My SECRET Consistency Routine
I've read literally thousands of emails from all my members and the one thing people want more than anything else is consistency. This is the exact routine I use that builds on everything you've learned to groove your swing before a round of golf or just when things get a little off. I reinforce the checkpoints and feelings so that you will make better compression, have complete control over the club face and trajectory of each and every shot. Solid and consistent contact will be your reward.
All right. RSA members. This is the thing that all of you have been asking for. So all the feedback I got, there was one thing that became very consistent, ironically, and that was everybody wanted more consistency and I've always had one simple trick, one drill or one routine that I've gone through when I'm playing a serious round of golf. And I, I need to bit, my ball striking needs to be on tap. I need to hit the ball the way I want and do it consistently over and over again. And that's this routine I'm going to share with you today. And in fact, you're going to see, I only have 40 balls out in front of me, and that's all it's going to take to get you warmed up and get your game and your swing on track. So you can do this every day before you go out and play.
If you're a golf ball striking a little bit off, and we'll get you back on track and you can do this indoors hitting balls into a net, this is a drill. Unlike many of the other RSA drills, I do want you hitting balls. So as you go through the stuff, you're gonna see a lot of stuff it's familiar, but also as we're hitting balls, there's going to be some things that are going to be challenges for you. So I want you to pay close attention to how we go through this. It's a perfect drill to get your swing exactly where it needs to be every single round. So how we start, how I start, my routine is always exactly the same. And that starts with working through the nine to three drill. It is the most important drill for consistency in your game, because it teaches you how to make a body oriented lead side, dominant golf swing that's control with not making this big, long unwieldy swing.
And you'll realize that most golfers, when they do this drill, they hit the ball further with a swing that they feel is much shorter than their normal swing. And there's a reason for that. And that's what we're going to go through. So for this drill, I always start out with my basic nine to three drill. And if I swing is really off, I'll go all the way back to the beginning and stop there because I need to check my impact position. And so I'm not going to hit this balls very hard. So the first few balls I'm going to hit, I'm going to go right all the way to the beginning. And that is just this movement here. So halfway back stop. I want to make sure that wrist is flat. My left ankle, my left hip is over the left ankle. My hips are slightly open.
Shoulders are square. And the club face is D lofted flat left wrist. This one I do not wanna hit the ball very far at all. These are just little baby chip shots and yes, they can help you with your chipping as well. We'll all I'm trying to do right now. So I just woke up. I'm going to the golf course. I'm trying to get my game ready to go around the range. I know that if I'm hitting this ball straight and all three of those balls are exactly in the exact same spot, then my swing, my impact position is doing pretty good. So that's what I'm really looking for here is are the, is the club and the ball and everything doing the exact same thing. So I'll hit five balls, a whole row of balls like that. And each time as long as I do it correctly, I'll go to the next one.
So now I did five balls there. My left wrist was flat. Every single time. My impact positions were good. My right heel was down. Shoulders are square. All of this stuff, you go from the nine to three drill from there. I'm going to keep stacking on top of that with the release. So now the ball goes twice as far, but it's still going straight, but I'm still going through all my checkpoints left tip, right foot left. Ankle club face is rotated. Dow, shoulders are square. Hips are slightly open. The exact same stuff we've covered in the nine to three drill. So I'm not going to go through it over and over and over again and repeat everything. But I am going through those checkpoints in my head. More specifically, I'm checking the things that I know I tend to struggle with. So for me, my tendency is to kind of want to drive pretty hard off this right foot.
And so now I kind of get my hips a little bit too open, and I chunk it like I did there. Everything's a little bit off. So I kind of, those are the things I'm personally monitoring for you. It might be monitoring the flip. It might be monitoring, holding the club face, open, whatever it may be. This is when you get yourself recentered and start checking through all those things. So now that was a good one. And each time I'm doing this, I would make sure that all five balls were the way that I wanted them to fly. And those are all good shots. So of course the ones I was talking, I chunked up those wasn't good, but you want to make sure you get five in a row like that. Now I've got a good impact position. The ball is going in the exact same spot. It's coming out de loss that I've got great contact. Now's when I add that right hand back in there and do the exact same thing.
Now I'm checking that my right shoulder stays back and the right hand, didn't drive the club through the right hand and released the club at the ball so that the club can go very fast without me having to move very fast. So that was pretty good. Another good one there, same thing, just working the sequence. This thing is never let me down. If I do these movements over and over again, the balls come out exactly where I want them to. And now I'm starting to have these nice little baby draws, but I'm building the confidence to know that the shots are doing the exact same thing. I've hit 15 balls and all 15 are going the same way.
Perfect baby little draws, every single time, short, little low flight balls. Those were all great. Now all I need to do is take that same movement because my checkpoints are good. I did all the movements correctly, and now I'm just going to make it a little bit bigger and that's it. That's the whole key. So now I have a five iron here, so I'm just gonna make a little bit bigger swing. So we might maybe 120 yards in the air. Same thing though. I'm just going through my checkpoints, my right foot, my chest, my shoulders, the release backswing movements.
Another good one there. Everything's good. I'm still making sure now that the ball, not the ball is going a little bit further. I'm watching my ball flight now. So if I goof up a little bit, now's the time I want to make the correction. So if the ball is going a little bit left a little bit, right when you're only hitting it a hundred yards, you should be in complete control of that ball. If you're not, then you're going to need to go back a step because something went off early on your impact positions off your release is off your weight shift is off, whatever it is that you're personally struggling with when a little bit faster, that time 150 yards or so, but the whole key again, here is building up each step so that you're not going from zero to a hundred miles an hour.
You're taking little baby steps, slowly, incrementally building up to where you're getting to the point, you're going to get pretty close to full speed on that last one, not quite full speed, but it's probably 175 yards or so. So I ramped up quite a bit. You don't have to ramp up that quick bit of your, if the ball flight is doing the same thing over and over again, then you can do that. You can start adding a little bit more, but I try to kind of do it in five ball increments. So these next five, I'm gonna start going a little bit further, but I'm still not ramping up yet.
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It was maybe 60%, 70% while I want a little baby draw, where I start to make mistakes. My body gets a little bit fast. The club gets a little bit late. So what I'm really watching for on all of these is that each one is just a little tiny baby draw. And that it starts on my line. If I block one a little bit. I know for me personally, my hips got out in front and that caused me to stand up and bring the club a little bit too far to the inside. So what I want to make sure that I do is that where I make sure I wait and get my right arm to release back out in front of me instead of being late and stuck behind my hip. So again, these checkpoints are my personal ones. You're going to have different ones.
But the important thing is we're all working through the exact same steps, the exact same sequence. If I hit a couple that get a little bit squirrely, I'll immediately back it, back down, go back through my checkpoints. I know if I did all this stuff, right? That ball goes exactly straight, exactly where I want every single time. So say I hit a couple like that. And then I go back a little bit further, another good one, same thing going through my checkpoints. Now I have 15 balls left. I've got my swing recentered already up to about a 65% club head speed, not a hundred percent yet, but ironically, what I feel when my perception of 65% is the ball is still going about 180 yards with a five iron. So I'm really close to my full distance. And this is really the key to consistency and why you build up really, really slow because you're getting good compression.
Even on these little shots, you want to make sure that you're making great contact in the balls going straight because you're 60% feeling of efficiency will probably translate to 110% of your normal distance because you slowly built up and slowly did all these little movements correctly. You don't have to swing nearly as hard as you normally would as if you went to the range and just started wailing away and started regrouping all your bad habits. So now I know that I've just slowly built up to having close to more normal distance, but I only feel like I'm working six tenths as hard as normal. And that's the whole key to being consistent is if I feel like I'm swinging at 60%, I'm going to hit it pretty straight. And that's what this drill is great for. So I'm going to go up a little bit further. Ballston went straight a little baby, draw happy with that and do this again from the other side or a little bit faster. I mean, oh, now there's a great example. My body got out in front, the ball cut. I was late. Couldn't get the club release. So that is exactly what starts to happen when I start feeling like I ramp up a little bit too quick and my body's not quite synced up yet.
Perfect.
My hips weighted arms and hands released ball goes straight. So anytime I get ramped up too fast, that's, what's going to tend to happen. And so I want to start working on getting my hips back. Another one that was a little bit off there. There's not right worldly. Right? I want it to be with it. So I'm going to back it down again. Perfect. That's where I'm going. And so these last 10 or 15 balls, you may find as you start ramping up, if you ramp up too quickly, like I did there, then you're a squirrely shot will come in there. That's okay. You back it down a step slowly, build back up these last 10 balls. I'm going to show you from down the line. We're going to start sh I'll go through the whole routine again, so you can see the whole thing and see what the ball does, but the whole goal with these last 10 balls, as they should be getting close to what you're perceiving as maybe 70, 80% of your normal speed, but the ball should be going a hundred percent of your normal distance.
All right. So now with these last 10 balls, we're going to look at it more from down the line. I want to just show you what you should be looking at, looking for and expecting on each of these shots. So my little one there goes straight, but I didn't release the club. I want to see it come out really, really low, almost rolling along the ground. The reason for that is club face control. If this left wrist is flat or even slightly boat and impact, you still have control over that club face. And so I should be able to hit, you know, five 10 of those in a row. And they all go in the same spot. As I add the release. Now things go a little bit further than before that one was a little crummy, hit it out to the right. It's okay to make a mistake while I'm yammering here. There we go. So that one came out online, released it properly. All that stuff was good. And then as I add the right arm, not trying to swing any harder, this is not about a speed. This is about learning how to be efficient and hit the ball far without working hard to do it. So now as I put the right arm on there, I do the same drill. Not very hard for me to get the ball to fly twice as far, I keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Yeah. I went a little bit faster. A little baby draw got five left here. I'm going to ramp up to getting close to full speed here with this drill so that I'd be ready to go out and play. And we'd go a little bit further back. You bald there, right online little baby draw still. That was maybe 40% speed. I'm not in a hurry to speed. Yup. And I went a little bit to the right and that's where I get my hips out in front a little bit. So it wasn't quite, it didn't quite have my movements down there. I'm back. Little bit better there. Okay. So again, I'm just always paying attention to those things that I struggle with. You're going to have the same thing. So it might be pushing off the right foot. That way you might be throwing your right shoulder at it, whatever it is. This is the time when you're swinging slow to groove that now let's move up a little faster, a little bit out to the right again. Didn't like that. So again, if I was at the range, practicing doing these drills, I would back it down right away. I'd take 10 or 20% out of that, but I know that I can correct that mistake here on this next one. So that's what I'm going to do here.
There we go. Okay. Good little missile there. And that is the key to consistency. Each day, you start out really small and slowly ramp up doing the nine to three drill. Left-hand only perfect impact position. Left-hand release, perfect release position, right hand release the club with both hands. And then you slowly start making your swing bigger and bigger, and that will make you a far more consistent golfer than you've ever been before.
Gerd Helene
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bill
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Scott
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Chuck
Larry
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Stephen
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stephen
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Larry
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Gerard
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Richard
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Marcel
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
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Carver
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