AXIOM Body Downswing
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Learn how to cure your flip, stop hitting fat and thin shots and how to get into the perfect impact position like the pros every time
A simple, solid backswing. Like you just learned, makes the downswing a piece of cake and the Axiom clockwise pressure shift makes it even easier to go from your backswing to your downswing. So now what I want you to do is keep doing the same thing. You sit on your backs are you're going to take that trail shoulder, pull it behind your head, let your pressure go back. But this time, instead of stopping at the top of your backswing, what I want you to do is keep that merry-go-round going keep going around the clock. We stopped at six o'clock in the backswing, but now we're going to go from six o'clock to seven o'clock, eight o'clock. So my pressure on the inside of my heel, as it moves to my end step, this is where the magic really happens. All I need to do to get everything to fall into place in the downswing that I really need to have happen.
All I've got to do is get off that merry-go-round correctly. And if I do magical, things are gonna happen. Like I'm gonna show you in just a moment. So first of all, let's get off the merry-go-round. So I'm going around them at six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock I'm up on the nine o'clock on the inside of my foot. My instep, as my pressure moves back up toward the ball of my foot and my big toe. All I'm going to do is imagine that clock on the ground. I'm going to take my trail knee and point it towards 10 or 11 o'clock that's it. Watch what happens. So I'm going back. My pressures on my heel seven o'clock eight o'clock you'll see my hips now, beginning to shift laterally, just naturally, I'm not thinking about weight shift or stomping onto the left leg. The Axiom makes my pressure shift back to the left happened because I'm moving around the clock and seven o'clock is closer to the lead side.
Seven o'clock eight o'clock, nine. O'clock all I need to do. Now use my pressure on my big toe and point my knee to 10 or 11 o'clock look what happened. I'm now in a perfect impact position. When we look at this from down the line, this is really, really cool, because one of the biggest differences between amateur golfers and pros is that you can see both butt cheeks had impact. Now, why does it matter? We'll talk more about that. Just a moment, but you need to be able to get your hips fully open. And this is one of the things you can see in all the tour pros. And we'll show you examples at the end of this video, but if you can get your pressure to just keep going, and then when you go to get off the merry-go-round and you keep that loop going, and you point the knee at 10 or 11, o'clock both hips will automatically open.
I will get my pressure off my trail side. You'll see that as I, a little slight push off that trail foot. Now you gotta be careful. You don't want to be driving off your hip. We'll talk more about that in the faults and fixes section, but if you're losing your postures, you're doing this, you're doing it incorrectly. You might want to grab a quick swing review so our coaches can walk you through it. But all you need to do is what you see me doing here. As I move up onto my big toe, I keep my heel nice and Lowe's is really helpful for control with your irons. You'll typically see most of the best players keep their heel down very low. But when, when they're going to whale on one, like a driver, you'll see that he'll come up a little bit earlier, but in general, it's okay right now for the heel to come up a little bit.
But you'll see. Even with my swing, I keep my heel very low in the, with my irons to give myself more control to the harder I'm driving off this, the harder it is to control everything. So all you need to feel is going around the merry-go-round and get off. And you'll see all the things that you see, the tour pros do the lead leg, straightening my lead hip. Watch what happens here with my lead hip. When you look at it from up the line as I go to get off the merry-go-round, first of all, my hips go deeper than they started in the back swing. They stay steep deeper as I start to move around the clock. And then as I go to just basically replaced my lead knee with my trail knee, what happens to my lead hip? It goes even deeper. This makes room for my arms to have room to swing down, especially when you look at the trail hip.
Notice how my trail hip is moving out of the way. This makes room for my arms to come from the inside. If you're swinging over the top, your body's in the way. If you start doing this, you're moving counter-clockwise. So when you keep that clockwise motion going and get off the merry-go-round, you'll have a perfect post-up position. You'll be nice and balanced. You'll make room for your arms to come from the inside. You'll have your secondary access tilt to shallow out the club and everything that you're trying to do in the downswing happens automatically. It's super simple. So all you have to feel is just keep that merry-go-round going. And while you're doing this, you can just sit here and kind of keep that hip gyration going just to keep fluidity in your lower body and then get off that merry-go-round and get your hips open and release that club. Now let's take a look at some tour pros to see how the best in the world do these exact same movements.
The backswing video, we already looked at Dustin Johnson's backswing to see how he hit those three checkpoints. Now let's take him to the top of his swing and see how he does these checkpoints that you've just learned in the downswing. So at the top of the swing, we can see where his right hip is on this first line. You can see his right hip has moved much deeper than where it started. And now as he begins to move his pressure back around, and this is what's really cool. If you can see this in your mind, you can see his hip socket, this area right here, making this little clockwise circle. That's mimicking the pressure shift around his foot. So you can see as his hips have moved deeper, he's moved into six o'clock and now he's going to begin to move to seven o'clock eight o'clock, nine o'clock.
And now as he begins to get ready to post up, you'll see that his hip has right hip has moved much further forward than where it was at address. This space between here is massive in this makes room as his right hip gets out of the way. It leaves room for that right elbow to come down from the inside. You'll see. Now it creates a secondary access tilt that helped him also shallow out the club. And now look at his left hip at impact. Look at how much further it is back behind where it started. He's actually increased his spine angle from where it was at address. And this happened because his hips have moved back to the left. His lead hip has moved deeper, and this makes tons of room for his arms. And you can see now while his body is very open, his shoulders are still very square to the line that this ball's going to fly on.
You can see the ball looks like it starts left and relationship to where the camera is. Then that's perfectly in line with his shoulder. So these are the key checkpoints. Your shoulders are going to be square. We'll talk more about this in the impact area. When we look at that in the fundamentals of mastery series and his body is open, his hips are open. His left hip is deep. You can see that Dustin does get up on this toe a little bit more than some because he gets a lot of body rotation. So, and it has lead arms swinger, which we talk about in the fundamental section. You'll see, tend to see more body rotation than somebody who tends to be more trail, arm dominant. But here it's very clear to see how Dustin's hips are working. Exactly like you just learned in how the Axiom makes it simple for you to feel this for yourself.
Let's take a look at the Axiom movement and John wrongs. He does this perfectly. The first thing I want you to see is his right foot from face on it. We're going to look at it in both face on and down the line. But at first I want you to look at his face on view. So I've also drawn a line on his right hip, and you're going to see if you focus on his right foot, notice how his big toe, the toe box of his shoe begins to lift up off the ground. That's how much he's working that pressure into that foot and moving it around the, the foot from where it starts at address back to five o'clock, six o'clock. And you can also look, I've drawn a line from the down the line view on the front of his shin, on his right foot and notice how much his right knee moves away from that, which is also moving that pressure back onto his heel.
So when you can put these two together in your head, and you can envision that as pressure is moving in three dimensions, because we need to see it from both face on and down the line and blend those two together. Then you can see as his toe lifts up, you know, his pressure's moved off his toes toward the back of his foot, and it has his lower leg straightens. You know, it's moving deeper into his heel. Now watch what happens as he begins the downswing, as he begins to move forward, notice how his toe gets smashed into the ground. So now he's done that getting off the merry-go-round move, and he's going to drive that knee point. You can look at it from down the line and he's pointing it towards that 10 or 11 o'clock mark. And you'll see his legs straighten up his lead leg, straightening up, and it's making room for his club and his arms to drop down from the inside.
One thing I want to make clear when you're moving your pressure shift around, first of all, this has happening very, very quickly. So if you can move this very, very slow and your hips are moving off the ball as well, then there's a problem. But if, as you remember from the back swing video, the right hip line stays right where it is many amateurs. When they start shifting their pressure around, they get way onto the outside of their foot. And their hip also moves past that right hip line away from the target line. You can see in John's case, even though he's made a pretty significant shift to the outside of his foot and back around to the heel enough to lift a shoe off the ground, his hip has stayed right where it started. So he's also even beginning to move early to the lead side.
So making that six, seven and eight o'clock rounding the bottom half of the hour to make sure that he doesn't shift his hips off the ball, because that will lead to a big sway. So if you're working on this pressure shift and you're getting way to the outside of your foot, you're missing the point. This is a quick clockwise motion. It doesn't stop and you get way on the outside of your foot. You never stop moving. It goes from four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock without ever stopping. And as long as you keep that motion going, you can see how it makes it very easy to get your pressure all the way back to lead leg, get into a perfect impact position, just like you see the best players in the world.
Gregory
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Asle
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)