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Phase 3 Follow Along
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It's in Phase 3 where you will start to really experience power AND control like never before as you start increasing the length of your backswing. As you increase speed, you'll now also start altering your trajectory so you can hit missiles that rip through the wind and high floaters that land softly on the firmest of greens.
The phase three follow-along is really about learning how to put everything together at speed.
So now we're starting to make a longer backswing.
Our nine to three position is now not club shaft parallel, but the lead arm parallel to the ground, and then our trail arm parallel to the ground on the other side.
And now we're going to be able to start putting a lot of speed into the shot and a lot of spin.
So now we're going to be able to start affecting different shots at different trajectories.
So as you're going through the bonus challenge in this follow-along, you're going to start being able to alter trajectory a lot easier and hit it harder and farther, but in manipulating ball flight in both directions.
So again, I've got my set of 10 balls here, and I'm going to now start focusing on hitting it, going through the stuff that you learned in the phase three video.
And then I'll mix in some of the bonus challenge here to walk you through that.
Generally, when you're doing a bonus challenge, you want to do all 10 balls in that bonus challenge sequence, because the system recognizes the different skill set that's required for that and scores you differently.
So that affects the total number of reps that you need for that set or to move on to the next phase.
So in general, you're going to hit all 10 shots.
If you're going to hit straight balls, you're hitting all 10 straight.
If you're hitting bonus challenge where you're working on in phase three or working on trajectory control, all 10 balls are about trajectory control.
So first, I'm going to just hit a normal straight ball, and I'm going to make a couple practice swings to get some warm-up speed here.
I'm going parallel, parallel, parallel, parallel.
Still working on keeping my head down.
My shoulders are letting the club release past rather than turning my shoulders and picking up my head.
Remember, if you go to look up to go see the ball, wherever your eyes go, your head goes, where your head goes, your shoulders go.
So you're going to work on still releasing everything and keeping your head down and letting the club pull you up.
All your pressures on the lead side, right foot's going to start to come up in the air a little bit more now.
All right, so let's hit one.
We're just going to hit straight balls for right now, and let's see how this goes.
Pretty good there.
About 160, 150 yards.
Pretty good strike.
Do the same thing.
Going through my checkpoints and my follow-through.
Little bit of a cut on that one.
So, now, what would cause me, when I'm hitting these shots, to hit a little bit of a cut?
Turning those shoulders open, not letting the club release.
So I want to practice that right shoulder staying back and releasing.
Right shoulder staying back and releasing.
Let the club go.
There we go.
Over-corrected and hit a little bit of a draw.
But that's perfectly fine.
In fact, you want to be able to do that.
Because if you can over-correct from a mistake, then you know where the center is.
You know what straight is.
It's just a little bit back down in between those two.
So, now, I over-corrected.
Which, again, you're going to make these mistakes after hitting a cut.
Like, okay, I need to back it down and let the club release.
You release it too much.
Now, I'm going to back it down.
I know what the feeling should be like to hit it straight.
It's just a toned-down version of those two.
Perfect.
Laser straight.
Right on my target.
And that's why it's okay.
And this is why it's important for you to take notes when you're entering your scores.
And pay attention to your checkpoints here.
Because the checkpoints tell you what kind of ball flight you're going to have.
If you're like this in the follow -through, that ball is going right all day long.
If you're like this in the follow -through, club's ball is going left.
So, if you're hanging back, you're going to hit it fat, so on.
So, that's why when you're entering your scores, it's important to put those notes in there.
Because the system knows, it's very predictable what kind of mistakes you're going to make and how to fix them.
So, it's very, very easy to correct these things.
I'll let the club release into a full follow-through there a little bit more, but the shot was absolutely perfect.
Laser straight.
Oh, I chunked that one.
Okay.
So, now, what did I do there?
Apart from losing my concentration.
Shoulder turn, no pressure shift.
The biggest mistake that many of you are going to make when you're going through this and you lose your focus for a second, and first of all, it's totally okay.
Everybody's going to do that.
Everybody's going to make mistakes.
So, the important thing is to stop, recognize the mistake you made, and figure out what caused it.
And again, with the rotary swing system, everything is cause and effect based.
You put input A, you're going to get output B, C, or D.
And it's not that complicated to figure this stuff out.
So, when I hit that a little chunky, what I did is I started down with my shoulders instead of my legs.
Now, for many of you who are hot, at this point, you should be able to recognize that very quickly if you're moving on to phase three.
So, you should know that this is no bueno.
You can't turn your shoulders and hang back.
But that's kind of, it's an exaggeration of what I did.
I was just a little bit aggressive with my shoulders, and that prevents my pressure from shifting over to the lead side.
And I made a mistake and hit a bad shot.
So, simple fix.
All I got to do is go back to my fundamentals that we've been working on this whole time.
Shift my lower body first, then let the club release.
Don't try to power it with your shoulders, which is all I tried to do there.
So, little lapse in concentration.
Refocus here.
And a perfect shot.
Dead straight, 150 yards, with a little seven iron, we're on the money.
Now, as I'm finishing up my set, one thing I want to talk about is how to use the bonus challenges.
In phase three, we're working on trajectory control.
So, we're going to hit the ball higher, we're going to hit the ball lower.
And so, as we're doing that, what you want to do is, during your normal set, you're just hitting the ball straight every time.
Because we're trying to reinforce all of the checkpoints we learned in phase one, the release in phase two, and now we're doing that with speed in phase three.
But as we start wanting to alter trajectory, when you go through the bonus challenge, if you choose to do that, then what you want to do is mix trajectory.
Now, of course, you can go and say, okay, I'm going to work on the bonus challenge today, but I'm only on this set, but I'm only going to do all low shots.
That's okay.
But I also want you to put this in the context of real life.
In the real world, on the golf course, you may hit one shot really low because it's a shot into the wind.
But on the next hole, you want to hit the ball high because it's straight downwind or what have you.
So, or you got to hit over a tree or anything like that, or go into a very firm green.
We want to bring the trajectory up to get the ball to land more softly.
So, it's a great idea to practice in sets of 10, mixing trajectory.
Hit a couple low, hit one high.
Hit one low, hit two high.
So that you get used to being able to get a feel for the sense of the release.
And that's what I'm going to do now.
So, I'm going to pretend I just finished up my set of 10 there.
I entered my scores, my tendency.
I tended to hang back and hit it fat here because I was overusing my arms or my shoulders or what have you.
And then the system's going to recommend videos based on your tendency.
And then what I'm going to do is, okay, my next set, I'm going to do bonus challenge.
I'm going to select bonus challenge, yes.
And then I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to hit this first one low.
And then if I hit that one well, maybe I'll hit the next one low to reinforce it.
Or maybe I'll make a mistake and try to correct it.
And then I'll start altering trajectory.
So on these last few here, let's hit one low.
And so when I'm hitting it low, of course, I'm trying to get this left wrist a little bit flatter.
And the other key is that when you bow the wrist to hit a lower trajectory, your hand will tend to get further in front of the club face, will tend to keep the club face open.
So what you're going to do is not just bow the wrist, but also rotate it slightly.
So it's this, The old supination that Hogan talked about is getting that wrist flat and a little bit more rotated.
To make up for the tendency of the face to stay open when you bow your wrist, because your hands are further ahead.
So I know that going into this, that if I didn't, if I just bow my wrist, this ball is going to go low, right?
Which is a valuable shot when we need it.
But right now we're going to hit it low straight.
So I'm going to try and bow my wrist and get a little bit of extra rotation, tiny bit.
And the only way that you're going to know what that feels like is to do it, which is what these bonus challenges are for and why we're hitting sets of 10 so that we can say, okay, I have a tendency to bow the wrist fine, but I keep losing them out to the right.
I need more rotation or what have you.
So let's see how this first one goes.
Nice and low trajectory came out straight.
So that one's totally fine.
Let's do one more just to make sure that we can do that on demand when we need it.
Pulled that one just a little bit.
I would say I was about five, 10 yards left in my target.
And that was shoulder rotation.
It's going to be very common.
It's probably one of the most common mistakes that every golfer makes is trying to motor their swing with their shoulders and arms, trying to get that right shoulder in to help push the club through the hitting area.
And of course, we don't want to do that.
We want to let the club release because that's where all that free speed is.
So I don't like that I pulled that because that was me not leading with my lower body.
That's me leading with my upper body.
So now I'm going to correct that and get this ball to come out low and straight.
A little better there.
So now I'm going to just pull over a couple more, pretending I'm in my set of 10 on my bonus challenge here.
And I'm going to hit this ball a little bit higher.
So you can see those came out pretty low.
And again, it's just bowing that lead wrist just a little bit.
And now I'm going to let the club release a little bit more and get the ball up in the air a little bit more.
It's going to pull me around to a little bit more of a full follow through.
Whereas the low shot, you tend to hold the release off a little bit more.
Much higher trajectory than the other one.
More than three times higher.
I pushed it a little bit right.
My tendency there, when I start trying to shape the ball, which will be common for you, as well as trying to start using my upper body too much and not letting my hands release.
This is the key.
When you start trying to really master ball flight is not trying to use your hands aggressively to control the ball and manipulate the ball.
Your hands are basically there right at the last second to left in reserve to manipulate very subtle deviations in club face angle.
Because the tiniest little change, you know, going from here to here changes your seven iron to an eight iron.
It's going to change your trajectory a lot.
So as you're doing this, you want to get a feel for the subtlety of it.
And the simplest way to do that is just by bringing the speed down just a little bit to get a feel for the release.
Oh, that was perfect.
Beautiful high softball flight.
I didn't try to muscle it.
I let the club work through the hitting area.
I let it release.
Let my hands release just a little bit more, a lot more than when the low shot.
And then that brought the trajectory up.
So this phase is all about learning how to control club face angle in terms of loft.
The phase before this, phase two was about controlling deviation of face angle.
So if it's pointing to the left or the right.
In phase four, what you're going to learn to do in the bonus challenge is put both of those together at the same time.
And that's going to be the next challenge.
But it's important that you learn how to master trajectory here before moving on to phase four.
Because that's where you're going to learn.
The nine ball challenge, where you hit every single shot in the book.
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
David
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Keith
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Keith
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Craig
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Brian
Thomas
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Chris
Chuck
Joost
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Joost
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Douglas
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
charles
Chuck
charles