Clinic - Fundamentals

What is a fundamental of the golf swing? I bet you don't actually know!

---

We have a couple goals that we're going to try to accomplish.

The first one is what we do during the morning.

I need you to have a good base of intellectual knowledge.

At first it may seem kind of mundane.

He may be like I don't want to learn this stuff.

I just want to go out and pound balls because that's what you've been used to doing.

Well think about that for a second.

What you've been doing isn't working so let's try something different.

If you understand what it is you're trying to do and you understand how to go about doing it, We'll be able to get the kinesthetic part, which is telling your body, I want you to do this.

And that's going to be the communication mechanism that's missing in what you're doing right now.

You first must understand what it is you want to do and why you want it done that way, and then we can tell our body how to do it.

But first I want to go back a little bit further.

My most important thing that I want to beat into your head is that you must always be working on the fundamentals until they're mastered.

Which will probably be never.

So you should always be working on something really simple, because the fundamentals in anything in life generally are pretty basic.

In the golf swing it's no different.

The fundamentals of the golf swing are incredibly simple, but you probably just aren't working on them yet and you don't know what they are.

So we're going to figure out what a fundamental is.

By definition Webster's definition for something to be a fundamental it must be primary, origin, central, and absolute.

So aren't my words those are Webster's words okay.

So to meet the criteria of a fundamental that's what it has to meet.

The antonyms of that are secondary, consequential, peripheral, and dependent.

Based on those definitions what are some fundamentals of your golf swing that you're working on?

Posture.

Okay what about posture?

What would be the fundamental of posture?

Just putting yourself in the right position to originate movement.

Okay so what would those fundamentals be?

Spine angle.

What about spine angle?

What my tilt is.

How much tilt should you have?

If I'm here.

How much?

Ten degrees.

Ten degrees?

Okay.

Anybody agree with that?

So about ten degrees?

I bend enough so I can drop my hands right below.

Straight down.

Okay.

How much I know how much I should tilt.

Straight below what?

What are you guys working on?

Take away.

Take away.

What's the fundamental of the take away?

Trying to use my shoulder blade to pull myself back rather than push on my hand, rather than push with my right hand.

Okay.

just as you demonstrated a few minutes back.

Okay.

Push versus pull versus push.

So you think you should push or pull?

Pulling.

How come?

Okay.

We're getting there.

Perfection balance I guess if you push.

Okay.

Can.

Yeah.

Can cause some injuries.

Think about some big picture stuff.

How about swing plane?

That's one of the most biggest things that's ever discussed.

If you guys watch golf on television, what's the first thing they do and they have down the line?

They get on their telestrator and they draw lines and show swing plane and stuff.

So clearly swing plane must be one of the most important fundamentals of the golf swing, right?

Result of what?

That's the result of how your body's moving, right?

I don't know.

Let's think about it.

I wouldn't try to think about it a lot.

Which would swing plane qualify for?

It's secondary in what way?

I think it's a consequence.

Consequence of?

Consequence of what everything does.

What your body does.

The swing plane itself is happening in the periphery, right?

It's completely dependent on what your body does, what point you fold your arm, how you roll your wrist, how much you turn your body, how much you elevate your arms.

It's clearly not the origin of movement.

So it can't be primary.

So by definition, swing plane can't be a fundamental of the golf swing.

That seems kind of crazy, right?

There are some golf instructors who will tell you that's the only thing they care about is swing plane.

Some well -known golf instructors.

But by definition, swing plane can't be a fundamental of the swing.

Now, what does that really mean?

Am I saying swing plane's not important?

Bingo.

That's right.

So the difference between the way a rotary swing instructor is going to teach you how to fix your swing plane and somebody else is that.

We're going to focus on the cancer.

The cause is your origin of movement.

If you move from the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong sequence, you're going to have a crappy swing plane as a result of those things.

So when you fix swing plane, I think swing plane's extremely important.

In fact, it's one of the first things I'll fix because if the swing plane is off, typically the path is going to be off, Which means the way, the direction that the club is moving when it strikes the ball is going to be off, which means everything else we do is going to be pointless.

I don't care how good your takeaway is.

If the club's going 10 degrees into out, you're going to hit a giant hook or giant block or slash or whatever.

So we have to fix those things.

The trick is how you fix them.

I will fix the things that affect Swing plane rather than worrying about what the stupid golf club's doing.

The golf club is going to go where you want it to go when you fix the things that are affecting it.

And that's the difficulty with golf instruction because almost nobody takes that approach.

They grab your club and they do you tell what, you know, put it where Trevor does.

Well, there's 15 different ways that I can kind of get to where Trevor is during the takeaway.

And if you're looking at it from down the line, that might look like Trevor, but I haven't turned my chest.

My chest is still pointing over here, but you're looking at it on camera and say, well, that looks pretty good.

Or I can do this.

I mean, there's a million different ways that we can accomplish that, But it's the way that you accomplish that, that's going to make you either a really good golfer or a really bad golfer.

So the first thing that I want you to start looking at is anytime you're addressing an issue in your golf swing, are you fixing the fundamental?

What is the fundamental that's gone off?

And honestly, Most times it's something really small and simple.

Because when you learn what we're going to learn this weekend on what movement.

You really have to be able to do to make the club go where you want it to, it's shockingly simple, shockingly simple.

You're going to learn how to do this and this, and that's the whole golf swing.

I just did it.

If you can do that, then everything else is going to go where you want it to.

And you just have to have the discipline to teach yourself how to do this stuff.

And then slowly add the arms and then slowly add the club.

And if you do that, it's really simple.

If you don't, And you keep chasing the golf club and keep chasing the ball and looking at the symptoms of ball flight, you'll struggle with golf the rest of your life, which you already know that because you're here, right?

This is how you need to start thinking about things objectively.

Anytime you hear something on television, you read something on a golf magazine or whatever, is it a fundamental?

What's really the issue here?

One of the biggest fundamentals that we've got to understand is some very, very simple basic physics.

I won't bore you with tons of physics, this is going to help you understand where these fundamentals really come from.

So this is my favorite tool to help golfers understand how to swing a golf club properly.

As I move this around in a big circle, how consistent is the plane that this ball is traveling on?

Not very consistent.

It's kind of going all over the place.

There's a lot of variables here.

How come there's a lot of variables here?

How much am I moving my body compared to this?

Am I doing more work this way or this way?

Which one?

A lot more stuff going on here, right?

A lot more variables.

I got a lot more joints that are moving in different planes and angles.

It's very hard to synchronize all of this stuff because I've got too many variables in here.

This looks really simple, right?

Is the ball moving faster or slower?

Is the stick moving more or less?

How does that even make any sense?

I'm moving the stick more.

I'm working harder.

The ball's doing less what I want it to and it's going slower.

And I do less and the ball moves faster on a consistent plane.

How does this work?

Such a simple thing.

A child can understand this, right?

The ball's doing what I want it to.

It's moving on a very consistent plane.

It's moving faster.

I'm doing less.

Now, in order to accomplish this, in what direction am I moving the stick in relationship to the direction the ball's traveling?

Opposite.

Does that make sense?

It's kind of a confusing one at first.

As I'm moving this ball, the ball is always wanting to keep going in a straight line, right?

So if the ball, the string broke, it would just keep going on a tangent to that path.

But because the string is attached to it, which you could think of as the golf club or the shaft, it's going to keep traveling in a circle.

In order for it to keep traveling in a circle, I must always be moving the stick in the opposite direction the ball's going.

Now, what happens if I try to move this stick in the same direction as the ball?

What's going to happen to this cable?

It's going to go slack.

That's right.

So if I try to chase the ball around, which is really hard to do, the ball stops moving, right?

But if I start pulling instead of pushing against this cable, which is soft, and I start pulling against the cable in the opposite direction, the ball all of a sudden levels out and speeds up.

Does it make sense?

Can you see how this could kind of relate to a golf swing?

It's kind of your body, kind of the golf club and arms.

Makes sense?

You should always be moving in the opposite direction you want the club to go.

Now, what do you tend to do?

Most everybody moves their body in the same direction.

So you're trying to do this, and this is what your golf swing looks like, and that's why.

The golf swing is all about centripetal and centrifugal force, which is what this is illustrating.

Centripetal force is the force that you're using to move this.

Centrifugal force is the result of centripetal force.

Centrifugal force is what's making this ball want to fly off the end of the string.

You don't try and create centripetal force.

You try and create centripetal force, and centrifugal will be a result of that force.

You don't need to memorize that.

All you need to understand is that anytime you're pulling, that is what is creating centripetal force.

Now, Newton believed that all movement was a push or a pull.

Now, that's pretty easy to understand when you think about it when we're not moving in a circle.

So I'm going to grab my trusty little truck.

It's my best golf training aid I have.

I should sell these on the site, but they're pretty simple.

All right.

How many of you have ever pulled a trailer down the highway?

How many of you ever pushed a trailer down the highway?

Nobody?

In a gas station when you got stuck.

But not at speed, right?

No.

Back on up in reverse.

So if I pull this, what is happening?

The trailer's going to follow along right away, right?

Now, as soon as I push it, what happens?

Now, I don't have to do much to pull it and make it go straight, but as soon as I back it up, why is this happening?

Now, what happens if I grab the trailer?

So it's not a fault with the trailer, right?

What's different?

The origin of movement is coming from where right now?

The truck, right?

Which is behind the object I'm trying to move, which means therefore I am.

What kind of force am I creating?

Am I pushing or pulling?

I'm pushing, right?

Because I'm from behind something.

And as soon as I start pushing, it jackknives.

But now if I grab the trailer, is the truck.

How come it's not jackknifing anymore?

I'm going the same direction.

I'm pulling.

Why does that change?

I'm just moving my finger from one place to the other.

How does that happen?

Does it make any sense?

Does it?

Explain it to me.

It's where the origin of the force is.

Okay.

In the direction of the vector, by the way.

No, you're right.

Yeah.

So why does it happen that way?

These two objects have a center of gravity, right?

So if I.

Try not to destroy my little truck.

If I could take a minute and be really patient, I'd be able to find this object's center of gravity and balance it there without dropping it.

And this one also has a center of gravity.

But why am I having such a hard time balancing it?

Well, how big is the center of gravity?

It's infinitesimally small, right?

So the center of gravity of this object is not the entire base.

It's a very, very tiny point on this trailer and a very, very tiny point on this truck.

It's very specific.

It's.

You can balance it on a needle if you took the time to find it.

Now, when you pull something, what happens to those two centers of gravity?

Do they align or misalign?

They automatically align.

You don't have to do anything.

It's a simple law of physics.

If I pull this trailer with this truck, the two CGs of these objects automatically align.

It's just a cool fact.

If I push them, the two centers of gravity must be perfectly aligned or what will happen to the trailer?

It jackknives.

So how easy is it to align two centers of gravity?

If you pull, it's incredibly simple.

You can be a complete useless buffoon and line up these two centers of gravity.

That's That's why anybody can pull the trailer down the highway, and you never see anybody pushing a trailer down the highway, right?

Anytime we try to back it into the house, It's always wiggling all over the place because these two centers of gravity must be perfectly aligned.

So you're trying to perfectly align two infinitesimally small points.

I'm not that coordinated and I doubt you are either.

So when you're trying to move your body correctly and work with the laws of physics, pulling is going to make your life a lot simpler.

Pushing is going to require that you do a lot of stuff and have tremendous great hand-eye coordination.

To be able to get all of these things to line up perfectly and follow with the vectors and so on.

So the simple answer is if you're pulling, you're going to be able to create centripetal force.

The club's going to release on its own.

It's going to go on the path that you want it to on its own, and you're always moving in the opposite direction of that.

Does that make sense?

Anybody not clear on that?

I know it's a little early for physics on a Saturday morning.

Makes sense.

So if all weekend you fall asleep during this class and I yell at you and I say, What was the answer that you just say pulling, you'll probably be right.

Now pushing is still important.

What does pushing allow us to do?

What is what is so great about pushing?

Why do you want to push?

Power, that's right.

When you get a car stuck in the mud, does everybody go to the front bumper and try to pull it out?

No, we go back behind it and we try to push it out.

How come?

Because it's more powerful.

But just like anything, any amount of power in life, there has to be control first.

When you learn how to control it, adding power is very, very simple.

But until you learn how to control things, the golf ball is still going to be going all over the place.

The golf club is still going to be going all over the place.

It'll never swing on playing correctly.

You'll learn that every, nearly every single swing flaw that is so common in amateur golf is almost all created by pushing.

I'll show you some examples.

How many of you lose your posture at impact?

All right.

What do you think?

What do I mean by that?

This move, right?

Where you stand up, you lose the tush line, right?

Now think about it for a second.

Forget golf for a second.

I want you guys to start being a little bit more of a scientist.

I want you to think objectively.

Forget everything that you've ever been taught.

What would create that motion of standing We're moving in a circle, right?

Because we're golf, we're not stepping anywhere.

So we know that we're kind of moving rotationally because our feet are stuck to the ground.

So what would you tell somebody if you wanted them to create that motion?

How do they stand up?

That's right.

So what happens if I push off my right leg, where can my hip go?

It can only go forward.

So simply, if I wanted to stand up, I would push off my right leg and that's how I lose my posture and that throws everything else off.

Now, if I pull with the left side of my body, where does my hip go?

Goes back.

And what direction is the club moving at this point?

This way.

So what direction should I be moving?

That way, right?

If you're losing your posture like this in impact, it's simply coming because you're pushing off your right leg.

How about coming over the top?

How many of you have a steep swing plane and come over the top and hit a slice?

Anybody?

How many of you have ever done that?

Most every single golfer, at least at one point in their career, started out with this move, right?

What causes that?

If you didn't know anything about golf and you saw somebody doing that, how would you tell them to create a steep swing plane?

Push with what?

Right shoulder, right?

So if I move my right shoulder and my right arm, It's in a perfect position strength -wise and angle-wise to make the club steepen the pitch and attitude of the shaft.

Now what happens if I pull?

It tends to go, if you pull too much, it tends to go underneath the swing plane.

So there has to be a balance between the two.

Does that make sense?

Coming over the top, losing your posture, club face staying open, it's all related to pushing.

Every amateur golf swing flaw can be boiled down to typically pushing or pulling.

Everything that you look at should now be evaluated with these eyes.

Am I pushing or pulling and am I working on a fundamental?

If you can understand those two simple concepts, the rest of the stuff will be easy.

I'm going to give you more specific steps on how we're going to start diagnosing our golf swing, because I'm going to be with you guys all weekend, but I'm not going to be with you when you leave.

You're going to have to understand how to work on your golf swing yourself because unfortunately, when I send you back out into the wild, there's a lot of misinformation out there in golf world.

When you go home to your local pro or whoever it is that you're working with, if you're not using online lessons or whatever it may be, And you're trying to get somebody to help you, to give you a second set of eyes or helping hand, or whatever it may be, you have to understand and interpret what they're telling you and say, is that good information or bad information?

So you have to be kind of your own best steward of your golf swing.

Because unfortunately, there's not certified RST instructors out there yet.

We have about 40.

So the first thing that you've got to understand is, am I doing something that is communicating with my brain effectively?

And you're going to learn what that is in just a moment.

If that's the case and you're working with your brain the way that you're supposed to, the next thing you need to check is setup.

Not sexy, but setup is directly related to most swing faults that aren't pushing.

If you're set up incorrectly with your spine at the wrong angle, either both this way or tilt wise, you will not be able to create a proper swing plane without a bunch of compensations, which will generally come from your coordinated hand.

If the setup is good, next thing I'm going to check is your weight transfer.

And this is the same way that I diagnose your swing out there.

I have, you know, given gazillions of golf lessons at this stage in my life, and almost every single golf lesson I have takes two swings.

And that's the only balls you're going to hit in a lesson.

The first swing is for me to video one face on.

And the second one is for me to video one down the line.

And you don't need to hit another single ball after that for the rest of the day, because I can see what your movement patterns are.

And I've had tons of guys come in and say, look, well, look, I've got like four different swings.

I'm going to show you each one.

You don't have four different swings.

They may feel different to you, but I guarantee you, Your movement patterns are practically identical, and it won't change more than a couple degrees here or there.

So I can diagnose stuff really quickly by going through this same checklist that you would go through.

So is your weight transfer good?

If it is great, then we will see, are you rotating correctly?

And then are your arms working correctly?

And then we'll add the golf club and add the trailing arm.

If you'll notice, this is the exact same sequence of stuff that's in the RST five step series.

This is the fastest way to learn a proper fundamentally sound golf swing.

There's no quicker way to do it.

I wish if there was, I would make it three steps or four steps or whatever it could be.

But through the last 21 years of giving golf lessons, this is what I've been able to boil it down to.

If it was any simpler than this, I would make it that way.

But if you follow this sequence, you will learn a biomechanically perfect golf swing in the fastest amount of time possible.