How to Shallow Your Hands During Transition

Do your hands go straight out toward the golf ball and don't shallow out during the transition in your golf swing? Here's why and how to fix it!

I can hear you. Great. So what's going on?

All right. So you probably might not remember, but we worked together back in July and we work on my hips. My head was stationary. So we've got that working in, working on my downswing. I had a little bit of a hit with it. You saw. And then we had been working on getting that out of the way. So it was really, I was 80%, like 80% arm, 20% legs until we wanted me to work on turning that around. So that's what I've been working on, the sticks since you and I met back in July, you know, one of the things we talked about is my writing Anthony's stationary and I landed it was coming toward the ball and it never, wasn't really going back behind, like getting back to that at this time. So, you know, I guess you probably want to see that and kind of see how that's looking. One of the questions I had is that maybe on this last header, should I just be one on that getting back, or kind of try to [inaudible] and not allow that to, you know, for that angle to increase

The angle? What, which, which angle are you referring to?

It was coming out toward the ball almost as if I was standing up and this rabbit was stationary. So when we worked on getting disrupted, you do with your left hip and work toward the ground and was down. And so my question is it's really, how do I teach that up to Iraq? Because I think I get her a little bit too flat. Okay. Gotcha. So

You see, as far as the angle goes, what you're trying to do is more or less maintain the BeltLine that you have at addressed. So, you know, if, if I'm hinge forward here, if this is roughly my hip angle, because of how much I'm hinge forward as I go back, that's going to stay roughly about the same. What you're mentioning is a lot of people kind of do this, and that's typically your arms kind of taking over a little bit and pulling you out of your posture. And that's just indicative that you're, you know, your brain is saying, well, I got to really fire my arms hard, and then your hips don't ever get a chance to work right. In the first place. Right. So, so really, you know, if your goal is to try and, you know, use your big muscles to hit the ball and swing the clubs so that you're not just relying on your arms and hands, cause it feels like a lot of work and it's harder to control.

You really got to make sure that this angle is roughly maintained. And then as you start down and get ready to push that left hip back, this angle actually can increase a little bit and that'll really help you steep in your angle with your body, your spine angle, and helps bring the club back out on top of the plane. What most people do with what you're talking about. If you get a little flat and your arms pull you out of your posture a little bit and you get a little flat and then you're going to get a, get a little bit stuck underneath or swing really over the top. But to prevent that is more or less just keeping this angle, increasing it, I call it kind of tipping a little bit so that you kind of get your hips further back behind you. And then as you're pushing back, then it's going to change. But does that answer your question?

Yeah, it is what we talked about last time, Chuck, in July, we talked about when I got there imagining a boar was there. And so that stayed away from that bar in transition and then the left hip was able to just talk. So yeah, we'll get you, I, and go ahead and hit full speed or I think we can continue kind of where I was at last time.

Yeah. Let's, let's hit a couple. I'd love to see where we're at. Whenever you're ready. Pretty good. Let's do one more. Okay. Can you do a just like a swing face on okay. Perfect. Swing looks really good. It looks like you're losing the tush line just a little bit. Which we'll talk about, let me pull it up here. Backswing looked, you know, as far as your hips and stuff looked really good.

Okay, good. Let me share my screen. Okay.

I mean, you get a ton of depth in the back swing with the right hip for sure.

Awesome. That's where it was. That was where we had our biggest problem. Last time I never moved. So that's good to know.

Oh yeah. I mean, it's going back really deep. That's great. But what what's going on here watch. So if you use this like this, you know, the screen back here in the background and watch how your hips go back. So you've moved like one, you know, you kind of move back like a, you know, an inch or two and you maintain that. And then as you start down, you'll see that the club gets a little bit steep. Ideally your hands would not be this far out in front of your chest. And I'm going to, I'm going to walk through all this stuff in a second, but this what's happening is you're losing your posture a little bit because your arms are out running everything. So then, you know, you stand up. So, and this is where, you know, you look like you, you lose your posture just a little bit. During this phase, you can see, let me put my mouse cursor right there. So now you've lost it. And your spine angle has gotten more upright, right? So this starts leading it. This can really quickly eat it, lead into blocks and hooks really quick. And so I'm going to explain why there's, I mean, otherwise did your swing looks beautiful, but this is going to lead to some, some ball striking issues. So let's just take a quick look face on.

Yeah. So stance with is just a hair wide. Not that you can't play from there, but it's going to typically, you're either going to not get enough weight over to the left side in the down swing, or you're gonna have to have a pretty big slide. You make a really good move there. That's pretty solid. But the biggest issue really, I have so many great things going on here is just the arms firing too soon. And

Then I, like I said, I don't know if you remember or not, but been in creative group now for like a year in July. And man, we've done some great things. I was, you know, he works with me a lot on clam shale, but we tried to get my transition with my arms to fall strike dances, January tried and everything. I just can't seem to figure out what in the world is causing me to not at those arms, just draw and allows the legs to work, you know? Yeah. I

Got her. Have you, have you filmed your swing working on this stuff with like a driver or

A three-word? Oh yes.

And you still find the same thing happening?

Yes. Okay. All right. Cool.

So let's talk about what's causing that. So in your swing, you rotate really well. You get your hips really well. Everything looks really great. And then your arms start to go up, right? And so as you start to elevate your arms quite a bit, totally normal, it looks great. There's nothing wrong with it. But as your arms start getting up on a steeper plane, then you need shallowing moves in order for that club to get back down to the ball from up here right now, if you were down here, you wouldn't need any shallowing moves, right? Your swing's already really shallow. Here are your swings really steep. You're somewhere in between. And that's the trick of figuring out where your hands need to be in what moves you need to put in your swing to get the swing to all gel. So what you're doing is you go to the top, you know, this is really nice.

And then the arms start to fire a little bit soon, and that's impossible for them to shallow out because you've started moving them this way. Right? So what your body does once you get this way a little bit where your hands are moving back out here, obviously one, that's going to pull you out of your posture a little bit, but then also, because that's a steeping name move, right? You're, you're, you know, hacking down with your arms a little and that's a big exaggeration, your swing. You're not making it back, but, but as you do that, you're, you're going to start to stand up, to keep the club from digging into the turf because your arms are steep. They're going down on a much steeper path than what they went back on. Right? So it's really more of a, it's a timing thing and a sequencing thing that's causing you to not be able to shallow out.

So in order for your club to your hands to do this, instead of this, you have to kind of look at it holistically. Okay? So one, if my arms fire at all from the top, if I pull down hard with my left arm or push with my right shoulder, any of that stuff can move the hands out toward the target line, out toward the ball. And both of those are no bueno, especially if they happen, which is what's typical ahead of your hips, starting to get out of the way, right? If your hips start to get out of the way first, then your hands naturally kind of dropped down in. But if they don't and your arms get just the timing, you know that 10th of a second, a split second head start. There's no shallowing off. That's going to happen. In fact, what your body's going to do, you know, from there to there, there's only two tenths of a second anyway, right?

So there's just not a lot of time for a lot of stuff to happen. So once you start this little tiny tug from the top, then, then your body, your, your appropriate steps and your subconscious starts saying, okay, well, what do we need to do to hit the ball? Cause that's my top priority. So shallowing out. It doesn't, it's not even on the radar anymore. Right? So really what it comes down to is, is two things working, synergistically, one, getting your hands to not fire from the top will automatically help them shallow out with number two, which is getting your hips to go a little bit sooner. Right. And so one of the things I've been doing, I've been talking a little about a little bit here and there I've been researching for the past seven months is having your high versus having your hands low in the back swing.

Okay. I don't know if you've followed any of that stuff. Okay. So one of the things that when you think about it as a big P do you, do you have time this morning? Cause I can. Absolutely. Okay. So I want to explain some stuff to you that may be a little bit outside of the scope of the lesson, but it would kind of help you think of it as a big picture thing. Right? So if you think of your golf swing entirely as, as shallowing moves and steepening moves, okay. Then the golf swing starts to make a lot of sense because we've seen, you know, there's 40 million golfers in the U S with 40 million different golf swings with, you know, a hundred different variables each, right? So how do you, how do you get everybody to kind of make their swing work? Well, it's pretty hard.

That's why golfers haven't really gotten any better. So, so when you think about it, most golfers don't really understand what's going on in their swing, your swing, as you start elevating your arms, you've added a steepening move. Totally fine. It gives you a lot of leverage, but then you need to get those commensurate con compensatory salvaging moves to get the club to not come down steep. Right? In my opinion, after the seven months of research and 50,000 swings that I've made in that time, I believe that it's much easier to simplify your arm movement in the swing. So the club does what it needs to do without having to try and compensate for it. Right? So having high hands in my personal experience gave me about three miles an hour, average club, head speed more with my driver. I've got more time to accelerate the club.

My I'm making bigger movements, right? My arms are moving more. They can move faster. This swing arc is bigger. And so it's about, you know, a couple percent of extra club head speed, right? But there's so much more complication to all of those moves. It's not natural for most people to shallow out the club from a higher hand position. You, you really have to kind of think about your swing. Like what do I really need to do to get the desired ball flight and all of those things that I'm trying to do from this position? I believe that it's going to be much easier if you shallow out your arms a little bit at the top by removing elevation. Not that you're not going to move all of it, but you're going to feel like there's no elevation. Okay. And when you think of it, that way, when you lift your arms up and then want to push them out toward the target, like you do a little bit, it's you, you now have to kind of revamp the entire way that you think about the swing, right?

You've you've got to get your hands to go do the exact opposite of what they're doing now. And that's a huge change. It's a lot easier in my opinion, to think about getting your hands here and this right arm shallower at the top without elevating it so much. And then as you feel that instead of getting your body pulling, kind of, you know, pulling your body out of posture, not a position as your arms go back there here, and you start to shift back in which you do really well. The hands are naturally going to start to shallow out. Cause they don't have nearly as far to go in the first place. The biggest trade-off like I said, is consistency versus overall distance. You know, you have plenty of club head speed. So if you gave up potentially gave up, you know, a mile an hour or two miles an hour, average speed with the driver, but you hit it on the screws way more often. That to me is the, you know, a good trade-off. And so what I'd like to do, if you're willing to experiment with me a little bit is let me kind of walk you through how to remove some of the elevation, some of the complications, some of the steepness in the swing, so that you don't have to try and go from this high hands position to this, you know, this big shallowing out move and see how it feels for you. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

But you said that I had plenty of club head speed. My, my driver's spin at this guy fit in there a couple of months ago. It was only around 105 miles an hour. So look, I'll do anything to get better, you know, to get that because I know that's what I've got to do to play golf. You know, I can't keep buying from the toppers for, like you're saying, getting out ahead of the lower body and I know that, so but yeah, when you lower it.

Yeah. So, so my, my kind of standard cutoff for club head speed is about one 10. My, you know, with low hands, high hands or whatever, you should be at least at one 10 with, especially with all the good stuff that you have going on in your swing and your athleticism and your, you know, the way you got your body moving, you should be much faster than 1 0 5, for sure. So, so what I'm saying, like you might lose, like my club head speed with low hands average is one 19 and 1 22 with high hands. So it's on a percentage basis is relatively small, right? But you should still be swinging much faster. Now the catch is there's always tricks in golf when it comes to producing speed. One of the biggest ones is that when people are kind of stuck at that level, that you're at the way that they try to produce more speed is by firing their arms sooner and harder from the top.

Right? And so it's counterproductive even though you're working harder, but you actually end up just, you ended up swinging slower than you will when you start letting the swing sequence properly. And that's kind of the key at the end of the day, you know, all this force plate stuff studying that I've been doing is really just about refining the sequence so that it's as effortless and as efficient and safe and fast as humanly possible. Right. And easy to learn because that's really the end of the day. If you have to work on your swing for six years to get a reasonable swing, that's kind of crazy. I want spend some time working on it, get it to where I can go out and play really consistent golf for the rest of my life, with the same story. I mean, without ever having to change it again.

And that's really what I've been trying to boil it down. Yeah. Because with high hands there's there's things that you have to do with low hands there's things you have to do. There's compromises on both. But I believe at the end of the day, everybody just wants to be able to swing at least one 10, you know, especially your ability. You should easily go to swing one 10 and, and be able to, and we will get you there, but, you know, and just go out and, and have a simple golf swing and not have to work on this thing all the time. And yeah. And, and the things that people do to, you know, when they're working with higher hands, it's just more complexity. It's not that it's bad or good. It's just more complexity because you're now trying to blend a rotational movement of your thorax of your hips with, and your sh your shoulders with a vertical movement of the arms.

Right. And it's not tons of great players do it, right? I mean, obviously you can play phenomenal golf doing that from Bubba Watson, the Davis love, and everybody called him the Camry. You got these guys with mega high hands and they call them a Gumtree is a great example, super high hands, big lateral slide to the right, going back. And then all the way down, a big lateral slide. That's how he chooses to shallow out that club. That's pretty complex. He's not a long hitter. And if you look at the, the trend, I like to look at stuff on like a macro scale. I was looking at like 20 year increments in golf. So you can look at the last 20 years of golf at the highest levels. One, the swings have become much more compact, much more rotational. You don't have like the big lateral drive, the massive high hands, the Nicklaus Weiskopf Watson Montgomery stuff.

You don't see that as much. Right. And, and part of that, I think is a, is an understanding of just how to, to biomechanically, leverage the body in the ground more efficiently with tools that didn't exist in the seventies. Right. We didn't, we didn't know how to measure this stuff, but also I think there's a, there's a trend to be as consistent as humanly possible. The guys on the PGA tour. Now it's crazy how consistent everybody is. You know, everybody relatively has a chance to win every week to some degree or another, because they all hit the ball. So freaking well, you know, it's not like you have somebody out there slapping it around anymore. And then just making every putt golf. It's just, it's too high of a level now. So Tony phenols of the world and the, the John ROMs and tiger and Rory, and these guys have all gone too much shallower arm positions.

They're used to have really high hands and he's gone lower and lower and lower, and then kind of brought it back. And he's kind of somewhere in the middle. I like where his swing is now in terms of taking the stress off his body. Right? Cause you look at again, steepening and shallowing moves. You got really high hands. Did you like call them at Gumby? And you have a big lateral drive, will you start creating side Ben? And then you add rotation to that, which is another shallowing move. And then you've got this torque and side bend. And so, you know, you look at how tigers had to adapt his swing to his back, to preserve and, and reduce as much stress as possible. I think you look at his swing now and say, man, it's relatively, you know, pretty easy on his back compared to things he's done in the past.

So long story short, I believe that you're seeing more and more consolidation in terms of what people are doing with their arms and why. And I've been trying to figure out for, for years, which is better, which is more ideal, both from how do you get somebody to hit the ball well, enough to shoot in the low seventies consistently do it as fast as humanly possible, right? Like I don't want to spend 10 years teaching a golfer, how to get it, you know, start shooting in the seventies. It shouldn't be that hard. This is, you know, it's, it's a mechanics, it's a technique thing. What's the fastest way to do that. You know, and to me, the more I think about it and the more I study the forces that I'm generating on the force plate, going with shallower hands, the biggest compromise is a tiny bit of top in average speed.

But again, you know, you know, again, my speeds much higher than average, but if the average guy is swinging at one 12 and hitting it solid every time he's going to be stoked. Right. Right. So, and that's really kind of how I started thinking about things. And it really it's a longevity thing. Right. You know, if you're firing your arms from the top, there's two issues that are going to come from that one, timing becomes more important aspect of your swing, right? Because you got to go to the range and you got to get this timing of your arms going up and your body going around and all of this stuff working together, it just takes more maintenance. Right. It's just more work to glue all this stuff together, you know? And if you do it enough, you'll have, you'll be able to do it, not think about it, but you'll still be always subject to timing in your swing because the more stuff you have moving in different planes in different directions, the harder it is to glue all this stuff together.

Right? So if you think about reducing elevation and you reduce the dependency on firing your arms from the top, you'll start to feel how your body can do stuff just the tiniest bit sooner. Right? You're able to transition to the left a little bit sooner. You're, you're able to finish posting up a little bit sooner and we're talking milliseconds, but that makes a huge difference in terms of transferring energy, you know, into the club, from the ball or from the ground, from your feet, and also not relying on your hands and arms for speed. So it starts to get shift you from, you know, putting a lot of effort into it from your arms and hands to feeling effortless and swinging the pendulum the other way. And I think that, you know, in the end you'll find that you'll, you'll get the big payoff without having to work so hard at it.

So long story short, what I want you to feel at first, a couple things we're going to do a couple things to exaggerate some movements so that you can see a big change in terms of shallowing out the club, getting your body to work. Cause you know, your body, your brain has got to adapt to these things and start getting it's like, oh wow. If my arms are here and now they're here, that's a big change. Okay. Right. So we're going to do a couple of things to experiment and help you feel some of these things. And then as you start to get comfortable with it, we'll start stacking some stuff in there. So what I want you to what's that? I said absolutely. Yep. Okay. So what I want you to do first to get this feeling is I'm going to have, you kind of keep your right upper bicep and your right pet kind of touching each other throughout the whole back swing.

Okay. So you will feel how your arms going to want to slide up a lot. This is elevation, and we're going to reduce that to make this swing simpler. So you're going to feel that this stuff kind of connected. You're going to go right arm only. And you're going to go up to the top, just like your normal move with your heads. Cause that stuff's all great. And now, because you don't have the left arm on the club for a second to pull it out this way, you'll feel how the right arm naturally wants to do this. And that's going to get you that hand drop. Now, of course, there's all kinds of variables with this stuff. So I'm telling you stuff that's specific to you. A lot of guys who, if they go right arm only, they just push this way. I'm going to help you feel how this is a little bit more of a little sidearm kind of flick instead of pushing out over the top.

But I believe most of your problem comes from, you know, starting to try and pull the club down with both hands from the top too soon. So we're just going to take one out and we're going to see how your swing shallows out with just this arm. And then we'll see how, if we need to shallows out with just the left arm, they both have to kind of learn to work together for this to happen. But it's a lot easier for this to happen from here than it is from here. Because as soon as you elevate a lot, not the elevator lot, but you have a fair bit. Yeah. You've activated this right front Delt, your, your shoulder muscle and the medial does both of these things. Once they're tight or activated, they don't just all of a sudden relax. How would they do that?

You have to lift your arms up. And so of course they, all of a sudden these muscles don't just deactivate and that, that's why it's difficult. So when you have high hands, you know, there's a lot of little they're shallowing moves that you have to kind of do to work with that. Again, if we don't activate the stele and lift this arm up and it stays more relaxed, cause it's moving in sync with your body turn, instead of trying to move on to different planes, as much as the air in your case, then this shoulder stays more relaxed. And as soon, soon as you make that nice transition move that you guys have been working on my hand is going to be drop straight down in front of my chest with zero ch you know, effort and trying to do that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So let's try that right arm only for a moment.

Yeah. I

Just want you to make some practice swings and just feel that those two are connected. You can choke up on the club as much as you like. Good. And now just come down from there again. Okay. So once you've got your arm there, just relax it, go to the top. I feel, I feel your right shoulder should be relatively relaxed at the moment. Yeah. And it, and then just forget about it and just focus on your transition with your lower body and see what happens. Okay. Still a little bit steep, close there. All right. So still a little steep and that's good. Let's let's take a look. Yeah.

Okay. So this is where I was telling you to feel relaxed. So you can see now that your bicep is just a little bit, or you're assuming your elbow a little bit beneath your pack right there. That's very shallow is a big difference. Yeah. It's going to feel insanely low. It's probably feels like it's down around your waist, but when you get the left arm up there, you'll see that your left arm would be just above your shoulder plane. And it would all be just about perfect. So while this feels very different for you, it's going to be much more compact and much simpler. It's just fewer moving parts. Right. But then as we came down, you still started to kind of get the, the arm to go and the shoulders to go. And the hips didn't see how your hips are dead square, basically.

Yes. Okay. So this is normal, but this is important for you to start to understand the steepening and shallowing moves that you need to get all of this stuff to gel. So in your case, when you go right arm only, you've basically got to just forget about your arm for a moment and just get your hips to go because your hips work way better when you're swinging at full speed. Right? So, and that will help the club. But now your hands a little bit far in front. So what happened there is you're in this position, but then you start moving the club for good about the club and start using your hips to get out of the way. And you'll feel how's your arms sorts of stay more relaxed that you're not trying to push the club through. This is where you're losing speed in your swing.

Even though you've got reasonable speed. But as you start trying to move the club, there's no, it's not enough speed and muscle mass in your arms and awkward to really be able to generate any speeds. So you can't rely on that. So you just got to keep it kind of chilled out here and then use your body. And once you do that, you'll see my hand drops down because it's, as it's moving back this way, while my body is beginning to transition back to the left, that creates this little bit of separation. So my right bicep. So I'm telling you in the back swing, these two are connected, but during the transition, there can be a little bit of separation where my body gets a little bit of front of these hands. Again, it's a shallowing move, right? If you keep this connected and you start turning right away, your hand, start moving out toward the ball and you go back and you start to transition while the club's still going back a little bit, create just the tiniest bit of separation between these two. And you'll feel that little dynamic drop of your hand.

Yeah. There you go. Okay. Relax the arm even a little bit more. Yeah.

It's wanting to do something not a bit better than them. All right. Let's take a quick look.

So this was just like your first little practice kind of drill, but you can see how your hands are staying back behind your hand to staying back behind your chest now, right? Yes. And then as you started to do a couple, you said, you know, I started to feel your shoulder or your, or your, you know, your Peck starts just kind of tighten up and there. I can see it. And then he's starting to kind of turn that right shoulder. It's better. The club obviously shallows out there and then you get a much better. So you're good hip turn there and a good release. And then as you started to kind of feel a little bit more dynamic with Eric, you can see it there. And again, you won't, you won't be able to get that big of a separation when you're left hands on there too. Right.

Okay. Yep.

But as you S you could see it, it buys you that little bit of time, so your hips are already back to square. He's still trying to get it out there a little bit, but it's closer, but you can start to see now, like, okay, gosh, when I feel super shallow, I feel like my hands are really dropping. And I feel like my arms are staying way back at during the transition they are, but then you can see like, oh gosh, right here, I start to really turn my right shoulder to try and get it, to get the club back out there. And then it kind of puts the club out in front of you a little bit more. And so you can exaggerate that now and get a little bit, even more shallow with it, but that's not bad right there. That's pretty darn close. So now what we're going to go ahead

And just say, oh, sorry.

I keep getting an echo in here. I think just check her last one. That was pretty good. There, there, you got to play dynamic with it. Maybe a little more speed in that.

Yeah.

As you can see, now that separation I was talking about between your upper bicep and your Peck. Yes. And again, this is exaggerated because your left hand is not on there. Right? This, you won't be able to do that, but you get the idea now instead of your hands, normally moving immediately out toward the ball from the top, they're just kind of floating right now. It's kind of hanging out. It's buying you that 10th of a second or those milliseconds to get that body a little bit out in front to get the hips a chance to clear out of the way. And then, you know, now your arms are still way back. Normally your hands would be already, you know, close to impact at this point, right? Yes. So now you're just staying back, stay back, stay back. And then you get that little flick of the wrist, that little release, that little boost to speed right at the bottom, instead of doing it so hard so soon from the top.

So as you start to kind of think about your swing and those perspectives, my goal for you, I want to help people understand their swings, right? So that you don't need me. You don't need anything else. You just, you know what, you kinda gotta do. You get some really basic stuff. That's really easy to understand and follow, and then that's it for the rest of your life. You just work on the same crap and you shouldn't take that long. Right. You just kind of get it dialed in and then you're done. And in your case, you can see now by, by just removing some little extra variables in your swing and getting a little bit more time in the downswing for your hands to, to just wait, to give your body time, to get out of the way the now the club and your hands are back here.

And so you start to understand, okay, well that feeling of, you know, this is what I need to feel when I have both hands on the club. So now as I come back, instead of you would normally go in this way, you're gonna feel the same thing, that little right arm separation at the top during the transition. And you can see my hands as I'm halfway down are still back here. And then there's that little effortless boost at the bottom. And that's where your speed really comes from of you trying to get your speed so soon from the top. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. So let's go ahead. Do you have any questions? Yeah. What was it

I was thinking about [inaudible] now on it. Oh, I know. So in my sway typically what I'll see is that it looks like a tiny bit of a closed here and it's probably from here and I make a big turn and I store it in. So that's what I look close and they never really, I never get the lid open, so I kind of need to be the office that it's been around. I feel that going a lot quicker. Right.

Not necessarily. I understand what you're saying, but not

As yeah. Yeah. That's what I did in that video. That right there is when I get to hear, I think really, I really started my engine down here and this is back what I'm after.

Yes. So yes and no, you're, you're correct. And not necessarily a hundred percent correct in the same sentence. So, so as far as what you're saying, there is a little bit of a closed hip slide during that transition because as your hip is turning and going back this right hip, it's starting to move cause you're rotating around the base of your spine back here. So as you're starting to do this, it's starting to help you shift back to the left, but this is happening super fast. Okay. If you're going really slow, it would look like this, but that's happening in the blink of an eye. Okay. So, so yes, you do need this tiny little bit as this, as this right. Hip is getting depth and moving around and starting to shift your weight back to the lead leg. There's this, you know, milliseconds of a closed hip slide.

And then you go, gotcha. What's really important is the muscles that are loaded during that phase of the swing. And when they're firing, right, that's really your issue. As you elevate your arms, like most golfers, you know, obviously you're going to use your shoulders to do this. This is what raises your arms up and down, right? It's all in the muscles. We got that in our, our traps, right? So we see a lot of really high handicaps, you know, do this kind of stuff. They really shrug their shoulders. That's really high handicap stuff. You're obviously not doing that, but you're still elevating your arms and activating these shoulders. The trick is then figuring out how do I get that club to shallow? A lot of golfers, like calmer Gumtree who have really high hands will add a lot of lateral move to do that. Right?

All of this stuff is buying time. That's really what it is. The most precious commodity you have in the downswing is time. It's, it's invaluable. There's just not a whole heck of a lot of it. Okay. So you're, you're doing everything in a quarter of a second, which means if you're fast, Twitch, muscle fibers, the hands and arms and stuff that can move really quick, get the slightest bit head start. There's just not enough physical time to get all the other crap done. And that's what you're really experiencing in your swing. And that's what you saw different there. You're like, oh, well now, because my hands not doing this, moving out toward the target, it looks like my hips are just getting way out in front. Right? We don't want that either. And we don't want you spinning your hips out. Right? What you're finding is because you know, the arms aren't connected.

So if when the arms are connected, if you start turning your shoulders at all, the hands are going out this way. There's no way around it. Right. But when the, when it's just right arm only, even if you make a mistake and turn your shoulders really fast, well, your arm is still going to stay back. And that's what I'm trying to get you to feel is what I really did is just buy you time. I brought you a 10th of a second at the top to get that little shallowing move, but it's much smaller from here than it is from here, because then you need more than the time I just bought you. We need more lateral or more rotational or whatever it may be. And I'm just trying to make it simple, man. I just want it to be as, as tight and compact, boring as humanly possible. So I love that.

Okay. So let's put, yeah. Do a couple of right-hand only again, just to get the feeling, use those hips. And then as you get the feeling of your arm, your hand kind of staying back a little bit behind your turn by that time go left-hand all right. So your hands are still going out there. So I want you to exaggerate that face. Yeah. There you go. Good. You're still kind of hanging back on your right foot there. So get your hips going out of the way and let the arms stay back. All right. So let's take a look at that. So you're still firing the arms, but I want you to see it so that you can start to recognize what's going on here. Okay?

Okay. Okay. So first couple of right-hand only pretty good transition there. The club's starting to shallow out, but you can see that you're still wanting to move those hands out towards, toward the ball, right? And this is normal to you. So this is why this is the trick here is that if you're still trying to move that golf club with your hands out toward the ball, you're going to kind of keep running into this same circumstance. And now you won't have as much time to get your body out of the way, your hips out of the way. And you're a little flat footed here. So you're kind of hanging back there a little

Bit. It should be rolled in slightly.

Yeah. You should be shifted more to the left side at that point, but you just didn't really have enough time to get everything all the way over. And you're still, you're hanging back now, as we put the left hand back on there, this is where you said you felt like you were making a nine to three swing.

Yeah. I'm dead looks. So I felt just like my nine to three. I promise if I sitting here at nine to three, it's paused

And that's normal. That happens for everybody. Right. And that's, that's kind of the beauty of this is when you start really understanding how, because you use your lower body really well. It just doesn't have enough time. And your arms are kind of taken over a little bit. Your swing should feel like a nine to three swing. That's my favorite feeling in the world personally, is that I feel like I took the club back to parallel and I still hit it full distance. Right. That's kind of the goal because that's how we're going to boost consistencies. We're making a swing that just doesn't have that many moving parts. So your hands are still a little bit they're pretty close to there and you had a good separation there, but the hands are still moving out, but you shall it out right at the bottom, which was totally fine right here. You're in a good spot. But you can see now that your hips are dead square. Yes. Right. So now you're hitting the dead square. By the time we get to impact, there's just no chance. There's no chance of them getting out of the way at that point. And they don't. Okay. So let me pull up something or you kind of an, a pretty big example of taking this to the extremes.

All right. So we'll pull up tiger here. Now watch during the transition. So his from down the line anyway you know, he's starting to shift back to the left right here, but his hand. And obviously I don't have the face on view of this swing, but I can see that his, you know, his belt buckle and his hips are starting to move deeper, his left leg starting to move. So that's kind of the beginning of the transition from this view. He technically, probably started a little bit sooner, but anyway, so let's watch how far his hands keep going while he's transitioning to the left. So they went into the club, went up another couple inches, right? But he's already transitioned to the left and now his hands really haven't moved much. They have, they haven't moved much in relationship to his body. This, this right arm angle is starting to widen a little bit.

The distance of his hands from his shoulders are starting to widen a little bit, but it's not. But in your case, you're widening a lot at this phase of the swing. Your hands are firing soon. And as we keep walking tiger, you'll see that that is something that he does as well as anybody, if not better than anybody in the business, his hands are still really high up. And I can start to see his left butt cheek already. His hand, and his left arm is barely below parallel. And now you can see obviously the other side of his belt line here.

And so you can see how much has hips are open at that point and how much his hands are behind his belt buckle at that point, right? Yes. So that's a much bigger hip turn, but the trick is that move can't happen. If your arms get a headstart, it's just not enough time. You can't move your pelvis that much, that far. And that's why it's happening in your swing. That if your hands get this slightest bit too antsy from the top or your shoulders start to go from the top, your hands go this way. And as you saw in Tiger's case, you know, he has much lower shallower hand the top of the swing. Now, now, in order to compensate for that, he's got to have a steeper posture, steeper shoulder, plane, steeper spine angle, cause that's steepening moves in his swing, right? So once you start, if you swing really upright with your hands, you can call it Montgomery.

Well, your posture is going to tend to be, I'm gonna exaggerate this, you know, flat or shoulders, more upright arms, right? What you'll see in Tiger's cases that he's got steeper, shoulders, shallower, arms, those two balance, each other out your high end is still got to get up here somewhere. You got to have some leverage, right? But as your hands are here, then you've gotta be steeper with your spine, which makes it easier to get your hips out of the way. And so from here now, if I do any of this, I'm screwed, right? If my hands, arms, and shoulders are going, because my hips will just never get out of the way in time. So what he's doing hands and arms are chilling out, buying time for those hips to get out of the way. And that's why his hands look like they're way back behind where his hips are pointing.

And then at the very last second, he's letting the club release. That's what you have to feel. And again, as you remove all the extra arm load intention from your swing, where they want to go and fire hard from the top, and you start prioritizing getting your hips out of the way and getting your hands a little bit shallow in relationship to your shoulders, then all of this stuff starts to come kind of blend together a little bit easier so that you're not just, you know, straight up and firing your arms. You know, your posture, if you were a little bit steeper that would help a little bit is that, you know, as you, as you get a little bit flatter with everything, your hands kind of tend to want to go out this way. Because as you're a little bit flatter with your shoulders, then this move to shallow it out starts to really get you coming way too far from the inside feels unnatural. And so you just kind of start goofing around with it. So anyway, long story short, a little bit steeper with the shoulders will help a little bit the spine angle. But the biggest thing is just again, getting your hips to get out of the way while your hands stay back. Okay?

Yep. A little bit. Yeah. A little steeper. It's set up tiny bit.

Good. How's that?

That's fine. There let's work with that. Good. There you go. Better again. Good. Yeah. It's a lot better.

All right. Let's take a quick look at those. I couldn't really feel my core. I'm a little more engaged than I typically do.

Good. That will definitely be a big change if you can start to feel that that's very helpful. All right. So I know you probably feel really bent over here being, so your posture looks totally fine. So now normally your hands would already be working out, you know, immediately toward the ball, right? Yep. So there is much better in terms of the sequence of the path that your hands are traveling on and the clubs traveling on, you can see now your hips are much more open. Yes.

And my right arm is never that close to my body at MEI. It's always way out there. Yeah, exactly.

So can feel now how that starts to happen. Naturally, as you're not trying to move your hands out toward the ball, your right arm, the way that it's going to work in the swing. Let me just get you down to impact here. Yeah. Way better. All right. So what you're doing is kind of immediately straightening and throwing the club out from the top, right? And that's why your arm right. Arm gets out like this at impact and is fully stretched out. And you saw in Tiger's case now he used hitting a pretty big cut there. So it's a little bit different trying to come down pretty steep and come across the ball a little bit and get the handle work and left. But you'll see that, that right arm, the strangest way that I've ever been able to feel this in my own swing and the only way that I've really been able to kind of feel it and help other students understand it is basically I'll show, I'll give you a kind of a simple drill exaggerate.

This was going to feel pretty strange. Okay. But it's going to help you understand when you have high hands like you did at the top. Not, not very high hands, right? But like, you know, a little bit higher, then this move to straighten this arm out and get your body away and turn a little bit flatter with your shoulders works or even doing this kind of like the old sidearm throw where you get this elbow way, you know, doing this, that's a shallowing move. Wouldn't necessarily recommend doing it quite that extreme. But, but it works because it's, shallowing out the club, right? When you get steeper with your shoulders and you have shallower hands, the movement you need steepening moves in your swing, which seems kind of counterintuitive. Right? Most golfers have way too much steepness in their swing in general. You're on the other side of it. Okay. So to steepen the hand, the, the path, like, if you notice, when I showed you the last video, your left arm, at this point, it was vertical. And a lot of times your left hand is out like your left arm. Excuse me. Right. So again, that's a shallowing move. Okay. But in order to feel this correctly, the steepening move is the way that I describe it as I take the club. What's that?

Yeah. It's, it's like tracing the plane line, but this is a little bit different. Cause it's, it's kind of focusing on what my hands and arms are doing with it to change the pitch and attitude of the shaft. So I actually feel like I'm stabbing myself in the, in the leg with my shaft. Okay. These are being exaggerations and I'll show you how to tone this down. But I want you to think about this again, as steepening and shallowing moves, right? So if I do this, my hips, aren't going to get out of the way it's a shallowing move. Right. It works. There's guys that play on the tour that do it, right? And then this is a steepening. This looks just as crazy as this, but that's what they have to feel like because there's much force acting on the shaft on your body it's happening so quickly.

So this is one of those cases where it kind of helps to really exaggerate something to the extreme and then slowly start toning it down and watching what happens on video. Cause it feels bizarre as can be. And then you see it on video. You're like, oh wow, this actually starts to, it doesn't look anything like it feels, okay, this is one of the things. So here, your arm, your right arm, you're normally doing this. It needs to do this again. Exaggeration. Yes. Right. So it's going to straighten out a little bit, but you can't go this way. This will cause you to stand up. Okay. So now as I'm doing this with my arm, you can see that that pulls my left arm in to my body instead of going out this way, huge exaggeration. So I go here and then it helps me as I'm doing this, helps me get my left hip out of the way.

And you can see my arm, my right arm was more into my body. And then it's more connected and then releases here where I can get rid of that final, last little bit of elbow bin for speed at the bottom. Okay. As I start to tone this down, so I'm not like stabbing myself in the thigh, that's a big steepening move. Then I started to kind of feel like it goes to the front of my thigh and then it goes to the middle and then it goes to my left thigh. And then I start thinking about, oh, that's getting my left thigh out of the way. My, you know, my left leg. So now as I keep this back, it brings the club out on top. As you mentioned, like tracing the plane line this way. Again, these are exaggerations, but you get the idea of this is very different than that. Yeah. That makes sense.

All right. So you want to feel it first? You look at that.

That's the huge exaggeration. Okay. Bingo. Yep, exactly like that. Yep. Okay. Do it a couple more times. Yeah. It starts to work naturally. Yeah. Now do that again. Keep doing that, but just let the club kind of swing through through the hitting area while trying to maintain that feeling. All right. Cool. Let's take a quick look. Okay. So that feels pretty extreme. I'm assuming, right? Yes. Okay. So you'll be shocked when you see what happens with that. Okay. So naturally you can see your hands are shallower at the top, right? You started to, to kind of put this stuff together.

I love that top position right there. Like just the way I would love to see that it pulls

Well, what's cool about this is when you start thinking of the swing holistically, you start thinking about the whole thing of what you're trying to do. Like part of me, let me pause this for just a second. So I think for a lot of golfers, his swing gets really disjointed because they look at the swing in components, right. And certain components work really well with certain things and certain components don't work at all. Okay. And again, I think the simplest way to think about it and how all of my research started with high hands versus low hands is understanding the swing was like, okay, if you have this, you need a lot of shallowing moves. You have this, you need a lot of steepening moves. Okay. But when you think about the swing in terms of like, okay, well what's the purpose of, you know, mastering a takeaway like this?

Well, honestly, there's not really much purpose in that because what really matters is the downswing. It doesn't really matter. And you can see guys like Ray Floyd do this crap. I, you know, that's a hard position to recover from, but you can do it. My bigger point is that everything that you're doing in the downswing is the top priority. And so when you start thinking about how your downswing needs to really work based on, you know, the elevation of your hands and what you're trying to do with your swing, then the backswing starts to happen in a way that automatically allows you. And it sets itself up for the priority, which is the downswing, right? So if you think to yourself. Okay. Chuck's telling me I got a steep in, in my left hand. My left arm is going to be much steeper and vertical instead of swinging out away from me.

And so now, you know, as you're taking the club back during the takeaway, you start to set yourself up so that this becomes possible because this steepening move is not possible from here, you know, or taking the way outside. That doesn't make sense. Right? So what I, my goal is, again, trying to simplify this stuff for everybody to be able to learn faster is that as you start thinking about, okay, if I'm going to be, you know, have shallower arm, plane at the top, and I start wanting to do add the steepening moves, well, then everything I'm doing from the moment I start that club back is all about setting that up. So the takeaway and the position of the backseat all starts to become instinctual because all you're trying to do is make these priority moves happen naturally. And so that's what you'll see. You'll start naturally getting to a shallower position at the top, without me trying to tell you to do it, because it makes sense with how you're trying to bring the club down in the down downswing. And so now your swing, isn't a big bucket parts. It's one cohesive unit with all of these steepening and shallowing moves that work together.

So you can see they're like, I didn't tell you to like lay the club off or, you know, shallow it out right here. You're doing this because in order for your right arm to work in the way that I taught, told you in the downswing, you have to,

Wow.

So you can see now the club shaft, your arm are all basically on the same plane. I didn't tell you to do that. I didn't teach you that, but I knew it would happen as you start thinking about this stuff in terms of what is it going to do to my downswing. And so now you can see that the club is going to, it needs because your hands are much deeper than they normally are. You need steepening moves and that's where stabbing yourself in the thigh. But look where your hands are. I finally

Dropped straight. I honestly didn't think I was capable of ever

Well from your position at the top before, with your high hands, it's more challenging. You need to do, you know, honestly, one of the best shallowing moves for high hands is losing your tush line. That's a big shallowing move. As you move your pelvis into the ball, it drops the shaft. Cause your spine gets more upright. That's not ideal, but it works right. So as I got your hands shallower at the top, but your shoulder steeper, now your hands need to work in a steeper fashion naturally. And so by giving you that little, my, my little goofy stab yourself in the thigh drill, you can see the club gets steep on playing through your form, but your hands are way back. And again, this is an exaggeration, right? We want your arm to be about vertical, not quite inside, but normally it was way out here, right? So you can see that even though this, this move feels insane, as you start to do this with a little bit of pace, it all starts to gel together. As you start fighting the forces that are acting on the club, you can see now there is no chance of you swinging your hands out toward the ball. Nope.

Right? Yeah. That looks great. I mean the

Transition fee you're dropping straight down.

So then I said, okay, let's try to do it with, you know, a little bit of pace. Let the club kind of keep coming through. You can see the club keeps shallowing right. And as you notice, which is great, your hips start to naturally do what they need to do because they need to get out of the way because your hands are coming down deeper. That's a steepening move. Right? So you'll see that this all starts to gel together. And so now, instead of thinking about, okay, I got to make sure I shift to the left and push my left hip out of the way and all that stuff. It happens automatically, right? Because of the way that your hands and arms are coming down with these steepening moves, you can see now, like I look how shallow your left arm is now, right? Again, you're doing this naturally. And this is why I personally believe that this will be a faster way for people to learn the really important complexities of the swing, the stuff that has to happen to have a good golf swing naturally, you know, here, you're a perfect example of the clubs now. Totally. Shallowed out, it's coming down on plane. And then as you started to come through, even they're like, your hands are going straight down, staying back hips, getting out of the way.

That's it

Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, on those last, you know, you said first to the side, to the middle of the left leg I was going through, is that kinda the last stage of that drill?

Say that I didn't catch the last part. Your volume was a little, I'm having a hard time hearing you in some of these. 

So you said when I started this focused on the right path, I've been gradually working through the last yeah. So

As you saw, when you, when you really tried to stab yourself in the thigh, your hand stayed way back, right? You may still feel that, but as you start adding speed, you know, you're not going to be able to, right. You're not gonna be able to stab yourself in the thigh because your body turned hip, turn, all that stuff's happening so much quicker that you may still feel this, but it's actually going to be way out here because everything is turning, right? So that's part of the dynamics of the swing. When you're doing stuff slow. Sometimes you have to really exaggerate these things because when you add pace to them, you've got centrifical force trying to fling your arms out. You got your hips and you got all kinds of stuff going on. Right. And that's why, when I was working on this drill, I'm like, I have to feel personally so extreme with it because of the forces that are acting on the club, right?

Like as I'm going back is that, especially as you start really adding pace to your backswing right now that you're swinging more around as you're going this way, gravity is pulling the club this way. So the force of the club and nurses pulling the club this way, you need to steep in it now. Right. Whereas before, if your hands are up here, steepening is the last thing you need to do. Right. You start steepening it. You're going to miss it. You're going to swim with it. Right? So again, that's why as you start swinging shallower to simplify things, you now have to think about it in terms of what forces I fighting now. And that's why I have to feel such an exaggerator move because I've got all this momentum going this way. I need to overcome that and get that club to the steep, because if I let this happen and then go the old school way of shallowing it, right.

I'm coming a mile from the inside and blocking it off the freaking planet. Okay. Yup. That's where I think a lot of players, especially, you know, low handicap players, good players with good movement. Like you have, they kind of get in this, this no man's land in terms of the steepening and shallowing moves, right? It's not that somebody's telling you to feel like this is a bad thing per se, but if your hands are up here, you know, if your hands are already down here, there, first of all, it's not plus much else for them to go, but you're already shallow because your arms are already shallow in relationship to your shoulders. So if you're already shallow and you try to add more shallowing moves. Well, now all of a sudden, you, you know, you went from being a good golfer to a golfer because you're blocking it and hooking it off the planet.

It's not that that information is wrong. It's wrong for that of steepening and shallowing moves. Does that make sense? Absolutely. So you may feel to get back to the, you may feel like this on the way down as your body starts moving fast, or you may start to get to the point of like, oh, I feel it's pretty natural. I feel like I'm doing it more into my left thigh, but my point is the feeling of that will be dependent on just kind of how all the forces that you're fighting, how fast you're moving and all of that stuff. So don't, don't give yourself a hard and set rule with it. Don't say, okay, I need to start working at forward. Look at what your swing is doing dynamically is, are your hands still shallow? If you start trying to go to your left thigh, like some people may feel, you know, are you now getting steep again because you're trying to move the hands or what have you. So think of it more holistically is the kind of the gotcha.

Yeah. So I'm going to work on that and draw that in slowly fine. I mean, that kind of took care of that. You know, that separation that we were working on, I mean, that really is all I need to be focused on

As you do this again, exaggerating this automatically separates this stuff. Right. At first I was just trying to get you to feel a little bit more dynamic and the natural shallowing of it and your body and all that stuff. And then as you start doing this, you'll feel how this starts to happen naturally. But again, it's going to feel really goofy at first, but you can see you saw it on video, even with the big exaggeration is not nearly as big as you think. Right. So, yeah. Cool. All right. So I would just work on that for a little bit, watch it on video, see what's happening, do some drills, exaggerate it and then add some pace to it and be like, holy crap. I can do this a lot more. I thought, or maybe I'm doing it too much. And then you've got to find that happy place. Gotcha,

Man. Thank you so much for your time today. This is fantastic. And I'm so appreciative of it.

Awesome. Man I hope it helps. And do you mind if I share this? I know this is a lot of new stuff that I've been working on and I'm putting out on videos. You mind if I share this lesson? Yeah, that's fine. Cool. All right, dude. Well, let me know how it works out. I will. Thank you. All right. Talk to you soon.