#1 - The Right (Trail) Knee in the Downswing - Part 1
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This video series teaches you the top 10 moves of the modern power hitter in golf that no one is talking about! The first one, the right knee, will help you understand why you're lacking in power if you're doing this wrong.
Okay. So I've been working on a whole new series of videos to go along with the arm research in the golf swing, to look at the modern player, the modern power player, the guys who are out there, truly getting it done, who are leading the field, leading the world in how to hit a ball with a stick.
That's really what we're doing. Right? That's all golf is. That's what we're all about. So, what I want to do is I'm going to show you, we're going to start with number one today.
I'm going to give you a top 10 list of the things that the modern players are doing. And then we're going to look at them. And these are not the things that everybody talks about all the time. Like, oh, I have a flat left wrist at impact, or they are, you know, their hips are open or they have lag or they're releasing the club, whatever I'm talking about, the stuff that nobody talks about, and they're far more important. Understanding the dynamics of how the body moves and they're going to help you hit the ball further with less effort.
So let's talk about some of these things. We're going to use Rory and DJ here. Obviously we're always on the left DJs on the right. And the first thing that we're going to talk about in this top 10 list is how the right knee works in the swing. And I'm going to show you with my own swing, two different ways of accomplishing the same things. And I'm going to show you what DJ and Rory do. So I've drawn a line basically on the outside of their right knee. And then we're going to pull up some amateur golfers to kind of show you the opposite. End, some tour pros who do this differently, and don't hit the ball very far at all. So let's start with Rory and DJ. The first thing that I know is obviously the right knee is going to move away.
They're turning their hips. They're letting that right leg straighten a little bit, a mini amateurs, let this thing go, ramrod straight and hyperextend that need, or in the backswing that obviously doesn't work, but they're maintaining some flection. And then as they come down, this is the part that I want to focus on today is the right knee moving past dramatically, past that line, that where the knee was at address. So we'll move DJ up there too. You'll see. In his case, he doesn't move it nearly as dramatically as Roy does. You're going to see everybody do these things a little bit differently, but there's where he was at address. And now at impact, you can see DJ's knees starting to show up on the other side, Rory on the other hand has a dramatic right knee, right hip really drive that's causing that right knee to move forward and get his hips very open and impact.
Now, of course, every single tour, bro, on the planet who hits the ball anywhere out of their shadow, you're going to see both butt cheeks at impact, just like that. With amateur golfers, we're going to see the opposite and I'm going to start to show you why what's going on with that and how you can put this, move in your swing to add more power in the second part of this video. So again, I want you just to draw your attention. We'll, we'll go through just DJs really quickly, just so you can focus on one at a time. Here's where the right knee is at address. It moves away. Djs moves a lot. He lets that right, and he really moved back. And then as he starts down, everything begins to unwind and rotate. Again. I'm going to talk about how the stuff done. There's definitely more than one way to skin this cat and you'll see different results as a result of that. But you'll see that right knee moves forward pretty dramatically. Now let's just take a look at a typical amateur golfer. We're going to replace DJ here and we're going to put up an amateur golfer who you will see now this camera angles, not ideal, but you'll still get the the idea of what's going on and what tends to happen with most golfers. So you'll see the right leg. It's straightened up pretty severely. Again, the camera angle makes it look a little bit worse than it probably actually is.
But now as he comes down and see, watch how the right knee, instead of beginning to increase his knee flex during the transition, it hyper extends. It even gets fully locked out.
And if we take Rory as an example, back to the top of his swing and as he gets ready to, into the tree transition, watch how his right knee moves first. And again, it's not just the right knee. I'm going to talk about that in the second part of the video, the video too, that's going to show you how to do this move correctly and how to do it without creating a ton of side bend or a lot of lateral movement, et cetera. But you'll see again, that the tour pros are going to have a lot of Netflix. I'm going to pull up some other tour pros in just a moment, but you can see in Roy's case, that's pretty obvious dramatically different. And then we take a look at our amateur here. And then as he goes, this is so common where they start to straighten the knee height, you know, raise the height of the right hip. And then
Rotation becomes very difficult because remember, as you're rotating,
Both sides of the body are working the right side and the left side are creating rotation. Now most golfers. And I tend to focus more on the lead side because most golfers tend to dominate it with the trail side because they're, right-handed the right side dominant their left side. Using their left side is like speaking a foreign language for most golfers that's. One of the challenges of the game is training both sides, how to balance everything out. And so I tend to focus more on the lead side, but of course you're working on both sides. Both pairs are working. So in this case you can see his right side is fully locked out. He can't use his right leg, right hip to help rotate his hips speed up that rotation at all. And so he has kind of the old dreaded arm swing. There's really not much hip activation at all.
And he can't really get any power out of it.
Let's take a look at another golfer. Here's different different player was similar moves. And you'll see if you don't get your hips open at impact. You'll see. That's very common here. Again. Arms are really swinging pretty aggressively here and he's trying to use the right legs. You see you didn't straighten it out like that, the last golfer, but you can see his hips are barely
Open at impact. You can't really
See that left leg at all. And again, if we run through Rory over here on the left, you'll see a ton of his left hip and left leg as he gets down into the hitting area. And this is more like what most AMS tend to look like. They tend to not use their hips very well at all. And they tend to use all arms and hands. And so they don't get their bodies open at impact. Let's take a look at another tour pro who does this really well. This is Alison Lee. She's a great LPGA player and we'll put a line on her knee. So you can kind of compare and contrast how different players at different abilities, different power levels create these movements, but you'll see the exact same thing. An Alison swing. She's got a beautiful golf swing and watch how much that right knee right hip begin to help rotate the hips clear out of the way.
You can see both butt cheeks and her right leg is way in front of where it's right knee way in front of where it started address and then gets into what I call the, the hip kick here. And we'll talk about that in another video, but you'll see again, a lot of right knee drive working together to help rotate the pelvis. They're working in pairs to rotate the body. Now let's take a look at a tour pro who doesn't hit the ball very far. But obviously still a phenomenal golfer. Brian Gay. He's a great golfer, but you're going to see a lot of differences even just from setup. If you look at Alison, she's got a, more of a flat back, a little better posture, Brian's a lot more rounded, a little slouchy at address if you will. And then as we move him back, what you'll notice is his right knee starts to move, but then he never gets back to that line.
And this is really just all arms and shoulders throwing the club at the ball. And there's no power there. And now Brian, again, you know, great golfer, a very accurate ball, striker, great wedge player, but no power. You know, you can look at this, look at the data. Doesn't lie. He doesn't hit the ball very far, and this is a big part of why he's not able to use his hips. You can see his right leg kind of straightened pretty much just like the amateur that I showed you earlier. And this is not going to hit the ball anywhere. There's no hip rotational speed. So he's really going to rely on arms and hands for all this power. And there's just only so much you can get out of that. You'll see again, watch his hands as he starts down. You'll notice that he kind of makes what's more of a typical amateur move.
To be honest, is that his hands actually start moving out toward the ball during the transition, you'll see that they kind of loop forward. And if we contrast that with Alison who's moves are a little bit more typical of a tour pro her hands almost tend to go, not so much with the driver but with the irons you see, especially she tends to shallow out a lot better and wait on it in her arms a little bit more passive, and she uses more hip rotation to get the speed out of her swing. Whereas Brian is going to get those arms firing really aggressively from the top shoulders firing from the top. And so they're going to end up in very different positions. You'll see his arms much further away, right? Almost that much further away from his hip, just cause he's activated, he's fired those arms. Cause that's where he's getting his speed from. So now let's take a look at two different ways of skinning this cat and then I'll get out and I'll demonstrate this stuff a little bit more outside with the different, with another video. So let's take a look at my swing. We'll we'll look at it from there down the line. Now on the left is going to be, let me sync these up. So you'll see both of these are essentially the
Same swing, but powered
Two slightly different ways. So let's go, I'll put in lines on both of my knees here, just to kind of give you again a starting point and you'll see that both we're going to accomplish the same movements, but two very different ways. So on the right. And you can already start to see during the transition. There's a lot more Knee-Flex on the right and you'll see, my right knee has already busted through that line where it was at address. This is a lot more right side driven. I've talked a lot about the arm research stuff that I've done. And so again, two different ways of skinning the cat, but for those who are really right side dominant, this is what you would look like. You're going to, and this is more like Rory's, if you remember Rory swing that we started with where I was using, or Roy is right, these really aggressively driving forward, you saw the same thing in Alison Lee swing and on the left, you'll see that my right knee hasn't quite broken that line. So even though I, you know, hitting the same club, same distance, all of that stuff, there's two very different ways of doing things. One on the left, I'm using way more left hip rotation, which again, I'll talk about in the second video and then on the right I'm using way more right hip rotation.
And both again, even through the hitting area, you'll see
That little hip hitch that I was talking about earlier. My hips stall as the club gets flung through the hitting area and my right leg, then straightens and posts up more so on the swing on the right, because I'm much more actively using the right side. And on the left side on the left swing, you'll see that my right hip doesn't quite post up quite the same. So I kind of keep rotating through the hitting area a little bit more. That's normal. What you'll see. And I'll again, I'll talk about the, the hip hitch where the hip actually stops or even goes backwards. Like you see in Rory swing or Alison swing, and I'm going to show you how that's done in an upcoming video. But for this one, I just want to focus on the right knee. Cause we don't want to get overwhelmed with a bunch of stuff, but this will help you. If you're the type of golfer who just kind of stalls out straightens that right leg and doesn't get any power out of their hips and knows it should be hitting the ball a lot further than they are. I'm going to show you in the second video, how to do that. Now, if you're watching this video on YouTube, I've put a link to the second video down in the description below. So take a look at that and you see exactly how we're going to teach you how to move your body. Exactly like the pros.
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Tony
Chuck
Ben
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