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DEAD Drill Step 1 - The Backswing - Junior Program
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RotarySwing Golf Junior Program - Backswing Drill for a consistent, powerful and safe golf swing.
as you're learning rotary swing there are three key things I want you to keep in mind first one of the primary goals and anything you ever do in golf is to learn how to swing more consistently and to do that to hit the ball the same way every single time that leads the lowest consistent scores you have to have a swing that has the fewest moving parts possible but the second thing that you've got to do is you've got to have some power it's no fun not hitting a long ball you need to have distance and and distance is such a critical part of the game today so as you're looking at the first piece where you're trying to have as few moving parts as possible we want to do that without sacrificing control and the third thing and perhaps the most important is making sure that you don't get injured while you're swinging a club believe it or not more than four out of five tour pros get injured from their golf swings and so the three things you're going to learn about rotary swing is we're going to teach you how to move as little as humanly possible while still having maximum power and preventing injury and the backswing is what sets all of this stuff up and that's the first thing that we're going to talk about today is how to move your body in the backswing so that you have a consistent powerful and safe golf swing we're going to look both face on and down the line in just a moment but let's start with face on I want to talk about the two most critical things you need to pay attention to so first set the club down here if you're looking at your swing on video which I highly highly recommend that you do you can't just rely on what you feel you need to look in a mirror and listen to your coach and video your swing so you can see what's going on and as you're looking at your swing on video with your coach I want you to draw two lines on your body one on your right hip or if you're a left-handed golfer but your left hip so one on your trail leg hip and one on the lead side of your head so if you draw two lines here these are the two most important reference points in your backswing so here's how we use those so the line on my right hip a lot of times people would just kind of turn and they'll shift their hips this way and you would see that my hip would move away from that line that's on my hip at the same point some people kind of do this little reverse pivot and their hips slide this way what you want to imagine is that your hip looks like it never moves your right hip as you look at it as you're turning back imagine your hips up against a countertop or you can even lay a club up against here stick a shaft in the ground and make sure that as you rotate your body back that hip doesn't move this way or that way it looks like it stays in place the same thing is true of your head so as you start to turn you don't want your head moving way off the ball that's adding a lot of moving parts to the swing it's going to make you more inconsistent you don't want your head tilting this way that's going to cost you power so your head is going to stay relatively centered and your right hip is going to look like it stays virtually in the same spot as you turn your rib cage your chest to look at somebody back behind you as you're doing this just take your right shoulder pull it straight back behind your head your head shouldn't move much and your hip shouldn't move much they should both stay very close to those lines where they started at address another thing to pay attention to as you're doing this is you want to start feeling some load some muscles starting to activate in the midsection your core and also your trail leg leg your leg your glute your hamstring you want to feel that these are waking up that you're starting to feel some power in your body most golfers just try to rely on just their arms and this costs you not only consistency but a ton of power as well we want to feel the big muscles in our trunk so make sure that as you go back you feel these muscles loaded up your shoulders are nice and relaxed and your right leg you feel like it's loaded into the ground now when i show you from down the line there's a couple other really important checks that we can look at as i go back if your leg is straightening up you're actually going to lose a lot of power and control in your swing so you want to feel that as you go back if anything as a slight exaggeration you can actually bend your knee a little bit more now you don't need to do this very much in your swing it's more of a drill so you can feel this glute your butt muscle start to engage back here so that you start to feel loaded up in your core for some power the other thing i want you to pay attention is your shoulders notice here i've got this shaft up here it's more or less kind of representing my spine angle right as my bend forward the shaft changes what you want to imagine with your shoulders is that they rotate roughly 90 degrees to your spine so if i hold a club across my chest and i turn back you'll see that that shaft is pointing down at the ground and it's perpendicular to my spine angle some golfers will have a tendency to want to tilt and get really steep this is a very weak position to be in and others will turn really flat all you're going to focus on is just turning and keeping your shoulders nice and relaxed and that shaft is going to point down at the ground outside the ball a little bit so if you can put this and feel this right glute together believe it or not that's the entire backswing these are the the most important parts they're going to give you power consistency and protect you from injury so as you're working on your swing remember your checkpoints your head and your hip feel some weight on that trail leg as you go back make sure that your weight goes back over your ankle if you're kind of doing a little tiny squat move as you go back make sure that your ball your foot is nice and light you don't want to be trying to pivot on the ball of your foot you want to get your weight loaded back on your ankle so you can really engage that glute and now you've figured out the entire key to having a powerful consistent and safe backswing
Keith
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)