Should You Switch to Swing Like Tiger Woods?

The #1 question I've gotten: Should I switch to swing like Tiger and why did you switch? The answer to both is in this video.

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The number one question I've gotten so far, should I switch?

Of course I expected this question, so it's just the simplest way to answer that.

But before I do that, let me give you a little background on this.

Long story short, I have always been a lead side guy.

I love the look and feel of the swing.

I'm a huge Ernie Els fan.

Of course, I'm a huge Tiger Woods fan as well.

But those are two opposing movement patterns.

I've always taught the lead side with trail side involved, of course.

Of course, I use my right hand.

But as I mentioned in a clip before, before I might feel like I was using it 30% and now it's 130%.

But the reason, there's two main reasons why I started exploring this several years ago, which you guys saw with the Axiom and other videos.

And I've honestly done a ton of release videos on the right hand from years ago.

But I just always saw people not understand how to use the lead side.

So we spent a lot of time teaching people how to use the lead side.

And after the last almost two decades that Rotary Swing has been around, I've been able to help millions of golfers.

I'm super proud of that.

But I am impatient.

I like to get things done now.

And you guys saw that I've always been like that.

When I did the roadshow videos, I went, you know, in 30 minutes, I wanted to see a wild transformation.

And in person, I can do that.

But I can't be everywhere for everybody at the same time.

So hence Rotary Swing, right?

Where you have the ability to teach yourself.

But the thing that I have found over and over again is that people just do not do what they think they're doing.

It's really that simple.

Every single lesson, and we've now done over 100,000 swing reviews online, over 10,000 in-person lessons, people just don't have the awareness.

Just the average person does not know what they're doing.

And that's just a simple statement of fact.

So when you're trying to train somebody's non-dominant side of their body to hit a golf ball, which requires precision and speed, it takes work, which is what the entire dead drill program is for.

But with the dead drill, I tried to make things incredibly simple, right?

And I love that all the feedback.

I've gotten tens of thousands of comments.

That video has been seen, I don't know how many times, a half a million times or something now or more.

I don't even know, but it helps so many people by simplifying the swing.

And you guys know that I've been obsessed with that partly because of my impatience.

I want to get, I want to get somebody to the promised land right away.

And so with the lead side, it just kind of feels like we're always swimming upstream with the average guy or gal.

And there's a numerous reasons for that.

Our attention spans are different these days.

We don't have time.

We're training something we don't do very often.

We don't use that lead side very often.

And so it just feels like it's more work for the average guy or gal than trail side stuff.

And the simplest way to think about it is that I can get done in two minutes, what might take me two days.

Lead side.

And in two days, I can get done what might take two months with the lead side.

And that's what you guys have seen with Pedro and Venkatesh.

And there are going to be many, Many more that I'm going to do in person, because it just moves somebody down that pathway way faster, way faster.

Now, it doesn't mean that you should switch or that you need to switch.

If you're happy lead side, happy with the dead drill, stick with it.

Of course it works.

I've hit the ball miles for decades, swinging exactly like that.

Ernie Els, pretty darn good ball striker, hits the ball very far with very little effort.

Tiger also hits the ball very far with a different kind of effort.

But the long story short is, for me personally, I had to switch.

For me, it was literally not an option.

If I was going to play golf anymore, I didn't have a choice.

As you guys know, I've had more than my fair share of injuries.

I've broken my neck twice.

I've had four surgeries on my cervical spine, shattered my hand, had a pin put in there.

I've broken my back, broken my leg, broken my arm, broken all my fingers, dislocated my left shoulder over 40 times, dislocated the one on the right twice.

You know, I have injuries.

I dislocated my pinky last year.

So lots and lots of surgeries, lots and lots of broken bones.

Mostly all because of two-wheeled activities, but not giving that up.

So for me, my left pinky is just kind of useless now.

And if you want to understand what the feeling for me has always been with a lead side dominant swing, it's slinging that club head into impact with my left pinky.

Of course, my legs are doing all this work to help accelerate the club and all these things.

But that's what it felt like for me.

And the lighter I felt like I gripped the club, the softer my arms and hands and wrists felt, the faster the club moved.

But you have to be able to hold the club with your pinky.

And mine literally is almost kind of useless now.

You know, unfortunately, my injuries are there.

They're not going away and they're permanent.

So I had to start exploring using my right hand for control and for power.

And as I started experimenting with that and doing that and then working on that with students, it was just so easy to get people to do what I wanted them to do so fast, so fast.

And I'll show you an example here of somebody who, you know, athletic dude, fit guy, but not able to assimilate into his body what his brain understands.

And that's what I hear all the time.

I understand intellectually what you're telling me to do, but I just can't get my body to do it.

Take a look at this student here.

I know so many of you are going to be able to relate to it.

But you're going to see so many typical things that most golfers struggle with, especially when they're trying to use their lead side for power.

They don't understand how to do it correctly.

You can see here he's casting the club.

The right elbow is internally rotating, which makes it far away from his body.

And so this causes you to cast the club.

If you externally rotate, it makes you maintain lag.

So it's the exact opposite.

So now as his arms internally rotating, he's casting the club and because he has nothing left to hit with, well, guess what?

Of course, he's going to use his shoulders.

He's going to turn through his chest to try and make up for that loss of leverage.

And this is what happens in most golfers' swings.

They look like this coming through where the shoulders are turning to try and move that club because there's nothing else left to hit with.

And so if you look like this, that's exactly what's happening is you're casting the club.

You can see the club's already flung out here because he started turning his shoulders right away.

That right arm gets flung out away from the body instead of the elbow coming down to the pocket, like I talk about in the Axiom Power Program.

And then there's nothing left to hit with.

The wrists are gone.

There's no angle there.

There's no leverage.

And so, of course, you're going to turn your shoulders through.

So then I said, okay, let's work on just the release motion.

So I had him just grab the shaft, and he started just feeling getting speed, hearing that whoosh sound, like the video I talk about on the site, where he's now focusing on getting that release to happen, that swoosh sound to happen because he's actually even stressing the shaft now.

He's starting to get a feel for what we're trying to do, but he's not using his body that great.

So then what I wanted to do is introduce that little step that we do in the Axiom Power Program.

This just wakes up the lower body.

It makes the post-up happen naturally, the hip turn happen naturally, and it's more natural to maintain legs.

And now look at the leverage in his wrist.

Compared to where he was, where he was completely casting it, he's gone too far.

And this is also very common.

Now look at his elbow.

See how his elbow comes into his body, and I can still see the inside of his bicep here.

So his arm is externally rotated, and then it comes down into his pocket, and now he's got leverage.

Now look at his right wrist in the shaft.

It's all because of this right arm, this external rotation versus internal rotation.

So simple.

So once you have that from here, now you have something to hit with.

All by just simply bringing your elbow to your pocket with that external rotation.

Now he's got too much lag too late in the swing.

He needs to get rid of it, right?

So now look how far his hands are in front.

This is really common.

Look at that shaft lean.

That's way too much.

The shaft's going to release late.

The ball is long gone.

You're going to maybe dig a deep trench unless you have a ton of secondary tilt.

So you're going to take a deep divot, have a steep angle of attack.

So I'm like, hey, that ain't going to work either.

So now what we need to do is get this feeling of getting your elbow down into your side, but also releasing that club.

So I had him take his driver and flip it upside down so he can feel the weight of the grip now, which feels quite a bit different than just swinging a shaft.

And so now as he starts coming down, he's starting to get a feel of that leverage, but I also want him to start releasing it.

That is the important part, because it does you zero good to have all this leverage and not get rid of it.

It's like trying to hit a nail with a hammer, but never letting your wrist uncock and unhinge.

So, but you know, you're going to start seeing things, tendencies, right?

So now his right arm has come away from his body, starting to internally rotate.

It's going to make him cast the club a little bit, but we still have too much leverage.

So we're not too worried about that yet.

Still working on things.

So now I went back to the shaft and I had the impact bag and I said, okay, we're going to beat the snot out of this bag, but look at the difference in his right arm here.

Now, this is not what we want to do, but this is very common.

Not understanding how to release that wrist angle.

Look at the angle.

He's still trying to push the shaft, push the handle of the club through the hitting area.

And all that does is keep the club from releasing.

That's the slowest way to hit the ball, other than maybe turning your shoulders through and driving that club through.

So you need to let that wrist angle release.

So if you're, if you see this, where you see this big gap between your arm and your shoulder or your right arm and your body, and you're seeing that hand continuing to drive through, Then know that you're not getting anywhere near your full speed because you're not letting the club release.

So I started telling him next, you have to understand, you have to get your hands to slow down in order for the club to speed up.

And if you had one mantra with a right arm throw, that's the simplest way to think about it.

Your hands must slow down.

So that's what we worked on next.

And now he's starting to get the feeling of a sudden continuing to drive and push that handle through.

He's starting to release, you know, look at his hands.

See how they're not moving way far forward.

He's still trying to help it.

See the real right shoulder shrug up and trying to do a little bicep curl.

It's not perfect yet by any means, but he's starting to get that right wrist to release.

And that's the key to unlocking speed.

This is why most golfers powder puff the ball off the tee.

So now we make a little bigger swing.

Now you see he's got lag for days to start down.

Because he understands what the feeling is in the swing with that right wrist release and how the arm has to work.

So now he's got leverage for days, tons of lag, tons of lag.

Now we got to get rid of that.

And look what he's doing.

Now look, hands are slowing down.

Now, instead of his hands being driven way out in front, like you saw a minute ago, now he's releasing that wrist angle.

That's the whole point of the golf swing.

The release is the payoff.

It's a lot like sex.

That is the big point.

I know somebody who's going to have a hard time with that, but we're adults here.

We have to release, we have to release that golf club.

This is where the speed comes from.

If you don't release it, you're just, you're just, you're killing yourself.

You're just holding on for no reason.

I know so many people do this trying to get shaft lean and trying to get their left wrist flat, impact because you're scooping.

You're scooping because you're casting.

That's the simplest way to understand this.

So if you're not casting, you need to release it.

And you know what Nicholas used to say?

I go to the top and I throw the club as hard as I can from the top because he's got lag.

He's got leverage.

He's, of course, he's trying to get rid of it in his mind.

That's the feel.

And that's how most golfers feel when they have a lot of lag.

So now check out the release now from where we, where we started, right?

This is just an hour in and now look at the difference.

Now, Look at how much leverage he's got when his hands get in front of his thigh, and his hands are slowing down so he can release it.

That's a golf swing.

In a nutshell, that's a golf swing.

If you can just do this now, yes, the club face is wide open.

I did work on his grip later on, but I'm just showing you the big picture stuff here.

So if we were in this ballpark, your right arm starting to release here, you're starting to get a feel of having leverage and getting rid of it and releasing it.

That is the most important part of the golf swing.

Everything else you can kind of fudge.

You can do all kinds of goofy stuff, but if you don't do this, right, there is no point in playing golf any further.

Do not pass.

Go do not collect $200.

If you do not understand how to release the club through the ball and have something to release, there's nothing else in the golf swing to worry about.

So he made huge progress here.

Again, I was telling him, all you got to do is you got to work less.

Your hands have got to slow down.

The club will speed up.

You know how to now release the club.

Let that happen.

And then he started doing it.

Look at his post up.

Now he's naturally posting up on his left leg.

He's naturally releasing the golf club.

So we are starting to look like a real deal golfer here.

So now the trick is what happens when we put the left hand back on there.

Now, it doesn't matter if you swing trail side dominant or lead side dominant.

When you add the other hand, Things will start to go off because you will start to do things unnatural the way that you were doing them before.

So for him, he's used to using his shoulders to power the swing.

So when he puts the lead hand back on there, that's going to start happening again.

So I took it off for a second.

We release it again.

We go back to the same feeling.

Because the important thing is when you add the opposite hand on there, you have to feel like it's not on there.

It has to feel like what the swing did before.

So he has to feel and continue to reinforce this one arm feeling and then understand what that looks like.

So then I brought in a T-dub here to look at what the right arm needs to do.

Because he started going back to turning his shoulders.

And when you turn your shoulders, that right arm flies away from the body.

It's just centripetal force.

It can't keep up.

So that's why the shoulders can't start the downswing.

You have to start down with this right arm if you're a trailside dominant guy.

So as you start down, I'm going to show you the difference here between where we were and trying to get that right arm in the right position.

So once we put the left arm back on there, I started using his shoulder.

So you can see this right arm now is very straight.

And I'm going to show you in a sec what it should look like.

So this is what it looks like when your arm starts internally rotating too soon in the swing, way too soon.

So now we're starting to cast the club.

You can see he started to cast it here.

Now, when we take a look at Tiger, focus just on the face-on view, I want you to pay specific attention to the path of the elbow.

The elbow is going to go straight down to the pocket, exactly like I talk about in the power program.

And now look at the angle in the upper arm of form.

See how there's a little V there?

That's what it looks like when your arm is externally rotated.

So the difference there is having lag or not.

When the arm is externally rotated, I can still see the inside of Tiger's bicep.

On the right of my student, I would start to see the outside of it.

I'm starting to see the outer part of his arm.

So this is the key.

That elbow has to be externally rotated.

The arm has to be externally rotated to get the club down to a position of leverage into the delivery area.

If not, you're going to start casting.

And you can see that on the right here on my student.

When he started going back to lead arm and started wanting to use that to help him pull those shoulders, to create power, that he started casting it again immediately.

That's what I've always said.

You create too much centripetal force too soon in the swing.

It's always going to create a throwout motion because the resulting force is centrifugal.

So you start turning your shoulders from the top.

Of course, that club's going to get thrown away.

Of course, your arm's going to fly away from your body.

You're not going to get your elbow down into your body.

So long story short, this is what you need to feel.

Elbow down to the pocket, externally rotated, then release that club.

And again, this is this, this conundrum that I've just gone through for, for decades of watching guys or gals struggle with understanding how to move their body, understanding what their body's actually doing versus what they think it's doing.

And when I teach them this trail side stuff, they just pick it up instantaneously.

It's so much faster.

It's so much easier for the average person.

Now, if you've, again, If you've got this lead side pattern developed and you're comfortable with it and you like it, and you're able to produce power, then awesome.

Stick with it because it's simpler.

You're putting Sir Isaac Newton in the driver's seat.

You're leveraging physics.

You're leveraging a body of biomechanics.

You're using your anatomy in an efficient and safe way.

And it, and it works perfectly.

The trail side, it absolutely still works perfectly.

It just feels wildly different, wildly different.

If you naturally know how to throw, this is a no brainer.

If you don't know how to throw, You have to learn how to throw, because that is.

The bulk of the movement is truly just a sidearm throwing motion and an active release of the right hand.

So should you switch?

It's totally up to you.

If you're a golfer, who's playing from as a right-handed golfer, but you're naturally left-handed, you got to teach your right-handed to throw.

That might feel really awkward for you.

If I was playing as a lefty trying to throw with my left hand, it wouldn't be very pretty.

It would take me a while to learn.

I'd probably, I would stick with my lead side dominant if I was playing golf as a left -handed golfer with, but naturally being right-handed because I just wouldn't, wouldn't want to train my left hand to throw.

Cause it just doesn't know how to throw, but my right hand, it knows how to throw.

So for me, it was a no brainer.

It was very easy.

And I taught myself this stuff just in a matter of days.

To be able to swing in a completely different pattern and still maintain club head speed.

And that's a huge thing because nine times out of 10, when you make a swing change, you have to slow down to get your body to start moving the way that you want it to.

You're making it move differently.

And so you always lose speed at least at first for almost everybody.

You just have to slow down.

So your brain can keep up with what you're trying to get it to do these new movements with this.

It's the opposite.

I'm moving fast immediately.

In fact, I think it's the only way to learn it properly.

The only way to feel the true dynamics is to do these movements trail side.

Like fast to do them with speed.

And so it's a completely, it's the antithesis of what, when you're trying to learn something lead side, Where you have to get your body to move in a completely foreign way than what you would do in everyday life.

This is common and normal for people who've ever thrown as I've talked about.

So I teach it very, very fast.

I teach it.

I want them to move as quickly as humanly possible.

And so that, That lull of where you're making the swing mechanic change and having to kind of give up some distance a little bit to get the mechanics right, that you don't have to do with this.

This, you can move fast immediately, should move fast immediately.

And so you actually pick up speed for most people right away, which is why you're saying, you know, you saw Pedro almost six, 60 yards off the tee, Vankatesh over 30 yards off the tee.

That's a huge change really quickly, which isn't typical when you're teaching a bunch of mechanics and positions that, that have to be done right in order to generate power, leveraging physics.

You have, if you're going to swing lead side and you're a right-handed golfer, you have to push off the ground with your left leg.

You have to push up to make the club go down.

That's part of what makes that swing work, but getting somebody to use their left leg at the right time to generate force.

I mean, quite honestly, as, as I've taught so many golfers at this point, I think a lot of golfers don't realize they even have a left leg.

They don't know how to use it.

There's no connection there.

The idea of using your core is completely foreign, not, not intellectually.

I know everybody understands what I'm saying, but getting them to actually do it and feel it and do it with power and speed and precision.

That just takes a lot of time.

This with the trail side, I can get somebody to do what I want them to do almost instantly.

And that to me is a huge win.

Again, I'm impatient.

I want to get you there really, really fast.

That's just part of my nature.

So long story short, happy with lead side, stick with it.

If you want to, if you haven't gotten the power that you want, or you want to get power right away and you, and you feel like the throwing motion is natural to you, or you've bought the power program and you've learned it and it makes sense.

And you're, you're able to learn it from that.

Then explore this because this is something that you can feel right away.

If you go and look at the YouTube comments as people are like, immediately look at the comments on, on the videos on, on the website on rotary swing and look at the comments and feel like, I immediately went out and did this and I picked up 20 yards.

I picked this 30 yards.

That is what the possibility is for this.

Just because of the way that I think everybody learns these days, the, the, the busyness of our schedules, the, the way that we, we've, we've kind of adapted to modern day technology in life.

It's changed the way that we think about things.

It's changed the way that we do things.

And this to me fits better with that.

So I feel more like I'm swimming downstream, helping golfers who aren't the most athletic, talented people in the world versus feeling like I'm swimming.

Upstream, trying to take train the non -dominant side for most golfers.

So long story short, should you switch?

It's totally up to you, but that's why I switched.

I didn't have a choice and the other pattern worked perfectly fine for me.

So it's up to you.

If you want to train the trail hand to throw, if you don't know how to do that, or if you're naturally one way or the other, but the simplest way is to go out and experiment a little bit with both, and then you'll know which is right for you.