How the Lead Side Works for Power
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This video teaches you how the lead side works to generate power in the golf swing.
Getting older, it kind of sucks in some ways, but just because you're getting older does not mean that you have to swing slower and keep moving up a set of tees every year, as you guys have been watching.
And I now have something personal to share with you.
For the first time in my life, I broke the 130 swing barrier.
I've swung at 129 when I was in my 20s, max speed that was out of control.
I can now swing in the 130s for the first time and actually hit balls and do it under control.
I'm going to talk about that more in an upcoming video.
What I want to talk about today is how I was able to do it at 48 and swing faster now than I did at 28.
And for many of you who don't realize, rotary swing is turning 20 years old in January.
This is December or almost December 2024.
So next month, we're going to be, we've been around for 20 years.
And during that time, you guys have seen all sorts of stuff that I have done to try and teach you how to play great golf and be a consistent and powerful golfer.
And with the goat code and adding trail side power into it, the one thing I want to talk about today that's going to give you power is understanding how to use the lead side with the goat drill, because obviously we have two sides of the body and they have to work together.
Otherwise, we would just swing like snappy Gilmore and just swing all right handed.
It'd be very hard to control the club and we would lose a lot of power from the lead side.
So how do we use the lead side?
And how does it actually help us produce real speed so that you can actually break your own speed barriers that I'm going to share with you today?
So the first thing I want to show you is this really strange looking drill that Tiger's doing on the range.
And you can see he's kind of doing what I call kind of a little right hip kick.
This move is extremely important for understanding how to load the body in the golf swing.
And so with the goat drill, you started to understand how to open up the trail side to be able to fire it on the way down.
And you can see if you kick your hip out this way, as your arm is going up, what is that going to do?
It's going to help you open up this trail side even more.
But that's not really, in my opinion, what Tiger's doing here.
And that's not he's not moving from his right hip to kick his hip out.
He's moving from the lead side.
And you're going to understand why and how to do this most importantly, in just a moment, because this is absolutely one of the most important parts of Tiger's swing for effortless power.
And that's what Tiger's always been about.
We've watched him hit so many balls, he's made it look so easy.
And this is one of the things that I've been working to understand for so long, that I now can teach you how to do this and produce probably more club head speed than you ever have in your whole life.
Even if you're getting up in years, just as I am, I know many of you are much older than I still.
But as you can see, as you've seen from some of the members I've posted recently, you can swing faster in your 60s and 70s than you ever have in your whole life, because golf is a technique based game.
And the technique that you're going to learn today is going to be one of the most important things that you're going to ever learn for power.
So this hip kick, what is Tiger doing here?
And what do you need to understand about this?
One of the biggest things that you do in a lead side pattern is you coil up to be able to rotate.
In a trail side pattern, you don't do that.
Not that you can't, not that people don't and blend all these things together.
But to make your golf swing really simple, I want you to think of it as moving in a straight line.
So as I move my hip out like this, if I just did it with my right side, this would just make me push up off the right, that's not going to work.
So what we've got to actually do in the swing is understand how some things have to work together.
And then that's going to help you understand how to use the lead side and how to explode off the ground for power.
So what's really happening here is that Tiger is actually pushing off the lead side to push the right hip back.
So if the right hip stays relaxed a little bit more, rather than trying to sit over on it, it's because you're going to shove off of it.
If I use my left hip to drive my hip back in a relatively a diagonal fashion.
So what I'm saying, not straight back, the club shaft would be moving straight toward the camera, but I'm kind of moving it diagonally.
So I want this hip to get deeper during the backswing.
This is important because this left leg is super important for producing power.
And in order to do that, I need to load it so that I can jump, not just jump, but I need to provide resistance.
I need to use the ground to push off of the ground to get everything to release properly.
And the first key for that is loading it properly.
So when you're looking at your hip, the way that you want your hip to move is again, use your left leg to push your hip back.
And you'll see this leg is going to straighten a little bit and my hip is going to tilt and I'm not going to turn.
That will make my belt really level.
I want my hip to tilt.
Now imagine if you were going to kind of jump off the ground with just your lead leg.
That's a bit how this works.
It's not exactly the same way, but I'm going to explain more about that in just a minute.
So as you push this right hip back, this left hip is going to tilt.
So you actually need your hip socket to kind of pivot.
You need your pelvis to pivot a little bit on this hip, on your lead hip.
So now you'll see that my belt line is going to be tilted and my knees are going to be tilted.
And what this is going to do is help me load up, open up the right side even more rather than turning or turning this way going back and then turning this way going through.
I want to tilt.
Now I'm doing this in a pretty big exaggerated manner.
When we look at a swing that I posted earlier in the video on how to waggle, we'll talk about how this is actually going to look in the real world.
But the biggest thing that you want to feel is that you're loading up your trail leg this way.
Your hip's going out, your lead neck's going forward, and it's actually going to go out.
And the more that you bring it out kind of over your knee without going too crazy with it, the more that you're going to be able to spring up off of it in just a second.
But before we understand exactly how this whole springing and jumping thing works, what I want to do first is get you a feeling of how your body's moving.
I talked about it in the waggle video where you're basically trying to feel your body acting as a lever against your wrist.
So you can see I'm actually moving in the opposite direction the club's going.
And without doing anything with my arm or hand, the club is swinging and it has a little bit of speed to it because I'm moving my body in the opposite direction.
And when you get a feel for this, it's going to help you to do a little exercise.
So let me show you a simple little exercise.
I'm going to do it with a kettlebell, but if you have the medicine ball with handles, this will be perfect for you.
You want something with some weight.
So let me grab a kettlebell and show you how to get a feel for this and visualize this in your head.
So this is a kettlebell.
It's 20 pounds.
It's obviously way heavier than the golf club is and heavier than the medicine ball that we typically use.
But this will help you kind of realize it's going to kind of pull me around a little bit.
And so you'll be able to kind of see and visualize what the golf swing feels like when you're producing power using your entire body, your entire fascial system, and how Tiger produces power.
So if I hold this with my right hand underneath the grip and then my left hand under there, how I would swing this back and forth is I would move in the opposite direction.
If I move with it, it's going to pull me off balance because it's so heavy.
If I try to move it this way, it's going to pull me off balance.
So how do I counterbalance this mass?
Well, I have to lean first this way.
So in the backswing, as I've talked about using the force plate studies, you've seen that the pressure on most tour pros goes to their back foot like 80-90%.
But by the time the club is parallel to the ground, it's done.
So by the time the takeaway is done, they're no longer shifting any more pressure to the trail side.
They're actually starting to recenter and get ready to go back to the lead side.
And that's what this is going to help you simulate is that if I have this heavy mass, it's obviously going to pull me back here.
But if I let it keep pulling me, it's going to pull me off balance and I'm going to stand up during my backswing.
I see that all the time for golfers who don't really understand how to swing the club and they just use their arms.
They kind of keep going to the right foot and then they all their weights over here.
And now they're going to be forced to stand up.
Otherwise you would lose your balance.
So if you're the type of golfer who stands up a lot in the backswing, you're completely missing how to use your body in the swing.
This will help you feel that.
So if I swing and if you don't have again, a heavy ball or the medicine ball, even a bucket of paint, a bucket of water, anything with some, a bucket of range balls will help you feel this, but you do need some weight.
So as I go back, you'll see that my weight's going to go here, but then once it kind of gets back, you know, where my hands would be at kind of at the end of the takeaway, I'm done swinging it that way.
And I'm starting to go back this way.
Now what's going to happen, you can see again, exaggerated, my leg is angled in and this leg is bent quite a bit from down the line.
I'm again, exaggerating, but my weight kind of goes to the outside of my foot, on my trail foot, and a weight goes on the ball of my foot, on my left foot.
Knees going forward, this one's straightening.
This is how you would swing this to then get ready to swing it the other way, which is what we want to focus on next.
So once I have this and I'm loaded here and it's going to start to fall back down, I'm going to wait for it for just a second.
But then once I would be about here, I would then push up off my lead leg because this has got some momentum swinging on the way down now.
So now I really need to resist it.
If I don't, if I just kind of do that, it's going to completely pull me out of control.
So what I got to do, now what did you notice there?
Watch my left foot and my, watch both feet.
So I'm going to swing it back.
Didn't use my arms at all.
I'm not using my arms to move this thing.
I'm swinging back in the opposite direction, back in the opposite direction.
And you'll see that I need to go from the ball of my foot to the outside to push back.
And then I end up on my heel.
This motion is what snaps the release.
It's what gets, it's what gets everything kind of firing the right way.
Now, of course, if I really wanted to push, move this thing really hard, I could push pretty hard off my right foot in conjunction with this.
When you really want to add a lot of power to your swing, you're going to start feeling doing both as if you were going to throw this medicine ball or this kettlebell as far down the fairway as you could.
But the biggest thing that you need to feel is moving in the correct order in the correct sequence.
So again, and I'm not trying to move this around my body, right?
It's not rotational the way the tiger swings.
It looks like it's a rotational movement.
What he's really doing, my arms are basically swinging back and forth in what feels like a straight line.
But of course, once the club starts, you know, starts going around my body more, I'm going to look very rotational.
But what I feel is this.
I'm starting to load this leg, fall into it, get that hip angle tilt, my knee, my left knee lower than my right, so that I'm starting to fall into that lead side.
This leg being angled in makes it very easy for me to fall over here.
If you get your leg vertical, how are you going to get back over to your lead side in the downswing?
And you wouldn't do this again with a bell.
So when you get the feeling of how you've got to counter the mass of this bell, you understand how you create power in the golf swing.
It's literally that motion that's producing all the speed.
So now when I grab a club, the motion is the same.
I just have to feel, just like the waggle drill, starting to feel that I'm moving in the opposite direction.
If I start doing this and I'm moving with the club, there's no power there.
It's going to be very pushy swing.
I'm wanting to go back, fall into this.
And then as I'm starting to come down, I'm going to push off of it.
And you're going to see that my foot, when I'm doing it at speed, is going to jump back.
This really snaps the release and gets a lot of ground force into my body and allows me to hit the ball really hard, but still have control because my arms and hands, just like swinging the kettlebell, I'm not trying to manipulate that kettlebell all over the place.
Same thing with the golf swing.
I'm not trying to manipulate the golf club.
I'm trying to swing it with my whole body and I'm falling back and then I'm snapping it as I'm falling back this way.
I'm pushing back off this foot and that's why you'll see the foot levitate.
Now let's take a look at this a little bit more closely in slow motion and go through this step-by -step.
All right, now let's take a look at this and compare it with Kyle Berkshire.
He is the longest driver in the world.
Can swing well over 140 miles or this swing on the rise, 148 miles an hour.
So incredibly fast, but you're going to see the exact same sequence of events, the exact same technique that I'm just talking about in this video.
So first things first, you're going to see now in this swing, notice how both of our heads stay pretty constant going back.
So I'm going to put a line on top of my head, a line on top of Kyle's head, and you'll see there's not, he's actually standing up quite a bit.
So he's pretty constant there.
But then once we get here, the head, both heads are going to drop a lot.
And we're going to talk about why this happens.
I know Tiger was criticized about this forever.
It was completely foolish to criticize him for this.
It's the most important powerful move in the swing and all great power players do it.
So watch as our heads drop.
So now you can see both our heads have dropped four or five, six inches.
Now, how does this happen?
Well, we are both starting to fall back into that lead side because of the angles that we've set up.
So first of all, you'll see that my right knee is above my left.
You can see my belt line is tilted.
My left hip is lower than my right.
Same thing on Kyle here.
You can obviously see a tilted angle here.
This is setting it up to make it very easy to get back to the lead side, but also to get ready to jump off the lead foot, which you're going to see both of us do here in just a second.
So now as we start down, our pressure is going to go back to the lead side.
Now, again, I've talked a lot about pressure and weight.
There's a very big difference.
I'm not trying to move my mass forward.
I'm trying to move pressure forward, which is going to happen automatically.
If I tilt my angles, my knee and my hip, that's going to make everything very easy for me to fall back on the lead side.
And because I'm setting myself up to jump, it only makes sense to load that knee, my left knee.
Notice the amount of flexion in my left knee.
It's pretty significant.
And as I'm using that, I'm going to keep it loaded till late in the downswing.
So you can see at this point in the swing, this is the old tiger squat look where you can see a lot of flexion in both knees at this point and both myself and Kyle here.
And you're going to see next that that's going to be maintained for a while.
But right in here, we're now getting ready to transfer that energy.
We've moved laterally, we've moved rotationally, we've created some torque.
You'll see if we want to see that first bit of torque here, you can see my right foot.
If you focus on my toe, it starts to slide back there just a tiny bit in these two frames.
It's starting to move back because I'm creating rotation.
Now, obviously, as I'm doing that rotation, then starts shifting into vertical force.
And that's the timing I was talking about in the goat power sequence.
All great power players move laterally, then rotationally, and then vertically.
Some do it more than others.
Some have the sequence a little bit different, but you're going to see that the longest here's in the world all do this basically the same way because it's the most efficient way to swing the club, just like it would be the most efficient way to swing that kettlebell.
We swing the golf club, not with our arms, but our entire body.
And that's how at five, nine and 165 pounds, I'm able to generate over 130 miles an hour club head speed.
This swing here was 127.
I don't like to swing that crazy fast without hitting balls because it doesn't slow the club down when you don't hit a ball.
And so you're kind of having a pretty aggressive follow through, which you'll see in just a second.
But long story short, now we're both up on our right toes.
You can see that we will shift off of that right heel really quickly because all our pressure is on the lead side.
So we make a very quick pressure shift.
We're falling into that lead side.
We've stacked our joints, our knees, our hips, all of that to set up for that.
And now from here, the focus is on going vertical.
So now you can see, and I'm going to use the mirror in the background, you can see that my left leg still got a lot of flexion in it, but it's going to begin to snap fully straight right there.
And that is where power is coming from that.
We are both pushing off the ground and you can see the same thing in Kyle's case.
Both of our feet are lead foot is going to levitate and float and shift back to the left.
This is where you're snapping your wrists without having to use a lot of muscular force to snap your wrists.
It's all in using your entire body to create leverage and you can use your hips, your legs, your core, all of it to create power.
And this is how you use the lead side to work with the trail side.
They both have to work together.
So again, you're going to go down.
You can see I'm still maintaining a lot of flexion in my left leg.
You can see that in the mirror there.
And then I'm going to push up off the ground very quickly to snap off of that left foot.
And if we zoom in here, I'm going to draw your attention for those of you who are looking at yourself on video.
I want to draw your attention to a couple of things.
So first, now I turned, I added a little bit more rotational force in here than I needed to.
It does help you get more speed.
But as you start shifting more in a diagonal fashion, rather than trying to think about it and moving in a rotational fashion, you'll start to get a little bit more snap.
And that's where I was really able to boost my speed even more.
But again, I'll talk more about that in an upcoming video.
Focus on my left heel here.
It's still up in the air.
Now it's interesting when you think about it, if you're wanting to rotate, you want to get back to that heel, left heel very quickly, because that puts you in a position where the weight moves back onto your hip and then you can rotate very quickly.
But again, I'm actually staying on the ball of my foot so that I can jump.
You don't jump off your heel.
You jump off the toes, off the ball of your feet.
So you can see my left heel starts to plant just for a split second.
So we'll go through it a few frames here.
Heel still up in the air, still up in the air, still up in the air.
Now right there is the most pressure it's going to be on it.
But look at how quickly I'm off of it.
In one frame, it plants and then I'm off.
So I'm never really getting back onto the heel here because I'm trying to jump up into the air to push up off the ground to snap my wrists.
And so now you'll see the left leg is completely vertical.
All my pressure is moving back onto my right big toe.
And you're going to see that left foot begin to rotate because it's becoming weightless.
I jumped.
I've literally jumped up in the air and it's still floating, moving back.
All my pressure's back on my right big toe, club's still releasing.
And then we get into a full follow through.
That is the key.
When you understand how to combine the lead side and the trail side together, that's when you start getting very efficient.
And for many of you, You may not feel very comfortable even jumping off of your lead leg right now, because you just probably haven't jumped since you were in high school, maybe.
And that's when we start to feel old.
When we stop moving like we did when we were younger, you've got to move powerfully, explosively.
And so I'm actually creating a full program to show you exactly how I took my club head speed into the 130s.
Because there's a fitness element involved with this, too.
This jumping motion is an explosive movement.
And so be on the lookout for that.
I'm putting together in the RSA program.
If you struggle with kind of getting this explosive jump feeling and you don't have the power that you need in your legs, I've got a full program that's coming out very soon.
But long story short, if you start to feel, understand this is how the lead leg gets straightened.
You are literally loading it.
Notice how bent my left knee is still.
And it comes forward a little bit more than Kyle's did because I'm, again, I'm moving a little bit more rotationally, which is a little bit of a lead side hangover, but I'm in a very powerful position to be able to spring off of that left foot.
You can see my hips get fully open, but they don't open until late.
I'm not trying to turn my hips.
I'm trying to move force in a specific way.
And if you just start pushing off of that lead leg in this way, you'll see my weight goes to the outside of my foot and then springs back.
Your hips will open without you trying to turn your hips open.
So if you're struggling with the lead side movements and you're not getting that lead leg to straighten through impact, start working on these core movements of loading into the right hip, get that right hip to kick out.
Like you saw Tiger doing at the beginning.
It feels like it's, again, he's doing an exaggerated motion in that drill, but that's what it feels like when you drive your left hip into the right hip and tilt and pivot on that left hip socket.
If you let the knee come forward, let the weight come forward on the ball of the foot, and then you can load into it dynamically on the way down.
That's where the head drop is.
So now I'm loading that fascia in my lead side of my body, my lead leg to be able to spring up off of it and hit with tremendous power.
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Chris
Chuck
Earl
Chuck
Mark
Mark
Mark
Chuck
David
Chuck
Dennis
Chuck
Matt
Chuck