GOAT Code Power Program - Step 1 - Activation

Step 1 of the RSA GOAT Code power program is being able to activate and engage muscles in the body that are critical for the golf swing but we don't use very often in daily life. The content on this website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with a qualified and licensed physician or other medical care provider, and follow their advice without delay regardless of anything read on this website.

---

It's 4 30 in the morning, you're in the gym at the Palms Hotel.

Nobody else is in there you think as you go upstairs by yourself, but there's one guy in there working out already.

He's on a stationary bike pedaling away, got a hoodie on, headphones in, grinding away on this bike like a madman.

The two of you work out together for about half an hour, not a word is said.

After about 30 minutes the guy gets off a stationary bike, approaches you, and asks you a question about working out.

You tell him a bunch of stuff, go back and forth, and then you're like, okay, hey, now let me ask you one question.

I'm sure you get this stuff all the time, but what do you think are the most important muscles in the golf swing?

And the guy responds, oh, without a doubt, glutes, hamstrings, lats.

You're like, wow, okay, very cool, and off you go.

What does that really mean?

Well, this is actually a true story that a good friend of mine ran into Tiger Woods at the Palms Hotel, and my friend's a bodybuilder guy, this big strong dude you would definitely notice in the gym, and they were the only two in there at 4 30 in the morning after a fight in Vegas.

And my buddy, who's this big strong guy, as I said, is benching like 250, like no problem, and Tiger walked over to him and started asking him a bunch of questions about what he, you know, what kind of supplements does he do, what kind of food does he eat, how does he lift, etc.

And then my buddy said, okay, you know, let me ask you one question in return, and that was his Tiger's reply, and this was after he was rehabbing his knee from a surgery.

That's why he was hammering away on the treadmill, on the stationary bike.

But anyway, the point of this is, is that the glutes, the hamstrings, the lats, the back, all the muscles in the posterior chain, all of the small muscles attached to your spine, all the small muscles in your hips.

These are the golf swing, in my opinion, I've always thought of the golf swing as more of a pulling motion, as a dominant force.

And I'm going to talk about that as I go through.

This doesn't mean you can't push or throw, or whatever you want to call it.

But in general, I've always believed that it's the pulling muscles, The ones that are on the backside of our bodies, that have all these pushing muscles on the front side of our body, that get neglected.

And it is what changes everybody's posture, which changes everybody's athletic ability, which changes everybody's golf swing.

And once you understand how to feel these muscles, and that's going to be the biggest challenge at first, is just for a lot of you getting these muscles to engage again, Because you probably don't even realize that you're not firing your glutes or your hamstrings, or your certain muscles in your back, or what have you.

And bad posture chronically over time makes these problems worse and worse and worse.

And so that makes it virtually impossible to really make a proper, efficient golf swing until you can fire these muscles.

And if you don't know what these muscles are and can't feel them or can't engage them, you're always going to be stuck muscling the club with your upper body, with your arms and shoulders and pushing the club through.

And it's always going to make your swing very inefficient.

You have to work really hard to create relatively very little power compared to somebody who's very efficient and knows how to release.

And snap the release and whip the club through with these pulling forces that you're going to feel today.

Hopefully, if you're not feeling them already, it'd be for the first time for a lot of you.

And we're going to really focus on the hamstrings and the glutes together.

And these things are key.

And as we go from the little exercises, and again, the point with the exercises is not to, you know, try and build a bunch of muscle.

It's not really what we're doing at all.

It's really more strengthening rather than lengthening or strengthening in a lengthened position, depending on what we're doing.

But it is really more about teaching you to engage those muscles and then relate that immediately to what that's supposed to feel like in your golf swing, even in your setup.

What are you supposed to feel at your setup?

You know, do you set up like this?

Most people do.

As soon as your head goes forward, obviously everything is attached in your spine.

So your shoulders are going to round a little bit.

A lot of you will tend to arch your back because you've shortened your spine by doing this.

So all of a sudden you have really bad posture.

Now you're trying to swing from a horrible position, which is, it can't work.

So, and it's very difficult to make it work when compared to just doing it right.

But take somebody like Tiger, who's always look like he has perfect posture, just like perfect angles.

He almost looks robotic.

It's looks so perfect, but he doesn't look tense.

How are you able to set up in such a rigid looking posture as far as your spine?

Like obviously his shoulders are pulled back because if not, he'd look really rounded like this.

So he has all of these muscles engaged back behind him, but he's doing it without creating tension because he knows how to move those muscles.

He knows how to engage them.

He knows what it feels like, and that's what you're going to learn.

So you're going to be doing an exercise.

And again, not about building a ton of muscle or anything like that.

It's really about getting you to feel these muscles and strengthen them in a specific way, and then immediately translate that into the golf swing.

That's what we're going to do now.

The first exercise you're going to do is standing up.

Seems simple enough, right?

I know how to stand up.

Most of us when we stand up without realizing, especially as we get older, and especially if you have back pain or back problems, you tuck your chin forward first, then you roll your shoulders, and then you kind of round your back, and then you push up using your quads, the muscles in the front of the body.

And biomechanically, once you start to do this, you put the hamstrings into a position where they're super lengthened, and you're not going to really want to be able, You're not going to engage them in some way, it's going to be harder to, because you're kind of having to relax them to lengthen them.

But your quads are building tension, and then you're going to push up off the ground.

That's the opposite of what I want you to do, and you'll see how that's so important to all movement, but especially in your golf swing.

So set at any bench, chair height, whatever, the higher you start, the easier this is going to be.

But start, this is kind of a normal chair height, or maybe a little bit lower, with your feet kind of back in a little bit, a little bit of angle.

Don't worry about getting this perfect.

It's just, I'm going to help you feel something.

So now, first just tuck your chin forward.

You should feel if you kind of just lean forward like that.

It's going to stretch your lower back a little bit, and then you're going to feel pushing up, kind of pushing forward, as if you're going to move and continue moving that direction.

That's what it feels like when you engage your quads.

Now, to engage your glutes and hamstrings, what I want you to do is, first of all, pull your belly in.

Belly button comes in first.

That's to support your lower back.

Super, super important.

It's not talking about making it rigid and tight.

Pull your belly button in, flatten your stomach as best you can to support your spine.

Now, what I want you to do next is pull your shoulders back and keep your chin tucked in.

So this is just good posture.

Probably not how we're used to kind of sitting like this all day.

So for some of us, I get stuck in front of a keyboard a lot.

You know, I have to really work at kind of getting my chest back out, but not popping my chest out, because then I have to relax my abs.

I'm keeping my abs in while having good posture.

So shoulders back, chin back, head back.

And now, what I want you to do, now that you're sitting vertical and your head is vertical, I want you to try and maintain that, as much of that as you can, as you stand up.

So what you're going to do, you're going to have to lean forward.

Unless you're super, super good, you can stay back, but you may lose your balance a little bit.

The stronger you get, the more you're going to be able to do that.

But at first, I'm going to make it easier.

So lean forward just enough, but hinge, truly hinge from your hip.

Don't let your posture, your belly, your low back, any of that change, all of that is staying exactly the same.

And you're going to feel a little bit more stretch and engagement in the back, your glutes and hamstrings as you do that.

So just start to become aware of that.

As you start to lean forward just a little bit, feel how that stretches this part of your leg and your glutes.

And then in your good posture, start to stand up by pulling yourself up, not pushing, but literally feeling that glutes and the hamstrings pull yourself up.

And the more upright and back you stay, the easier that will So then just try to keep your spine keeping straight up and down the whole time.

Now, just sit back down, try to feel the same thing.

If you don't feel it on the first reps, okay, glutes and hamstrings, you're trying to keep your spine upright, trying to keep it as upright as you can.

Again, you're going to have to probably lean forward.

Maybe some of you have to lean forward a lot if you're not used to engaging these glutes and hamstrings, but that's all you're trying to do.

So once you get a feel for that, as you get more, better balance, better core muscle engagement, better engagement of the glutes and hamstrings, you'll be able to stand with, you won't have to tilt forward as much, and you'll be able to really isolate the glutes and hamstrings even more.

Don't be in a hurry.

Just go slow and feel that engagement the whole way up and all the way back down.

Try to do 10 of those.

If you can't do that in about 45 seconds, only do about five.

Whatever you can do in about 45 seconds.

The whole point is trying to feel the glutes and hamstrings, and now let's go tie that into the golf swing.

All right, now grab a golf club.

I've got a six iron here for reference, and I'm going to be doing this barefoot.

You can do this in golf shoes.

I'll explain why I'm doing it, why I'm doing it barefoot as I go through, or in socks.

But what you're going to start to feel at first, the first thing you've got to do is understand that you need to begin to engage these muscles, these glutes and these hamstrings, immediately at address.

And the reason for that is, is they need to be prepared for action.

When you relax and lengthen a muscle, like when you kind of roll your spine forward to stand up, and you feel these muscles relax instead of starting to engage, well then all of a sudden, these muscles are just out of action.

You can't really do that much with them.

You got to be really dynamic to wake those up all of a sudden.

But it's so much easier if you engage them right from address, because then you know the muscles that you're using to start the backswing, start the takeaway, and what you're trying to use to generate power in the downswing.

Because the whole point of this is that you're going to be able to drive hard off your right hip.

That's the most powerful way that you could move anything, right?

Obviously pulling is for control, pushing is for power.

And when you understand how to do that, what you're going to find is that if I move from the glute and hamstring, I can drive my hip forward as much as I want, and much easier, without any torque or stress on my spine, because I'm not pushing off my quad.

So if I start pushing like this, now I'm starting to twist my hips.

But when I pull with my glute and hamstring to drive my hip up and forward, all of this is able to stay relaxed.

And so that allows me to get into extension without any stress on my spine.

I'm actually, if you stood me up from this position, I look like I'm basically in normal posture.

But when you look at it from the side, it looks like I've got a lot of potentially uncomfortable side bend.

The only way that it's uncomfortable is this I'm pushing up off this foot because that's driving my hip up into my spine.

But when I'm pulling, What happens is my pelvis moves forward the same amount it moves up versus just going jacking it straight up, driving hard off my toe and pushing hard off the quad.

That's compressing my spine.

But when I pull, it continues to make room for itself by moving into extension by pulling that glute and hamstring.

What does that glute and hamstring do if I wasn't in a golf swing?

Pulling my glute and my hamstring right there.

Now, when I pull with those, I'm in this neutral spine posture, but still able to get into side bend.

It's all how you move and where you move from.

So now, understanding that I'm going to be pulling with this, I'm loading it in the backswing, the glute and hamstring.

That's why it's okay for the leg to straighten a little bit.

And then because you're getting ready to load it.

So you stretch it just a little bit, The glute and hamstring by letting a little bit of leg straightening up while you kind of even stay in your posture, you'll feel how that stretches that glute and hamstring.

And if you go down, if your head drops a little bit in the backswing, you get even more load of this.

Now, of course, you've got to balance that out with this right amount of side bend or what have you.

But that's why your head going down in the backswing and then further in the downswing is a good thing because you're loading this gluten hamstring.

And so now as I begin to fire those, my hip can rotate, but I'm not pushing to drive my hip forward to rotate my hips or turn my hips.

That's why I don't like that phraseology of rotating the hips.

I'm driving it forward by pulling that hip or the glute and hamstring, contracting them.

And my hips are turning, but I definitely don't feel like I'm turning whatsoever.

So because this is a little bit of a unique move, and it's why tour pros who are great with their hips and move properly, they look really fluid and relaxed and dynamic, but you see them in slow motion.

Like, oh my gosh, how could you be in that position?

Like Joaquin Neiman, right?

But he understands how to fire his core, his glutes and his hamstrings.

And it's so much easier.

It makes your life so much easier if you feel this right from setup.

So now your glutes and your hamstrings from doing the exercise have probably started to wake up a little bit.

And so now as you're kind of feeling them and perhaps for the first time, and if you don't feel them a lot yet, Just keep working at that exercise and keep disciplining yourself to try and keep your spine more upright.

But now you want to feel that engaged at setup, Because what I'm going to do first is go to straighten this and lengthen this while my stay in my posture or increase my posture.

I want to lengthen that puppy so I can begin to use it to pull.

My hip is pulling here by engaging the glute and hamstring.

I'm not pushing.

And so once you feel that, you want to feel it right at setup.

So that's what you're going to focus on here.

Glute and hamstring at setup.

And it will help some of you at first to kind of start with more pressure on the trail foot.

Just kind of get over here and feel, if you were to kind of try and do like a one -legged squat, to feel that glute and hamstring continue to activate.

This motion that you're using to pull yourself up is what you're going to try and feel engaged at setup.

And so the more pressure you have over here, the easier it is to feel that muscle getting ready to engage.

Now as you get more comfortable with this, it needs to be really fluid and relaxed and dynamic and quick.

All right.

So this is the intensity that you're feeling at first is a thousand times higher than what it should feel like in the swing.

It should feel super fluid and relaxed.

That's the best way to prevent injury.

That's why drunks who are in car crashes generally fare better than people who are sober.

It's a true thing because the more relaxed you are, The less trauma that you're going to put on your body, because it's always that sudden stop at the end that causes the injury.

So what you're trying to feel is that I'm getting into this right leg and loaded up over here, but not to push off of it, to pull, to load really more than anything.

During the transition, I'm really extra loading.

That's what the tiger squat is.

I'm loading that glute and hamstring more to then be able to fully fire them.

And that's what gets my hips turned.

But it's why it doesn't look like tour pros are turning like Gary Player talked about.

So feel that your right glute, your right ham or trail leg hamstring, and feel that right address that you can actually sit into it a little bit more to start your swing.

And then as you continue to rotate, that will recenter you as you, you eventually run out of ability to load that glute and hamstring.

You don't want to fully straighten it because then you just lose the engagement.

You want to stretch it.

But then as you're here, you're going to dynamically stretch it a little bit more in the downswing and then continue to move, move through.

So feel that by starting there and then letting it straighten a little bit as you go back.

Arms and hands should be really relaxed.

And then you're going to start feeling that more as we work on the next piece of it.

So, but right now, the big thing is just to feel that at setup.

That's your goal in step one.

Feel the glute and hamstring so that you can kind of load into it.

You can see I'm kind of doing this to feel that stretch and that glute and that hamstring.

I kind of sit into it a little bit at first to give me a little bit of dynamic load rather than just doing it statically.

So that's why you'll see a lot of, a lot of players kind of bump this knee in to start, and long hitters do it a lot more.

They kind of really get into it and then spring back, really stretch that stuff, and then go.

But just feeling that at setup and even if you can kind of feel a little dynamic load to start your swing, kind of exaggerating, a huge exaggeration here, But that's how you would exaggerate to feel that glute and hamstring that you're feeling it set up to start your swing.

All right, if you haven't felt your glutes and hamstrings yet, don't worry about it.

Again, It's a lot of people are going to struggle with this at first, and even just standing up, as I showed earlier, is going to be a challenge at first.

So we're going to do another seemingly simple movement, seemingly simple exercise.

And of course, if you're a more advanced person and you have access to equipment, you can add weight to this.

And the same thing with the getting up off the bench, you can add dumbbells to that, you can add a barbell on the back, you can add a weight vest, whatever you want to do.

But the basic feeling of what I want you to do now is to feel more of the hamstring engagement.

And we're going to do this in two different steps.

So this first part is really simple, but you have to pay attention.

You have to have a mind-body connection, Mind-muscle connection to feel these muscles because these are not the muscles we typically rely on anymore, especially as we get older.

So all you're going to do is just stand up with your good posture.

Your chin is going to be back, so your spine has a chance to be in a more neutral posture.

It's going to give you more mobility.

Shoulder blades are back, but your abs are in.

And the abs are the controller here.

So you can't pop your chest out, you disengage the abs.

So abs first and then get yourself in this good posture.

And now bend your knees a little bit.

Again, no magic number here.

All you're trying to feel is from your good posture, if you just start to bend your knees a little bit and bend forward a little, you should start to feel a little bit of engagement.

Not a lot, but a little bit in your hamstrings.

And so now maintaining your good posture, abs in, Hinge forward and try and go slow enough that you feel that the back of your legs are really doing all the work.

The more you keep your shoulders back and your body in good posture, abs in, you're going to feel more in the back of your legs.

You don't have to go all the way to the ground.

This is not building muscle.

This is engagement.

Now, pull yourself up and let your pelvis should move forward.

And then again, hinge forward very slowly.

Try to feel, you should feel down the back of your legs into your calves and your hamstrings now.

And then keeping those knees flexed.

If you flex them just a little bit, you'll feel a little bit more stretch or load into the hamstrings.

And then pull from the back, The bottom of your butt is where the hamstrings are going to attach, is what you're going to feel in the back of your legs, pulling yourself back into good posture.

Do this five to 10 times.

Again, About 45 seconds is a good amount of time to get your brain aware of what you're trying to feel without wearing yourself out at first.

And get a feel for it.

All right.

So now with your club, what you're going to feel is that you're in good posture again, chin back, shoulders back, abs in, nice and tall through your legs and hips.

Now, as you hinge forward, try to feel a little bit of hamstring engagement.

And once you feel some engagement there, relax your knees a little bit and then grab the club.

And you should still feel some stretching down the back of your legs in a normal posture.

Not a ton.

We're not trying to get them super loaded up.

We're going to do that in a moment.

But the point is that if these are the muscles that we need to engage to create the movement of our body in the swing, then we need to feel them right away.

And so as you're sitting here at address, it's not just the glutes that are working, but the hamstrings as well.

If you feel a lot of tension in the front of your legs, you probably got a lot of knee flex, you feel a lot of pressure towards your toes.

And so you're starting to, again, disengage those muscles.

So as you stay nice and tall through your legs and then relax them just a little bit, you still want to be relaxed here.

But this is going to give you a sense of being more connected.

Because if you lose this hamstring engagement, what's probably happened is you've rolled your shoulders and your chin forward a little bit.

And then all of a sudden these have to relax to get that lengthened in your posture.

And so now it's going to be very hard to wake these muscles up again, to like dynamically use them in the backswing.

So you're not going to, you're going to just be all push, push.

So as you stay nice and tall and let your hamstrings lower you into posture.

Now your shoulders, and with your shoulders still staying back in good posture, not holding them rigid back, let them relax.

But as you're maintaining that posture with the back of your body here, you should feel the muscles in the back of your spine working or in your spine, Attach your spine and your back, working to hold you up in that, maintain that good posture while keeping those hamstrings engaged.

So once you have that, that's what you want to feel at setup.

And now your arms are going to feel more connected to your chest, which is a great feeling, but not if you're manufacturing it, not if you're sticking the glove under your arm and rotating into it, like that's not a natural way to move.

But if you're in good posture and you're using the back of your body, all the muscles in the back to hold your shoulder blades back, but not tense, But not letting them round forward to affect your spine and lose that glute and hamstring engagement.

That's really the key.

In my opinion, is these muscles working to motor the swing.

And so once you start to get aware of that, You're going to start feeling that your arms and shoulders don't have to twist and rotate so fast to create power.

In fact, they're not to do anything once you move correctly.

So you want them to be a little bit more connected to your chest.

So your body movement, because again, all the power is coming from here, that your arms and hands are going to just whip through, they're going to be moved really relaxed.

And the more connected they are loosely, the more they can swing quick.

And so that's why having your shoulders back and knowing how to power your swing from the back instead of the front, your shoulders, that once you do that, you'll feel it feels good to let your arms kind of be swung by your body turn, but you're no longer trying to turn like this, you're getting this hamstring loaded, and then you're pulling and that's rotating you through.

So your arms stay nice and relaxed.

And that's how you get a lot of arm speed and hand speed to snap those hands at the bottom.

So that's what you're needing to feel here, is just paying attention to hamstring engagement, right at setup.

And if you can't feel this yet, I promise you're going to in a second.

So relax, it's okay, if you can't feel this because it's subtle.

But again, It's going to be less subtle when you think about how to start the swing, to load that hamstring, to really dynamically load it, That what you're going to feel in the next segment is what we're going to do.

To get the hamstring to really fire and learn how to use it to create power in the downswing.

Okay, next exercise.

So if you haven't been able to feel your glutes and hamstrings a lot yet, I know it's going to be the case for a lot of you.

It's okay.

This next exercise is going to give you another way to step up that feeling of engagement.

If you didn't feel it with two legs, you will with one.

So grab a club or you can put your hand next on a bench or anything solid.

If you've got reasonably good balance, you can do this with a club or you can do it without.

Again, and then if you're again more advanced, you can add dumbbells to this to strengthen these muscles because I'm a big believer more in people.

Obviously, there's a lot of lack of flexibility out there, But a lot of this is bad posture that has made these muscles perpetually lengthen and weaken over time.

And so and it's the muscles that you need in the golf swing, right?

It's just the ironic cruel twist of life, right?

The rub of the green with golf.

And so these muscles, that's why nobody's swing looks good.

It's an amateur golfer.

They're all trying to muscle it.

The pros have learned how to rotate by pulling and firing this right hip correctly rather than pushing off of it.

So so once you get a feeling for how this is going to work, would you really want to pay attention to how to add power to this?

And again, that's where some extra weights and some gym equipment can come in really handy.

But if you can't feel it at first going to the gym, you're just going to use all the wrong muscles anyway, and you're going to compensate and you're going to hurt your back.

So if you can't do this with any weight at all, or don't feel bad and also just be patient with it.

If you can only do one rep, one reps good because again, We're just trying to to wake you up to a problem that you have with your body and teach you how to use these muscles correctly.

And with time, if you just spend a little time every single day doing this stuff, or if you get really serious about it, maybe just to a couple times a week with these, because you're going to add a lot of weight and it's going to, it's a lot of work to do this correctly.

So now what I want you to do is stand up, get into good posture and take your lead leg, the one that's closest to whatever you're holding on to, and using your glute and hamstring in your good posture, move that leg straight back and you should feel your, this muscle right here, your glute and your hamstring both fire because you're keeping that leg straight.

Now from here, hinge forward with your knee bent.

So it's very similar to what we were doing just a moment ago with two legs, but now you're just doing it with one leg.

And again, maintaining your posture, not letting yourself round, but maintaining that posture, balancing on this one leg, Feel that glute and hamstring work to hold you up and try to keep your front of your leg relatively relaxed.

It's going to engage, But try to feel so much more in the back.

And while also holding this other glute and hamstring tight, to hold that leg tight up there as you hold it back.

And then as you come forward, keeping the glutes and hamstrings really engaged, lengthen back into normal position, and then switch that and do five to 10 reps of that on each side.

Once you have the feel for that, now your glutes and hamstrings should be really awake.

And so what I'm going to teach you next is going to make a lot more sense because your, your brain is going to be much more aware of what you're trying to feel now.

Are you burning?

I know I am.

I definitely feel that.

And the more controlled you are with it, again, It's about strengthening and developing engagement in these muscles and then becoming aware of how to use them.

That is the magic formula.

So once you have that, they should be awake.

Now you've maybe even tired.

And so now what I want you, you should be, It should be much easier to feel them because what you need to do now is understand.

How the heck do I use my hamstring to create power in the golf swing?

It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

But it's, and again, it's not just a glute and hamstring.

It's obviously quad and calf and all this stuff is working, but primary movers is how I think about it.

And this is what you have to feel.

What you have to feel is you want to load into it and up.

And again, this is a big exaggeration, but now that that muscle is tired or engaged, or you're aware of it, you should feel again, keeping your quad as relaxed as you can relatively as you sit into it, that that begins to fire.

And so I'm just rocking back and forth like this onto my heel, really feeling my glute and hamstring, and I'm sitting into it.

Okay.

That is a big exaggeration of what the takeaway is, Because what you're trying to do is load that glute and hamstring as quickly and early in the swing as possible, so that it has time to then drive correctly on the way down.

Whereas what most golfers do, The reason their hips never get open is because they fire their arms and hands and shoulders of the ball too soon without moving their hips at all.

They just don't know how to move or can't.

And so that's why everybody's, you know, the arms and hands catch up to the hips and the hips don't ever get a chance to get open.

They don't have time.

So, and of course they're going to start bracing once you start doing that.

So you need to give your hips a head start.

And especially if you're not using these muscles at all to create power.

So you're wanting to feel that they load.

I feel like they load at setup.

I've got a little bit of load.

Like I'm not just here like dead, relaxed, like my setups got purpose to it.

All right.

So I kind of try to feel a little bit more bias on this right leg to some degree, just to make sure I can feel it.

Even if it's just like, uh, like part of my kind of waggle that I'm kind of like waggling by moving, sitting into this hamstring back and forth.

And I don't have to start there.

I can, I have, I can do fine off there.

I like to start just a smidgen more lead while still being, because I want to give myself something to move into.

It's a little bit trickier to feel it.

If you're kind of already back here, you don't really have anywhere to go.

So you're just kind of like going to stand up.

It just doesn't feel as fluid or natural to me.

So I like to start into that lead side and maybe even, you know, I kind of rock into it just to, again, these are huge exaggerations.

Like, These are things that you really could barely notice unless you're on force plates or like high speed, But that little quick movement to my front and back gives me that ability to straighten that up a little bit while tilting my, Feel like I'm going to tilt my spine down more because that just stretches this more so that I can then fire it.

And that's what you need to feel at this stage is that as you're going into it, and up with it a little bit to go back, that you're getting this ready to be able to fire in the downswing.

And so that's what we're going to talk about next is how do we get these muscles, You're starting to get a feel for how this has to lengthen the side of your body and so that you can be able to do something with it.

In the downswing.

But that takes a little bit more explanation.

So that's what we're going to talk about in the next part.

All right, what's the point of all of this?

What's the point of the golf swing, really?

In my opinion, I think the point is to learn how to do this as quickly as you can.

Literally that.

That to me is the whole point of the golf swing.

And how you choose to do that, it's up to you.

There's a million different ways to do it.

You don't even have to do that.

But to me, that's the most efficient way to swing, right?

How much effort is in doing that and doing that passively.

I'm not really trying to muscle it as we'll see.

Actually, I'm trying not to muscle it at all because I love that feeling of true effortlessness.

And what I'm going to show you in just a moment is going to show you how effortless it can be, How easily you can do this and feel it by just going through the muscles that we've been working on and starting to understand how to snap your wrists, how to release the club as quickly as possible with as little effort as humanly possible.

And so what you're going to see is that if you understand how to load this hamstring and glue, the posterior chain of the body, to feel it all the way up through the spine, all the way up to the neck, all the way up through the body from there, and then begin to increase that load.

Because as you're shifting back to the lead side, this hamstring is getting a little bit of extra load.

You're not squatting down to get on your toes to like push up per se, you're squatting into it to load this even more.

And so of course, your head is going to have to drop.

And again, these are huge exaggerations again, so that you can feel what those muscles are, what muscles are supposed to be engaging as I really dip my hip back and get way back on my heel.

But of course, in the real swing, it's tiny.

But from there, as I shift back to the lead side, and I load that a little bit more and kind of get down into the ground a little bit, What I'm really trying to do is be able to push off of this foot to move in resistance, to create torque in my body, using the ground with my feet.

And so as I'm pushing back away from the target with this, while this is now getting into a position where the hip and hamstring can fire to move it forward, that's going to give me torque so that I can do that more quickly.

How quickly you want to do that is up to you.

But if you're worried about getting your hips that open, as somebody who's had a bad back for literally 29 years, and I'm only 48, so I've had back problems my whole adult life, from car accidents, mountain bike accidents, dirt bike accidents, snowboarding accidents, you name it.

But this doesn't hurt my back at all.

And any pushing from the trail side, like trying to drive my hip up, trying to push forward to rotate my hips, trying to rotate my shoulders, all of that eventually led to back pain for me, just experimenting with all sorts of different ways to power the golf swing, because I'm weird like that.

So for me, To be able to tell you that, at least in my own experience with somebody who's got crazy bad arthritis and scoliosis, check out this picture, a scan of my x-ray, this is from 10 years ago.

God, imagine what I look like now.

But anyway, My pulling with the glute and hamstring keeps my spine in neutral, with just a minimal amount of side bend, but side bend is totally comfortable.

It's side bend with torsion on it, Driving off that right foot and creating torque on that, and also running out of room that herniates a disc in the back, because you twist it and then side bend it.

There's just no room.

That's what squirts the disc out.

But when you are pulling to get into hip extension, You're going to feel this lengthen up through your hip flexors in the front of your body as you're pulling, but not pushing.

And that's how you easily stay behind the ball.

When your head's moving in front of the ball, you're obviously moving from your shoulders or trying to drive your hip forward off your right leg.

It's not what it's doing at all.

So as I'm pulling this open and this is resisting that, it's going to allow me to snap it and do it quicker.

I can just engage those muscles more effectively together to get my hips open.

But I can do that with zero back pain whatsoever.

Your mileage may vary depending on what's going on with your back, but I've definitely had a fair bit of experience with back injury.

So as you're now feeling that together, I'm loading into this.

My glute and hamstring is going.

Obviously, big exaggeration, but as I keep going that way, it's eventually going to, like I talked about in the axiom, kind of 1000 rotate clockwise.

Again, it's a small 1001 movement.

That's going to naturally 1002 recenter your hips.

1003 So now you're in a position where, 1004 again, these are huge exaggerations, but 1005 as I'm going back like this and I settle 1006 back this way, I'm now in a position 1007 where I can push harder off my left foot 1008 to resist or create that torque.

Or my 1009 foot's pushing this way while my foot's 1010 pulling back this way, right?

Because as 1011 this begins to go into extension to go to 1012 maximum range and maximum power, if you 1013 really wanted to put all your, you know, 1014 mustard into it, your hips are going to 1015 be really open.

1016 But as you're doing that, 1017 what's going to happen if you were on 1018 like a sheet of ice?

I think there's 1019 actually an internet video where a guy 1020 doing this and you can see he, his feet 1021 don't spin around this way, like some 1022 might think.

This guy actually knows how 1023 to create torque in his golf swing, while 1024 one side is resisting and this side's 1025 opening up the hips.

And you can drive, 1026 you know, because this is a very powerful 1027 segment of the body to use once you can 1028 use it, once it's available to you.

But 1029 if you've been sitting at a desk for 20 1030 years, these muscles are so lengthened 1031 and so weakened, the last thing on earth 1032 you need to do is stretch.

1033 You need to create strength in those 1034 muscles first and get them to fire and 1035 engage.

And become aware when you're 1036 walking throughout your day that you're 1037 starting to stand more upright because 1038 that engages the posterior chain of your 1039 body.

And those are things that you'll 1040 use them or lose them kind of thing, 1041 right?

So that is what you're trying to 1042 really do is create that torque with 1043 those big muscles in the body.

1044 And as you do that, your arms have to do 1045 anything.

1046 All you're really trying to do is wait 1047 for the release, and the release is where 1048 all the money's made.

So once you 1049 understand how to release the club, 1050 all of this stuff starts to make a heck 1051 of a lot more sense and that's what we're 1052 going to do next.

All right, 1053 the fun part, the release.

This is the 1054 best part of the golf swing.

This is what 1055 makes everything worth it.

This is what 1056 makes it so much fun when you learn how 1057 to do this correctly.

1058 Golf is a completely different game.

And 1059 I'm going to show you that you can swing 1060 way, way faster than you are right now 1061 with way less effort.

I'm not saying what 1062 I'm doing is the most effortless way in 1063 the world, But for somebody who has a lot 1064 of spinal injuries and lots of missing 1065 parts and additive parts, that I'm all 1066 about.

Taking it as easy on my body as I 1067 can, while still, I want to crush the 1068 ball.

I just love it.

I love being the 1069 longest hitter at the club.

I do.

I'm not 1070 gonna lie.

It's fun.

You know, 1071 at this altitude, I can hit it 365 all 1072 day.

So it's a lot of fun playing golf up 1073 here, but you gotta hit the ball solid.

1074 That's what makes golf fun.

And you don't 1075 hit the ball solid, 1076 not feeling like you're having to work at 1077 it.

That's not fun.

1078 I want to feel like I can smoke the ball 1079 and put as little effort as I possibly 1080 can into it.

And so that's what this is 1081 all about.

In my mind, this is the most 1082 efficient way to do that.

And to be able 1083 to snap the risks, as you're going to see 1084 in just a moment, 1085 it's taking power out in your arms and 1086 hands and shoulders and whole upper body.

1087 And it's learning how to snap the release 1088 with your body and your hands working 1089 together.

This is one of the challenging 1090 things about golf.

I can't tell you it's 1091 just do one thing and that's your golf 1092 swing.

There's a lot of different things 1093 that have to happen at a lot at this 1094 exact same time.

1095 And if one is out of sequence, then the 1096 whole thing falls apart.

But it's not 1097 hard to get right once you start to feel 1098 the muscles that you need to feel, and 1099 then you understand how to create speed.

1100 Because at the end of the day, it's all 1101 that really matters.

The way that you 1102 create speed, Whether the way you 1103 consciously do it, or the way you 1104 unconsciously do it, or however, you're 1105 trying to create power, is your golf 1106 swing.

That's what the whole golf swing 1107 is for every single human being on the 1108 planet.

We're trying to hit the ball 1109 hard, relatively hard.

All right, that's 1110 the whole object.

Otherwise, we would 1111 just play putt-putt or whatever.

But we 1112 want to put speed into it.

And there's a 1113 million different ways that you can do 1114 it.

And some work better than others.

And 1115 some take more effort than others.

But to 1116 me, I'm all about finding the most 1117 effortless way to do that.

And that 1118 requires that my hands and wrists can do 1119 this as much as possible.

They can be 1120 that loose and limber for just a 1121 thousandth of a second through the 1122 strike.

1123 That's all I'm trying to really get to 1124 happen.

And that's not, I can't do that 1125 with muscle power.

I can't twist my arms 1126 and shoulders and all of that stuff 1127 faster than what I can snap my wrists.

1128 And so to snap them, they've got to be 1129 soft.

You can hold onto the club firm, 1130 firm as you like, as long as it doesn't 1131 keep your wrist from releasing.

Now, of 1132 course you want to knock it down or hold 1133 one off or whatever.

You can tighten up 1134 the wrist a bit more.

But to generate 1135 effortless speed, there's nothing that's 1136 going to move faster than that.

And 1137 there's nothing that's going to have a 1138 more immediate impact on that.

1139 So this is, to me, the simplest way to 1140 play golf and the most fun way.

That's 1141 why I've always been a really long 1142 hitter.

I just know how to snap my 1143 wrists.

And so once you get that feeling 1144 and you understand how to apply torque 1145 with your body to help move your arms 1146 down for you.

And that's the key.

If you 1147 have to move your arms by trying to 1148 muscle it, you slow the release down and 1149 you change the plane and path, obviously.

1150 But if your arms can stay relaxed because 1151 your intention is to sling the club head 1152 with the wrists through the ball, then 1153 your arms got to stay chilled out.

1154 There's no point in tightening them up.

1155 You're just going to slow everything 1156 down.

What you're trying to do is be able 1157 to decelerate your hands from moving 1158 forward really quickly, because that's 1159 what's going to make them snap.

You've 1160 got all this energy stored up back here, 1161 in your leverage and your lag and this 1162 momentum of this club head getting ready 1163 to take over.

And the more that you can 1164 get moved through the ball, there's two 1165 different ways of thinking about this.

1166 I'll talk about both a little bit.

But as 1167 you drive that hip forward as far as you 1168 can, eventually the club and the arms are 1169 going to get, they're going to catch up.

1170 And so as they're here, But there's no 1171 energy in trying to drive the hands 1172 through the ball because they're staying 1173 relaxed and being moved by this great new 1174 hamstring 1175 glute engagement.

Your arms get to stay 1176 more relaxed and then you get to 1177 into that lead side.

And you can hear the 1178 difference.

The first one I turn through 1179 a little bit and that one I posted into 1180 this lead side.

So hamstring, it's really 1181 fast, right?

1182 There's no effort in that.

None.

1183 Anybody can do that.

I am moving that 1184 hamstring and glute, loading it, settling 1185 back to post up and drive while this is 1186 engaging to lengthen and drive this hip 1187 forward.

This is creating torque to help 1188 move the hips open.

1189 Foot's pushing this way.

This one's 1190 pulling this way.

1191 That's why you see Scheffler and Tiger 1192 and all these long hitters, their foot 1193 jumps back backwards.

It doesn't, you 1194 don't see Tiger Woods ever do that.

Never 1195 in a million years.

He doesn't do it.

1196 He's moving the opposite way from 1197 different muscles.

He's pulling that hip 1198 forward from the posterior chain.

And 1199 yes, the glute, you could technically say 1200 it's pushing however you want to design 1201 it, but it's not driving forward like 1202 that.

So once you're more relaxed and you 1203 can stay more relaxed at a dress.

And you 1204 can do that now.

Because your arms are 1205 naturally pulled more into your body, so 1206 they can swing more freely.

Because 1207 you're in good posture, because you're 1208 worried about your posterior chain, 1209 because as soon as you let your shoulders 1210 roll forward, you lose all of this.

So 1211 now I start to look like I have better 1212 posture, but my posture has intent behind 1213 it, right?

If I'm getting ready to load 1214 into the ball, depending on what I want 1215 to do, if I want to hit a little draw, I 1216 can kind of slide it out a little 1217 further, but I know that I'm still 1218 getting ready to load in the same way.

If 1219 I want to be a little closer to the ball 1220 and hit a cut, I have room for my arms to 1221 come through because my hips are now 1222 always going to get out of the way.

1223 Because that's the primary mover of the 1224 arms and shoulders.

1225 And so once they do that, the arms and 1226 shoulders stay relaxed.

And once you post 1227 up and that hip moves through as far as 1228 it's going to go, and everything slows 1229 down, the harder you can snap those 1230 wrists.

1231 I pushed it through there.

It wasn't 1232 quite as good as the one before.

1233 Load into it.

1234 That's tons of speed.

That's life 1235 -changing golf swing mechanics for you 1236 because all you're trying to do is that, 1237 and anybody can do that.

Anybody can 1238 swing at least that fast and look at 1239 least that under control when you're 1240 loading that, driving back into it, 1241 driving this hip forward by pulling, 1242 letting this one create resistance.

Arms 1243 and shoulders are done.

And that's when 1244 you finish off a little bit of right hand 1245 there.

If you want to, you can keep them 1246 totally passive.

I like to throw it a 1247 little bit.

I like that feeling of it.

It 1248 gives me more speed.

The more I throw it, 1249 the more speed I get.

So it's always 1250 available to me, but I don't turn my body 1251 through more to get more speed.

I load up 1252 a little bit bigger, a little bigger 1253 turn, a little bigger hamstring load, 1254 a little bigger weight transfer to get 1255 back, a little quicker snap, and a little 1256 quicker throw.

But that's not stressful 1257 on my body.

And I can create tons of 1258 speed, as you've seen, by not having to 1259 work for it.

Your goal is not to work for 1260 it if you want to, you know, if you want 1261 an effortless golf swing.

And so that's 1262 the easiest way.

Make sure you're getting 1263 a good posture, load back, 1264 throw.

All of the positions and the 1265 follow-through and all that stuff, you 1266 have zero control over.

1267 I'm just moving like we've done.

1268 There's no energy to drive the hands and 1269 shoulders forward.

They're relaxed.

I 1270 snap it.

You can hear even just with 1271 that.

1272 The more I post, the quicker I can snap 1273 my hands to the ball.

The quicker you can 1274 do that, 1275 the faster you can swing the club without 1276 having to be some superstar athlete.

It's 1277 not about athleticism.

It's about 1278 understanding the mechanics, the muscles, 1279 and exactly what you've got to feel in 1280 the golf swing.