Former Mac O'Grady Student Saves Back Learning DEAD Drill
If you've followed Mac O'Grady or Stack and Tilt at any point, you might relate to this golfer who had back problems before switching to RotarySwing. In this lesson, you'll learn how your setup may be killing your power and making it impossible to have a proper backswing.
Yeah, no worries.
No worries.
So I got to thank you for giving me the notes.
Should I lie down on the couch now or later? Nah, we'll wait for that.
Let's see how far we can get in real world practical terms first.
Yeah, that's good.
So if you want to start out with some questions, you're welcome to lay them on me.
Well, I mean, just, you know, it's funny.
A number of years ago, I took lessons with Mack O'Grady.
Okay.
And he totally had a different philosophy about swinging.
My local pro kind of subscribed to that, you know, keeping your weight centered and moving through.
And actually, Mack stayed at my house for a few times and he was, you know, obviously a great golfer.
But like it really hurt my back, you know, like trying to really hit down and turn and all these things.
And then I found your site and everything you ever said, you know, I've watched all the videos and I do the reps just made sense to me.
So I've been trying to sort of, I guess, weed out the old stuff and bring on the new stuff.
And I guess the big thing, like I have a great practice swing, as I said, and I just want to be able to use it on the course.
And sometimes I think when I'm, you know, I'm thinking so much, I sort of get lost when I'm on the course of what I should do.
When I hit a bad shot, I start, you know, the wheels come off.
I guess that would be a good way to say it.
Yeah, that's so it's obviously if you've gone down the Morad route and TGM and Mack and all that stuff, that pretty easy to get a lot of stuff in your head and miss the forest for the trees with some things.
Yeah, no, exactly.
But the cool thing is with the dead drill, that's exactly how you recenter yourself on the course immediately to get back to the focus of the only stuff that really matters in the swing.
And if your practice swing and your real swings aren't the same, then it's actually really simple to understand that.
And that all comes down to just what muscles are being loaded.
And that's the biggest difference between, I mean, I see it all the time, like day in and day out, where we guys have these great listen practice swings, great rhythm, great tempo, you know, good positions and so on.
Right.
But the reality is when they go to hit the ball, that stuff all goes out the window.
And you can't fake that part, right? Right, right, exactly.
It's the white devil, as you say.
Yeah, but it really doesn't have to be.
It just comes down to loading the right muscles in the right sequence.
And when you have that and you really understand what that really is, then the ball truly does just get in the way because you're not really trying to hit it.
But that stuff, I promise you there's a cure for it all.
And, you know, it's like obviously a great honor for me to be with you.
It's exciting.
I've been really – I mean, I kept testing this all day.
And then when the volume didn't work, I was like, oh, my God.
It's always something.
It's always something.
Well, why don't we dive in? I'd love to see you explain.
I'm going to screen capture it.
So I'm going to video it.
I'm going to walk you through it.
And then we're going to get a plan here.
And we're going to attack it.
I'm going to shut my garage just because I don't know if I'm getting washed out, but I get a lot of glare looking at you.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm ready whenever you are.
You're ready? Well, you got a lot of great things going on in your swing.
Can you make a practice swing face-on for me? Sure.
Perfect.
All right.
Let me share my screen with you.
And let's walk through this.
What's your handicap right now? Like a 13.
Oh, wow.
You should be like a 4, even with doing what you're doing.
Okay.
So setup-wise, first things first.
At the end of the day, the entire golf swing comes down to how you use your lower body.
I say lower body.
What I really mean by that is really just your hips.
You know, maybe from the top of your belly button down to the middle of your thigh.
That's all I really care about.
If that stuff works right, then the rest of the stuff is a piece of cake.
But you have to be set up in such a way that's going to allow that to work right.
Now, when you look at your setup here, I want you just to forget golf for a second.
I know you probably know way too much about the golf swing.
Way too much.
If you were just looking at this guy's setup here, and you came and tapped him on the chest, what do you think would happen? Tapped him on the chest? Yep.
Just kind of pushed him on the chest a little bit.
Think I fall backwards a little? Oh, yeah.
Exactly.
So you are setup.
You can see me on the top screen there.
You're so far back on your heels that if I just came up and tapped you on your chest, you'd fall right on your ass.
You need to set up in a way that if I came and pushed you from your back, your front, your side to side, you wouldn't fall over one way easier than the other.
When you're off balance on your heels like this, it becomes much more difficult to move athletically and use your hips properly because you're off balance.
And so as you let your weight come forward and your hips come more underneath you, instead of being more outstretched, I'm exaggerating this obviously a little bit, but to get you to see the idea that you're not going to be able to move powerfully and engage your legs properly in the swing.
So that's the first thing that we got to change is just to get you set up more athletic again and let your whole body come forward a little, because this will throw everything else off.
When you're way back on your heels like this, your spine angle is going to tend to be a little bit more upright, you've got a little bit of curvature in your lower back and a little bit of hunch up here.
That's not bad, but it will flatten out the swing plane and you'll tend to correct that with your arms.
But let's go back.
Let's keep going through here.
So first thing, you're starting to straighten that right leg a little bit.
This may be some morad hangover in here.
Exactly.
Yeah, so big space between the two legs here, right? This little gap here.
Part of that, it really comes down to just your setup, but we don't want to see a big gap through there.
It's a little subjective thing, but just a really easy marker to know when somebody's going to tend to over-rotate their hips a little bit.
Right.
That's that flashlight drill, right? I've never heard that.
Well, I mean, you said, like, you always want your right knee kind of towards the target.
The laser beam knee drill.
Yeah.
So that's a little bit different.
That's talking more about your hips over -rotating, but we'll see that more from face on.
If you're talking about your right knee, then yes, it's okay for it to rotate out a little bit, but this is more about over -rotation of the hips and straighten the right leg.
Right.
So, as I mentioned, because you're, you know, you're set up a little bit too far back on your heels, that makes that much easier to fall into, and then it tends to make your swing flat.
And so now you're a little bit flat, the club's going a little bit inside, and there's a little bit of left arm roll here.
Yeah.
If you imagined, to take Hogan's analogy of a plane of glass, forget about it going through your neck and shoulders.
Imagine a plane of glass on your forearms right here.
I don't know if you can see my mouse cursor moving.
I can.
So, just imagine that there's a plane of glass right there during the backswing.
You can't break that, but you'll see how your arms go outside of that.
Right.
And then my forearm rolls.
And they go hand in hand.
Exactly.
So, these two work together.
So, I'm going to talk about that in just a moment.
But, so now we're a little bit flat, a little bit deep, and then the lower body, you're going to, I'm certain you're going to, yeah.
So, see how your, your tush line is actually off the screen here? Yeah.
And then notice that before impact, you've moved probably four or five inches.
You've stood up, right? Right.
So, obviously, you know, now your spine angle's changed, but your spine angle now is actually closer to where it should have been in the beginning.
Because had you set up properly, not so far back on your heel, that's about where your hips would naturally be.
So, this isn't that bad.
Right.
And, again, release.
Let me play it for a second.
Okay.
Release and impact stuff looks really good.
Again, you're struggling with balance a little bit here just because of the setup.
Let's take a look at the face-on stuff.
Hold on one second.
Is that your launch monitor? Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I had a little launch monitor and it's connected to the screen, but then I, when No worries.
So, overall setup stuff looks fine here.
Pretty strong left-hand grip, but nothing that's going to be too devastating here right now.
A little bit of left side push, but not bad.
I tend to get, like, a little sway, too, at the top.
Yeah.
Your hips are sliding to the right.
So, you're not coiling on your right hip.
You're straightening it up.
And this is, again, this is, you know, this is stack and tilt type stuff.
Not exactly.
You have more weight to the right because you've let your hips slide to the right.
But you have a coil on that right hip, and that's where that straightening of the right leg is happening.
We want to change that.
A little flat here, as I mentioned, so your arm, you see how your right elbow is really, really low, visible underneath your left arm, just a flat swing.
But, again, it comes down to setup, how you're loading the right hip, and what you're doing with your hips, going back to the arm roll.
So, all right.
So, let me walk you through these things.
So, first things first.
Set up.
When you're set up way back like this, it's going to be impossible to make anything right.
But as I mentioned, you probably lose four inches of tush line at impact, but that's your body getting into the position that it's naturally trying to be in.
It's not like you're doing, you know, this, where you're stood up.
You still have spine angle in a proper amount, but you're starting from here.
So, once we change that and just let everything come forward to get your weight more over the center of your feet.
You know, I like to use a range between the ankle and the ball of the foot.
In between there, the middle of your foot is anywhere in that range is going to be fine.
But you're way back.
So, now as you move your weight forward and get your hips more underneath you, your hips can now pivot properly.
But right now, your hips are doing this, where the leg's straightening.
That's why you see the big gap here.
And when the leg straightens, here's the whole problem with that.
This glute disengages.
And it's exactly what you would do in order to disengage that glute.
It makes sense.
If this isn't loaded, then you lose the whole automatic part of the transition.
If this is just straightened up and this isn't working, then you're going to have to try and figure out something to manufacture a downswing that isn't all arms dependent.
And you're too good of a golfer to just huck your arms at it, but you're still having to use your arms a little bit, that's why you feel that necessary, that idea to roll this left arm going back, because you're just trying to get some power out of your swing because you're taking a lot of your trunk out of it.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.
So, what we're going to do, and then as I mentioned, you know, you have a little bit of this where the top, you're just sliding a little bit.
That looks really bad when I see you do that.
I'm exaggerating a little bit.
It's not that bad, I promise.
It's subtle, but it's there.
So, once we get rid of this and this and the setup, what you're going to start to feel is the stuff that you already know how to do, you're going to be able to do it a lot better, a lot easier, without having to try and fabricate it.
So, what I want to do first is get you feeling what it actually feels like to load your right hip.
And when I'm talking about your hip, I'm talking about everything here.
There's all the stabilizer muscles, the glute itself, the hamstring attaches in here.
You're really going to feel loading on this hip a lot, way different than what you're used to right now.
And once you feel that load, then using your lower body, which you already do really well given the position that you're in, it becomes instinctive.
It becomes natural.
You're just going to be able to shift back over there because this is so loaded up that it wants to do nothing other than unload.
So, that's the, the good thing is you really have no business being a 13.
So, being a 13 is really kind of an insult to how well you swing the club.
And obviously, you understand a lot about the golf swing.
But when you're missing these core pieces, it doesn't matter.
Just compensation is the whole way through, right? The whole way.
So, you know, again, like, and part, it's all tied together.
Like, when you're set up like this and your arm's outstretched, it's almost impossible not to roll your arm and break that imaginary plane line.
But as I get my arms, my hips more forward and my arms more underneath my torso instead of being, I'm exaggerating again, but being like this.
Now, as I go back, my arms will have no problem just moving back with my body and not breaking that plane line.
So, again, it's just, they're all tied together.
I'm going to, at first, we're going to get you set up differently.
And then I'm going to get you loading up that hip.
So, I want to see you face on, but you don't need a club for the moment.
I want to just get your body working right first.
So, first, actually, let me turn down the line.
Let's just get you set up right first.
Okay.
So, take your normal setup.
Okay.
Now, let your whole body come forward.
Stand up a little.
Move your hip there.
Right there.
Exactly.
So, actually, let me do this.
Go back to your normal setup.
I'm going to record this.
Okay.
So, that's normal setup.
Now, let your whole body come forward.
Keep going.
Keep going.
Move your hips more towards the target.
There you go.
You can hinge forward from the hip socket a little bit more.
You can still bend forward more.
But your hips need to come forward.
There you go.
Right there.
I'm getting there.
So, now, let me just show you that real quick because I know that feels insane to you.
Feels like I'm on my, like, almost onto my toes.
Not quite.
Yeah.
And we'll work through the weight.
That's all just posture and structural stuff.
All right.
So, that's your setup right now.
So, you can see, like, the lower part of your leg is almost, like, vertical.
And then it just starts going back.
And then, as we move you forward, what does that look like to you? Yeah.
It looks better.
It just looks like a normal setup, right? Right.
So, when you compare the two, you can't- That's like, I'm almost, I'm literally trying to sit on that stool.
Exactly.
You took Hogan's advice here, right? Yeah.
A little too much.
So, that's my problem is I exaggerate.
I keep doing, if a little's good, a lot's better.
Exactly.
So, now you can see how easy it would be for me to come up and tap you on the chest and knock you over, right? Right.
And then you look at, as you start adjusting, you're like, okay, this feels funky.
But, as you look at it, you look really balanced.
You look really natural and athletic.
And even though you may feel that you're way out on your toes, it's going to be just a little bit of a mind adjustment because you obviously do not look like you're set out on your toes at all.
Right.
So, that's the first thing.
That's going to allow you to move correctly because you're no longer way back on your heels.
And once you can compare and contrast this and this, it's going to start to feel really different.
But once you feel that you're more over the center of your feet, you're going to feel how it's easy to move your weight.
When you're already starting on, I'm sure Matt probably explained this to you in some way or another, your weight, the way it moves in the golf swing is not linear, right? It's not like you move laterally this way and laterally this way.
It moves kind of in a figure eight pattern, right? Wherever you start, let's just say you start on your heel, on the middle of your feet, the weight as you go back goes to the left ball of the foot and back to the right ankle.
And the downswing, that's kind of reversed, right? If you're already back on your heels, where else can you go? Well, you can go onto your toes.
That would feel really terrible.
You're too good to do that.
Or you can go further back on your heels.
But in your case, if you're already there, what has to happen to your leg? It has to straighten.
There's nowhere else for it to go.
So that's why this is such a simple but critical fix for you.
So now you have some place to go and you can load and move into your legs instead of just feeling like you're trying to get out of the way.
So you've got to get used to the setup thing and you're probably going to start out setting up like this and just kind of letting everything rock forward.
And you'll notice, as I mentioned, when you tend to set up too far back on your heels, it tends to make your spine more upright.
So now, as you start moving forward, your spine, you can hinge forward a little bit more and that will bring your arms more into a vertical plane instead of stretched out away from you, which helps address that tendency to want to roll.
The flatter your arms are, like if you were swinging on a completely horizontal plane, your arms would roll a lot, right? Completely vertical plane, your arms wouldn't roll at all.
But the more that you sit back on your heels and the more upright your spine is and the more your arms are out, the more you're going to want to roll.
Makes sense? Yeah, absolutely.
So let's get you set up again properly and then I'm going to start getting you to feel your heels or feel your weight.
So really, for me, I almost feel like I'm coming forward like this, right? The whole body's coming forward.
Yeah, keep going.
I'm sorry.
Move your hips toward the ball.
There you go.
Get your hips more underneath you.
And then, yep, and then you can hinge forward.
There you go.
Good.
So that'll put your arms a little bit more underneath your shoulders instead of so outstretched.
There you go.
Right, because now it's hard to roll them.
Bingo.
That's why these little fundamental pieces are so important.
Oh, absolutely.
I told my wife, I was like, you know, I got to get this set up because if you're not set up correctly, then right from the get-go, you're off.
Literally.
I mean, it's devastating to just make such a simple little mistake or take something too far.
And then all of a sudden, you're chasing your tail in circles for years when it's really just one stupid little thing, right? I mean, almost, I'd say 90%, 80, 90% of the work I did with tour pros when I was still working with a lot of guys on tour was all stupid, simple, little fundamental lapses.
Your shoulders are 20 degrees closed.
Your feet are 20 degrees open.
Just stupid little stuff like that.
That's what stuff really starts to fall off.
Set up, same thing.
Oh, you're too far back on your heels.
We start falling into these little traps because our body feels different every day.
And that's why you can't rely on what you feel.
You have to feel by what you see.
And these days now with cameras, high speed, everybody's got a 240 frame per second, you know, super camera on their phone now.
So we have no excuses not to check this stuff.
Exactly.
So let's get you set up.
And now I want you to feel, so I'm going to have you go down the line again, and I'm going to have you start to turn, and we're going to keep that right leg flexed this time.
How narrow do you like to see that? I know it's, is there a.
.
.
That's perfect.
Right here.
When it comes to, when it comes to setup, it's kind of like peas and pours.
So obviously from a mechanical standpoint, what we really talk about is a couple inches outside of neutral.
Right.
Understand, like with a driver, you stand a little bit wider because you can shallow out the angle of attack.
You don't want to stand too wide with irons because it's really hard to get back to the left side.
But with a driver, specialty club, right? Right.
But you don't want to be too narrow where you can't feel power from your leg.
So right there is perfect.
There you go.
So it's funny because like, I definitely was this now, like, yeah, you had a little bit of lordosis, a little bit of extra curvature in your lower back, the way you were set up before.
So you're, again, I'm going to exaggerate, but you were kind of like this, right? I'm surprised you didn't have some back issues kind of hurting your lower back.
If you didn't, I mean, I definitely feel it at times.
And I'm an ophthalmologist.
So I'm leaning over.
So that's why, like, my thoracic spine has a little curvature over the years.
Well, you actually, as soon as you set up right, it pretty much went away.
Where you get that upper thoracic curvature, when this is lordo, when you're bending this, this tends to go like this, and then you still got to get to the ball.
So you end up with the old hump.
Right.
So I want to sort of feel like a little bend, and then I'm just leaning over, right? Yep.
That's it.
That's great.
Now, go to the top of your swing without a club, just like that, and let's see what happens with your legs.
Okay.
Do that a couple times.
I just want you to feel it, because it's going to feel very different.
This is a big adjustment.
You know all those muscles you talk about, the 20 pounds or 30 pounds of muscles you need? Yeah.
Well, I'm going to show you why.
You couldn't feel them before, because you couldn't engage them.
So take a look at your screen.
Now, remember we had that big old gap between your knees? Yeah.
The flipper could jump through? That's your top of the backswing now.
I can't even believe how high it is now.
Yeah, remember I said your arms were going to tend to be a little flat with what you were doing? Again, your spine angle is the primary dictator of swing plane, right? So when you've got a lot of curvature forward in the lower back, and then the upper back has to get a little bit more, mid -thoracic has to get a little bit more upright, that more dictates the arm plane.
And so when you're kind of like this, then it's real easy to do this.
And then as you come forward and get your weight more in front, now as you turn back, you feel your glutes engaged, because before you couldn't, you were so far back on your heel, and straightening this leg, you had to disengage the glute to allow that to even happen, and that's what created the gap, and that's why you didn't feel these muscles.
Now, your arms are going up instead of just around, and so these little setup changes have changed, as you can see, everything in your swing.
That's crazy.
Just simple fundamentals.
At least my fundamentals.
I like your fundamentals.
So yeah, this looks awesome.
Way better.
Even in there, I could have you come forward just a hair more, let your knees come forward just a little bit more, bring the pelvis forward a little bit more, but this is totally workable here, right? You're no longer having to make big compensations.
Arms look good.
During the takeaway, that left arm should be vertical or slightly to the inside, give or take a little bit.
It's a little bit on the outside there, but we're definitely in the ballpark, and we can golf from there.
Now, the big things that I want you to focus on are going to be getting comfortable with your setup change.
I don't want you to feel out on your toes, obviously, but be careful with what you're feeling, right? I had a guy swear to me that true balance for him forever in a golf clinic I did many years ago was on his toes.
I'm like, no, it's not.
And I kept having to go through this exercise, and I'm like, I can push you forward.
I just come over and tap you on the shoulder, and you fall forward.
He's like, no, that's balance for me.
It's different for me.
I didn't know that he had been a ski instructor for like 25 years, and so he spent his whole life telling people to put their shins into the front of their boots.
And so when he would stand up to the golf ball, this was normal for him.
Right, of course.
That is, you are balanced.
So you're going to have to just get comfortable with the feeling and just make tiny little adjustments.
As your knees come forward and your pelvis tilts forward, you're going to find that balance.
And again, the range is center of the ankle to the back of the ball of the foot.
The middle of the foot is about where that weight needs to be at setup.
That's going to allow you to move, right? It has to shift.
Yes, it has to go back on the right foot and forward on the front foot during the backswing and then switch that.
But if you're already back, you've got nowhere to go.
So if I were to set up against the wall, how far away from the wall should my heels be that I could still set up? Because I think like sometimes I do that, and I almost have a foot, you know, because I'm so.
.
.
There's no hard and fast number for it because it's based on your anatomy.
Like I have shorter legs and a longer torso, which means the more hinge I put into my swing, the more weight I'm actually moving forward.
So for me, I may be back a little bit more than somebody who has really long legs and a short torso.
But I would give you a range of really no more than like four or five inches.
That's getting pretty extreme.
If you're a foot, then we know you're way out of whack, right? Yeah, I'm just thinking about a way to practice and kind of get used to.
.
.
Yeah, use that as a range, you know.
Sure.
No more than four or five inches would be really pretty extreme.
You've got to have a specific build for that to be truly balanced.
Right.
I'd say shoot for, you know, three or four inches is fine.
Makes sense.
But I really don't really want to change a lot else to what you're doing in your swing right now because I want you just to get comfortable with this.
You're in time already, but I want you to focus on when you're practicing this, I want you to really start to feel that you're loading into this right leg so that you're no longer straightening this leg, but you're feeling that this leg, this glute and hamstring is really, as it's exaggerated right now, really engaged going back.
So that you, it's going to feel so foreign to you at first, but I want you just to try and feel that as you're going back.
And then as you transition over to the left, that feeling of the glute, how loaded it is, it transfers to the left and doubles because now you're dynamically moving and trying to create downforce, literally trying to push that leg into the ground and then driving up off of it for the post move.
But really once, once you, once I just got you set up, right, you started moving in the right way.
I'm probably not going to have to make, tell you to do those things, but that would be where I tell you to focus your practice on what you're going to feel on your lower body.
That sounds awesome.
Any, I know you have a bunch of questions.
Any questions you want me to run through before we wrap up here? Um, just, uh, so when I'm, so now I'm going to be a little bit more upright and, or not, just forward and I'm here.
So really just feel this engage and then just shift and then post, right? That's it.
That's the dead drill, right? Now the dead drill is going to make a lot more sense to you because you're going to feel those muscles I'm talking about in the video.
All right.
And then, uh, are you planning on doing some more of these zoom for a while or? Yeah.
I'm trying to open up spots at the beginning of each week, just based on my schedule.
So the timing has changed a little bit, but I'll probably either today or tomorrow open up more spots for the upcoming week.
And I'm just doing it week by week.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
Just a little, a little crazy busy right now.
So this is a good thing.
You have a great model.
I was, uh, I have a friend of mine.
I was like, you should check out the site and replicate it for tenants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've got a lot of people contact us about stuff like that.
It's a lot of work.
Oh yeah.
No, it's not.
And I think it's nice that you're able to, you know, connect with some of the followers and users and offer these lessons.
You know, it's, it's one thing to watch yourself and I've been videotaped myself, but you know, you, you have a trained guy, you've seen thousands of people over the years.
So for you, it's like, oh, your setup.
I was like, what is my setup? That's like my key, you know, because you just get used to seeing it.
And for you, it was like very easy.
Like, and I've taken a gazillion lessons.
Yeah.
You know, everyone has their feeling, but I like, I'm really committed to keep working through the process, so I'll look forward to connecting with you again.
Awesome.
If you haven't already, jump on that.
If you're on Facebook, join the Facebook group, because you can post your swing up in there.
And if I don't get to it, or one of our instructors doesn't get to it, there's a lot of super knowledgeable people in there who are also learning together.
So there's like dozens of swings posted every single day, even just drills, people just checking, you know, something simple.
So that's always a quick way to get free, instant, you know, really, really quick help on there.
I mean, each time somebody posts, there's probably 20 or 30 comments on there.
Right.
Well, I look forward to kind of doing my dead drill now, because I've been getting, you know, pretty good with it.
And, you know, now with the new kind of positioning, I look forward to seeing how that translates.
It'll be a big difference for sure.
Yeah.
And then our next one, I need to work a little bit on my chipping.
All right.
No problem.
That's easy stuff.
Those are, those are short swings, right? This is the hard one.
If you get this out of the way, then it's the rest of a piece of cake.
Well, listen, enjoy the rest of your week.
And I really appreciate your time.
You bet.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Russell
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jonathan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Stephen
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Harold
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bill
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bill