How to Fix Trail Leg Straightening in Backswing
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Is your trail leg straightening in the backswing? Do you know what kind of issues this simple little flaw can cause? Learn how to fix this deadly swing flaw and simplify your swing!
and then you should get sent a link to download it if you don't let me know and i'll email you the link directly appreciate that buddy thank you yeah of course so uh i took a quick less look at the last lesson that you did and so i kind of have an idea of kind of what you were going through but why don't you tell me in your own words what what's going on now because i think it's been a little while since you had that lesson yeah yeah so yeah i think um so that they i forgot which coach i worked with was craig or i forgot who it was but they um they pointed out my weight shift weight shift was off as you saw so i was working i definitely worked on a weight shift which just started first then rotating um so i think i got that pretty much solved but um you know i think i've been i've been putting a lot of reps in you know over the winter a lot of reps so i got the i think i got the basics down i think i mean you'll be the judge of that but i think i got it down but i think the problem i'm having i'm having is that i'm initiating the turn of my shoulders as i told you so as i'm going back my shoulders are so tensed up that i'm either not making a proper turn or you know even when i'm trying to not turn my shoulders first i i have a tendency to still fire and i think it's just i'm so tensed up and i just start i'm naturally going to unwind my shoulders first kind of throws everything off it doesn't always happen you'll kind of not do it once in a while but i think that's part of the problem but and i saw yesterday when i went out after i got your email i played seven holes and i tried to turn with my you know hips and then kind of my obliques and i hit the ball a lot i had a lot of good holes yesterday doing that so you know keep my shoulders kind of more loose um definitely keep my arms loose my shoulders i think is a problem that's that's my perspective anyway how do we think about that that's super common and honestly that i mean i first published that idea of this initiating shoulder blade glide to keep you centered like 12 years ago and it's kind of been the bane of my existence ever since a lot of people absolutely love it because the people who absolutely love it they move their lower body pretty well already and so for them but they move off the ball right so they take that and like oh yeah that got me centered right away and then others who don't have great lower body movement to begin with they just start moving all of her body and then they have so much tension in their arms and shoulders that they miss the forest for the trees and they just you can't it's impossible if you start building tension up here right away to not have that fire to initiate the downswing so i've been trying to explain it in a way it's hard for me because i have such a wide diverse group of people who have every swing problem under the sun so i try to kind of make explain things in a way that works for everybody but in your case it sounds like you're one of those people who needed to focus more on their trunk and and the upper body stuff way less yeah i think so but you know i think overall you know i think i'm getting i mean first of all you're a genius i have to say i mean you earned every penny you're making because you're i've taken a lot of lessons over the years a lot of different coaches and you're by far explain how you are supposed to swing a lot of coaches i've had they tell you they tell you what they know what i'm doing wrong they know what i have to do but they don't explain how i have to do it like what muscles do i have to move how do i initiate it and it's just so confusing so you just really simplified it so i i think i've got it down i mean i'm i think i'm making really good progress in my swing so i'd like you maybe to take a look at my turn you know my post up i still think i try to you know i think i had a problem with hyper extending my left leg on post up so i was trying to back off that then now i'm kind of maybe starting to slide a little bit more lately so i'm trying to get the post up perfect perfected too but overall i think i'm in a pretty good spot just had to fine-tune a couple things my opinion anyway you might look at me and say with guys a wreck but that's what i think anyway no no it sounds like we're on the right track so what i go ahead and uh i'm gonna video i'm gonna record on my own desktop while you're swinging so i can go back through really quickly frame by frame and then we'll uh we'll get an attack plan and we'll get rocking and rolling here sounds good yeah i'll hope the angle is good on this we'll see um okay closer let me know you know this is my normal kind of golf mat i'm using it is this too far let me go closer no you're fine okay all right let me uh take my setup here and i can go down the line too i guess i could just turn this or this way the other way you need down the line but um perfect so i'm not definitely trying to loosen my shoulders up now um keep my arms loose but you know i'm trying to access tilt i'm trying to get that that right um so i take a couple swings here yeah okay okay cool i see good stuff there that i want to work on go ahead and do a couple swings down the line okay perfect now let me stop this recording and open these up real quick and i'm going to show you i'm going to share my desktop so you can see we just recorded there give me just a second here we go get your arm loose all right let's turn the audio off for that now let me share all right can you see that okay i can uh this all right so let's start with face on so overall setup looks really good lots of great stuff in your setup so we're not going to worry too much about that what we're going to focus on is this guy here now when you look at that what do you see what's that yeah my left my left leg's collapsing in um that's a big problem so it's training yeah the right leg's straightening right and if we look at yeah real quick you'll see how significant this is oh yeah wow that's good right like during your takeaway that right leg is already completely straight so so what you're doing is you're you're turning your hips by just straightening this leg and then we lose just about everything there's a couple things we're going to do one little setup adjustment you're a little tiny bit too far back on your heels and the way to think about balance is if i came up and pushed you from the front here would you easily fall over backwards i want to be able to come up and push you from any direction and you feel stable you don't think you're going to fall over easier one way or the other but the biggest thing is is fixing this hip hip turn first because as soon as we fix this the natural motion that you have in your swing is going to be way way better we're going to be able to take advantage of it so that's what i want to do first so let me show you what's going on here so first just ditch the club for a second when we work on this and what i want you to start to focus on is paying attention to how you turn i want you to think about the swing a little bit differently because what you're doing right now is that you're you're staying in a really centered position but you're turning your hips but in a way that you can't possibly load your glutes properly your lower body your legs your quads hamstrings glutes all of that when you do this it actually does the opposite of what we need it to do and so we're going to start to flip that so that you start to feel load in this leg and there's two ways that you're going to do that the first one is a really simple visual i want you to imagine that if you were going to load up and just kind of take a step a big step right like a baseball pitcher he's going from the stride to take this big step here think about how you would load your leg you wouldn't do this right this wouldn't make any sense to me if this massive hit turn and straighten up your leg you naturally load into this leg and get your weight over there in a way that you could feel like you could lift your leg to then take a step that's a little bit of an over exaggeration for how it really works in the golf swing but that's in the ballpark the second thing is that i want you oh did i lose you there you still hear me okay no i lost you for a little bit i think i'm going to move closer to the house my internet might be glitching out but that's okay keep going okay i heard you though okay perfect so so the idea of just loading into this leg loading into it as if you were going to move laterally right because right now you're moving really rotationally and we have to have a balance of the two you're moving too rotationally in this sense the second thing is i want you to go to the top and we're going to exaggerate another motion where once you kind of feel like you're going to take this step you're going to actually increase the knee flex because right now you're straightening right so this will be literally the exact opposite of what you're doing so you're going to load into the right leg where you could lift this left foot up and you're going to squat down on it at the same point this is again these are big exaggerations but we have to go to the extreme other side for just a moment so that you start to feel how natural that the knee flex would be maintained and how we load into the leg rather than just turning our hips does that make sense yes okay perfect so that's what i want to see it first is we're going to start to load where i'm going to have you literally pick up your left foot you're going to be a baseball pitcher for a second okay load into this right side and then take a step and that's going to give you the natural feeling of weight shift pressure shift transferring weight from one side to the other and then the next thing we're going to do is go up to the top and bend that right knee squat into that right leg so go ahead you can throw the club down you have to slow down for a second and i want you to just to kind of go back and lift your left you're going to be a baseball pitcher for a second how would you naturally get ready to throw a ball show me what you would do perfect yeah like stuff a better balance but yeah like like that i guess yep yeah lift your left foot up completely in the air there you go now you can see that your hips are going to turn a little bit while you're doing this naturally right yep but it's not in a way that you're doing where you're straightening that right leg this is a natural way for you to feel the load in this right leg that's huge for you so when you go back and you feel like okay i can kind of bounce on this leg for a second i start to feel it in my right butt cheek now we're in the ballpark there you go believe it or not that's very similar to how you should feel at the top of your golf swing which is going to be very different than what you're used to right now yep yeah exactly there you go yeah start to play with it a little bit make some turns and kind of sit into it and then add that second piece into it to where you bend and actually increase the knee flex rather than letting your legs straighten at first that's going to be a little worse okay i'll try that let's see okay okay don't so right now you're trying to move your upper body don't even think about it don't do that okay all right i got it just to focus on the belt down okay there you go perfect there you go and we don't have to move so far laterally to the right just think like you're going to pick your foot up how would you naturally shift your weight if you just picked your left leg up there you go big difference so if you just pick your foot up you naturally put all of this weight on there in the right way there you go so now take your golf setup arms across your chest but don't think about turning your upper body at all for just a moment all i want you to do is just pretend that you're loading into this right leg it's going to be a pretty small move but you're going to feel a lot of pressure on this right leg so make like a little tiny turn and just shift into the right side you're still doing the baseball pitcher move okay now your head's moving a fair bit there so getting there good now increase that knee flex really exaggerated on the next one as you go back so you can turn it up watch me for just a second yes so it's not this you're letting your knee kind of move out again if you made a ball pitcher you wouldn't do this right you just you get stacked over that side so your right knee is not going to move laterally you're just going to stay right into it keep that right knee in place there as you go back there you go better now try to keep your right knee pointing at the ball a little bit more it's going to turn a little bit but just feel that it's kind of pointing at the ball more as you go to the top there you go that's way better even more so a little bit more keep it pointing at the ball a little bit way better there you go now so that's a night and day difference in what you feel right yes so now we just now watch me for one second so you're doing great with the lower body stuff but now you're adding your upper body movement into it right so now you're actually moving your upper body quite a bit this way so now what we're going to do you the lower body movement looks great and now instead of moving our upper body to feel weight over there you're going to just feel your hip move while your upper body turns so you're still going to feel the same load in your lower body but now is when you start to feel that right shoulder move behind your head a little bit okay now your head moved about eight inches that's okay it's normal first better head still moving about five inches we can cut it down even more better now one thing that you'll notice while you're doing this is that your left knee is really coming in so we've got the right side working a lot better now the left side just doesn't really need to move in it's going to move in it's going to naturally move in a little bit but what you're going to but you're actually kind of actively moving it and you just don't quite realize it so you're going to start to feel that this left leg is a lot more chilled out it's not really moving it's not active you're not trying to drive off of it right now because you're a little overactive with it so you're just going to feel again all right glute all right leg and right shoulder back behind your head that's it calm the left leg down getting there now relax that left shoulder yeah there you go we're getting there all right let me show you a quick i'm going to do a quick recording of this so go ahead keep doing it better that's a lot better now turn down the line and show me the same thing perfect let me show you that first of all use that window in the background you see how much your head is moving there okay now your hips are doing pretty good if you use kind of this little green flat piece of grass back here in the background you can use that as a reference your hips move laterally a little bit too much but not bad yeah not bad your head's moving quite a bit but your lower body looks a million times more stable a lot more powerful right left knee not buckling in the right leg not all twisting if we compare that to where you were a moment ago can you see this was the original swing do you see this yep oh yeah i mean i feel like you know that that's not my best rotary swing there obviously but you know what you just had me doing chuck i probably feel three or four times as much load than i have been and i think i'm swinging pretty good so i guess that's what it yeah you're going to have a huge improvement in your power and your consistency once you stop adding all of this extra hip rotation this is a big difference from here to where you were to where what you are doing now so that's huge you're loading into the right leg instead of just twisting the hips does that make sense yes so we're getting there we just got obviously minimize that head move but that's simple to do like when you go after this lesson put your head up against the wall doing that wall drill and you'll feel your head dragging across the wall so you'll be able to fix this quickly on your own i want to get you the big tools that you need so you can recognize what's going on so lower body movement i mean this is pga to or quality compared to where you were when you started this is a million times better but here's one thing that we're going to do this is what i'm going to talk about with your setup in just a second it's going to make this a lot easier and a lot more natural is that if i came up and pushed you from on the chest i'd knock you right on your butt without pushing very hard and you're just too far back on your heels i'm going to help you with that for a moment so you can see your butt is way back here like a foot behind your ankles yep way too far back and this is what's making this a little bit more challenging but even there you see how you've maintained your knee flex yes and before if you compare that to where you are this is way better yeah straight that's crazy i almost said it straight there it's locked out right yeah so that is a huge improvement so now what we got to do that's a quick question sure of course so do you think i mean is it fair to say that i'm not going to consciously move my hips when i do it right i'm just focused on loading and that'll kind of move his naturally yeah so i move it a little bit more than that or just that's that's all it should be just load into that right glue and that's it exactly so what i want you to feel i want this to be natural right it should be natural and as soon as i made you you know be a baseball player you got it right away yeah you naturally wouldn't wouldn't do this so so will you have to think about it at first you'll have to kind of make yourself do this because you're used to doing something pretty extreme and this will feel normal to you right if i was trying to do this it would feel unnatural i'd have to make myself think about it but what i want you to do obviously i want you to watch it in the mirror and in video but i do want you to start to get the feeling of like you know what this is just a natural athletic move if i was going to throw a rock or throw a ball it's pretty simple you were thinking just turn and now you're going to think load into this right side as if i was going to take a big step right because there is a lot of movement in the swing if you look at the how much the pelvis moves at the top of the backswing where your left hip socket is at the top of your backswing this is the same for pretty much every tour on the planet the right hip socket ends up there at impact it's that much so you think about that you're moving the entire width of your pelvis i've got a picture of me up here at impact this is where my right hip socket is at impact which is almost over the ball that's where my left hip socket is at the top of my swing that's how far i move laterally but it obviously doesn't look like i'm doing a big lateral slide right so so you're just going to feel you're going to feel this is important more lateral movement obviously you don't want your hips sliding you know you've got to maintain that right hip line but it's going to be loading kind of laterally into it so that you can move laterally across because you already rotate way too well that's going to be the perception now the setup thing that i was talking about right now you kind of reach the club's a little bit far the ball's a little bit far from you at address because you're way back on your heels and so again if i just tapped on the chest you'd fall over really easy that you feel like you're in balance right now but if somebody just came up and tapped you i want to be able to literally come up to you at address push you from the chest the back side to side and you wouldn't fall over easier one way or the other and if you can it's really helpful if you can just you know get in a little spat with your wife and have her come shove you she'll be happy to oblige just find somebody that can give you a quick tap because it's just an instant like oh my gosh i had no idea you'd be shocked how many people i literally knock off balance with just touching them with my pinky and that's where you would be right now so okay as you set up your your weight needs to be from the ankle to the middle of your foot in this range right now you're kind of back behind the ankle towards your heel and so you're going to move your weight forward your hips and everything have to come forward it gets your weight more centered over your feet because if you're too far back on your heels it makes it really easy for this leg to straighten because that's all the place you can go right you know your weight moves think of your weight in the golf swing as like a figure eight pattern so right now if my weight is on the middle of my feet during the backswing it goes backwards to the ankle and my weight moves forward on the left foot towards the ball of my foot in the downswing that's reversed my weight on my left side goes to my ankle and on the right side it goes towards the ball of the foot so it's moving in this figure eight pattern whereas if you're back on your heels you can't really move anywhere but on your heels and it's really unnatural and it's super unpowerful and it forces you into the only way that you can move is to straighten this leg so as soon as you bring your hips forward and hinge forward from the hips you're going to feel way more forward than you're used to then you're going to feel as you load into this right side your weight feels way more natural so that's going to make this little move you know think about it again if you're a baseball player you're not going to have your weight all the way back on your heel to throw a ball it wouldn't make any sense right so the same thing when you're loading into this that's what you're going to feel once we get you set up properly so that's what I want to do next now you kind of have a basic idea of the feel is we're going to do it from the right setup and it's going to glue all these things together okay let's do it okay okay so take your normal setup so we have a starting point now bring your hips forward so start coming closer to the ball but everything your head and everything is going to move further keep going keep going believe it or not and straighten your legs up just a little bit so take some knee flex out there you go now come forward more let your whole body come toward the ball now everything hips and everything hips head everything get in there and take a little bit of knee flex out there you go let your arms hang down a little bit more relaxed there you go we're pretty close there you still need to actually come forward more so watch me for just a second when I'm saying come forward I mean everything has to rock forward your whole body what you're going to do is sit back on your heels and reach for the ball and as soon as I said I'm saying naturally they came into a really nice position and it allows you to move forward into the ball more but you're so used to being back like this that this feels natural as soon as you come here and let everything your hips and head and everything come forward and your hands come in there you go a little bit taller through the knees there you now come forward more there you go let your arms come in a little bit more relaxed take knee flex out so stand taller there you go to want to squat and then when you squat it moves your hips back so you still need to keep that knee flex out but move your whole body several inches closer to the ball keep going there you go now stay right there for just a second where does that feel like your weight is in the center of my foot let me show you what it looks like it feels really weird wow yeah it's gonna feel weird at first so this like it feels fall forward wow it's amazing okay that's your setup so it doesn't it looks normal it didn't feel like that it's funny right but this is why I always tell people I don't care how you feel at first you have to see it yeah and now that you see it if you compare so this looks normal right it's just normal golf now when you contrast that to what you did before it'll now your old setup will look bizarre yeah see how you're really rounded your arms are outstretched the club is really flat the toe is way up in the air and your hips are way back right so this is why it's so important to get these little things right because now you just look like every guy on the tour and there's a reason for that our weight has to be allowed to move in this figure eight pattern dynamically throughout the swing and if we're way back on our heels we're gonna have that point where our hips are straight our leg is straightening up and all of that stuff next Chuck I've had a problem I've had a problem for with rounding my shoulders that's part of the problem I guess right it's why my shoulders always seem rounded every time I look at my swing exactly so you're back like this if you had a normal setup you wouldn't even be able to get to the ball so you're reaching like this and that as you reach forward your shoulders have to round to get out here to this flat club position that's why you know when you look at your club from your eye it looks normal so when you look down the line the toe is up in the air quite a bit and you're really reaching I'm exaggerating this a little bit but this is kind of how your setup is right so you're now as I pull my shoulders back and I get forward into a normal setup all of a sudden now I have a nice neutral spine okay so what I what you're going to do is the drill that we're just doing just getting your weight to feel natural moving like a baseball player just getting loaded up loaded I like to use the term loading into that right side is really critical for you as if you were going to jump to the left then as a as a as a reminder when you go to the top of your swing just as you're practicing you go to the top and just squat into that right leg just a little bit that'll give you the feeling of feeling that right glute engage again and help remind you when you start to straighten that leg if you do those two things from this new setup you've got the whole thing cooked because the rest of your stuff is going to work way way better when you're not way outstretched and all like when you were talking like you know I chunked out a little bit your swing plane is so flat that it's hard not to and you can't move your weight laterally very well when you're way back on your heels it's not very the right muscles all of these things together are going to make a huge difference you just need a little bit of time to work on does that make sense makes sense exactly how to practice I think so yeah I mean I think I you know I watched all the videos I've been practicing this for a while and I mean I've been trying to load it's all about the weight chip the loading obviously but I I wasn't doing it nearly enough obviously I'm not even close working on it now you know do you feel when you're in your top of the swing do you feel a tremendous amount of load or just you know what do you feel no I mean because it becomes pretty quick right yeah so it's just kind of quick just going in that speed I don't when I'm doing the drills I may feel a lot when I'm going really slow but as you're adding pace to this it's just going to be natural dynamic and quick so you're probably going to feel tremendous amount more than what you're used to as you're kind of going slow and drilling through it but don't overdo it because you can overdo too much of a good thing but yeah I think this is going to be a huge transformation for you hitting it better on your lower body instead of your arms now you're going to be able to feel your lower body loading correctly which is a whole nother game changer for you very quick question to come across the ball at impact look at my it's like pointing a little bit left is that anything to do with what I set up and all that all of it yeah you're your body can't load correctly and your arms are tight and you're gonna fire them first that's what's gonna cause you to come over the top for sure okay you can't load and clear that lower body out of the way you're always gonna resort to the arms so 100% okay all right I'll work on it Chuck let me know if you don't get this recording and we'll email you a copy of it so just let me know like if you don't have it in the next hour or so email to you we'll send you a copy great all right hey it was nice meeting you man you too man thanks so much and let me know how it goes thanks all right talk to you later okay bye
Ian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bruce
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Rod
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Benjamin
Bradley