Most Common Backswing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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Make a repeatable and powerful backswing every time. Most players struggle with the backswing because they don’t know which muscles to use and how the club effectively swings to the top. Learn what common backswing mistakes are killing you from making a great downswing. Learn a simple drill and feel what it's like to not worry so much about the club and how sequence provides better backswing in just minutes. Remove unnecessary backswing thoughts to enjoy focusing on the downswing where the real fun happens!


good evening everyone welcome to what are we doing today common faults in the backswing how are we doing tonight all right hello form orlando got a few regulars in here i see all right how we doing today ready to work on some backswing as i said my takeaway webinar you don't hit the ball with your takeaway you don't hit the ball with your backswing technically but it sets you up to make a tremendous downswing and i'm going to try to make it as foolproof as i can for you tonight see what got in here today hopefully everything's good video mike all good on that i know we always try to make sure that we have some sound we had one where we had about five minutes with no sound so all good out in the world hey mitchell all good thank you greg how are you doing tonight hey tom for those that this format or this webinar you may be new to you're going to see me every now and then start to mosey up towards the camera because i'm just checking the computer screen to see what's going on in the notes making sure everything's okay um other than that same as usual all right we're going to talk about some golf stuff getting some good positions and we'll do a nice little q a at the end and this is one where i'm going to try to cover um practically every fault that i usually see in somebody's backswing i'm going to give you some tips of how to make the backswing easier uh i'm going to give you a drill that you know i work on a lot with my students and actually i just did a video on it the other day so that'll probably be coming out soon too um and from there we should be in a good position to make that downswing pretty simply so for right now i'm just going to give everybody a couple minutes because i see that ticker on my end i can see it like climbing so some people are just now sneaking in i know this is a little bit earlier than i usually do it but just one of those times we try to experiment with the times to see what works best because i know it's seven o'clock for the east coasters and it's five o'clock for our mountain time here and then our west coasters they sometimes get left in the dusk because it's so early for them and they're caught at work so try to experiment a little bit with the time and usually my uh partner in crime chris is in a chat i don't think he is tonight he's on vacation in park city so it i'm gonna have to come up and forth a little bit because i don't have him watching the comments for me so unless like it's total chaos like loss of feed or you see me collapse on the ground leave the comments towards the end so i don't come up here and i'm like hey wait a minute what's going on he said he was doing a little ice skiing today they haven't had snow in a while uh and i think it was like 40 degrees today so he's doing a little ski and some slush and some mice and the good news is for players that have had prior injuries or currently injured like myself if i can hit all these positions tonight okay that means that every one of us at home can hit these there's absolutely no excuse all right no excuse don't say ribs broke all mine don't say clavicle broke that one don't say torn rotator cuff torn labrum done that one and i can hit all these positions all right give it about one minute more and we'll get going hopefully everybody's got some fun weekend plans maybe a little working on the game a little golf who are we picking in the super bowl i gotta know who to bet on i gotta make it interesting and none of my teams are in there so i gotta know who i want to bet on that way i'll watch it who are we picking going with cincinnati or going with the rams being from georgia i guess i would have to go with the rams just because of stafford but man that's oh i just don't know if i can do that all right early is good all right thank you dan little fuzzy sean sean is it better on your end now bingles and take the three and a half points okay and go rams i i just i don't have a dog in this fight so i gotta make it interesting for me um yeah i i i can't be too upset uh you know being from atlanta you know the braves finally broke the curse and then you know georgia pulling off the college football playoff so i mean i can't i can't be too upset that my other team isn't there bingles everybody i've heard a lot of bingles that joe burrow joe cool all right so without further ado let's talk a little bit about golf because that's what we're here for right now the same thing as in my webinar on monday where i tried to make the faults move throughout the swing like you know this is a setup fault takeaway what have you it's the same way that i'm going to do the backswing not necessarily set up but when i look at any given golf swing i look at it from the inside out and for everybody that's done a swing review with me you especially a first time review with me you've heard me say hey i'm going to look at your swing but i want you to kind of look at it through my eyes when i look at any golf swing i look at what somebody's body's doing i look at what their arms are doing i look at what their club's doing and in that order i really don't care a whole bunch what's going on with the golf club if their body's way out of whack because i know they're just going to continually make compensations from there with their arms and hands and that's the same way that i want you to look at your backswing when you're kind of diagnosing it so we're going to go body work our way out to arms we're going to work on a couple drills how to hit these positions so the first thing is and i i i'm not lying to you i finished doing reviews about 15 minutes before i turned on this camera and my last two students of the day had this exact same problem and it was the first thing i want to talk about tonight so in the backswing one of the biggest flaws that i i see body-wise that wreck people people are going to think maybe it's head spine what have you the main thing that i see is as they start to make this backswing what happened right here where are my hips going as i'm going to the top right here this is what we refer to as a reverse hip shift now when you get into a reverse hip shift and you get into this position here what do i not really need to do on the downswing now well if i've already shifted my hips too far too soon as i start making my backswing what do i not need to do now well now i really don't have any use to shift weight so what i'll commonly see is that players start to go back they make this backswing they start to early reverse hip shift towards the target and they get down into this position where they really don't have to shift weight so it makes it very hard to shallow out the plane makes it very hard to generate lag because there's no change of direction and when they get into this position what's the only thing you can work on well your weight's already here so the only thing you can work on is the vertical motion or the vertical post up and that's why they end up starting to cast they end up starting to lose their angle too soon because they don't have that gear or they don't have the chain of events that needs to happen or take place in the downswing to sequence out to get the arms to come down to have lag so the first thing that i want you to do when you're looking at your golf swing at home and you're filming it and you start to go from here and you load and rotate towards the top i want you to be very aware of this hip line now you can take a chair you can take a golf bag you can take a golf club a little bit hard on a wooden floor like this but what you want to see is that as you're going back up towards the top that this line doesn't go this way creating a little bit of width between here nor even go this way but i would say the vast majority of players reverse hip shift so you want to take a bag or a chair and make sure that you maintain that line all the way towards the top now players that are really dynamic in transition you'll see that they get up here and they start to lose it chuck did a really good video on that kind of center mass moving where the players kind of start the downswing before completing the backswing so if you lose that hip line right at the tippy top no problem but it's usually right off the ball or about midway back where people get into this reverse hip shift weight shift video part two on the site talks about it just find something and i really want you to focus on loading and rotating and maintaining on this line because it's of the utmost importance it typically coincides with the tush line as well so if i go from here and i go up towards the top and i reverse hip shift what is typically my butt doing it's starting to come forward i'm starting to have a little bit of early extension in the backswing so just like you've seen in the clamshell as you're maintaining that hip line you want to make sure that this right hip's working deep okay so you're feeling is that this hip stays on this line and starts to work right back towards behind you kind of the same direction as your shoulder blade glide that hip needs to load it needs to work deep it needs to actually turn a little bit so you can facilitate a full shoulder rotation one quick little topic i'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time on it because we've talked about in boot camps and other webinars it's just head and spine i think this one's pretty self -explanatory at this point when you start to make the backswing it's okay for the head to move about an inch inch and a half there's no problem with that we need to spend the time in the backswing with the body loading into this right glute working this right hip a little bit deeper at the top if your head moves as a function of it there's that's not a big issue it's only a big issue when you start to have extremes it's moving a ton off the ball or it's moving towards the target which would typically be referred to as a reverse pivot now what's funny is i commonly see this one but the most common one with the reverse pivot is which one this one actually breaking that trail hip line which forces your spine to start to lean towards the target so if you kind of think about it in a roundabout way if you have reverse pivot or you're seeing these kind of tendencies at the top this is kind of the first place you need to check because if you don't fix this hip portion you're not going to be able to kind of control what the head's doing you're not going to be able to control what the spine's doing okay now our mantra for rotary has always been big body turn tiny arm swing and you know that i don't think that's ever going to change the arms do very little in the golf swing and the priority is on making sure that you have big rotation because you really don't have to move the arms we're going to work on a drill a little bit later but the arms do have some role and the arms do have to hit certain positions so if we're maintaining good trail hip line we're maintaining good spine angle the head can move a little bit there's a little variance right there it's fine and we have our spine we have our head we have our good hip as the arms start to work towards the top if you quit rotating the most common thing that's going to happen if you quit rotating is what kind of a little it's almost even hard for me to do right now what happens with my left arm if i quit rotating as i get towards the top my left arm starts to bend now when the left arm bends it can be a function of not rotating enough but whose fault is it really that the left arm's bending now i used to love in the clinics doing this to players and having them try to do it and you can do it at home if you want if you stick your arms and hands out in front of you and you grab your left thumb or your right thumb depending on what side you play on the golf ball like a gun and stick your arms out in front like this just nice and straight all right and grab your lead thumb like a gun i want you to try to bend your left arm without your right arm bending try to do it so i can get to about here and then after that my left arm bends if i try to straighten my right arm what does my left arm start to do so the issue with the left arm bending at the top has nothing to do with your left arm it has all the world to do with your right arm players tend to add too much flexion in the backswing because it feels powerful to take this trail arm and really load it up here at the top because they want to hammer down on it but when you start to add too much flexion too soon you stop rotating conversely the same way you stop rotating there's only one other way to get those to get that club to the top and that's to add a lot of flexion with the right arm so if you start to work up towards the top of the backswing and you see that this left arm's bending look at it the same way i do first thing is i look and see if they're rotating all right well the player's up here at the top and they've got full shoulder rotation so i know it's not their rotation well the next thing i'm going to check is the flexion in their right arm if your right arm doesn't bend more than 90 degrees it's going to be pretty darn hard for that left arm to bend you need to blame the culprit you need to blame the cause i don't like fixing effects the left arm's only bending because the right arm is bending too much so if we can load and rotate and we can maintain a little bit of flexion in our right arm as we start to work our way out one thing is non-negotiable with me with my students elevation in the swing or hand height is a variable you can have low hands you can have kind of mid-range hands you can have high hands it doesn't matter to me it's a variable you want a little bit more elevation have a little bit more elevation but what's not negotiable is depth so if i start to make my backswing right here and i get to my takeaway and i get up here towards my top and i get into this position right here what's wrong with this position well my arms and hands are now behind my body they're way across my circle my hands have moved too much across center line and now from this position right here i've got one or two options and i can either come down to my normal downswing and if i shift my weight i'm going to get stuck now i've got that flip hook or power block or i get up to this position and my brain realizes i've got all this tension in my arms and all this tension in my shoulder joints and so they're going to start to throw the club back out in front of you because it's not very comfortable to get there depth in the backswing is a non -negotiable one okay and if you're getting deep more than likely all you're doing is pushing there's a reason we have so many different pushing versus pullings or pushing ideas on the site because that's usually the root cause of all problems as you start to load and rotate and get up here towards the top typically what players are doing is they're taking their lead arm and they're pushing it across their chest because they want to feel loaded they want to feel powerful and so by taking the lead arm and pushing it across the chest to them that feels like they're actually recruiting muscle fiber and they're loading up but all you're doing is you're making the kind of primary driver of your swing your arms so when you start to make the backswing the arms and hands don't really cross center line that much so if we take my backswing for example as i elevate and add flexion where are my hands right now my hands are still in front of me something i see all the time when people are doing the five minutes the perfect backswing hey craig got my backswing down check out my drill and they pick up the club and they go to here and they elevate and they're like watch this and i'm like okay we'll go ahead and finish it off for me they're like okay i get to here i elevate i add my flexion let me hinge forward and rotate well what's the problem with this position not only am i way too deep i've also lost all my width my hands are dead behind my head which width is a lot of free speed i like width personally not a big lag guy i like width just i'm never going to be that kind of syrupy guy but the main thing is is that when you're making your backswing that the arms and hands don't swing or push across the chest the arms and hands only work in the vertical space in the swing they only have the job of going up and down they don't work side to side okay so i always give my students like the the image of like a mechanical robot and i'm sure they probably have one of these at amazon where if i'm the robot and i've got my arms i go over here i pick up the box like this and then i rotate and then i drop down the box well on the robot the arms and hands don't go like this the machine literally picks it up they rotate like this and drop the box it's kind of the same motion in the golf sport as i start to load and rotate my arms and hands only work up they don't work across and it typically comes from people that are pushing their lead arm across their chest so to stop pushing the lead arm you have to put the priority back on rotation which we're going to do here in a second but the depth part is non-negotiable when you look at your swing and you get up here in the position it's a rough estimate but if you can imagine a line kind of from the butt end of my club going down you would be able to see that that line is roughly over my ankle joint if you're anywhere within your kind of ankle right there you're going to be in a pretty good spot it's usually going to be right over your trail shoulder if you start to see that you're behind your butt now we're in problems because you're going to have to make compensations in the downswing and as i was saying earlier you don't hit the ball with your takeaway or backswing but you're prepping yourself if i allowed my arms to push and get deep across my chest i can never hit a golf ball no matter how good i maintain tush line and post up and release the club because i'm going to get stuck i told you know chuck a long long time ago you know i tell students this too that the one thing i hate to be is stuck if i'm not stuck i can still manufacture a golf shot but if i'm stuck i'm in trouble if you push your arms across your chest and you don't put the priority on the fact that your big rotation that your arms work up your arms only go up and down in the vertical space as i rotate my arms go up then it's it that's over it's done with then you're basically setting yourself up to get in a position where you don't know where the ball is going to go flip hook or big power block the right arm or the trail arm when we think about this needs to stay connected here in this upper bicep upper pectoral area everybody's seen like the big flying right arm you know that big kind of you know over lifting over kind of power move that people do where they start to lift it across the line how do they do that how do players go to here and then all of a sudden lift it across the line what's the only thing that they're really doing all they're doing is they're losing that connection with the right arm and the right arm's taking over so when the right arm starts to come away from the side and it starts to dominate the backswing it'll tend to cause across the line but for me i'm kind of all about the power with it when this right arm's in position and this right arm stays in front it keeps your scapula down and in in the spine not only does that help us apply force and apply power on the downswing but it also keeps us from over swinging it helps kind of create a natural break when your right arm stays in front has no more than 90 degrees of flexion so that this left arm doesn't bend and we're nice and wide when it's in this position right here and i rotate towards the top this scapula moves down and in towards my spine and when it moves down and in towards my spine it kind of gets connected and that connection is what's going to help me transfer my trunk rotation through my arm through my hand to the club but it's also going to create a break at the top i can only go that far if i keep this elbow here and i keep my arm connected once i go like this now i can go all over the place but the only way that i can move this is to disconnect my scapula right there so when your arm stays in front of the chest your trailer stays in front of the chest right here it puts your scapula in a position that kind of helps give you a natural break because one of the biggest things that people ask me all the time is over swing how do i stop over swinging craig you know it looks like i'm loading okay it looks like i'm rotating it looks like my right arm's not bending more than 90 degrees but i can't stop over swinging the reason you can't stop over swinging is because you're trying to stop your arms over swing is a function of not recruiting the proper muscles okay when i make my back swing and i get up here towards the top i physically can't go any further like i can't do it that's that's that's all i got my lungs are compressed they're really tight i'm really engaged my arms and hands are really relaxed because i really didn't do a whole bunch with them but i physically can't over swing if i tried to just stop my arms i never would be able to stop doing it so for those of you that were in my takeaway webinar i want to take the same drill that we did for the takeaway and i want to expand upon it i have a video on the site it's kind of roy versus dj where chuck's showing about how much rotation they have by the time the lead arms parallel to the ground i want you to take the same two inch hand drill that we did in the takeaway webinar okay and for those of you that weren't in the takeaway webinar your arms and hands in front of you spacing about two inches apart fingertip length exact same okay from down the line you don't want your arms and hands way out here you just want them kind of hanging kind of like where you'd be holding a golf club and i want you to go as far as you can go without that changing and i want you to tell me kind of what you feel you don't have to actually tell me but i want you to think about what you feel if i take my two inch hand drill like this and i start to go all the way up here towards the top remember robot arms they only go up and down and i start to go all the way up here towards the top that's about as far as i can go you can hear my voice that's about as far as i can go maintaining this two inch gap and maintaining this fingertip length you're going to see that my right hand's not on top my left or vice versa i'm going from here and that's about as far as i can go if i want to keep both arms straight that's about as far as i can go that's all the backswing really is remember our old mantra rotation elevation flexion so that's all the backswing is i'm rotating i'm elevating about right here i'm really tight well what's the rest of my backswing it's just a little bit of flexion that's my entire backswing i can't over swing because my muscles won't let me that's that's as far as i can go because i'm moving my arms with my rotation i'm not allowing them to kind of move off my chest not allowing them to swing independently if you take this drill get up to here hold it for a second feel it feel how tight everything is look at how much rotation you have now well i don't want my arms moving anymore if i'm not rotating anymore so right now i'm maxed out now i have a little bit of flexion i'm at the top of my backswing it's time to go the other way i did a live lesson late last night with one of my high school students and his downswing was immaculate and he just said i'm tired of looking about how deep and over swinging my backswing is and so when he'd get to the top he'd get all the way up into this position and you'd see a lot of over rotation of the hips and you'd see the arms way across the chest like this i had him do the same drill the kid's name was rohan really great kid and i had him do the same drill i said i want you to do this i want you to go up here and stop all right and tell me how you could swing more he's like well the only way i could swing more is i'd have to okay i'd have to let my right arm fly i'd have to let something work deep i'd have to actually disengage the muscles that got me there i said that's why you can't stop over swinging because you're not recruiting any muscles to tell you when it's time to stop this club and your arms and hands are out here in space they're out here in the periphery you don't have a chance in hell of stopping that club if you're just doing it all arms but if you're controlling the backswing with your rotation and your arms aren't going all over the place and they're staying in front of your chest and staying in front of your sternum you physically can't over swing so you can take that same feel of doing that two inch hand drill of the takeaway and keep going just keep going with it keep going keep going that's about as far as i can go now it's a little bit of flexion back swings over i mean i can't go anywhere unless i let my right arm fly or i disengage of these points not only does this help with club head speed consistency but it and you know kind of a one piece backswing but the big thing is is it gives your brain a sense of hey you're done you don't need to go any further now why i bring up that live lesson is because he brings up a point or he brought up a point that people have a hard thing or a hard time wrapping their head around when players make a backswing like that and they get up here towards the top and they feel really loaded unless they're like it feels so short craig i'm not going to hit it anyway it feels like i'm only making like a half backswing great that's awesome that's what i want it to feel like there is no arm swing in the golf swing the arms in the backswing only go like this five minutes the perfect backswing they only elevate and they add a little flexion that's all the arms doing the backswing that's it this is how much my arms move does that look like a whole lot but when i combine that motion with load in the right glute and big rotation it turns into a golf swing turns into a full backswing but if i were to stand up and go right back over here what position am i in in the exact same position that i just created because there is no arm swing in the backswing if you want the simplest working machine you want as little moving parts as possible you don't want your arms flying around do you know how simple it is when you stop focusing or stop worrying about swinging your arms and you worry about what you're doing with load and rotation you see how simple it is for me to sequence the downswing now wait oh okay post release like from this position here i can't screw it up just shift my weight my arms drop down post up my arms are here let the club release i don't want my arms going off all in space because now i'm creating this huge timing mechanism now the good news is if you understand these points there's a real kind of big cheat to getting this if you've watched any of the axiom videos if you watched any of the winter backswing videos for those of you that want to be lead side dominant players such as myself not swaying you one way or another i've done them both in my career i was a lead side player as a kid i was a trail side player for eight years and then switch back to lead side if i take my setup right here and i focus solely on my body and not pushing my arm across the chest just letting it react to my rotation and working up if i load and rotate left arm to the top that look like a pretty decent position what happens when i add my right i load rotate left arm to the top it's over my shoulder over my ankle add my right hand it's the same position i'm in in the five minutes the perfect backswing but i'm not trying to put the club there all i'm doing is focusing on load and rotation letting my lead arm swing towards the top same thing with the trail arm if your trail arm stays in front not like this the arms do not swing and you focus on loading rotating letting that right arm stay in front and have a little fold am i in the same position i'm in the exact same position but it's all in how you get there if you try to put the club somewhere you keep chasing this demon up at the top you're never going to get there i struggled with my backswing for a long time i had across the line i had super laid off you name it i had it all i couldn't fix my backswing until i stopped trying to fix my backswing not trying to get philosophical on you but i couldn't fix my backswing until i stopped worrying about where this club was going when i put the priority on how i was moving my body moving my arms less after i got my body moving the club naturally just started being like oh that's it that's all i got to do i don't i don't have to go find this thing in space the point at the end of the day if you put the priorities on the inside out you put the priorities on the backswing on maintaining the hip line and big rotation making sure that as you rotate towards the top that this hip stays deep doesn't start to go forward usually due to the fact of people getting this reverse hip shift are not loading into their trail heel if you get that nothing crazy with the head and you minimize what the arms do they only go like this they only elevate that's it a little bit of flexion but you put the priority on big rotation you're going to be able to turn off your arms you're going to be able to stop thinking about that and you won't overswing because you physically can't overswing okay and i know that you know this webinar i'm not technically kind of like teaching you you know you do these three steps to get to a perfect backswing but that that's not the point of this we've got videos for that i want to show you the common things that i look at and what i see so that when you look at your swing at home you can be your own doctor of it you can look at the hip line you can look at the head you can look at the spine this is this is what i do for a living all right these are the same checkpoints that i look at when you send a swing in for review if you put the priority on big body turn tiny arm swing makes the backswing insanely simple never have to practice my backswing in fact i mean up until two weeks ago i wasn't swinging a club for four months same position as it was when i left one thing i want to leave you with before we go to some questions i know we're running a little bit over time um is axiom a lot of players are like all right craig well i understand the lead arm to the top and i understand kind of what you're doing with your trail arm right there but how does this tie into axiom well the footwork stays the same regardless the loading into the heel moving back towards six o'clock loading the right glute that doesn't change all right you do that in a lead side swing you do that in a dead drill swing an axiom swing doesn't matter the question that i always get is well craig chuck said you know to to make these clockwise motions you know and to start out at first to make a little exaggerated same way i teach it in human form to go back is to start to make these kind of clockwise circles so that you can feel how the club stays in front and showers out coming down okay absolutely nothing wrong with that in fact when i teach axiom i teach it in a very exaggerated manner at first because most of the players that are really taking axiom are players that struggle with over the top they typically go here on the inside and then come over the top on the downswing so focusing on that clockwise circle from the golfer's perspective gets the arm and hand to work in front and gets the club to shallow out now for me axiom is this it looks almost exactly like my normal swing it's just because my clockwise circles very minute but doing it that way in the initial has is zero problem the thing that i see that people keep forgetting about is rotation it's not just the arms going in this clockwise circle this is a good way to learn what it's like to swing the club shallow you are still loading you are still rotating that's still the primary driver of the move it's not just taking your arms and loading you're trying to load your right hip you are still rotating it's still big body turn tiny arm swing and over time it starts to get smaller and smaller okay and if you have any questions about that i'll be happy to answer it so those are the pitfalls let me have it i hope you enjoyed hope you at least learned a little something to kind of help out with the backswing all right blurry that's not good daryl if your torso gets tight it will not fire first before your legs harry uh i'm assuming that was a question up above so if your torso gets tight it will not fire before your legs can you expand upon that a little bit when you're trying to have good club head speed in the swing you can't just do it with your arms your torso right here is going to create tension you need this muscle fiber but you're also loading the right glute you're loading your abs you're loading your obliques just because this is tense doesn't mean that this is going to fire first you still have to work on your pressure shift to get your weight you're sitting down into the lead side remember when we get up here towards the top of the backswing for the vast majority of players what are we trying to fend off trying to fend off coming over the top so when you get up here towards the top the motion starts from the ground up as your back stays towards the target to help you shallow out the club well think about it if i load all this muscle right here and i shift and i keep my back towards the target that does what it creates even more separation and now that i got more stretch and more separation well i got more down here got more pop so just because you get tight right there doesn't necessarily mean it's going to fire first now hopefully that's what you're talking about all right is there more elevation after the takeaway the vast majority of elevation is after the takeaway okay so in the takeaway you only need about this much elevation from there towards the top is about this much elevation right about to the base of the pectoral so the vast majority of elevation in the golf swing is after the takeaway how are most pros getting the parallel in the backswing so most pros are i don't want to say most pros the better swinging pros okay when they get the parallel right here the literally main two things that they have is if you look at them they have almost 90 degrees of rotation by the time their lead arm is parallel to the ground they're mainly rotating and elevating that's all they're doing there's a tiny bit of wrist set tiny bit tiny bit it's just reacting to the club i seem to struggle with the backswing and swing thought i noticed the idea of lifting the bucket of water with my body and tossing it over my right shoulder that worked for five minutes well sean uh we actually had an old old video i think it's called creating a swing plane we had an old video where chuck used to talk similar about the same thing if you kind of imagine like flipping a coin over your shoulder so if you start to load and rotate and you wanted to flip a coin over your shoulder that's kind of the exact same backswing position that you'd get into now you're saying that worked for just a little bit basically i'm kind of doing the same thing with a bucket with my two inch hand drill to get to here why all of a sudden would you start to overswing now why why if you felt all right i'm getting here and taking that bucket why all of a sudden would you start to overswing the only way that you would do it looking at it the same way you start opening up your hips too much you start letting your right elbow fly i want you to try to keep your right elbow down in that position like pointed down to the ground like this and see if it allows you to overswing because what it does is it keeps that scapula down and in it's going to make it very very hard do you rotate your wrist on the takeaway to get the club toe up when the arms are parallel to the ground the rotation in the takeaway is very minimal so as i go from here and i try to make my takeaway a little bit toe up right there my forearms and hands really aren't rotating much at all there is the tiniest bit so if you think about like the old belly button drill so when you make the belly button drill to here you add a little bit of elevation and when there's that little bit of wrist set there's just that tiny bit of form rotation but i mean i'm only talking about it's like this so you don't really need to focus on trying to make your forearms rotate in the takeaway because really don't do that from then on out the club is going to aid and abet that rotation but the folding of the right arm starts to bring the left arm across center line like this well what's happening now it's the folding of the trail arm that starts to set the plane and bring this lead arm and hand across center line how to stop rolling the hands in the backswing i do the drills correctly but not when i swing the club greg it's because you're swinging the club what i tell you not to do stop swinging the arms don't swing the club don't swing you swing now i know you can and greg i know that you understand this you can put a box here or for a long time i had a coach that made me swing it's the wall to not take it inside but what's really causing this what's really causing that the only way this is getting inside is that your arms are swinging that's it you're either getting here and you're pushing with your left wrist and rolling the club inside or you're getting into this position right here as you start to roll this way and you're changing your shoulder plane and your axe arms and hands are actually out in front you've got to stop trying to swing the club there in the nine to three like building drills even chuck talks about how you know if you're really trying to learn lag you can kind of float load it like this just to get the feeling but what is this this is the opposite of me worried about swinging the club this is me just moving me and dragging this back if you get here and you rip the club inside you're starting to swing with your arms and hands your priority isn't moving your body i mean that's that's why if you think i like the five-minute semester rotation or my takeaway webinar as much as you think that you're moving you you're still moving the club with your hand arms and hands your priority isn't in the right place i guarantee you the more you start to rotate and add a ton of rotation in the takeaway you're going to start to be like wait a minute this is going to start to get this way i've got to start to elevate if i minimize how much i have to move my arms and hands this big gigantic rotation you're naturally going to start going up because you don't want to be two feet behind yourself sean flexion let me know uh i see nelly and others getting to the top with the club horizontal parallel to the ground is she turning farther okay great question john when you see players get the club parallel to the ground okay so for me my full turn and arm right here that's about as far as i can get okay there are some players that will get parallel to the ground how are we going to get there a like you said you can turn more if i get to this position and i allow my hip to keep rotating yeah i can almost get it to parallel but then i start to reverse hip shift so there's no point in it the other thing is is that people actually start to add left shoulder push so if you go to like you know one of these uh kinesiologists and people that you know kind of study the kinetic chain of the golf swing and they put all that they map you i did it with you know titleless for a while in maryland um what you'll actually see is that players start to add left shoulder push or left shoulder stretch at the top so you'll see they measure like 120 degrees of shoulder rotation it's really not that they're rotating that much more it's just the fact that they made a 90 degree rotation and when they're here they started to protract their lead arm which allowed them to keep going like that but the issue is it's just unnecessary that extra little length isn't going to do anything for your speed isn't it's not going to do anything all you're doing is creating at some point in time this is going to have to get in conjunction i think like sergio was like 123 degrees or something but his club wasn't even parallel to the ground but it's because he added a lot of left shoulder push you're just worried more about injury at that point is the club pointing down the line at the end of the takeaway well let's find out i don't have it yeah there we go that's something in there well we'll just use this guy so if this is my target line all right don't mind animal here if this is my target line and i'm setting up to here as i make my takeaway where's my takeaway right now it should be pretty much exactly on that line it's okay for the club to be a little bit outside of it right there you can see how my hands are just working just inside that club okay but ideally it's going to be right here right in front or you can be right there down the line of the takeaway this one the takeaway inside is it is it is the one that i allow the least i'll allow for a player if they add just a little bit more wrist or whatever but if they if they let the club stay a little bit more on the outside like this in the initial i will allow that because the club can still work through the proper functions but typically the inside player what happens when you start to get this excessive rotation well the club plane and swing plane start to get too flat and that typically leads the players going this way most players if they miss even way out here they're not going to go like this and then come down like that they're going to at least attempt the shallow out the club the really shallow takeaway or getting inside that one's usually the big troublesome one all right sean ignore me all right i'll ignore you okay any other questions about anything else nothing else about the backswing nothing about wrist or anything the club face is shut you're probably letting this right wrist hinge back too much which is shutting it down right wrist too flat opens the face at the top should be nice and balanced can you apply this to nine to three absolutely so when you think about the nine to three all it is is just a condensed version of a full swing so as i'm going from here into a nine to three all i'm doing is i'm loading i'm maintaining my hip line and getting a big shoulder rotation because i don't want to swing my arms it's how i get this width right here to this position right here my arms have barely moved i've rotated a ton now it's the same thing with shifting posting and releasing same thing with down the line i'm getting 45 degrees of shoulder rotation by this position if i had this logo right here you'd still see it it's the same rules apply it still stays in front so as i go from nine to three all i'm doing is still just allowing the club to work up with more rotation now i'm at a full backswing that's it all nine to three is just a miniature condensed version so if your chest is moving 45 degrees are your arms rotating 45 degrees i mean in relatives not really i mean because you have to think about the kind of radius wise so you know your shoulder turn and your backswing's moving in about 15 to 18 inches but the club's moving about seven feet so the rotation in your forearms right here this position is roughly the exact same as i hinge forward and as i continue to go up my lead arm just has a tiny bit a little bit of flexion in the right a little bit of internal rotation right here a little bit of forearm rotation to help set the plane it's not really a ton most people over rotate their arms and hands and club way way too much all right uh in the takeaway i mean above not not a shoulders are 45 hips are very little there's hardly any rotation with the arms and hands they don't need to rotate i mean they're literally staying right here in front i'm not trying to see that's this is where you all get into trouble i'm not trying and i'm doing this close because it's easier to see i'm not trying to go like this and rotate my arms my arms and hands are here all i'm trying to do is rotate my chest arms and hands really haven't changed thank you charles what causes a low trail elbow at the top of the backswing a low trail elbow what do you think is it your trail arms fault or your lead arms fault the trail elbow starts to move down or stay down okay so as i start to rotate because the lead arm is pushing it down okay see that right there it's typically because the lead arm is overworking and as this is overworking you're adding overflexion which is keeping this down that's why you know for players when they think about it the arm elevates the base to pectoral right here okay so as you go back this arm has to go up but as this arm goes up if you're pushing with your lead arm what's it doing it's actually pushing this elbow down so it comes back to pushing too much with the lead arm stack and tilt somewhat teaches a reverse pivot on the backswing right yeah so a stack and tilt they basically want you to get to here and then as you go towards the top here you kind of just stay stacked and you kind of pivot back off that lead lead not to bash any you know golf theories or anything out there but i had a lot of playing professionals at time when stack and tilt came out and they switched to it and i told them that they were nuts the stack and tilt works somewhat for ball striking if you don't care about power every single guy that i know and gal that switched the stack and tilt that was trying to do it for a living when they first did it it worked great but as soon as they started trying to apply power that ball started screaming left that's the easiest way to get rid of your tour card i'm assuming that you start weight shift before you get to the top of a full backswing so that some extra wrist set and lag can happen in the downside i'm assuming that you start weight shift before you get to the oh okay so david you're basically saying starting down before completing the backswing yeah you're going to sequence down just slightly before finishing the backswing you're going to see players that do it to a really crazy degree as in like you know you'll see them start to get like lead arm parallel to the ground they're already going the other way to help generate a lot of lag some of them don't finish their turn some of them let their arms disconnect but in a in a normal full-blooded golf swing as i start to get up here towards the top i'm loading early i'm rotating and as i start to finish this backswing right in this position i'm going to start to shift down think about like we used to have the weight shift sweep drills on the site it's kind of the same premise if you're loading and rotating this way and you start to step back this way do you stop here and then step back or do you typically start stepping and shifting weight before your arms finish everybody has it to a little bit different degree even uh i don't watch golf uh it's a the asian player uh matsuyama maybe even matsuyama who almost comes to i think that's who it is that comes to a complete stop if you put him on a pressure map where you mark out his turn you'll see even when he gets here and looks like he's come to a complete stop his arms and hands and everything stay forever as his lower half starts actually pretty crazy to watch thank you barney appreciate it david very well presented thank you craig thank you david i appreciate that thanks doug thanks michael i appreciate it so no more questions glad y'all are happy i don't know if it means i did my job but i'm trying up here the the tough part is you know we we try you know we want you to post in the community and you know tell us you know what you want to talk about i could sit here and talk about this backswing for the next three hours i mean we could break it down to where we're just i'm just getting up here talking to you about like different wrists and different face angles and how much the pitch of the shaft is going to be affected depending on where this is i mean we can do that i can do this for hours i just try to pick kind of the big highlights if y'all want to talk about something let us know i can talk about it for days and days i got it all on my brain thank you joseph thank you jimmy thank you glenn all right well i hope everybody has a great weekend if you have a dog in the fight at the super bowl all the best to your team everybody's telling me to take the bangles but i have one rams fan in here so can't play favorites on either or i have to do some research so i hope you all have a good night sorry for all the up close and personal but it's the only way i can get to my computer so have a good evening take the three and a half all right doug i'm going to quote you on that we have this recorded all right

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