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Wide-Narrow-Wide Golf Swing Shape
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Every single PGA Pro swings wide-narrow-wide. Often, though, when this typical shape of the swing is discussed, the conversation ends at “you want a wide-to-narrow golf swing.” However, it’s crucial you ensure you finish by getting wide again!
- Step 1: Wide Takeaway
- Big Shoulder Turn
- Arms Straight But Relaxed
- Step 2: Narrow Downswing
- Right Arm Bends From Elbow
- Both Wrists Cock Vertically to Create Lag
- Step 3: Wide Release
- Arms Relaxed and Straight in Follow Through
- Wrist Un-cocked to Release Lag
- Repeat 9 to 3 Swing Until Ingrained
One of the questions that we get commonly asked is what? Tour pros use rotary swing, and, as I've talked about in some other videos, pretty much all the tour pros use the fundamentals of rotary swing tour.
Again, it's not a preference swing where we talk about, oh, do this with the club and this little tweak, and this makes it look different.
And this is how I think it should be done.
It's based on physics biomechanics and anatomy how your body is designed to move.
So these tour pros that you see out there are all using, to some degree or another, the fundamentals of RST.
Now, they may have variables in their swing that look make the swing look a little different.
Going back, or what have you? But the core fundamentals of the physics that they're using leverage and lag, and using the ground for leverage.
They all do that stuff, or they wouldn't be tour pros.
You can't hit the ball very far if you don't.
So the fundamentals you're gonna learn here are critical.
And one of the big fundamentals I want to talk about is this concept of a wide, narrow, wide swing.
And what does that mean exactly, and what's the whole point of it? And why do the Tour pros, at least in that regard, all look really, really similar? They have this kind of wide, narrow, wide concept of their swing.
And I'm gonna explain why that is and why you need to do it and exactly how to do it.
So the first thing we're talking about is when we're talking about this wide in the swing, we're talking about creating a wide arc for the club to travel on during the backswing.
And why is that important.
Well let's first talk about what most most amateur golfers do.
What they want to do is they make a really narrow swing during the backswing they take their wrist and they set the club right away and they pick up their arms and now the club the arc that the club has traveled on is a really narrow arc and I've got this really narrow tight steep swing I could swing in a phone booth basically and what this is going to do is create a lot of leverage I have a lot of levers in my swing but I didn't wind up or recruit muscle fibers from my core and my trunk and that's the critical piece if you look at the overview swing how we're trying to use these big muscles and get more muscle fiber recruited for the swing the last thing you want to do is just pick the club up and pick your arms up because now you've the only muscle fibers that you've engaged are from here up we need to get these big muscles remember we need 32 pounds of muscle mass to swing over a hundred miles an hour so as you're going back the first thing you want to do is shift your weight and rotate and not set your wrists and club and what that's going to do in order to move the club over here you know move the club six or seven feet I have to move a lot of muscle and that's going to start recruiting these muscle fibers so as I do this my arms and hands and shoulders these small little muscles haven't really done anything they've just transported the club back for me with doing basically nothing but I've recruited a lot of muscle fiber my right glutes already engaged I can feel the muscles in my rib cage twisting and rotating my rib cage my core starting to engage I'm starting to recruit big muscles and this is what you see really common in all the tour pros as they create this wide arc for the club to travel on now where's the narrow part come in that's really simple because as some point as you get to the top I want to create a lever in my wrist here I want this wrist angle to set there's just no point doing it really early because if you do that you're going to again not recruiting muscle fibers because you're going to feel like your wrists and arms are really loaded up so there's no point in turning anymore your brain's going to use tension as its guide of when to start swinging the club back down so we want that tension to be built from the inside out first from our big muscles and then as we keep going to the top and the club starts setting naturally as we start down by shifting our weight notice now the path of the club heads traveling on now is very narrow why do we want this very narrow arc coming down but what's a really wide one going back well we know on the way going back we're trying to recruit muscle fibers on the way down what we're trying to do is preserve that lag angle that we've created the lag angle again a simple way of thinking about it's just the angle between your form and the shaft this is leverages potential energy think about swinging a hammer right if you've ever hit a nail with a hammer you know the vast majority of movement is in your wrist here this is very efficient to create a lot of speed if I smacked you on top of the head it wouldn't feel very good but if I did it like this I can't really create a lot of speed because I don't have a wrist angle here there's lots of potential speed in this angle well in the downswing your primary job primary job is to conserve that lag angle and then finally release it we can serve it by moving our big muscles first in the downswing and maintaining this angle without trying you don't try and hold the lag angle you simply keep your wrists soft and move your big muscles and the lagging will be preserved and maintained on its own you don't have to try to do anything for this it's a natural byproduct of following the RST fundamentals and doing these simple big muscle movements correctly so now as I start down my wrists just naturally set on themselves because they're very soft the clubs got momentum going backwards this way and as I shift my hips it's going to force my body to start unwinding which will cause the club head to set my wrist on top of themselves so now I have this really narrow path coming down because I have all of this leverage which I want to maintain and then release how do I release it as I talked about in the overview video in the downswing video it's this pushing motion against the ground it's a very powerful driving force that creates a tremendous amount of leverage pushing against the ground and reusing these muscle fibers that you've recruited in the backswing and your legs and your core your hamstrings your quads pushing against the ground which is what causes the club to snap and release again my hands and wrists are relatively passive they don't have to do a lot so as I have this narrow lag angle I've got a lot of potential energy here as I push up against the ground and that releases it now look how wide I am in the follow-through every tour pro that you've ever seen on television doesn't look like this in the follow-through do they of course not the way that most amateurs swing is they take their right arm and the right shoulder and the right leg and they push really hard against the shaft in the top so they start getting wide on the way down right you start seeing this really common motion then they're still pushing with the right side get the chicken wing and left arm broken down and they do this and this is what every amateur looks like on the planet and every tour pro looks like this why again it's force of movement where you're moving from is going to determine what kind of golfer you become you don't move from the top you don't move from the right side and push against the shaft like that it's very inefficient and it fights the forces of physics that are happening in the swing you want to imagine like I discussed in the throw the club ad video that you're throwing the club at at the ball passively with your wrist doing it with your body and as you do that it pulls you into this wide follow-through that you see every tour pro do so wide narrow wide is the way you want to think about the golf swing you're going to be wide going back because you're not doing anything with your wrists arms and hands going back you're focusing on your big muscle movements you're going to be narrow coming down and then as you post up on this lead leg and let your arms and club release it's going to pull you into a wide follow-through position and get rid of that chicken wing and give you way more speed with way less effort
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