Live Lesson - How to Fix Your Arms by Fixing Your Legs in the Backswing

Do you struggle with your arms getting too deep or too disconnected during the backswing? Did you know that the problem may not be your arms at all! Watch how I fix this student's arm position at the top of his backswing without focusing on his arms at all! It's RotarySwing magic!

Speaker 2:
Cool. So I saw, yeah, I watched your video. I didn't have too much time practice. I did some stuff with the right leg and I know you mentioned just, you know, still a little bit overactive on the arms. You kind of answered my questions. Don't worry too much where your arms land on these practice back swings. Yeah. I always have a feeling of depth rather than a little more vert. It seems like you guys have 

Speaker 1:
Just gotta be in the ballpark when you're stopping at the top. Because again, as I showed you, like you're already transitioning so much earlier in the restaurant, so yeah.

Speaker 2:
So I won't worry about that now. Or maybe it doesn't even make a difference. And then the one thing I know you were saying, you know, once my body works out, I won't have to worry about the rotation. Two days ago, I just, no matter what I did, no matter how well it rotated, no matter what I was still just getting that little bit of rotation and then the club was just pointing, you know, flat. So I did take some time just, you know, thinking about not doing my left hand at all. Yeah. I know that's a little mechanical, but you know, at least it kinda got me to a good spot sure. For the time being. So

Speaker 1:
Yeah. I mean, at times you're going to go through that stuff where you kind of got, gotta swing the pendulum. We're all trying to get that fitted on to stay in the middle, right? Yeah. At times, you know, when things are overactive, then you've got to kind of go the other side. It's, it's really difficult for most people to kind of get right back to the middle of the first swing. Right. That's why it helps to just know that other barrier of their cocaine, this is what you started doing. You started taking the club way outside your hands and really exaggerating this stuff, you know, it's okay to do that stuff. And nothing else, like the most important for you too, is to learn, right. It's for you to learn how to teach yourself. And so by making big mistakes, that's really where you learn the most, just like anything else in life.

Speaker 1:
Right. So going way to the other side and like saying, okay, I'm going to really just keep my wrist, like even rigid for a second, just to see what it looks like. You're learning, you know, even if it's not the exact way you're going to do it, that's really important because you just putting that tool away in your toolbox so that you can reference that later on, like, okay, I know if I go way to the other side, I at least know how to get back to the middle. Yeah. So it's good to do that and experiment with it as long as you know, where you're really trying to get somebody and I'd be like, okay, this is going to be my thing. I'm just going to lock my wrists in here. Not move them. That's when you run into trouble.

Speaker 2:
I think for now, visually aside from, we'll see where my hands end up on a real swing visually I can tell when the butt is facing at a reasonable, vertical level, I'm doing it right. Versus, you know, I can tell when I'm out here.

Speaker 1:
So yeah. Okay, cool. So where, so what do you want to focus on today? Are you ready? Do you want to double-check backswing stuff and then start doing transition? Or where do you feel ready for you?

Speaker 2:
Let's definitely make sure my right leg is working properly. Like he said in that video. Yes. When I am recording, I'm very rigid because I used to slide so much back. I'd have to lunge back to the ball just to get it right. So that's why I'm so rigid. I look at that hip line, you know, every time I'm staring at a line, so maybe, I don't know, want me to do a few more active rotations with my back leg and just kind of see where if it's too much or not enough,

Speaker 1:
Well, what are want to get you next? My goal with you is to understand how to get the lower body to work. So the whole, for the whole downswing extra, the whole swing, really. But when we're doing stuff in the back swing for me, I've always found that the back swing is, is really difficult for people to learn, unless you break it into two halves, right. And that's really upper and lower because there's, as you found, like just getting, you know, the arms to play nicely, which really the whole secret is getting that to not do very much, but for most golfers they've done nothing but swing the golf club with their arms and hands. And so taming that is like step one so that you at least get yourself in the ballpark. But what most people tend to do is that they realize God, I had no idea.

Speaker 1:
The club was going all over the place and my lower body has been all over the place. And it's just all a wreck. And once you start to learn that, you're like, okay, now I got to really refine that. And then they tend to go on a swing that pendulum, the other side now the lower body doesn't work at all right. And it probably wasn't working right. It wasn't working right to begin with, but you kind of have to forget about it for a minute to get like all of these. Cause I mean, this is the stuff that moves the most, right? And your arms can do all kinds of crazy. So once you, now you have that in the ballpark. Right? Very, very close to being dialed in. Now you've got to shift your focus without letting that fall apart to really getting your lower body to work correctly.

Speaker 1:
Because the key to the whole swing is getting that lower body to do the majority of the work because it leads the downswing. If you don't get it working right. And even if the arms are beautiful at the top and perfect, you'll still use them on the way down because you just, you won't have a choice. So what I'd like to start getting you to do is, is getting you to focus on getting your legs to work correctly from beginning to end. So not just the backswing, cause I don't want, if you do it and you isolate it and you say, okay, just going to look at my right leg in the backswing, you'll miss the purpose of what we're trying to do with the right leg in the backswing, in the first place, right. It's it's to load it so that it has your body has a base to then use the left side and then drive and get through the lower body through the ball.

Speaker 1:
So I want, I want to start taking a little bit more of a holistic approach to your swing cause otherwise it's really easy just to get bogged down and like this detail, that detail, that detail. So, so when, when we start doing, looking at your right leg, I'm going to actually have you use it to then get you going back to the left. I don't want to do this as like just a super chunky thing like this. I want you to see the forest for the trees. Okay. So that's really kind of my goal with that. If we can get that right. Like to start to understand like, okay, cause I can teach you how to make it work in the backseat, but then you won't, you'll be like, what am I doing with it? Now that I get that question asked all the time, like, well I'm not just driving hard off the right leg.

Speaker 1:
Why load it in the first place? And like, I totally understand that. It's kind of difficult to understand until you look at the whole picture. So, so definitely what I want to do today is get you looking at the whole picture because then your arms will be way less of a concern. And you'll see that now that they're in the ballpark, that they start looking better at the top when you have that transition dynamically in there. So that's really the goal and that's kind of be the pathway. And then obviously you still got to kind of keep getting comfortable with the vaccine stuff and what your risks are doing and learning to continue to calm that down. But it will be way easier once the lower body has its purpose in life. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
A real question before we do that as I was just thinking about, okay, you know, don't rotate this thing around here. Is there something that, you know, my grip or something that is just kind of, if there's like a strain

Speaker 3:
Trying to

Speaker 2:
Keep it from rotating and there's like a, there's just something going

Speaker 1:
On, it needs to rotate. Right. So it's not that it doesn't, it does need to rotate. And so it's just a matter of like when you get active with it during the back, like during the start of the swing, that's when you start running into issues and there can be little things, little nuance, things like stand up for a second. So for instance, you know, if you start of creeping into a weaker grip without realizing it with the left hand, then it becomes really natural to do this. And even if it's just a little subtle start to it, you know, once you create that momentum on the club and it just kind of keeps going and going and going. So you kind of got to check just the basic fundamental stuff. If you find that you're still struggling with that you know, make sure that your grip is proper.

Speaker 1:
And then at the same point, you know, a little setup thing, like a lot of times people set up and they, you know, they don't, they get themselves a little right-side dominant or the club's a little angle. You've got to make sure that you have the left arm set up in this dominant position in the right arm to reach under. Cause this kind of acts as a brace to keep it from wanting to do this stuff. So it's more, probably something small nuance like that, that you just have to kind of pay attention to it again, part of it could be because your right leg is just kind of rigid. You feel like in order to get the club to move anywhere and move with any decent pace, you kind of feel like you need to use your hands a little bit. Don't get too caught up in it. It's probably just a little conglomeration of all those little things adding up

Speaker 2:
For sure. I'm still working on my grip. Cause as I do the interlock, you know, I gotta maintain, you know, keep looking at the strength of it. I keep creeping strong constantly. Okay.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So those little things like that are probably what are tripping you up really minor. Okay. So yeah. Take a look at your back swing with what you're feeling in the legs now. Okay.

Speaker 2:
And I do still need to kinda warm up into it a couple of times. Sure. Just kind of check a few things while I'm doing it, Eric.

Speaker 1:
So that was pretty high elevation. Right? So, so what I saw there was that your hands and arms move really fast and your lower body barely moved at all. Okay.

Speaker 2:
Can we do this one more time? Sure.

Speaker 1:
Okay. So better. What I want you to start to focus on for you. This is going to be both a feeling and somewhat real is that to initiate the backswing, you're going to start by turning your hips. Now that sounds counterintuitive to a lot of stuff I've talked about. I've mentioned why, you know, when people, people are super overactive with their hips in general, right. But you are not. So you, we to swing that pendulum back toward the middle a little bit, and one of her probably overshoot our target a little bit on purpose. Okay. So what this will do is help you feel that you have something else to move the club other than your arms and hands and, and even other than your upper body. Right? So right now, you know, if this leg is pretty rigid and not really turning, you're not turning on this hip much, then this is going to start to want to act up.

Speaker 1:
And when this isn't turning, your arms are gonna want to have to swing across the body a little bit in order for them to get an E into an even reasonable spot at the top, you're going to have to add that rotation in your arms. And that's what you're feeling. It's not. So now is it forget all of that stuff for a second and think, okay, I'm just going to make a big hip turn, really load into this right leg. And now my chest is like, you know, facing away from the top. I've already made a full term, but I really hadn't done nothing. My arms could still be exactly where they started. If I don't, then my arms are going to have to swing. So we're going to exaggerate this for just a second and you're gonna turn your belt buckle to really load and pivot on that hip. And then you'll feel your arms don't have to move at all. So that's what we're going to do first or the takeaway. Okay.

Speaker 2:
Just totally turned right off the bat.

Speaker 1:
Yep. Just turn your belt buckle. Okay. So now look how far the club has gotten inside. Right? So what does that tell you? Cause I literally said don't move your arms and hands at all. And I said, just turn with your hips. And the club got way inside so that this is, you know, again, this is an exaggeration, but this is a really important drill to feel. Okay. I have no idea how much I'm really overusing my arms to start the swim back because what we really should feel, I make a huge upturn and nothing with my arm. Like I hear I've already made 50, 60 degree hip turn, but look where the club is now I can feel it. My arms don't have to do anything, but if I don't do that, I keep that locked in there and I'm going to start swinging this thing, let it swing, let it rotate. So try it again. And now you're going to really feel that your arms and club don't move at all and then moving the body, the club with your hip, turn

Speaker 2:
It just way exaggeration.

Speaker 1:
Yep. We're going to be, you know, it's going to make 50, 40, 50 degree hip turn here I live in the club is so it should be way back in front of you.

Speaker 2:
So, but are you, are you saying, let my arms go vertical at all or just rotate. Don't move them at

Speaker 1:
All. Literally keep your whole, your arms exactly where they were to address and turn your hips. Yep. Now look where the club is. So

Speaker 4:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Little inside still.

Speaker 2:
I thought the point was if I'm only rotating. Yes. My arms are going to go way out way around my body.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. I understand what you're saying. Cause you're thinking there's no elevation there, right? Yeah. Right. What we're really trying to get the feeling of is our hips moving everything and everything else is chilling out.

Speaker 2:
But am I, am I allowed to put it into a takeaway position? Or am I just letting her rotate around?

Speaker 1:
You shouldn't have to. Right. I'm literally going to keep my arms exactly where they started at address and I'm just turning my hips and the club doesn't go anywhere. Right. It stays right in front of my hands.

Speaker 2:
There you go. So yeah. So naturally by the moisture out here, it's going to just go basically like that.

Speaker 1:
Exactly. So now you can see that you had no left arm rotation in there. Right? There you go. Okay. Keep doing that for just a second. I want to grab a screen recording of that. So that's you making you do it again? Huge hip turn, right? Perfect. Yeah. I'll come take a lucky. Okay, I'll go to the second one you did there. All right. So this is your massive hip turn during the backswing. It doesn't look so massive, right? Gotcha. I mean, you've obviously overturned a little bit. Cause we tried to make this a big exaggeration, but look at your right leg. It's in a normal position. It hasn't, hyperextended, hasn't straightened up. Your left leg has come to where it's supposed to be. And the arms and hands have now had no tendency to want to swing around and rotate. And you've moved the club with your body. This is what I'm really talking about. And this is the only way that you get your arms under control. You literally have to move the club with your body turn. And so we kind of swing the pendulum way to the other side to really overdo it. But this is not really that much over done, because think about this in the context of the real swing.

Speaker 3:
Okay.

Speaker 1:
A real swing by the time that you have gotten there, there, the rest of the back swing is going to take like two tenths of a second, right? So you're already here and you've made a full hip turn again. We've overdone it a little bit. You aren't going to swing up a little bit more, but I showed you the mycelium by the time your arms are here, you're already done and you're getting ready to go back the other way. Right? So this big exaggeration is really not as big of an exaggeration as it may seem. So once you've done this, now we're just going to tame this down a little bit. So it's not just quite like a massive, you know, full hip turn by the end of the takeaway, but we're still low. You should feel more loaded on that right hip when you did that because you're turning onto it and you're pivoting on it.

Speaker 1:
And then now that as that load is increasing, as you go to the top of the swing, it becomes pretty natural to start to get back over to the left side. So when you've taken that right side, because you, the slide and you've tainted down too much and taking your little body out now on you, you feel like you're making a huge intern. You're really just making almost a normal hip turned or the backswing. And that makes sense. So that's what I want you to feel. Okay. And now we'll go a little bit further. So you're still gonna feel like your arms do nothing, nothing, nothing. You're not gonna take away. And then we're going to start working up to the top a little bit further.

Speaker 2:
Good. There you go. That would feel yeah. Tight right in there.

Speaker 1:
Good. Well, let's keep going a little bit further back in the back swim. Yeah. And then a little bit higher up. Yeah. I mean you can start to start to let your arms elevate just a little bit, you know, starting to make it, what would be a normal backswing at this point, but use it, there you go. We using your hips to initiate all of that and can get it going a little.

Speaker 2:
There you go. That's definitely, yeah. That's definitely more attention here than I felt before. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
There you go. So by the time your arm is right there, like your brain is saying, I'm ready to go the other way. Right. And that's, what's going to keep you from getting to that longer, deeper position than what the extra elevation, because you have something else that's loaded. That's going to not only physically prevent you from going any further, because this is just kind of rigid and you can just kind of let your arms and upper body swing all over the place. Yeah. But as I've always said, the swing really happens from here down. Right. It's from your belly button down. And that's what you're starting to feel for the first time. Here again,

Speaker 2:
There you go. Good. It's gonna feel deep, right? Because we're exaggerating, the hands are gonna come a little deeper. Right?

Speaker 1:
Not necessarily. Now they are right now, but that's because you're actually just swinging them a little bit more than you need to. Right. But again, you're used to this, you're used to, if you don't do something with your arms and there's nothing else to get them back there now that you've added your hip rotation in there, you've added something else to add depth to your swing rotation adds depth to the swing. Yeah. Yeah. But before you were creating part of that depth through rotation of your arms. Yes. Okay. Now we take that out and we add rotation from our core and the arms get to do less. And that's how you start to get this feeling of your arms. Essentially. Just moving, barely caught the whole swing and just vertically, primarily. And the rotation creates the depth how you're doing both. Okay. Okay. Okay. I got Jane here. Ah, bingo. Okay. You see the difference, right? So

Speaker 2:
Don't let my hands create depth. Really. All they have to do is do this and that should be

Speaker 1:
It exactly. Right. So now all that stuff I've been saying in these videos for some years makes sense. Right? You have to feel it. You got to experience it because you know, if you're one of those people, who's like, you used to make mistakes with the lower body. And you're like, okay, I'm going to fix that. And you lock it in place. Well, it looks good on camera to a degree, but then you start trying to make up for this depth and these other natural movements of the swing from the wrong spot. And then you're chasing your tail again. I think this is really a big part of where you've kind of gotten, you know, you spent more time on getting the backswing dialed in, then you needed to, because we were so fixated on getting the club and the arms in the right spot, but missing this part where you were locking that lower body in there. And so now that you've got that feeling towards like, okay, I'm really trying to use my legs to hit the ball. When I say that in those videos, I mean that literally literally trying to get the ball up my legs. And now you can feel how that starts to make sense that your arms are really not doing a lot, but this puppy is loaded up and that's going to make it really easy to get over here and then that's loaded up and then that drives it into the ground. Right. So yeah. So

Speaker 2:
My arms should not go deep if they're going deep with that rotation. It's cause my hands are helping them go deep, but it really should just be off hard hip rotation and just straight Burt.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. I'll be, I'll be careful with saying hard hip rotation, but yes. In your head right now, it's probably what it's going to feel like. Yeah, there you go. You made a little correction. I said, now you'll start to find that your arm making those corrections for your arms to get it like perfect at the top is super easy because they've moved 50% less. Yeah. And that's the whole point of the swing. The fewer moving parts. That's the guy that's going to win every time. But the secret to that is if you take movement out of something, you got to replace it somewhere else. And that's what you're starting to feel now. And now what what's going to happen now is the dominoes are going to start to fall. Now that you know how to load yourself up in the backswing. You're not going to spend a crazy amount of time and the transition to downstate. Cause it should truly be pretty instinctual. If these muscles are loaded up, they're firing like food. My bud is saying, I got to go this way. It's just going to keep you from over swinging. It's going to keep you from getting deep and it's going to make this whole downswing and postnup move totally automatic because you only have a quarter of a second to do it. Anyway. It's got to happen pretty instinctively. Okay.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. Let's see here. If I can get the first one, I go deep and I correct. Correct.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. And you're gonna have to tone down the hip rotation that you're feeling going to take away. Right? Because right now we're over, we're spinning the pins on the other side.

Speaker 2:
There you go. Interestingly, my arms don't collapse. When I do that,

Speaker 1:
That's strange. The width

Speaker 2:
Just stayed there. That was very easy.

Speaker 1:
Somebody posted on there yesterday. I can't figure out why my arms keep going deep. And I, I, I probably sound like I'm being an and I'm saying it, but I'm not trying to be the truth is if your arms go deep it's cause you moved from too much. If I didn't move my arms at all and I can just turn, well, how on earth would they ever go deep? They physically can't do this and add a little bit of elevation and a little bit arms swinging reflection. Then my arms always stand from my body. So the trick is again, if your arms are going deep, you just move them too much. It's that simple. Okay.

Speaker 1:
They're a little fast there. You'll, you'll get comfortable with that. And the whole trick I was showing you when I was doing one of the swing interviews and I was showing you one of my face on swings, it looks like I'm just kind of dragging the club back with my body. That's what you're going to start to get to feel. Once you get comfortable with this, you're like, oh yeah, gosh, I can just drag the old way to the top of my arms are literally going to feel like they didn't do a thing. It's going to feel like it's all lower body.

Speaker 2:
Well already my right arm was nice and wide. I mean, it's not collapsing at all when I do that.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. But before it had to, yeah. Yeah. If you, if you rotate this, your left arm. Yeah. And this right arm has no choice, but to get narrow and deep or narrow or 4d either one. Yeah. So you, the difference from where your arms started at the beginning and the, in the video you did on the swing interview where they were pretty deep the other day now it's like, oh yeah, they're just easily standing right in front of my body.

Speaker 2:
Do you want to see face on it? There's too much going on. Are we not worried about that?

Speaker 1:
Not all. Let me see it. It looks great. Let me see your face.

Speaker 2:
You caught me right in the middle of a garage. Reorg. I mean, there is everywhere. I don't know where to put it.

Speaker 1:
I get some more cabinets. Every man in the world can relate to your garage situation at one point or another. We've all been exactly right there. Guys. I got my beer here too. Great. Now you're going to find your hip move on that right. Hip line, maybe three quarters of an inch. I showed you in my own swing. I did the same thing. Part of that to set up related to, I tend to kind of set up too far on my right side because my left hip is really weak, but, but you will find that you'll be able to nuance that and get that to where it's like, okay. I feel like when I, you know, overturned my hips, you're also kind of sliding a little tiny bit laterally. It's totally okay. You can, as long as your body moves, your lower body moves fine and you can get away with it.

Speaker 1:
Right. It's not an issue at all. But what you'll find, if you want to tone that down, it's just going to be a matter of moving less this way and just add a little bit more rotation. Then your hip will stay right on that line. But it's just finding that balance and it's just, it's nuance it. Doesn't it's not that big of a deal. Okay. I'm really concerned when I see people slide, this leg is pretty upright and they're on the outside of the shoe. Then you're screwed. Then you're in trouble. Right? You can't recover from that. If you're going to goes out there a little bit, but you're really loaded up. I know that you're going to get back to the left. So I don't really care if it's a little bit past that line because mine does tend to do the same thing. Okay.

Speaker 2:
I'll forget about that for a while. That's good.

Speaker 1:
Well, don't forget about it. Just, just monitor it. So as long as it's not getting crazy, you know, oops, my hands are fast. There you go. Good. The rest of the stuff as you start working on what I want you to do now, if you've kind of, I want you to spend a little, you know, a couple of days getting comfortable with using your core to turn and this loading on the sip to create the back swing. Instead of worrying about so much with your arms and upper body are doing right there, they're already training. You spend a lot of time training them and now it's going to be way easier to get them to do exactly what you want them to do. But I want you to start to then why don't you feel like, okay, I can kind of do this. And you know, my arms aren't swinging deep anymore.

Speaker 1:
They're not getting fast and not rotating them. You know, they're just kind of going where they're supposed to start getting back to the left. Like you were there, just start practicing with it. Start seeing what's going to creep into there, what your natural tendencies are, because that's going to be the next step is just getting all of this. That's low Democrat in the backswing and using it in the downswing so that all of this stuff starts to happen. And then you're to start, I mean, being able to go out and play and hit balls and start seeing what's going to happen. And then you start refining things to fix ball flat and that type of stuff, but this next big step, and this is the big step of getting you to let's go out and start seeing the fruits of the labor kind of thing. So

Speaker 2:
Checkpoints so I know I'm not using my hands too much, so they'll go when I over-exaggerate go go a little bit deeper just because I'm overturning my hips a little too much. They should not go deep. And then just with the smallest amount of Bert, that should put me in the right position.

Speaker 1:
Yep. As you experiment with this in front of a mirror, that's what I want you to do. I want you to see like, okay, gosh, if I, when I feel this, I see the result here. And when you feel like you literally do nothing, you'll be like, oh crap, okay, they're right there where they're supposed to be. And then just get comfortable with that. Once you start to see how little your arms really have to move in the backswing, they'll become more relaxed as they become more relaxed and you become more comfortable with it, they'll start doing less and less. Like you'll feel more relaxed over the ball and they feel more relaxed, et cetera. You'll feel more relaxed in the takeaway. That's the progression that you're going to start to feel as like right now. Like you feel like your grip kind of cinches up before you take the club back. And those types of things, those are obvious telltale signs of somebody who's going to be two arms you're going back. And their focus is from here up instead of from here down again. So we're just shifting that focus now. And that's what you're going to be practicing.

Speaker 2:
All right, man. I think it's good. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Awesome dude.

Speaker 2:
Ups and downs, but we're figuring it out.

Speaker 1:
It ends up like this, but it gets there like this, right. The straight lines. So that's a big step. So this is going to be a really fun one to be able to like, okay, now I start to feel some power and my arms and shoulders relaxed. And this is the fun stuff. So,

Speaker 2:
Well, I liked this weekly schedule because it allows me to work on something pretty thoroughly, but not yet go in different directions too quickly actually. Is this seemed like a good sorta schedule we're done.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Yeah. Once a week, like this is definitely a great cause I, you know, I'm seeing all the results in now. Again, if you submit stuff in the interim on a swing review, just like, Hey, I want to check this real quick. Definitely feel free to do those. My schedule is starting to kind of get a little out of control, getting really, really busy. And I was already like super busy. So now it's a little bit worse, but I'm still gonna try to open up slots the beginning of the week as I have time available. For sure. Yeah. You're grinding it out over there. Staying busy, dude. It's getting crazy. Getting real. Okay. So that's good. Good problem to have so, all right. All right, man, I'll talk to you soon later.