Widen the Trail Wrist
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In step 2, we learn how to start feeling speed in the swing effortlessly
In the first video, I introduced you this concept of widening the angle to start the downswing, or casting or throwing from the top, like the Greats have talked about in their swings.
Now we're going to talk about what this trail hand does.
And for most golfers for throughout the years, the trail hand has always been the one that causes the most trouble.
But the reality is this, when used correctly, is your best friend.
Think of the lead hand, the lead arm, as providing structure and shape and doing some heavy lifting in the swing.
In other words, it helps swing the club up to the top and gives it support and structure.
It's not moving a whole lot and it's not really there to provide a ton of speed.
It helps, of course, But really, What you're trying to do is create this big wide angle and maintain a wide angle all the way to the top of the swing.
Because if you're like this, then you're having a much more difficult time timing this cast, timing this throat in order to get the club to move fast and sync with your body.
So now what you think about, as long as this one's just kind of providing the structure and the shape and maintaining width, then the trail hand becomes your feel hand, your sensitivity, your speed.
And that's how Tiger has always talked about his hand.
He associates all shots with his right hand.
And the reality is most golfers don't know what to do with this thing.
And so sometimes, and you can certainly do all sorts of different stuff with it.
You can leave it completely off the club.
You can have it barely on there.
You can have nothing but right arm.
But the reality is what the greats are doing is really, really simple.
And all it's doing is helping accelerate this widening that I talked about in the first video.
So what I want to do first is just get a feel again with your lead arm only going to the top, maintaining this width.
Remember, don't want to get your wrist like this.
Maintain this width in this wrist.
And then as you start to go tip the shaft, let it swing, come through to a nice balanced, relaxed follow through.
Do that again a couple of times.
Let the club brush the grass, start to feel speed effortlessly as you begin to widen that angle to start the swing.
And that's what you want to feel is you're trying to make this club trace the widest angle possible.
That's going to give you the most time to accelerate the club.
So once you've got a feel for this again, and you've got that feel of the club tipping past that balance point, starting to get cast out into its own orbit and starting to move faster, put your trail hand back on, but don't really think about doing anything with it.
Just focus on the same movement, focus on the same feel that you had with just your lead arm only.
So now we do the same thing.
We'll go to the top.
Same thing.
What do you feel?
Notice how much more speed my hand's barely on there.
I'm holding it really just with the last two fingers and the first knuckle on this right hand.
We'll talk more about this in the grip video.
But note, as I begin to widen the angle, I can use this right hand to move it very fast.
That's all I'm doing to get all of that speed is this.
It's very important.
Look at how much speed I can generate.
Look at my body's not doing anything.
Again, my body, just like the first video, it's just kind of VJ singing it.
It's just chilled out and relaxed right now.
All I'm trying to do is begin to accelerate this widening that I already feel in my lead hand to pitch the shaft and just speed it up.
And now you're starting to understand where speed comes from really in the golf swing.
It's not your trail arm.
It's not your trail shoulder, not the trail side of your body, not that you can't use those things.
You can.
It's your trail hand.
And that's the important distinction.
And that's why we're going through it in this sequence.
Widen with the left first, get the feel.
And then right hand, trail hand, speed it How much stress is that on your body?
None.
My body is just responding to this.
And that's why it's so important to get the feeling of this motion to speed up the widening of the shaft, the widening of the angle between the forearm and the shaft, getting rid of lag.
Now, Hogan and Jones were both very adamant about this right hand and this right arm and this right shoulder.
I said, last thing on earth you want to do is use those things from the top.
But then Hogan at the bottom said, I wish I had three right hands.
This is one of those cases of feel versus real.
First of all, You absolutely do not want to use your right arm and right shoulder that aggressively in the downswing.
Now there's certain swing movements and patterns in which you can do that.
But let me show you what typically happens when you start using this.
The first thing you're going to see is while I'm feeling this to start the downswing, Most golfers trying to feel this because it feels way more powerful, because I'm getting way more powerful muscles involved.
My right shoulder, my right pec muscle, my right tricep, all of these things can start moving this club really fast.
But of course, from down the line, I'm done.
And what did Tiger say in the first video?
He's working to get that club back in front of his body.
So if I go hard like this and I start rotating early, my hands will get stuck.
They'll get thrust out toward the ball and the club will get stuck behind.
And so now all of a sudden I'm in trouble.
Great players want the club back in front of them.
So in other words, if I start to turn, look where my hands go.
Now, You've seen many videos me talk about in the years past where tour pros hands look like they take a very, very steep path back down.
They never look like they're going this way, but most amateurs do.
What causes that?
There's a couple of things.
One could be, I could start pushing the club with my right arm and shoulder because that feels really good.
It feels really powerful, but it just wrecks your golf swing.
And that's what Hogan was talking about when he said they are swing wreckers and they will ruin you.
His literal words in his book, five lessons that the right arm and shoulder and finger will ruin you.
Okay.
So he was pretty serious about this stuff, But what Hogan did was he was already much more shallow and the club dropped right back down as he's doing this.
Of course, it looked like he had tons of lag, but he's also trying to get the club back out in front of him.
That's what all great golfers do.
No great golfer wants the club stuck like this and they definitely don't want the club going this way.
How do you get the club back out in front of you?
Well, the last thing you would want to do is start rotating from the top.
If I start rotating, even the slightest amount, let's just say I go up to the top and instead of doing this with my hands, I start turning my shoulders.
Well, which way did my hands Immediately out toward the ball.
Okay.
Well, that's, that's not ideal.
I know I don't want to turn my shoulders from the top.
You've heard, keep the right shoulder back or keep your back facing the target.
All those things are valid.
What if I start turning my hips?
Wait a second.
No, no.
I know I'm supposed to turn my hips.
I'm supposed to turn my hips as fast as I can.
Well, unless you're Gumby and you turn your hips, your hands are going that way.
And you don't see any tour players doing that.
Their hands all work straight down.
Any great ball striker, their hands are working almost vertically at a much steeper path than amateurs.
So what you'll find is any way that you try and generate what you feel or associate as power in the golf swing, which will come from pushing off your right foot, your right hip, turning your core.
All of those rotational things will cause your hands to start to move out this way.
It's just the way our bodies work, right?
I'm not flexible enough to just twist my hips in any natural way and not have my hands go out that way.
And neither are you.
Maybe if you're a child, you might be able to do that.
But the reality is that's not what great players did in their swing.
They all talk about their hands.
And the hands have kind of been bastardized in the golf swing.
I've taught swings where you're much more body oriented and your hands can feel passive.
That works.
There's all sorts of different ways to hit the golf ball.
But the greats all talk about hands.
Their hands, their hands, their hands.
Their hands speed more than anything.
The clip I posted of Tiger in the intro video is like, I never worry about my body speed.
I'm all worried about hand speed, hand speed, hand speed.
Trying to get their hands to move fast.
And that really comes down to understanding force in the golf swing.
And that's the word I want you to put in your brain.
But I want to give you a different connotation for it.
Because we need speed in the golf swing.
Power is where everything breaks down.
You can make the most beautiful looking backswing, but if you have no idea how to create speed in the downswing, you're always going to fall apart.
You're always going to try and do something to muscle it, to do something you think is right.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
But if you don't understand how to generate force in the golf swing, you're never, ever going to get out of your bad swing faults.
But force is really a simple thing to think about.
It's the technical thing is definitions, mass times acceleration.
Here's the mass that we're trying to accelerate.
That's it.
That's the whole golf swing.
Lots of different ways you can do it.
I can take the mass of my body and try and accelerate it.
Or I can do it with my hands as I'm showing here, which again, throwing the club from the top.
This is a lot more efficient way to create speed.
This is it.
This is all I have to feel.
And if I do that and I relax my body and let my body just move with in response to this club, look at how much speed I have.
I did not try to use my body for power at all.
I literally threw the club.
And as I throw the club, I'm accelerating that mass.
I'm trying to generate force in the swing.
Force to me is speed.
It's not power.
I'm not trying to feel power.
What I'm going to do is the goal in the golf swing.
That has always been my goal with rotary swing.
Because the less effort I put into it, A, the more consistent I'm going to be.
B, the less stress and wear and tear it is on my body.
And C, I'm not going to be as tired after a round of golf.
If I'm working as hard as I can, like I'm doing a deadlift on every shot, I'm going to be exhausted.
I want you to think of force as what you're trying to generate in the swing.
And that's just accelerating mass.
That is your goal.
Now, trust me, I realize this is counter to pretty much everything that's in golf instruction out there today.
Other than what the anecdotal things we have of golfers like Jack Nicklaus saying, he feels like he throws it from the top.
The reality is that in order to produce speed in the golf swing, this thing isn't that heavy.
It's a couple of hundred grams, give or take a little bit.
So as you're swinging this thing, you can use your whole body mass to move it.
And that absolutely works.
Or you can use your hands and that also works.
Now, which one do you think is going to be easier on the body?
Now, of course, the immediate fear that I'm certain many of you have is like, I've been casting the club my whole life.
So, and I don't hit the ball anywhere and I don't hit it consistent.
So how does this help me at all?
It's understanding that first of all, if you're probably casting the way that most amateurs do, it's because you're pushing with your right arm and shoulder, like Ben Hogan warned about in his book.
That's not what it is.
It's this, it's just your wrist.
We need speed.
Remember force, we're trying to generate acceleration and this can accelerate really quickly.
And it doesn't take that much force to get good club head speed.
And as you start to get a feel for this, and you become sensitive to it, And you need to do as many as you can, feeling just the left widening and the effortless release of that, getting that club and wrist released properly.
And then your trail hands, you put it on there, feel the same thing.
Note the club is still released over.
If I'm starting to do something weird, kind of manipulate my hands and what have you, you're going to see that that position is going to change.
But if you keep the basic structure of the swing with the lead arm, casting the club and releasing, and then you speed it up with the trail hand, you're going to swing so much faster with so much less effort because your body can move faster.
Now, how does that work?
Really?
We all know that relaxed muscles move faster than tense muscles, right?
If I was going to jump up to try and touch the ceiling here, if I was really tight in my legs, it's not going to work.
But if I was springing in light and quick, I would be able to jump much higher.
Same thing's true in the golf swing.
Your body can move faster when it's more relaxed.
I spent years trying to get my hips and body to move like Tiger Woods.
It was when I stopped trying to move my hips and body like Tiger Woods that it started moving more like Tiger Woods.
And then my arms and club and all of that stuff started to happen automatically.
And that's when it became super clear to me that this little five-year-old that I showed in the intro video, he had it right all along.
Just throwing the club and your body begins to respond to that.
And then your body can move really, really fast.
So what you want to feel first is the club head beginning to accelerate and feel the hand becoming light.
Feel that club starting to be able to swing in sync with that club head, moving fast because the club head is moving fast.
And once you have that and your hands feel soft, well now my arm is soft and it can move fast.
And then my body, it goes all the way up the chain.
And we tend to think of it the opposite way.
Oh, the swing starts from the ground up and you got to have, you know, your legs in a powerful position and so on and so forth.
Again, you can absolutely swing that way.
It will totally work.
It just is going to be a heck of a lot more work than what Nicholas did.
Jack Nicholas didn't look like he was working that hard.
In fact, if you look at him at setup, his legs were basically like locked out.
He's like standing straight up.
Does this look like an athletic position that you see of Jack on the screen here, where his legs are basically straightened up and then he straightens it up even more going back.
It's not a real powerful leg drive that you're going to have in your swing, unless you start bending down and using your hips and twisting all these things.
When everything started to click for me is when my body started feeling like it was doing less and less and less on every single shot.
And the less it felt like it had to do.
And the more I got the sensation of my hands starting to cast the club and getting speed early in the swing throughout the entire downswing, all of a sudden my body aches and pains and things that I've had for a long, long, long time went away because my body's not doing anything.
Of course, that's a bit of an overstatement.
It's doing something, but really what it's doing is it's responding to this club.
And as long as my club, that is moving fast and my arms and hands are not trying to force it to do that, they're just casting it out into its own orbit.
And as I do that, I can swing very fast, feel very balanced, very relaxed and zero strain on my body.
Now, the key to this is understanding what you need to feel in your hands to throw the club correctly.
So for those of you who are casting the club and not really understanding how to get it to work, a lot of this has to do with your grip.
And that's the next video.
So go to the next video.
I'm going to walk you through exactly how you need to grip the club, just like the greats, in order to feel proper effortless speed.
Jonathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jonathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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