How Your Takeaway is Costing You Distance

Even though you don’t hit the ball with your takeaway players start losing distance off the tee as soon as the club starts going back. Most players don’t understand how important it is to start recruiting muscle fiber to achieve great club head speed. Learn the most common mistakes you're making that are killing your distance and how to correct them. Understanding the takeaway is one of the simplest things to accomplish when you know what to do and feel.

Good evening, everyone.

How are we doing today? Everybody ready and excited for takeaway? I know it's not the fun and sexy topic we may talk about, but it's vital and it's very important and it's actually one of the most simple things to get correct in the golf swing.

As usual, we're going to let everybody kind of get settled in, make sure that the feed's going good, the audio, the web.

I've done a lot of testing on my end, so I just want to make sure that everything's rocking and rolling before I get yelling at everybody.

All right.

Chris Tyler in the house.

Good to see you, my friend.

I'm glad they got it worked out for you.

How are we doing audio and video-wise? Can everybody hear me? Everybody see me? Shouldn't be too hard to see me.

I got a wide lens.

Everything's perfect.

All right.

Sounds great.

Looks great.

Does that mean I look great, Chris, or you're just saying the picture looks great? For those of you that haven't been in a webinar before, you'll kind of see me bounce around a little bit.

You'll see me kind of walk forward and walk back.

Basically, all I'm doing is I'm checking the comments thread.

I'm making sure that the feed's still alive and nothing in error is going on.

So I'm going to give everybody about two, three minutes to settle in, and then we're going to get to work.

All right, Robert.

Everything looks good.

Nice.

Dr.

Harry's in the house.

Yes, we see you.

Awesome.

If anybody in this class in current boot camp so far, everybody enjoying that? And Chris has been doing a great job.

I think that this camp is really going to see a lot of improvement from what Chris has been doing the last week, or actually two weeks now.

Hopefully, what we talk about today, We'll just expand upon it a little bit.

So you'll be able to take those good principles from boot camp and really kick it into high gear once you start getting full swinging.

Right elbow looks good.

All right, dang.

Everybody, about a minute more, and we'll get going.

So I hope everybody's had a good day today.

I know it's been a little busy at Rotary.

And by the way, let me go ahead and throw this out because I know there's been a little bit of error today.

Vimeo is having an issue, so I know that some people have been trying to access videos on the site.

Vimeo, it's not on our end.

It's on their end.

So hopefully, that'll be resolved soon.

So there's a few videos that aren't popping up, but we're working on it.

Give them just a second more.

Because I can see, on my end, I can see the ticker where people are now just popping in.

So I'm giving them just a second more, just in case somebody has a question and they get in and don't want anybody to mess up.

Because this is, it's such a simple move that's so easy to mess up.

But, you know, when you think about the takeaway, it kind of sets up the rest of your golf swing.

Chuck is well known for saying that you don't hit the ball with your takeaway, but it sets up the rest of the events.

And it's one of these things that are just kind of vital.

I can speak from personal experience that in my playing days, when I felt I had the takeaway right, everything else just kind of clicked.

Like if I just got past like this section, like just got the train moving down the tracks, everything was going to be okay on that day.

Because I actually had a very uncommon flaw that Chuck had to work with me a lot on.

And I'll show you later on in the broadcast.

Hey, no problem, Greg.

No problem.

I'm glad you enjoyed the review.

I know I gave you a lot of homework, but that's the way it is sometimes.

So I think that's enough time.

I don't want y'all to waste your time.

I want you to get working on the swing.

Anything that I do up here, please feel free.

Get up and join me.

In fact, one of the sections I'm going to, you know, I'm going to really want you to get up and join me.

So the long and the short of it, when it comes down to the takeaway, if you want your takeaway to produce results, you want it simple, repeatable, you want to take advantage of one of the simplest moves, you kind of have to go back and think about what really creates power in the golf swing, or, you know, what are our power sources in the golf swing? Now, as you've seen on the site, we've got three main power sources.

We've got rotation.

We've got leverage.

And we've got width.

Those are the three things when you're focusing on working your takeaway, are you maximizing those three power sources, or are they firing on all cylinders? Because what most people tend to do is they get started off the ball and all those go out the window.

All right.

I'm going to show you not only what I want you to do, but the most common errors, because I don't want you to fall into these kind of easy pitfalls that you can with the takeaway.

But when you start to look at this, I want it to kind of ring back in your head, like, okay, as I'm doing this drill that Craig's showing me, or if I'm working on this takeaway that Craig's showing me, am I maximizing what I can out of all these categories? Am I fitting the profile? As you have probably seen in the five minutes to mastering rotation, or in what we've spoken about in the boot camps, and you'll keep hearing it because of how important it is.

In the golf swing, if you want good speed and you want good power, you have to recruit muscle fiber.

It's of the utmost importance.

It takes 32 pounds of muscle to create 100 mile an hour club at speed.

And we just don't have that in our arms and hands.

Some of you may out there, but I know that I don't.

And when we start looking at the takeaway, this is right when it starts.

This isn't a section where, you know, we get up here towards the top, then we start coming down.

It's like, okay, now I'm going to actually start recruiting muscle.

That's not the way it works.

We need to recruit muscle fiber early.

There's topics such as short stretch cycles where we really have to recruit this muscle fiber and stretch it so it rebounds faster.

But it has to start right from the very beginning because I don't want you lost in the weeds.

Trying to find it at some point in time and adding brute force when we don't want you to add brute force.

So the first thing that we're going to talk about is the most common error that I see.

When people get set up and they start to take their takeaway, and I'm going to assume that most people know how to take the basic setup by now.

When they start to make their takeaway and they start to move the club off the ball, the first thing that they do is they start to fold their right arm or they start to fold their trail arm.

Okay.

And when you start to fold your trail arm, even though I may be creating a good position, if you start to look at it from down the line, it might be creating a good position.

You're like, well, Craig, you know, it's down your target line.

It's toe up.

But the problem is it was all placed and moved by just folding my right arm.

So when you start to fold your right arm, it starts to do a couple of things.

One, it deletes rotation, which is one of the very first things that I told you is rotation is one of our power sources.

The other thing that it starts to do is it starts to delete width.

Now, for me, I'm a big fan of width, even though I'm not that tall of a guy or anything like that.

I'm a big fan of width because the wider the radius, the wider the swinger, the more free speed that you get.

And this simple move of just taking the right arm and folding it off the ball is the utmost killer of those two.

The other thing that it does when you fold that right arm and you continue to work towards the top, what does it do to your shoulders? So I start to go to here.

It's about as far as I can go right now.

I still got a broken clavicle.

But as I start to go to here, these positions, my shoulders start to get really tense.

And what happens when I get tension in somewhere? Well, I get that tension and I want to fire that tension.

And so not only do I get up here and I can't rotate, but I also want to fire my arms for the top.

So now I've killed any chance at having speed other than throwing my arms and hands at the club, which as we know is going to be very inefficient.

So the first thing that I want to do is I want to work on some body positions.

And we're going to work on body and arms, and we're going to focus on having good rotation and good width.

Then we're going to get the club in our hand and we're going to talk a little bit about leverage.

And we're going to talk a little bit about the club face and how the club face needs to work because we need to maximize everything that we can.

Now, all of us instructors here at Rotary, we have our favorite drills on the site.

Chris and myself are a big fan of roll the right foot, talking about how the right foot works in the downswing.

Big fans of the release, how you use the lead arm and hand to allow the club face rotation.

This is one of my favorites.

I know it's not really cool, but it's one that kind of creates a light bulb moment for people.

When you take your right arm and you fold it off the ball, how much tension do you feel? How much engagement do you feel? Do you really feel anything when you make a takeaway like this? I mean, I can sit here and slap my arms back and forth like this and that's just, it doesn't really do it for me.

It feels very weak, feels very powerless.

And one of the drills that really was that light bulb for me was the two inch hand drill.

Because this showed me how incorrectly I was always making a takeaway, that I wasn't really using muscle, that I wasn't really rotating.

So if you're at home right now, you can go ahead and do this with me.

And I want you to really start to be aware of what you feel.

And this is what we're going to do.

First thing is we're going to start to work on rotation.

I want you to take your hands.

I want you to stick them in front of you, getting just kind of golf posture set up.

I don't want your arms way out here, not way in here.

If I were going to hold a golf club right here, just stick your hands about two inches apart in the same position.

And when you get into this position, I want the fingertip length the same.

Okay.

I don't want anything jacked up this way or this way.

And I don't want you to cheat at home.

Don't take a golf ball and put it in there.

I want you to do it exactly how I'm talking about it because I know everybody's going to come up with some way of cheating it.

I want you to take your setup, stick your hands two inches apart.

Now, without moving your head way off the ball or doing anything finicky, I want you to move your arms and hands over into a takeaway position.

So, for me to go from here to this position, what did I have to do? What do my shoulders have to do right now? I have to rotate.

It's a physical impossibility for me to move my hands over to this position without rotating, maintaining this two-inch gap while also maintaining the fingertip length.

So, I want you to take your setup, hands two inches apart, fingertip length the same.

Now, I want you to slowly go over here to a completed takeaway.

And if you don't know where a completed takeaway is, hands roughly in line right here with your trail pocket.

So, we don't need the hands way up here.

Shouldn't it still be way down here? Hands roughly in line with the trail pocket.

And when you do this, if you maintain the two-inch gap and the fingertip length, what do you feel? What are you starting to notice when you do it that way? I don't want any arms opening like this.

I don't want any fingertip length changing.

I don't want any crazy head motion.

Just right here, maintain that same spacing, that same fingertip length to trail pocket height.

What are you feeling right here? You can probably hear it in my breath right now.

You should start to feel your abs.

You should start to feel your core.

You should start to have some compression.

If you don't have compression, then either you're not going far enough or you're losing this spacing and fingertip length.

Right here, right to a completed takeaway and hold that right there for a second.

Start to feel how you're actually starting to use some core.

Use some abs and some obliques.

This is what a one-piece takeaway is.

If I focus on not moving my arms and hands and I focus on the rotation, my arms and hands automatically go to the same position every single time, but this is how we start to get a one-piece takeaway.

This is how we start to recruit muscle fiber.

You should feel this.

I hope you feel it.

If I take the club and I go like this, I feel nothing except for that club swinging around.

Now, if I take my arms and hands like this, rotate, just move them to that trail pocket, maintaining these two things.

I can feel this.

You are now starting to engage and recruit muscle fiber.

This is what we need.

I saw a couple of comments pop up.

I just want to make sure.

Okay, there we go.

So, you feel this.

Yeah, I can feel a stretch now.

The fun thing is, if you get a little froggy with it, if you understand elevation, you can actually keep going just a little bit more and you'll really start to feel it.

So, what we want to do is we want to recruit muscle fiber early.

And we want a simple one-piece takeaway and we want to rotate.

The only way that we're going to do that is if we stop trying to do something with our arms and hands and just rotate.

This isn't rocket surgery.

If you maintain this, you're going to feel this.

Now, a couple checkpoints with this that I want you to notice.

If I go over here down the line and I make this same motion, where are my arms and hands right now? They're still in front of my chest.

They're still in front of my sternum.

They haven't swung way behind me because if they swing way behind me, what happens to See how that changes? If I maintain this two-inch spacing and fingertip length, my arms and hands are still in front of me.

So, my club's not going inside.

What else do you notice? One of the big checkpoints of rotary.

You can still see my Nike logo right here.

I'm rotating.

I'm moving.

I'm moving my arms and hands by doing what I kid about with players all the time.

What's the website called? Blankswing.

com.

There's a key word in there.

So, the first thing is, I want you to start to get the feeling for this rotation.

How to move your arms and hands by engaging the core, rotating, maintaining that length.

That's going to do two things for us.

One, we rotate.

Two, it's going to help us get width.

Because what happens as I'm doing this? Where's my right arm right now? Is my right arm bent? If my right arm was bent, I'd lose my fingertip length.

When this right arm stays straight, because you're rotating right here, it starts to act as a piston on your trail shoulder to continue rotation, which is the biggest thing that you need to do in the backswing.

You must rotate.

Big body turn.

Tiny little arm swing.

Now, I'm going to give you some checkpoints of what we need to do with the club, and what's going on with the club facing the wrist, but I want to show you something.

Hopefully, I won't break anything.

If I take my setup here, and I make my takeaway, okay? So, I'm over here.

I'm rotating back.

I'm starting to get the load right there in my trail thigh, but the big key that we're focusing on right now is rotation.

What do we think about that takeaway? Is it okay out there in TV land? Do I have a decent takeaway? Can I hit the same spot every single time? Can you see the rotation club staying out in front? What am I really doing? Am I really focusing on where this stupid club's going, or am I focused on moving me? Hmm, let's find out.

Well, if I make my takeaway right here, and I let go of the club, what position am I in? Am I in the exact same two-inch hand drill position that I've just been doing for the last five minutes? I'm not worried about putting this club in a certain position.

I'm not worried about trying to hit all these mythical beasts with the takeaway.

I'm merely taking my setup and saying, I'm not going to swing with my hands.

I'm not going to swing with my arms.

I'm going to set up here, and I'm going to rotate.

And when I rotate, I can feel my abs engage.

Everything's really starting to work.

And look at the position I'm in.

The exact same thing as the drill.

What I did is I went and mastered the drill and then got the club in my hand, because I don't care about that.

It has no choice but to move where I move.

So don't chase this club.

Focus on your rotation.

So if we get rotated, and we get that good muscle fiber recruitment where we start to get a lot of width, and we have 45 degrees of rotation in the takeaway, that's our goal.

And we start to get a lot of width.

Well, how's width going to help us get more speed? Well, the wider the radius, the more free speed we can get.

You know, if you think about a golf club, for every half inch is two miles an hour.

Okay, so if you're used to making your takeaway where it's like this, now all of a sudden you're rotating 25 degrees more, and you've extended out your width by another two to three inches, that's a lot more powerful than this, I can promise you.

Okay, so right now we've got rotation and width.

Well, at some point in time, we've got to get the club in our hands.

What do we have to do with that thing? Or what do we have to do with our wrist? Or do the wrist even matter? Craig, hey, I was taught that you're not supposed to start with your shoulders.

You're supposed to set it and forget it.

Or how I was taught, I won't name the instructor, led something.

I was taught to take the club off like this.

I was supposed to really get those wrists set hard off the ball and keep that face pointed down towards the ground.

Why don't I do that? Well, as soon as you start to engage the wrist, and as soon as you start to activate them off the ball, what are you going to do? Well, you're going to create tension.

What happens when you create tension? And by the time you get towards the top, and all that tension's in your wrist, what's going to happen with your wrist now? This is where we start getting into leverage.

If you load your wrist early on, well, now you're not going to rotate all your tensions in your arms and hands, and now your wrists are completely loaded, and there's only one direction this club wants to go when you get up towards the top.

The only direction it wants to go is out.

So as we make this takeaway and we start to rotate back, we're pulling back with our trail shoulder, we're keeping our arms and hands really quiet to that trail pocket, and we do nothing except shake hands.

See, I'm in my same two-inch hand drawer where I'm shaking hands right here.

If my wrists are pretty quiet, they're going to naturally allow the club to set a little bit.

You're going to feel the weight.

You're not going to be like this.

As I mentioned earlier, this was my problem.

I didn't let the weight of the club set any, and that's because I went from one end of the spectrum like this to not doing any at all because I was so angry about it.

So as we start to go back right here, you just allow for a little bit of the weight of the club to start setting the wrist.

We don't load them early.

If we load them early, we get the tension.

If we load them early, we eat up the width.

This is what I'm meaning about what I was referencing earlier.

When you start to look at your takeaway, look at what power source you're messing up.

All right, well, Craig, I'm looking at this.

I'm rotating.

I feel like I'm rotating.

But what's wrong with this picture? I don't have any width.

But in the club, it's still in front of my trail thigh right here.

Well, what happened? Ah, let my right arm fold.

No, my arms are supposed to stay straight.

I'm not supposed to do anything with them.

I'm just supposed to rotate.

Now I've got my width back.

Now I've got my rotation.

So you need to go back through and look at all these checkpoints with it.

Now, if you're behaving with your wrist, and you're not focused on rolling or fanning or doing anything, the club should end up in a nice toe-up position right here.

It's okay for it to be a little bit toe-down, just kind of depending on the strength of your grip.

But ideally, this spot is going to be toe -up.

Now, two most common things that I see, literally every day, is that players start to rotate right here, and then they activate their right wrist, and they shut down their club face.

Well, what happens when I activate my right wrist and I start to shut down my club face? How's this going to wreck my speed? Well, one, I'm shutting down my face, and now my wrists are going to be loaded, so now what's the other one? What is the club designed to do? Like, what is this thing designed to do? It's a little stick swung on an upright plane.

It's a heel-toe balance.

What is this club designed to do? This club's designed to rotate.

Well, if I make a takeaway.

.

.

Okay.

If I make a takeaway, so I'll rotate.

Good.

Anyway, if I make a takeaway, and I shut down my club face right here, I'm deleting the natural movement of the golf club.

And when I start to delete the natural movement of the golf club, I start to delete speed, because I'm fighting this battle with physics.

If you think about the release, in a properly released club, okay, in a properly released club, this toe is rotating about 12 miles an hour faster than the heel, and the center of the face is rotating about 6 to 8 miles an hour faster.

So if this club's rotating through here, and you allow it to rotate, that's 6 to 8 miles an hour for free.

Well, if I get my takeaway, and I shut my face down like this, and hold it to the top and start to come down, what did I just delete? I just deleted the natural swing, the natural rotation, the natural flow of the club.

You're not going to want to release it from that point.

So as we start to make this takeaway, and we load and rotate and get to here, I don't want the right hand on top with the right wrist going this way, nor do I want the left wrist bowing out.

Because now what's that doing to my club? Now my club head's getting inside.

Now I'm going to have to make all these other cockamamie moves to fix my golf swing.

One of the things I commonly get from students, players, which is a benefit or a kind of side note with this, a lot of times I get the comment, Craig, how do you keep your swing so short? Like no matter what I do, I just can't keep my swing short.

You know, arms run away, I don't know, the club goes beyond my head.

How every single time, no matter how hard you're swinging, how does your swing stay right there? Like, do you stop your arm? I don't stop my arm.

Off the ball, I'm rotating so much and not swinging my arms and hands that by the time I get here, I can't go anymore.

I physically can't do it.

Because I've left my arms and hands connected.

I've moved them solely due to my rotation.

And when I get up here, all my lungs are compressed, my chest, my abs, everything's ready to go, and now all I've got to do is start unwinding with my legs starting first in the downswing.

Everything happens automatic.

I can't tell you the last time I've actually over -sung a golf club.

I can't.

You can't.

So, when we're trying to get takeaway and we're trying to get power, I know it sounds simple.

Well, Craig, you're just telling me don't fold my right arm.

You're telling me just don't do anything with my arms and hands and I'm going to get more power.

Yeah.

I see it every single day in the trenches.

I did a live lesson yesterday with a student struggling with the same thing.

With what he was taught.

He was taught to take like this and make his spine and go like that.

It's the simplest thing to get right, and it's the simplest thing to get wrong that can wreck your power.

When you set up, you must rotate.

You must create some width.

And you're not creating width.

Don't think that, like, I'm getting here and I'm just pushing my arms and hands out.

You're born with all the width you're ever going to have.

Sorry, I can't do anything about that.

Here's my right arm.

It's what I've always called the governor of width.

If I'm right here in this position and my right arm stays straight, I'm going to have width.

But I can't get any more than this.

I don't want you taking your arms and outstretching them like that.

All you're doing is you're starting from this position and you're rotating.

You're rotating.

You're recruiting that.

Good muscle fiber.

And there's no major quarrels or quorums that you have to worry about.

Toe up.

A little bit toe down because you've got a strong grip, no worries.

But when you get over here, look.

Make sure you see this logo on your chest.

Make sure you see that you've rotated.

You don't need to do anything with the arms, hands, and wrists.

If you've got a decent enough grip and you're relaxed enough, the club's automatically going to start setting up for you.

For people that are, you know, kind of technically inclined, 25% of your wrist sets in the takeaway because you're 25% done with this one.

Let's not reinvent the wheel on this one.

If you're like this, this is about as much as we need.

We don't need that much.

The big thing is big body turn.

Big body turn.

Small arm swing or tiny arm swing.

The most common thing that we see is the right arm fold.

But the biggest thing that people struggle with is they don't feel it.

If I could, you know, jump through this camera and give you the feel.

Hey, I'm just going to use Bob as a random name, not calling out anybody.

Hey, Bob, like this is what it feels like to make a takeaway.

This is what it feels like.

It'd be super simple.

I can't do that, though.

But this can.

If I set up here and I make this motion right here, I can start to feel my muscles.

I can start to feel moving my arms and hands with my body.

Don't do anything with my arms and hands.

I'm moving them with my body.

So do that.

Do about 10 reps, okay? Take your set up.

Stick your arms and hands in front of you like this, two inches away.

Maintain the same fingertip length all the way to here.

And stop.

Do it about 10 times.

Now pick up a golf club.

Keep that same feeling to there.

You're not trying to move the head or anything.

Keep that same feeling to there.

Then you'll start to feel that you're working.

I know we teach an effortless golf swing.

I get it.

There still has to be a little bit of effort, though.

You've got to use this muscle fiber, okay? Rotation, leverage, width.

Prioritize rotation first, okay? If you have the rotation and your right arm stays straight, you're going to get the width.

I know leverage may not sound like it's a topic in the takeaway because we don't really have a whole bunch of wrist or anything going on right there.

But if we load the wrist, we use this lever too soon, we can't have good lag.

So if we want good lag, this lever needs to be nice and quiet so when we get up here and we start to shift, it can increase, okay? We also have a little bit of weight shift.

In a normal takeaway, which I'm assuming everybody kind of knows the basics of the takeaway, in the normal takeaway, you're going to have weight shift.

You're going to push that trail foot into the ground.

You're going to move your pressure.

But when you do that and you start to engage these legs, this is going to be how we use it for stability and pulling up leverage from the ground.

And it all starts right in the beginning.

It's a very simple move that can wreck your entire golf swing.

Prioritize leverage, width, rotation.

If I rotate, I've got width.

If I rotate with my width and my arms and hands are pretty chilled out, the club's going to naturally set, and I'm going to have the chance to create leverage.

If I get a little bit of load in my trail glute, I'm going to be able to use my legs coming down for leverage.

I know it sounds really simple, but back to that feel point.

You should be able to feel this.

This should feel different.

When you do this, you should feel something for the first time.

If you're already doing it, then it's probably desensitized.

But if you haven't been making a one -piece takeaway and you haven't been recruiting muscle fiber, you're going to start to feel something.

And if you do some reps tonight, you wake up in the morning and be like, Oh, what the heck is that thing? That's an oblique.

Muscle you haven't used before.

So with that, I'm going to open up the floor to any questions.

I know there's probably something I missed or something out there in the world that we have a question on the takeaway.

What do you got? Throw it at me.

All right.

So bending the left elbow makes it look like more rotation.

Well, you can cheat it.

You can cheat it.

The thing is, is I can get here.

And Glenn, I'll tie it into Axiom 4 if you want.

The takeaways are the same.

So if you bend your left arm off the ball like this, what's happening, though, when I start to bend my left arm off the ball? You can see that my logo is starting to get smushed.

So if my logo is starting to get mushed, I have it rotated.

It's one of the big things we should see is that this logo stays nice and free right here.

I've got a I had an old swing of mine on the Facebook page that somebody was giving me heck about because I had a my sister went to South Carolina.

I had a big old Gamecock logo right here.

And I was like, see that Gamecock.

All right.

So, Glenn, you didn't tie into the Axiom.

Well, I'll tie it in for you right now.

The main thing that I'm focusing on right now is just for speed, not, you know, perfect takeaway mechanics.

We can do a perfect takeaway mechanic in another one.

The main thing is I want people to start to feel their core, move their arms, move their hand, move their club.

When you're making the Axiom, OK, the Axiom, we're making this clockwise motion.

I'm exaggerating just for camera's sake.

You're making this clockwise motion.

Well, when I make my takeaway right here and I start to go to the top and start to come down, even though it may look like traditional rotary, that's still Axiom.

It's just my clockwise movement is very, very tiny.

OK, you start out with Axiom and you work on these bigger positions to get the feel for the arms and hands and club to move clockwise.

But my takeaway starts here and then when I start to come down and get into here, I'm now on the inside.

If you look at my hand path and you trace it, it's barely any different, but it's a little clockwise motion.

You can start out a little bit earlier on.

If you want to add a little bit more elevation to kind of feel the club staying outside, that's fine.

But you have to rotate as you're doing.

OK, because that's the big key.

Axiom, dead drill, stack and tilt, A swing, doesn't matter what it is.

If you don't rotate, it's not going to work.

That's the priority right now.

I'm going to scroll this back a little bit.

Carver, pressure shift.

You're still shifting weight in the takeaway, Carver.

So when you think about like triggers to move off the ball, a lot of people get stuck right here.

OK, And it's part of the reason why they tend to start with their arms and hands, because they kind of get like Sergio, and they start milking the club a lot.

They don't know what to do.

So when you think about loading the right heel or moving the clockwise pressure, you can start your takeaway by starting this little pressure shift.

Starting to load and starting to shift is a great way to kind of take the tension out.

To kind of be like, OK, I can use my pressure shift in my rotation to get the club face going.

But even with making this pressure shift, I go like this, I can still get my hands off to the races.

OK, so I really still want the priority on rotating.

OK.

We'll talk about that one off camera, Chris.

All right.

What's the role of the right knee in the takeaway? Keep it bent or let it straighten some.

Great question, Charles.

So the right knee in the takeaway, you want to maintain as much flexion as possible.

All right.

Now, if we're talking about overall backswing, it's perfectly fine to allow that trail knee to straighten a little bit, to allow the hip to open so you can facilitate full shoulder rotation.

But from here to here, to kind of get good muscle fiber recruitment, you need to kind of create a little bit of a stretch.

You need to create a little bit of separation.

So ideally, try to maintain as much of that trail knee flexion as you can.

You can lose it slightly.

Yes, you can see right here as I'm making my takeaway.

My hips are rotating a little bit.

But this is a killer, all right? Because if I go here and then my right knee straightens as I do this, what happens? Now I start to reverse hip shift and I lose this healthy engagement.

If the wrists are passive until the club's parallel to the ground, how does one get the club shaft vertical to the point where the arms are parallel to the ground? Passive, not dead.

So as I start to work up from here, if you have a proper grip where it's in the fingers and you kind of see the meat of the club or the meat of the grip is on top.

As I start to go back and I keep rotating, this would be dead, like never allowing anything to happen.

They're passive.

They're reacting to your rotation.

If the grip's in the proper place, as I start to go up, it's going to be natural for this club to want to start to set up on itself.

It's just the big killers that I see is that people do this right off the ball, and therefore they don't rotate.

They get too much tension, and then they fire their leg.

This would be dead.

This is kind of like what I used to do, but even when I got to here, I started to allow my wrist to go a little bit.

So you're allowing the weight of the club to set your wrist for you.

You're allowing for it to react.

Push rotation would leave the club diagonal.

In order to have it parallel to the ground, there's a little wrist set.

Is that only the inertia of the club, or is there some elevation as well? Well, there's a tiny bit of elevation in the takeaway, okay? So if you think about the old belly button drill, where you stick here, and you kind of make this one-piece rotation, if I kept going, where are my arm and hands going to go? Eventually, they're going to start to go this way.

As I start to get here, the belly button, the club's just slightly coming away.

There's a slight amount of elevation in the takeaway to keep everything in front of the sternum, but it's only about this much.

And what you'll come to find out, when you're doing this two-inch hand drill, to keep it in front of you, to keep rotating, maintaining this, you'll start adding a lot of it automatically.

All right.

Patrick, awesome.

I love the two-inch.

Thanks, Patrick.

Steve, how is the takeaway impacted by shoulder plane with different club lengths? Not much.

So I'll demonstrate with this one.

So if I'm right here, let's say, like if I'm hitting a driver, this is going to be about my driver posture, okay? This is a nine iron.

So this is going to be my nine iron.

Just the taller I am and the little bit less hinge, just the flatter my shoulder plane is going to be, because the goal is you're rotating around the spine.

So if I'm really bent forward like this, I'm going to have a really steep shoulder plane.

The taller I get and the less hinge that I have, I'm still rotating around the spine.

It's just not going to be as steep.

Votes.

Roll of the hips and the takeaway.

Let me get this thing.

Let's see.

Okay.

So, Greg, roll of the hips and the takeaway.

When you start moving the club off the ball, you're allowing your hips to be moved.

And this is what I – let me try to demonstrate what I'm meaning by that.

I'm going to go kind of overall backswing, but this is what you want to think about the takeaway.

If I'm sitting down in this chair right here, okay, I can rotate this much without my hips moving, all right? For me to get a full shoulder rotation, at some point in time, I've got to start to allow my hips to move.

Same principle with this.

So as we start to go back, you don't want to actively try to kick back the hip or kink in the knee or do anything crazy with the hips.

As I start to rotate and I start to pull with my trail shoulder and I start to pull with my core, My hips are going to start to turn automatically.

Because it's the only way physically for me to get a full rotation or to start to have a lot of rotation in the backswing.

So the hips are getting pulled by your shoulder blade.

You're letting them kind of react.

Because if you start down from the ground in this takeaway and you go from here and you start kinking a lot of your hips really fast, well, not only am I going to lose this healthy recruitment of my core, well, as I start to go back, I've already rotated all my hips and my takeaway.

So I really don't have to do anything going back.

Now, there might be a little confusion of that because, you know, the video that the live lesson that Chuck did, because that may be what you're referring to, where people saw, I can't think of his name right now.

I know him, where Chuck was having him kind of rotate his whole core and his whole hips.

He was trying to recreate the same principle, stops moving your arms and club.

So he was just allowing him to allow some hips so he could feel rotation.

Ideally, you maintain a little bit of the knee and you allow the trail shoulder to start to pull the hips for you.

You can see mine right here.

That's what's pulling on my hip.

All right.

Thank you, Chris.

Looks like you've been busy.

Howard.

How far into the backswing do the hands stay exactly in front of the sternum? Good question.

So the hands will start to cross center line when? Again, so if I'm, if my arms and hands are in front of me right now, I'm going to kind of do this from vertical and then I'll do it from the other view.

My arms and hands are in front of me and I'm rotating.

They're still in front of the sternum.

What's going to cause my arms and hands to start crossing center line? Well, if I move them up like this, arms and hands are still in front of my sternum.

What's going to cause that to happen? As soon as the right arm starts to fold, that's what's going to bring the hands across center line.

But what I want you to notice, especially as I'm doing this right here, how far are they really going? Not much.

You don't see my hands way over here like this.

They're in front.

A little bit of fold.

Right there.

Same thing as the five minutes to perfect backswing.

So when you rotate and you get up to this position, the right arm is going to be pretty much still fairly straight, parallel to the ground.

And that last little bit for that right arm folds and you have that little bit of flexion.

That's going to be when you see the hands start to cross, center line a little bit and kind of get over the right shoulder versus being directly above your head.

Thanks, Douglas.

All right, Howard.

Do the hips actively resist the shoulder turn? Well, depends on what you're trying to do.

When you're right here and you start to make the takeaway, okay, there is the old notion of locking your knee or kicking it into place and not letting this move to where you really get that X factor.

All right? Jim McClain used to teach or taught that a lot, the big X factor.

And then they tried to figure out why everybody was blowing out their backs.

So you want to – I don't want to say don't, but you need to feel some separation.

You don't want to just be lazy and then just let your hip go back like this.

So if you're used to or you're one of those players that starts to take it off the ball and you're used to kind of kinking your hips like this, in the beginning as you're working on your rotation and working on getting that width, try to feel a little stability in the knee.

Try to feel a little stability in the hip.

Try to feel a little bit and then allow it to open up as you rotate towards the top.

I just don't want to tell you to lock it and don't do anything because, yeah, it is a way to get power because you can really stretch the muscles that way.

But, boy, is it bad for your back.

So flexion starts when the arms are parallel to the ground.

Yeah, Jose, there's a good video on the site.

Chuck was doing a demonstration with Rory and – I can't think of his name right – Dustin Johnson.

So as I'm going from here, remember our mantra in the swing, rotation, elevation, flexion.

So I'm rotating, I start to elevate, and by the time my arm gets parallel to the ground right here, my lead arm, you can see my right arm's still pretty darn straight.

And then I just have a tiny bit of flexion.

Golf swing's over.

So roughly right in here, when this lead arm's parallel to the ground, you'll start to see that flexion.

Some people may have a little bit of mobility issues, but the straighter and the longer you can keep that right arm there, the more you're going to turn, the wider your arc's going to be, the more power you're going to have.

That's why you're not going to see a lot of powerful swingers go like this.

They keep this wide arc and big rotation.

So this is going to – about the time that lead arm's parallel to the ground, you'll start to see that flexion come into play.

Let's see what he said.

So does the body keep turning to the top? Darryl, always be rotating.

When you get to the end of the takeaway right here, you're going to have roughly 45 degrees of shoulder rotation, okay? Hands in line with trail pocket club parallel to the ground.

Now, for this club to get up here towards the top, yeah, could I just lift my arms? Well, what am I doing? I'm just lifting my arms.

I'm disconnecting from my core, and I'm just picking up the golf club, okay? From this position, you continue to get that trail shoulder behind your head.

You continue to rotate as the arm's at a little bit of elevation, a little bit of flexion, okay? So you have to continue to rotate.

That's why when, you know, the discussion on the hips earlier, some players, when they get to here, when they get to this position, they may need to allow for a little bit more hip rotation to get a full shoulder rotation.

Perfectly fine.

It's much more important that from the takeaway as we continue to the top that we keep rotating versus five degrees of hips.

I appreciate that.

Any other questions? My partner in crime did a great job, as usual, on the keys.

Stevie Wonder on the keys is pretty good.

Any other questions? I know that this may not seem like prototypical, like, okay, this is how you make a perfect takeaway.

I'm kind of going a little bit beyond that, kind of looking at a little bit of higher level, because it's more important that you do the basic fundamentals with the rotation and getting the width early than having just these perfect positions.

That's why you can get away with things.

That's why, how many times have you seen or been out with buddies and all that, and they don't hit perfect spots, but they hit the ball far, you know, they're really good players.

A lot of them have a lot of the basics.

They might have the club a little bit toe down, but if you look at them from the front, they've got a heck of a lot of rotation and width.

This is kind of a higher level thinking of it.

All right.

Thank you, Glenn.

Thank you, Steve.

Steve, no other questions? June's out, but I know she's in that.

Extremely helpful.

Wish I'd heard that 50 years ago.

Well, thank you, Richard.

I appreciate that.

All right.

Charles, need to get it in? No, I need to get it ingrained.

Yeah, I will tell you, I played for a living for about eight years, and the takeaway was one of the banes of my existence during that period.

And I ended up blowing out my shoulder back in the day.

And one of the big things when I started kind of rebuilding my swing, when I started to do this, and I was looking in the mirror, and I'm watching this, and I'm feeling this, I realized how difficult I was making the most simplistic move in the golf swing.

Like, how much I was getting in my own way.

Like, I've got to be toe-up.

I've got to be this.

It's got to be perfectly down the line.

Or, you know, club head outside the hands.

It's, I realized that I was missing the forest through the trees.

That if I just had the basics of it, I never thought about it again.

I never think about it now.

All right.

Thanks, James.

Thanks, Michael.

All right.

Well, if we don't have anything left, I'm going to bid everybody adieu tonight.

Hope everybody gets to work, gets their takeaway fixed.

I don't see anything else popping up.

If I missed anything, I apologize.

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Find us in a swing review.

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If you have any other questions, post them up there.

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I'll be floating around there.

And we'll keep it rocking and rolling.

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