Trail Arm Release - Throw the Ball Drill Pt 1

This is THE key drill for really understanding how the downswing sequencing works. This 20 minute long video is one of the most important on the site.

• If the drill feels natural, you're probably fine - if it feels strange, you need to work on it
• In setup position, set the right arm where it would be at the top of the swing - keep the shoulder blade down
• Rotate back then throw a ball with the right hand, working to feel that the shoulders and hips remain shut
• In fact, the throwing motion will cause a natural weight shift leaving hips open while the right shoulder stays back
• Feel that the pivot point (the shoulder) does not move beyond the release point (the ball)
• This helps golfers who over-pull from the left and over-spin their hips
• The hips need to brace up in neutral at impact so the power of the swing transmits up the chain to the shoulders, arms and club

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All right, Chuck Quinton here with Rotary Swing Golf, and we've got a student here, Josh, who has been struggling with his game.

And we worked on a drill just with him yesterday.

And one of the videos that you'll see on the page was Josh working on this throw the ball drill.

And it's made a big difference.

And so I brought him back in to talk about a little bit and talk about what he was doing in his swing before and how it's changed so that he can play a little bit more confidence.

Josh you've been playing for a long time but you've been struggling with your swing lately and so you really haven't been all that jazzed about golf.

No unfortunately not.

I'd say about six or seven years ago, I was playing probably some of the best golf in my life.

And I was hitting the ball with my driver.

When I hit it solidly, go probably 300 yards or more, quite often, hit my irons pretty crisply as well.

Since then you know I lost a heck of a lot of distance.

Last few years I've been hitting it maybe 270 yards when I hit my best shots.

Most of those shots with the driver you know occasionally hit one straight but usually it's a big block to the right.

Sometimes I would kind of flip at the end and hit the big old snap hook as well, but just really not making a very good pass at the ball.

And my swing speed, you know, I checked it last year, it's probably around a hundred miles an hour, were some of my top swing speeds.

And you know, there's no way you're gonna hit 300 yards when you're doing that.

And I've really been disappointed and would like to get some of that distance back.

I I mean, I'm six foot three and probably a little bit more flexible than most.

I'd like to think I could hit a little bit further.

And so yesterday was a pretty quite an eye-opener for me and I was pretty excited.

So for those of you who haven't seen the video that we posted up Josh was just working and we came in and had him do the right arm only drill and the left arm only drill in both hands and then averaged his speed and his speed without hitting a ball was about 110 miles an hour I believe and of course when you're not hitting a ball you're going to swing a lot more freely but as you felt on the golf course you really had to tone that down because your path had become severely into out and that's a big part of what we're going to talk about today because fixing that path is going to have a dramatic impact not only in your confidence but also just in how solidly you strike the ball what how it starts online your release and all those things and so when when your path was bottoming out way behind the ball you mentioned that you tended to block it a lot and so of course what's going to happen is when you try and swing harder you're just going to tend to block it even further or so just everything kind of goes into a big funk and so you end up in a position where you're not comfortable to swing fast anymore because you're not going to hit it online and then you start backing it down even more and you're still blocking it so you just run into this place where you don't really know what to do with your golf swing and so so what we did yesterday is we worked on the throw the ball drill which we're going to demonstrate in just a moment I'll have Josh demonstrate it and then I'll walk everyone through it but one of the big things was that doing that drill just by itself your club head speed from 110 to 118 and just two swings yeah and we probably worked about two minutes on the drill so it really is a phenomenal drill and it blows people away how fast they can pick up speed but it's really pretty simple it's a very athletic move it's a very simple move and a natural move it's a very natural throwing motion so right away we got Josh back into that range where you could you know at 118 miles an hour if it's launched properly instructs oddly you can actually carry the ball about 300 yards so so we're getting a lot closer to where we want to be going from 100 miles on the course to 118 would be a nice big jump so so what I've done I've got the ball here we just use a little foam ball this is a great drill because you can do it indoors you don't have to be outside you're going to get all the right work and especially have a mirror or a video camera you'll make 10 times quicker progress but I'm going to have Josh kind of walk through the drill so Josh go ahead and set up for me and then what we do in the drill is that I just have him at first just preset his right arm to where we want it at the top of his golf swing so he's going to be a little bit more connected here with his chest and his bicep this is important that he keeps that scapula down because this is the connection to his trunk his motor of his golf swing has to have so if you want to generate any power that scapula has to be down so that the trunk can transmit power to the arm and club when his shoulders elevated his shoulder blade is elevated now when he turns his trunk his arm doesn't really do anything so he doesn't take the advantage of that initial acceleration coming from the cord hips and transfer to his arm so so we do this just getting everything perfect right from the beginning it's a great way to start then go ahead and rotate back so now we've got him in a great position here made a good turn and then all he's going to do from this position is he's going to feel now this is important he's going to feel that he doesn't move his shoulders and he doesn't move his hips at all all he's going to do is just make a natural throwing motion so let's take a look and see what happens when he does that go ahead and throw it josh you threw it at me that'll work so now let's take a look at what happened his shoulders have undoubtedly rotated and his hips have rotated and we're going to do it again do it from down the line josh we'll do without the ball this time so just kind of act like you're throwing a ball there so preset the right arm go to the top of the swing and now again he's going to feel like this stays shut and his hips stay shut and go ahead and throw the ball now what happens his hips are open they're in perfect position his right shoulder stayed back his arm is released and his shoulders if he was at impact would be square and then they're going to release a little bit and he's going to be open so again this is a go ahead and come out of there josh this is a feeling that he's trying to keep everything shut the reason is josh as you well know you tend to overdo pulling from the left side and what does that do to the club when you do that yeah i would pull and pull and pull and what would end up happening is i could create some speed but always came after impact because i pulled and pulled and pulled and never really released that right arm until it was too late exactly so what happens is when you get to the position in the top where you start pulling really really hard your arms never have the chance to catch up to get back in front of the torso in front of the chest because from the top of the swing to get into a stuck position your shoulders only have to move four or five inches but your hands have got to move several feet and so if you don't actively use the right arm to help bring the club back down bring the hands back in front of the body all you do is end up in this position and how did that affect your follow through and your release oh the release was really late the follow through i certainly didn't come back toward the inside like you see a lot of times on when you're swinging with a proper release and it was just a really weak i didn't hardly feel like i was getting through the ball or making a full complete turn through the ball exactly and so a lot of time this is this is really interesting because a lot of golfers complain about not being able to get the club to work back around to the left and so what they do is they start trying to force it and in fact the way that you get the club to release back around to the left is to not force at all you let it happen so josh i'll give you a club for just a second and then go ahead and go down the line and we're going to demonstrate a couple things so go ahead and preset it go to the top and you can use both hands for this for now go to the top and now go ahead and i want you on this swing just to to demonstrate go ahead and pull really really hard act like you'd be pulling really hard his arms are stuck at this point see his shoulders are already open but the club's very late and if he keeps pulling the club is going to have to release out this way which is way out to the right and this is about where you would be absolutely so your shoulders have been opened and the hands couldn't catch up so they just finally once they do release which the ball is long gone at this point they're releasing out to the right so now let's go to the top again and we'll do this one just right arm only just to make it a little bit easier go to the top and now go ahead and do the right arm only drill so you're taking it so now as he's worked actively to bring the club down it's starting to close it's back in front of his body and now at impact he's square and then the club and arms release now automatically the club has worked back on the inside path where it needs to work on this arc but if he continued to push his shoulders around the club's going to get stuck out to the right so let's do that from face on and i want to show people what happens to the right shoulder here when we do that so we'll do it incorrect first so go to the top and now just go ahead and pull go and put your left hand on there because it's a lot easier to see with both hands on there when you pull really hard from the left good now go ahead and pull really hard from the left and so what's going to happen keep going notice how his right shoulder keeps moving this point is critical that you understand in the swing that when this right shoulder keeps moving through impact the club doesn't get a chance to release now let's do it correctly good now go ahead and release down with the right arm now it's going to appear that from about this point to about this point that his right shoulder only moves a small amount so let's just kind of go back and forth there because the club is being allowed to release past the body and that's how you get it to work back on this art so the feeling with this right with throwing the ball with the right arm or the trailing arm if you're a lefty is that this right shoulder this pivot point doesn't move in front of the release point which is the ball if it keeps moving let's come back here so this is good here but if he keeps moving that shoulder out front well the club doesn't release till here the ball's long gone the club's working out to the right so this is really critical that you feel that this right shoulder stays as just kind of a pivot point and allows the right arms release past the body now what kind of motion could we compare this to in sports well it's very simple it's like a basic throwing motion right what do you feel like so that they can kind of just hear it from somebody's words who are doing it what do you feel like you're doing from the top of the swing when you're doing this drill uh it basically just feels like you're doing kind of an underhand or a sidearm type of uh baseball throw it's definitely not this way right absolutely not absolutely not it's more of a coming under uh old dan quisenberry for anybody who remembers the old sinker ball pitcher for the royals it's more of that kind of feelings we're coming under as opposed to any kind of uh coming over the top feeling exactly and that's important because that's gonna that interests a whole another set of issues if we're staying connected to our core on the way back we don't need a tremendous amount of rotation from this upper arm of the humerus whereas in a baseball throw you do have that so it is it's similar to a baseball throw but different as well right so the big key here is to understand how this just works in a simple term of physics this right shoulder is the point that this right arm is going to feel like it's releasing past do you feel that when you actually swing the golf club absolutely for the first time in years yeah so at impact you end up in a position where that right arm is really extending so it's actively helping the left side to release now the question is well do i just not use the left side that's definitely not what's happening at all but because josh was so dominant with the left side he feels like it's 100 right side that'll be very that won't be the case for everybody but you will notice that if you have been very very dominant with the left side pulling and getting your arms trapped back behind your body your shoulders open and impact and the club working out to the right you're going to feel like it's a hundred percent right arm throw right that's exactly how it feels there's no question that he's using both sides if we hooked up bmg to him he would see that both obliques are working and the lats are pulling and all those things but it's a feeling because his right side was so underutilized that we had to go the other direction and this is important because i think a lot of golfers do it and they lose speed and so when you start to do this drill when you actually start to do throwing the ball you will notice whether or not that feels like it's normal to you and so you already do this you don't have to worry about this or it will probably feel really foreign to you at first and so that's really indicative that you need to work on it so hopefully this will help a lot of golfers to work on this right arm drill get your shoulders all the way back feel like you keep closed at the top and fire the right arm so that you get into a good impact position one other thing i want to talk about that this drill helps with is what do you feel that your hips did before in the golf swing when you started the downswing i felt like the hips pulled a heck of a lot as hard as i could to the left in fact and moved way before my arms or anything else did quite honestly so and then when you wanted to hit it further did you just try to try to do it even more and what did that what happened then uh seems like things got even worse bigger blocks or hooks and certainly no more distance exactly so it's counterintuitive to to think that gosh if i just spin my hips faster i would hit the ball further it seems like that kind of makes sense it's counterintuitive what what the truth is because we've got to change the path of the club we've got to change the release point of the club rather than being several feet or inches out past where the the ball is in we want to have that fastest point of the club moving right around impact so when we get those hips to feel something again it's it's one of those feel versus real things because so many golfers you know freely feel that they're doing one side over the other but most golfers that we deal with do do two things one they pull too hard with the left side on the downswing on the upper torso and push too hard from the right side on the downswing and the fact is you actually need to do the exact opposite in the downswing and so when i had you feel when you went to the top and i had you feel like you didn't move your hips but of course nobody is just doing this everybody to make a natural throwing motion naturally shifts over to the left side which is another important piece because so many golfers really struggle with that to get that weight shift part to learn how to sit into that left side it's very easy when you do this drill would you would did you struggle with the weight shift before or i well actually uh you know we used the sam balance lap once and i got a lot of weight over my left side in the downswing the problem was i was pushing pushing really hard i was actually going past neutral joint alignment with my hip exactly very first time i tried this drill i got exactly into neutral joint alignment and it i didn't even think about it exactly so go to the top of the swing for me and let's show them what what happens and what the what happens when things go wrong but first let's go to the top and then just feel like what you're going to do is you're going to use the muscles of the left hip to pull yourself over the right leg can just take a nap for right now is what it's going to feel like and you can pull as hard as you want to pull yourself over onto that left side and what you'll notice is that the center of his hip is basically over the left over the center of his ankle now the only way that he can get past neutral joint alignment is to push off the right side so go ahead and show what that looks like that's the only way that you can do it is so if you're moving from the correct muscles it literally forces you to move into neutral where you need to be to rotate safely on your hips so let's do that again so just you can pull as hard as you want really get that weight over there you'll feel the left glute engage you'll feel the left hip muscles that attach down here in the upper quad engage all those things are going to engage and then as you start to throw you can start to continue to pull with the left side as you throw the right arm and as he comes down at impact his hips are open let's do that from down the line so we'll show the whole thing here yep go to the top and pull yourself over on the left good and then fire the right arm and then what happens to the hips is that they become open and right now put that club across your hips a little bit yep and they're about 45 40 to 45 degrees open which is all you need because what's going to happen is during the downswing once you get to that point the hips kind of stall and this is a this is a confusing point for a lot of people and certainly we've talked about it in different ways in the past but the goal here is to get all the energy that you generate from that initial rotation from the torso to eventually get out to the golf club otherwise it's useless you can spin your hips as fast as you want all day long but if it doesn't transmit any energy to to move in the golf club faster it's wasted and that's kind of what you felt in your swing the faster you turn your hips you didn't really swing any faster and certainly not at impact because the faster you turned your hips the further out in front of the ball the release happened so your club head speed would actually probably be slower right the the harder you worked so it's very inefficient so what happens is as we start to pull ourselves over and then pull from that left side the hips go they can only turn josh go do that for me again and just pull your hips open from the left side as far as you can you can only get about 45 degrees open which is perfect because now you're in a stable position in neutral joint alignment and you've rotated enough you generated speed and now it's time to let that speed go up the kinetic chain so that eventually it gets down to the arms and club where we need it right so the only way that you could get past that so let's go to impact again how would you get past that 45 degrees open probably going to be able to push exactly so the only way that exactly so the only way that you did that is that you used your right oblique and your foot and your leg to help shove your hips around and so now what happened for so many people who get into this early extension point and you can see now that his arms are jammed up that right arm's really close to the body is solely because you push from that right side so you don't have the room to let that right arm fully release to get maximum speed you're in this jammed up stuck position and then what happens for a lot of golfers that they get that early extension so they lose their spine angle right it's solely from pushing from that right side go to the top again and do it correctly pull from the left and let's see what happens to your spine angle spine angle is fine you've got room for your arms release you've got a lot more room than when you pushed off your right foot and you've got maximum extension and then what happens for a lot of golfers is that when they let's do face on here just simulate impact a lot of guys complain they don't have a very good release of the club they don't have a lot of extension so go ahead and let the club release josh has got maximum extension here his right arm's fully released both arms are released and this is going to be maximum speed at this point it's just taking over physics are taking over the clubs the ball is long gone now go ahead and push go back to impact and push off the right side so you get your hand into the way and what happens for a lot of guys because their arm let your arm bend there that's how most guys and they kind of end up in this bent right arm position because their club didn't really release because they shoved their body into it so that yeah so that's a very typical impact position for somebody who pushes off the right side and this is also where you're gonna end up hurting your hip yep can you feel that i had a lot of back and hip pain right back here i never knew why a very simple reason so so the so to get back to the hip rotation it may sound kind of counterintuitive again to to get your hips to where they kind of stall but it will happen automatically because as you pulled as far as you could you could only get about 40 or 45 degrees open as long as you only move from the left and then that's great because as those start to to slow down everything else transmits up the chain it speeds up the shoulders to get accelerated the arms get accelerated in the club so this drill when done correctly solves a million different problems it's amazing yeah so so if you can go to the top feel that you are paused at the top just gather yourself at the top and then pull yourself over on the left fire the right arm go ahead and let it release perfect looks like tiger woods that's how tiger gets into the positions that he does if he pushed from the right side he would end up in a completely jammed up position he would have early extension the spine his hips would move out past neutral which would create a slide and be in an unstable position and his hips would just keep rotating around which is very inefficient so a lot of things can be fixed by this one simple drill so let's have you demonstrate it one more time okay so everybody can see we won't throw the ball but i'm just going to have you feel it and kind of go ahead and do it at speed good that's it so his left side now again keep in mind his left side's working there's no question that it's working feel yeah the obliques yeah some of you won't feel it some of you will because you'll be so focused on this you'll probably feel this more than anything else but there's no doubt that the muscles are working they're working in pairs so but this will this drill is a phenomenal drill it's going to help you pick up club head speed it's going to help you work the club back around to the left it's going to help you release faster at the bottom where it matters so it's not just wasted club head speed and it's going to help you get into a stable impact position where you're braced on the left side and get the kinetic chain working and so you're going to find you have a lot more efficiencies in your golf swing