Taking Your Golf Swing Drills to the Course
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How to take what you're doing with your golf swing drills in front of the mirror to the golf course.
Hello everyone Chuck Quinton here and I want to walk you through something today that's going to be really really critical and helpful for you learning how to change and improve your swing and take something that you've done as a drill inside in front of a mirror wherever it may be and translating that onto the golf course at full speed in a full swing that's one of the most common questions we get all the time is you know I do my drills I do them perfectly but when I go out on the course hit balls it's not the same why is that in this video today I'm gonna walk you through exactly why that is and how to make the changes in your swing that are gonna take you from the in front of the mirror pro to being a pro actually hitting a ball so I've got a student up here on the left that I just had and I want to walk you through his swing and show you what we did to make these big changes and help you understand how you may be doing the same mistakes that he was and learn how to flip those around so that you can make those changes happen much much more quickly in your swing so in this example here this is his swing they started out with during the lesson and it's pretty obvious to see that the shaft is extremely steep it's way off plane at this point and so he went and got a lesson and the instructor told him you know well the shaft is really steep pretty hard hit the ball from here we need to do is try to get your hands deeper behind you pull this right elbow deeper behind you now if you're cringing hearing me say that that's good that means you are also learning a lot about the golf swing you know that that's horrible horrible advice because obviously that's just gonna over activate the arms even more which is the problem that we already have how do we know that well I'm going to give you a little secret of some little cues that I use when I look at my students swings on video to help me quickly diagnose and analyze what's going on in the swing that's going to help you see the same thing in your own golf swing so when I say that the arms are out overactive what I'm saying is that the arms are moving more or faster than the body and that's really easy to see with my little trick here I want you to look at the logo on his shirt so we got a little Jets logo here and as you watch we can see that Jets logo is moving right and the club is moving in the hands are moving now I always like to tell my students that I want them to imagine that their sternum or the logo on their shirt it's moving at about the same rate as the hand club in other words if that golf clubs moving because your logo is turning or your chest is turning however you want to phrase that it's all saying the same thing I want them to imagine that they're moving at a one-to-one ratio so in other words if your chest moves an inch your hands move an inch now of course that's not accurate it's different than that but if you imagine that in your head that the only way my hands are going to move is because my chest is moving them then we're on the right track but what happens for so many golfers is they start to turn now keep an eye on this logo keep focusing on his left chest now what do you notice happening already you see how the logos look like it's basically frozen on the screen but the arms and hands have still moved another foot and a half two feet keep going keep going notice this chest is completely frozen now there's zero rotation happening so when the rotation stops it's about right here give or take a little bit from there how far do you think you're going to hit the ball not very far obviously your brain senses that you have no power no leverage no loaded up potential energy in your swing so what do you do well you keep swinging the club's got to go further back you know that you need some more power here and you're not going to get it from a chip shot backswing right so your body keeps moving the club and the only way that it can and that is with your arms hands and shoulders so as he folds this right arm very early in the swing and starts to load up this right tricep instead of the big muscles in his body the right arm is going to get really loaded up here and guess what you're going to fire first coming down well not going to be rocket science right shoulder right pec right tricep you can actually watch as this trap starts to engage in the right shoulder roll forward as the peck engages this is a purely right-sided dominant movement this is how you come over the top he actually does a great job of trying to shallow it out because he has really great lower body movement but it's all for not because the arms are completely smashed and buried against against his chest and behind his chest now the reason this is such a great example is because so many golfers do this exact same thing they start turning then they slam on the brakes with their body rotation because they're not prioritizing rotation and then they keep swinging the club back with their arms that loads up their arms and shoulders and then the only thing they have to fight with coming down to produce any power is this right tricep now when he came to me he actually said man my right elbow has been killing me ever since I took that lesson and started you know trying to get my arm further back well yeah no kidding because you're trying to rely on all of your golf power coming from that right tricep then as he begins to fire that right tricep and starts to snap it like he's throwing the ball to try to produce some speed that elbows getting a lot of strain on it and of course the right side hopefully you know this and from the other videos is that as the right side starts to become more active it steepens the angle of attack the right side of the body in the downswing can only steep in the golf swing for the most part especially with the arms the legs can help shallow it out a little bit but in general when you think about taking deep divots it's almost always way too much right arm right hand so not only are you hurting your elbow because you're trying to generate a lot of force from it but you're also starting to take a lot deeper divots you're hitting the ground a lot more often and this is how people start developing golfers elbow and it's completely changeable as long as you start learning how to swing correctly the way we advocate so obviously here you know deeper divot short chopped off follow-through because there's no swinging motion it's all a golf hit it's a right side right arm hit in the swing and that's what's causing the shaft to get steep and come down steep now how do we fix this the secret is quite simple first of all look at the position on the right obviously the same lesson here you know a few minutes later had him in front of a mirror his best friend hopefully you bought one of our little training aid mirrors if you don't have one at your club because you can stick these in your bag you can buy them on the store if you have if not you've got to have something to have some sort of visual feedback videos awesome but it's not instant you got a video and then go back and look at it mirrors instant and it never ever lies to you so what I did was walk him through the RC five-step stuff now he's watched all these videos he knows this stuff already but like so many other golfers out there watching the videos and putting it into practice the right way takes a little bit more discipline than what some people have put into practice and that's what I want to show you today so what the first thing in the RST five step is what what's the first video all about weight shift right the first thing we got to do is shift our weight correctly without weight shift working correctly nothing will sequence in the swing correctly so the first cue that I gave him I said I want you to think about two things would you think about smashing your right ankle into the ground and loading that right glute now when you look at this you can draw a straight line right to the center of his ankle and right to the back of his knee we know that force is being driven vertically through that right ankle he's loaded up that's how you can barely see any of his shoe here because he smashed that heel into the ground compared to over here where does this weight look now well on the ball of his foot of course right you can see his whole bottom of his shoe here and you can see that if I came up and tapped him from behind he'd fall right over on his face right because he's off balance because he's steepening everything and lifting up the right arm into position of leverage and not using his legs you can see his right leg is much more straight here if we draw a line up vertically from the center of his ankle it's nowhere near the back of his knee so he's not able to activate that glute properly this is more calf and quad here he looks like it's very obvious that he's sitting back into that glute which is what we need to do the golf swing is all about recruiting muscle fiber we need to generate enough power enough horsepower to move that golf club at least a hundred miles an hour and ideally my goal is to get you over 110 so to do that we need a certain amount of muscle fiber at least 32 pounds to start moving that club fast you need your chunkiest muscle in your body which is your glutes to be activated in the swing to be able to use them for power when you're out here on your toes you can't do that so number one rule weight shift first right glute right ankle right glute right ankle if you think about those two things that's what he kept saying to himself in his head is right glute right ankle and then all of a sudden as he watched himself in the mirror he began to load up like a tour pro instead of looking like an amateur golfer was about to fall over this looks night and day difference much more powerful position now the other interesting thing is that this because it's done first affects other things down the chain what does it affect rotation if you don't shift your weight over that right ankle and you don't get over the right side period it's almost impossible for most people to have enough flexibility to make a full shoulder turn weight shift there's a reason that I put it first above and all else because if you don't want to if you want to stop turning only halfway 30 40 degrees here start making a huge shoulder turn like we have here you've got to get your weight over that right ankle and you'll instantly add 30 degrees of rotation so it's very very important that you get over to that right side to allow you to make a full turn how do we know we made a full turn without looking at it from face on that's pretty obvious we can see his logo facing us no problem and in fact he made about 110 degree rotation now on the swing on the left where he started he's making 30 or 40 degrees rotation it's not even halfway there so how did I get him all the way over here because before like most golfers are thinking you know what I'm 60 in my 60s mid 60s I just don't have the flexibility to turn anymore and he was thinking the same thing I'm you know I'm fit I'm healthy but I just can't make a full shoulder turn you're not making a full shoulder turn because you're not turning your shoulders you're swinging the club don't swing the club with your arms and hands turn your shoulders if you prioritize turning your body and go through it in the sequence the RST five step walks you through loading up on the right side first you can make at any age this big huge shoulder turn this shoulder turn is partially helping change the swing plane I didn't discuss swing plane with him at all but notice that the club is in a completely different position much closer to being on plane which it would be once we added the right hand back on there the left hand is going to tend to over shallow it out a little bit when you're doing these drills perfectly okay but compared to this one we're night and day difference we can actually get the club back down to the ball here so what do we do weight shift rotation video number two RST five step he's now thinking about instead of swinging that golf club he's thinking about turning his rib cage told him to turn his chest like he was going to turn and talk to me once his weight was over that right foot now no problem no flexibility issues more than double the shoulder turn he had over here huge for power and creating a proper swing plane now the next thing we do what's the third step RST five step add the left arm clearly we've already gone through that step four step add the golf club clearly we've done that now everything's starting to fall into place and we have a completely different look at the top of our swing versus over here as we come down obviously the next thing we do is shift our weight watch what happens to that club instead of coming over the top and getting steeper look at that drops right under the plane the old proverbial dropping the club down into the slot right you've heard that a million times I didn't say anything to him about dropping the club down period or trying to put it on plane or drop it into the slot or any of that nonsense you don't manipulate the golf club you move your body correctly and the club will go where you want this is further proof of that didn't tell him to do anything with the clubs on plane on plane on plane beautiful position all the way down into impact and release but now the bigger question how do we take these drills done in front of a mirror and translate them into full speed hitting balls etc I'm going to tell you a quick little story first of all how many of you learned how to drive a car of the manual transmission most of us have right I always talk about this at my clinics when you learn how to drive a manual transmission where did you do it was it on a busy city street or the 405 and rush hour traffic in LA no of course not that sounds stupid right where did you learn how to do it probably in a parking lot somewhere with nobody around a quiet country road maybe a field somewhere where there were as few distractions as humanly possible now why is that no pretty obvious right you were having a hard time feeling how to slip the clutch just enough and give it just enough gas to get the car rolling without stalling or lurching or any of those things and your brain could only process so much information right now if you went back maybe 20 30 40 years later and gotten a manual transmission be like riding a bicycle for you right you've got that motor motor movement down that skill set down because you've done it thousands and thousands of times however think about the next day when you went out to drive so you you spent an hour in the parking lot you got the basic idea you can slip the clutch you can get the car rolling you have installed it a couple in 15 minutes you you're ready to go let's go to the Indy 500 tomorrow none that doesn't make any sense to you that sounds really stupid Chuck why are you saying such stupid things because people do the exact same stupid things with their golf swing they learn something new having to do it very slowly and very consciously thinking through every step of the swing like he is here right glute right ankle turn my rib cage that's a lot of mental processing to get all these things right but then people want to do this drill for five minutes and then go out and play golf and expect everything to fall into place well that's just as dumb as learning how to drive a manual transmission and then going and racing the Indy 500 tomorrow because you simply don't have enough repetition for your brain to have be mastered this movement pattern you're not gonna do it as you add more distractions you've got to do it slowly just like you did when learning how to drive a manual transmission the next day maybe you went on to a public city street slowly but surely you got more comfortable more confidence more skilled as you repeated the movement over and over again and then maybe you went on to a you know a highway somewhere and then eventually you started going faster and so on and so forth learning is learning any movement pattern any motor movement goes through the exact same process and I cover all of this stuff in depth in my intro videos on how the brain learns new movement patterns to take what you've learned in front of a mirror and take it to the golf course it's a process it's not a quick fix a quick tip lesson it's a process you're going from learning this one thing and starting to stack more pieces onto it as you go so as we've added one piece on here or matted four pieces on we've got weight shift we've got rotation we've got left arm we've got the golf club we don't have the golf club flipped right side up yet we're not ready for that but eventually we've got to add that right arm as we add the right arm we're going to start adding pace to it and make sure you can do all of these movements together in sequence and then we'll add a golf ball and we're only going to be hitting little half shots at first still making sure that his brain can process these distractions and then we're going to start hitting it further and then we're going to start going to full speed and then we're ready to take this out to the golf course learning is learning it doesn't matter who you are or what it is you're learning when it comes to motor movements you must understand the mechanics of learning so if you want to stop kind of beating your head against the wall and trying to all these band-aid fixes and still making the same mistakes over and over again and you want to go from being this guy on the left to this guy on the right you must work through the process that's why the RST five-step videos are laid out the way that they are in a sequence take your time take pride in the process knowing that if you walk through this you're going to make huge improvements in your swing I guarantee it if you go through it the way that it's laid out you're going to see these huge changes in your swing going from this to this this only took 10 minutes now no he's not ready to hit full shots with it yet of course not nobody is these are huge radical changes but it's all getting him down the pathway of permanent improvement and that's what we're looking for we want to see progress happening from this day forward every day for the rest of your life and if you work through things in the sequence and give yourself enough time with the repetitions you will get there but don't be that guy going from the parking lot to the Indy 500
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