to be able to have the head move an inch, inch and a half.
So that's fine, that's not going to kill you.
But we want to be able to maintain the angle of our spine.
Okay, over here, like I've drawn on a down the line perspective, and we want to be able to rotate our body without seeing a lot of head movement.
So what you're going to see, Jason does very well, he stays very centered here, gets a very, very good load here.
So you see he's made a good full 90 degree turn here.
He's been able to maintain his axis tilt at the top of the swing here.
You can see that his spine is still leaning away from the target.
All right, and then from a down the line perspective, very similar looking move here, where you can see that he's maintained his spine angle beautifully here to the top of the swing.
So now we've got things in order.
We've got load, and we've got rotation.
Those are the two critical parts of building a very good looking backswing.
Because a lot of times as golfers, we get fixated on this hand and arm position here at the top, and we're like, okay, I want to work to get my hands and arms up there.
But the first thing that we start to do is load up our shoulder girdles.
And in turn, it makes it very difficult to make a good full turn.
And your arms are the first, your arms and your shoulders are the first things that are loaded up, and they're going to turn around and try to go the other way first.
So that's why it's super critical for us to focus on load and rotation.
All right, So if you've had a hard time with rotating without seeing your head or seeing that your head is moving, I want you guys to work on five minutes to master rotation.
Okay, That's a great video that's going to kind of give you some step-by-step processes and what you're going to want to do, what you're going to want to have the body to start to try and compass when you're working on these.
All right, so that's the second thing.
So we've got, obviously we've got stance width, we've got our setup, we've got, now we've got weight shift and we get that right hip line.
Now we've got five minutes to master rotation.
Once you get that down, Once you notice that, you're loading properly and you're rotating without your head moving all over the place, and you're maintaining your spine angle, then it's time to start to work on your hand and arm positions.
But don't put the cart before the horse here, all right?
Don't go starting to work on hand and arm positions if you're not certain that you're rotating or loading properly.
And that's what you can use the swing reviews for on the site.
If you're a premium member, send swings in and ask us.
That's what our instructors are here to do.
All right, so now hand and arm positions.
What we're going to be focusing on is just a little bit of elevation and a little bit of flexion.
Okay, and this is how Jason does really, Really well in his swing is that he gets things started off with the right tone because he's working on load and rotation.
So here we are into a takeaway position.
Okay, both arms stay very nice and relaxed and straight here.
Okay, you can see the club shaft parallel to the ground.
Let's get it from a down the line perspective as well.
You can see his chest turning at the same rate as a club here.
Okay, his hands are directly in the center of the chest.
Both arms are nice and straight.
It's made 45 degrees of shoulder rotation.
So the hand and arm movements are really just facilitated by the rotation of the body.
Now, when I said a little bit of elevation, you're going to notice here that at the completed takeaway position, his arms have made a slight vertical movement.
Okay, So if you were to stand there at a dress and you were to just lift your arms up, just a slight amount and elevation is a variable in the golf swing.
We want it to happen gradually.
It's nothing we want to have.
We do, in a sense, want to kind of keep things down the middle.
So we always want things to be happening gradually.
And what we're looking for at the top of the golf swing here is we're looking for your right elbow to be in line with the base of your chest.
And we'll talk about that now.
But elevation is one of those things that happens gradually throughout the takeaway and into the backswing.
So we're going to go ahead and finish now into the top.
So he's elevated his hands a little bit.
They're at about the base of his pocket.
He's going to add right arm flexion, still continuing to rotate through the entire process.
And here he is at the top of his swing.
And let me get it from a down the line perspective here.
So there's Jason right at the top.
Very, very good looking backswing position here.
And what you're going to notice, like I said, is that we want the base or the right elbow to be right in line with the base of the chest.
And what it should do is give you the appearance that your hands are up above your right shoulder.
That's a very, very good backswing position.
So what we've done here, again, Is focused on the big parts first, and then added a little bit of elevation and a little bit of flexion in the arms.
Now, remember, our arms are generally the things that are trained most in our golf swing.
So it's going to be, it can be a tricky thing to retrain.
And what you're looking for, again, at the top of the swing is that your right elbow is not going to be behind your body.
You want it to be in line with your chest.
You don't want to see that it's lower.
You don't want to see that it's much higher.
You can go to a higher elevation point, but just remember, we want to kind of keep things in balance.
You're going to have to, at that point, if you go to more width, you're going to have to take away from something in the equation, which generally you're going to have to be a little bit more patient with your body on the way down.
So a couple of great videos to help you guys out with that is five minutes to a perfect backswing.
All right.
That's a great video that kind of talks about how to get into, Move through these details and work into the top of your swing when we start to get the hands and arms back on things.
Pool noodle shoulder elevation video.
That's a video that's going to give you two checkpoints to show you where we can start to build elevation gradually into the golf swing.
And then five minutes to a perfect backswing checkpoints video.
All right.
That's going to talk about elevation, inflection and a little bit of external humorous rotation that we didn't mention in this review.
All right, guys.
So that all these videos that we just discussed are going to be over here to the right hand side of Video player in the Recommended Videos tab.
All right.
And that's going to, you can work through those things in order, but make sure that you're watching your own golf swing.
You're evaluating things and make sure that you're understanding it.
Okay.
I've got proper width.
I've got proper shift into that trail side, but I still see that I'm not rotating properly or you're losing axis tilt.
Make sure that you get these things down before you start focusing on these smaller detail things like a hand and arm position at the top of the swing.
And you'll be well on your way to getting a backswing position, just like Jason Day.
All right, guys.
So that's today's analysis.
Now get out there and build that good looking backswing and do it in order.
And let's play some great golf.
Ronan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Remington
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Remington
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
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