Understanding Shoulder Elevation
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At the request of members from the forum, Al Consoli has put together this great video on understanding shoulder elevation during the backswing. So many golfers get their arms buried deep behind their chest during the takeaway and that leads to numerous swing faults. Understanding how simple it is to have an on plane takeaway and just how small the movements really are will be a revelation to many after watching this video. If you've struggled with getting across the line at the top of your swing or getting the club working too deep behind you, this video will change the way you think of the arm movement in the backswing forever.
- Shoulder elevation does not mean lifting the shoulders!
- Shrugging the shoulders disconnects you from your core, causing all kinds of problems in the golf swing
- Shoulder elevation means raising your arms in a vertical plane, hinging from the shoulders
- Elevation is combined with rotation into a single, smooth movement
- Go back and review the Bucket Drill
Good afternoon everybody, Al Consoli, here again, and today I want to talk about a topic that has come up in a couple of the forums within the past two weeks.
And there's been a little bit of confusion when I use the term shoulder elevation in the golf swing.
One gentleman, in particular, wrote to me and discussed about how he suffered from getting the club very deep very early in his golf swing.
And he was saying he kept trying to keep his arms very passive.
And the club is still getting stuck way behind him very early in the golf swing.
Now, this is a common thing.
Just like anything in life, too much of a good thing is not going to be very productive for us.
Okay, so what exactly is going on in this situation is if we keep our arms pinned to our body.
Now, that is not what we meant by passive arms, but if we keep our arms pinned to our body.
And I rotate my chest by pulling that right shoulder blade behind me.
Like Chuck talked about in his takeaway video, the club will go way inside.
Okay, and then it can result in a couple of detrimental things from here.
If I continue to rip this thing around, you can see how flat laid off the golf club is and how trapped behind my body, my arms are.
Now okay.
That's scenario number one.
The second scenario, which is really the more common scenario that I see on the lesson tee or on the online lessons.
And one that I'm a big authority on, because I suffered from it myself for a long time, is when you get this thing too far inside.
You can see how the club now gets lifted late in the backswing and gets up across the line.
Horrible position to try to recover from, completely disengaged from our core and the rest of our body.
And we're not going to be able to use any of those weight transfer videos.
That we all watched and enjoyed.
Okay, because we're completely disconnected from our lower bodies and can't make the proper weight transfer back into the golf ball from there.
Force of movement is all going to come from the top.
So we now can plainly see that there is a role to the arms in the golf swing now.
Passive arms has been a big key for us, and they will remain passive, and what we mean by remaining passive is.
The arms never consciously work in this sort of direction around the body, we never want the arms moving around the body like this.
Even if I'm turning, I'm standing still as I'm doing that, But if I turn while doing that as well.
You can kind of see my arms working across my chest, across my core, trapped way behind myself.
Now, okay.
The role of the arms in the golf swing is simply to stay directly in front of the body the entire time.
This is what I mean when I say proper shoulder elevation, Okay, you can plainly see This is a shrug.
This is not shoulder elevation.
This is simply shrugging my shoulders.
At no point in our golf swing.
Do we want this to occur?
Because, again, if we allow that to occur in our golf swing and a shrugging motion?
You can see exactly what happens my shoulders raise up, my arms flail out, get separated from my body.
We're in a horrible position to hit the golf ball, not a very powerful position from there.
Okay, So when I talk about proper shoulder elevation, the arms are staying directly in front of my sternum here, and My shoulders are going to elevate approximately.
If I had to put an amount on this, it can vary.
But I would say two to three inches is all it does.
So.
My arms during the course of my back swing elevate two to three inches.
The arms remain straight no elbow flexion at this point and They elevate two to three inches.
So let's see what that looks like if I take my stance.
Arms straight, two inches apart.
I'm simply going to pull that right shoulder behind me and And allow for a little shoulder elevation that you can see what that's done with.
My hand position very different than keeping my arms pinned to my body and allowing them to be ripped inside, Okay, Remember our friend the bucket drill?
It's been on Chuck's site for a long time.
couldn't find a bucket.
But it's a hot day here in Florida, so we'll call this the lemonade bucket drill here We're using a picture today, but it's the same situation here If I'm using this picture, and I keep those arms pinned to my chest so much and then rip that right shoulder behind me Well, This doesn't look like the bucket drill that Chuck has been showing us for several years now on the website.
Okay, But if we allow for that proper shoulder elevation to occur, You can see.
It's like I'm passing the pitcher of lemonade to someone directly behind me.
My shoulders have remained down and depressed, have not Shrugged or moved up closer to my chin.
Okay, So that's a very important.
We can go back and use the bucket drill to kind of ingrain the proper feeling of the shoulder elevation.
The the real pitfalls.
I'm not allowing this to occur again.
Which we talked about getting inside, which is going to get those arms deep and we get very trapped.
It's going to make it impossible for us.
To use our lower bodies and our core successfully to transfer back into the golf ball on our transition into the downswing, Okay, the force of movement Is going to have no choice, but to come from the upper body and we know all the problems that come from that Okay, So I hope this clears up what I mean by shoulder elevation.
Remember, it's very much The arms staying directly in front of the sternum, elevating two to three inches while we're turning our core the entire time.
That's a very important point that I'm going to leave here with you because you remember.
The.
The driving force on our backswing, which Chuck just talked about in the latest video, is the pulling of this right shoulder blade Behind us, okay, And the arms elevate two to three inches directly in front of the chest.
We have to make sure that that shoulder blade is pulling behind us.
As this is occurring, we don't just want to start flailing our arms up and out to start our golf swing, because again We become disconnected.
Then.
Okay, so very important.
It's going to kind of be like teaching yourself to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time, Okay, with a little bit of practice we're able to do that without even thinking about it.
It's the same thing.
We need to learn how to allow this elevation to occur directly in front of our chest, While we're pulling that right shoulder blade behind us, and then you'll see how the two blend together very nicely Okay, so everybody's going to be working on that.
Hopefully we're clear and we'll see you next time
Joe
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