Phase 1 - Mastering Consistency
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Phase 1 of the C4 Ballstriking Mastery Program starts with mastering consistency. In this golf instruction video, you will learn the 5 pro fundamentals for consistent golf shots that will teach you to hit the ball laser straight every time.
- Flat Left Wrist
- Shoulders Square
- Hips Open
- Foot Down
- Head Down
The nine to three drill is all that matters in the golf swing from parallel to parallel or from nine o'clock to three o'clock.
If you get that right, you can play consistently great golf.
And that's exactly what we're going to teach you how to do.
And in phase one, we're focusing exclusively on consistency.
If you learn how to do these five simple checkpoints you will learn how to hit the ball consistently straight every single time.
But the nine to three drill isn't just about consistency.
You're going to learn clubface control so that you can control trajectory and shot shaping.
You're going to learn how to release the club for effortless speed and power.
You're going to learn how to use your body for power and use it correctly to protect yourself from injury.
The nine to three drill is going to teach you all of those things and much more.
But we're going to first focus on consistency and the five fundamental checkpoints that you're going to learn.
So that you can consistently hit the ball laser straight every time.
In phase one we're going to focus primarily on impact.
The only thing that actually influences the ball is when you actually hit it.
So getting these key checkpoints right is paramount.
If you don't get these right you won't be able to control the golf ball.
You won't be able to play consistent golf.
There are five fundamental checkpoints in phase one that will teach you exactly how to hit the ball perfectly straight every single time.
And they're going to seem really simple at first, but it's very important that you learn how to do these correctly.
And don't jump ahead to the release.
And all of the other fun parts about adding power like we do in phase three.
Because we need to be able to hit the ball straight rather than just hit it far and into the woods.
So these five checkpoints are what we're going to focus on first and they're very very simple and I want you to commit these to memory.
The first and most important one and we're going to go through this as I hit balls in just a moment is the flat left wrist at impact.
The wrist has to be flat at impact.
If you're flipping and scooping which we'll talk about in the faults and fixes you're not going to have any control over the golf ball.
You're not going to have any penetration on your ball flight.
So the first thing we're going to focus on is getting this wrist nice and flat at impact, so we can control the loft on the club face and get a nice, stable, consistent impact position.
The second thing is that our hips are going to be open.
As a result of this our left leg is going to be straight.
So these two things you can associate together.
As your hips move to an open position your leg has to be straight to facilitate your hips rotating.
Most golfers struggle with using their lower body.
So learning how to do this in these little, slow, nine to three movements is going to be very, very simple for you to get this hip movement correct.
Once your hips are open the other thing that you're going to be focusing on is making sure that your shoulders are square.
Most golfers are going to struggle with getting their shoulders really open because they try to weakly power the swing with their shoulders and arms.
We're going to teach you how to use your lower body correctly so that you can have effortless power.
Checkpoint number four that head has got to stay down.
So a lot of golfers when we start teaching them how to do these nine to three drills in our clinics, they start looking up.
And of course, that pulls your shoulders out of position, it pulls your body out of posture, and everything goes to heck really fast.
So keep your head down, looking on the ball, looking down at the ground, even after you strike the ball.
To start getting in the habit of keeping your head down on every shot.
And the fifth and final checkpoint is that this your trail leg, in my case right leg?
That heel is going to be rolled in, 95% of my pressure is going to be on the lead side, but the right heel is going to stay down.
We don't want it popping up because when you start looking at this from down the line this is how you start losing the tush line losing your posture.
So when we look at this all together, your perfect impact position is going to look just about like this.
My shoulders are going to be square, my hips are open, right foot's rolled in, my head is down, my left wrist is flat.
And if you want to take a little bonus point, you want this left elbow pointing down the target line instead of rolled in like this.
Because this leads to a flip and also can lead to a lot of elbow pain on the inside of your arm.
So if you can get that left elbow pointing down the line in line with your wrist that's a little bonus that'll help protect your elbow from injury.
So this is what you're trying to do, because you will see these exact same five checkpoints.
And every great ball striker on the planet, every Tour pro you're going to learn.
Why they're so consistent is because their impact alignments are consistent.
And these are the five keys that you must master to be able to consistently hit the ball straight.
So how do you know if you're doing these five checkpoints correctly every single time stop and look that's the most important thing don't go off and rattle through a bunch of balls that's not productive you want to start learning you want to learn how to learn and you have to check yourself on every shot so after every shot you'll see in just a moment I'm going to stop and I'm going to go through my checkpoints at first you'll you'll have to commit these five things to memory but you'll go through them very quickly once you do this like okay my heels down left wrist is flat hips are open shoulders are square heads down this will come through very very quickly as you get comfortable with this you'll also find that many of the checkpoints you will do really really well right away with and others you'll struggle with consistently at first that's how we have to learn how to diagnose ourselves and be able to fix them so don't worry if you struggle with the same thing over and over again such as a flip or pulling your head up we have all of the fixes that you need for each checkpoint in the faults and fixes section so if you're pulling your head up don't worry there's a video that's going to teach you how to fix that when you're practicing on the range or at home you'll want to keep notes so we've created a self-assessment tab for the for you to write down two things one what is it that you're doing well every time it's always golf beats us down enough as it is it's important to look at the things that you're doing really really well and keep note of that over time and also the things that you're doing incorrectly if you keep struggling with the flip that's okay we're going to help you fix it but write that down so that you can keep a checklist of the things that you need to focus on during your next practice session and this is going to help you also learn how to emphasize the right things in your practice time so you don't waste any time so you can improve quickly at first we're going to start out with groups of 10 so another thing that we've created for you is a tracker so that you can track the scores on how many out of 10 you're hitting properly you're hitting your checkpoints and i'm also going to give you the what this white line is here for in just a moment to help you understand how to assess yourself so that you know when you're ready to move on to the next step our goal is 8 out of 10 consistently out of groups of 10 so for the first 10 balls you might only hit 5 out of 10 where you're hitting all these checkpoints and hitting the ball within the the allowable deviation for the for the shot distance that we're talking about here and each phase has a different distance that you're aiming for and a different deviation that you're aiming for but we'll talk about that in just a moment so first if you only hit 5 out of 10 it's perfectly okay but write those scores down you can do it on your phone while you're at the range right in the on the website and just keep track of that so you can see over time your progress like okay i'm getting better i'm getting better or i keep struggling with something maybe i need a little help i need a swing review to make sure that i i know what i'm doing how to fix this you'll see your trend increase you'll see yourself improve but you have to put those scores in there so that you know where you're at so we've made really simple notes and scores and your score your goal eight out of 10 is your goal to where you can consistently take groups of 10 balls and hit eight out of 10 hit all five checkpoints keep this keep the ball in the deviation circle and then you're ready to start ingraining that movement you don't want to ingrain something incorrectly because then you're just reinforcing your bad habits so we're going to talk about how to practice in the follow along section but at first we've got to get you the baseline on how to do this correctly and then we'll start building repetition so we start building that myelin in the brain so you can repeat this movement over and over again without having to think about it all right so now let's get started actually hitting balls what you're going to do at first i'm not going to give you a lot to think about on the backswing we really want to focus on just getting the impact alignments correct because again that's the only thing that influences the flight of the ball so if you want to hit the ball straight impact has to be i'm going to give you a couple things to to focus on in the backswing so for those of you who are a little bit more advanced and you're moving through these checkpoints very quickly you can start to also start to move into the backswing movement so you can start making making this movement a lot easier and more consistent so during the backswing you're going to want to keep your trail arm my right arm straight there's no reason for this to bend and if it is check out the faults and fixes for that you're also not going to have a lot of wrist set we're only going to nine o'clock on a clock so if you think 12 o'clock three o'clock six o'clock nine o'clock from your perspective this is nine o'clock so you'll see my hands are my wrists are very relaxed they're barely set my right arm is straight and i've turned my shoulders to move the club as i do this there's going to be a little bit of pressure shift to the right side that's it you don't need to think about any of this stuff on the backswing a lot of this will happen naturally and we'll start to focus on refining this movement in phase four but for right now what we're really going to do is just try to get a little tiny backswing so that we have some momentum to come down and strike the ball with that's where we're going to really start getting into the nuts and bolts of the five checkpoints that we talked about before so let's take a look at what this is going to look like in real time on a real shot all right so when we're starting out with the nine to three drill especially in phase one we're only aiming for 10 to 15 yard shots maximum if you hit it any harder than that you're working way too hard and we're going to teach you how to get effortless power and i really want you to feel this and experience it perhaps for the first time when you learn the release in phase two so do not try to hit these hard at all it completely is counterproductive and defeats the purpose of the drill what you're trying to do is learn how to control that club face every single time at impact so you know exactly where that face is pointing so that you can hit it straight and you know exactly where you're going to hit the ball on the face so that you can get good compression on the ball what we're going to aim for is consistency not power in phase one so what we're going to do i've put a little line of tape here on the ground so that i can show you what kind of deviation you should be expecting and achieve in these drills when you're aiming for your eight out of ten and i'm going to show you a couple notes about things that you're going to discover as you're doing this we're going to go through the checkpoints and i'm also going to show you a couple incorrect ways that you're probably going to see yourself doing so that you start to learn how to diagnose yourself my goal is to get all eight out of ten within about a one or two yard circle at a ten yard distance so you'll see when i go through this movement first and get my setup it's also going to help i'm going to take a little bit narrower stance than i normally would because i don't have a big swing i don't have time and momentum to make a big pressure shift so my stance will be a little bit more narrow all i'm really going to focus on here is getting that ball getting my impact alignments perfect and the ball as a result should go down this line and if it doesn't and it goes a little bit to the right i'm going to tell you why that happens in just a moment so nine o'clock just a little baby shot now what i'm focusing on here i don't care where the ball went yet what i'm focusing on here is my alignments is my pressure on my lead side 90 95 and that left leg straight right foot rolled in hips open shoulders square left wrist flat perfect and you'll notice i only hit that one about six or seven yards i'm going to start out really really small at first so i can get the feel and make sure i'm hitting my alignments correctly my impact alignments if i'm doing that i can start to go a little bit longer ball still rolling along the tape i'm starting to get control over that golf ball for many of you this will be for the first time to know exactly where that ball is going to go before you hit it is a really good feeling in golf and that's what you're learning here so here little baby shots you can see there's no power in what i'm doing i'm just trying to hit my impact alignments every single time now a couple things you may note as you're doing this drill if you put out a little piece of tape like this it's really helpful what you're really focusing on again is not how far you hit it again 10 to 15 yards max what you're focusing on is grouping and starting line now this one i hit a little bit to the right you saw just about six eight inches to the right that can happen because you're holding off the release that's normal the release of letting the club face rotate instead of holding myself at impact or just after impact the release helps square the face so if it goes a little bit to the right and you're consistently finding that happening perfectly okay however if you're seeing it consistently for right handers go to the left then there's something else going on and you're starting to open your shoulders or shut your hands down etc so what you're looking for is either dead straight on that tape or just a little bit to the right as you're doing this drill ideally you're going to see it landing on the tape over and over again and you're going to start to find that you can consistently hit the ball dead straight every single time as we do this we're going to build on it in the next phase we're going to add the release and you'll be shocked at just by adding the release how much further the ball will go with no increased effort on your part whatsoever that's what i'm trying to teach you consistency and effortless power at the same time so once you get a feel for this and you can do eight out of ten over and over again and landing on the tape and of course you're going to ask hey will this help my chipping too absolutely as we hear that all the time in the clinics people working on the nine to three drill and they're like man my chipping has improved dramatically of course this is part of the the movement for a chip shot so that's what you're looking for a consistent grouping and now this is artificial turf so you're going to see the ball kind of bounce around and take funky bounces so you're not necessarily going to have a consistent grouping if you're out on ground that's very uneven and so on but your goal is to see that is it starting on that line and consistently ending up in about the same spot over and over again if you see the ball is going over here and you see yourself flipping it etc you're not hitting your checkpoints that wrist is not flat your shoulders are not square they're opening or or your hips are not getting open etc you have to hit those five checkpoints but once you do you'll see the ball going the same spot over and over and over again and that's the goal and that's the secret to the game of golf so just one more time we'll take a look a little bit more closely as actually hitting a ball going through these little checkpoints make i'm going to make a narrow stance here there you'll notice the club went a little bit past impact it's not going to stop right at impact it's okay it's a little bit of momentum but my goal is again checking that this left wrist is flat that my right foot is very light my head is still back behind the ball and as i do this that club face is going to be consistently square over and over again you hit these checkpoints you're going to be hitting straight golf shots if you find yourself hitting shots that are erratic and inconsistent or you can't hit these checkpoints over and over again go to the faults and fixes section and look for the fault that you're struggling with if it's a flip it's in there if your head's coming up it's in there we show you specifically how to address every single fault with a fix and how to drill it so that you can improve very quickly and get yourself hitting these checkpoints over and over again so that you can hit the ball consistently straight once you have that and you can consistently hit eight out of ten into about a one or two yard circle at about 10 to 15 yards you're ready to start ingraining it and that's what we created the follow along section for where you're going to follow along with the rotary swing instructor going through these same drills showing you the types of things that you're going to think about to feel to focus on how many reps to do how to start catching yourself making little mistakes and how to correct them so that you can start becoming ultra consistent and putting the bat on the back of the ball dead
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