Pro Secret #3 - Swing Easy, Hit Hard

Learn how pros like Ernie Els use physics and leverage to swing easy and hit it hard!

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Swing easy and hit it hard.

It's been the rotary swing mantra since I founded rotary swing.

com back in 2005.

I'm all about hitting the ball as far as I can while putting as little effort into it as humanly possible and in today's lesson you're gonna see a student start to experience that for himself and see how you can take this into your game you're gonna learn some things you've probably never heard before so make sure you stay all the way then to the end of the video where I'm going to talk about some really important concepts and you're gonna watch just how amazing and how quick you can produce speed just watch the student here I'm going to show you a highlight of what you're gonna see toward the end of this video make your hands travel on a really wide circle feels a little goofy right now let your hands drop and get close to your thighs and move them in a tighter circle there you go so you can you can hear the difference right now burn this image in your head so you know what it's gonna feel like for you to learn how to hit the ball effortlessly and farther than you ever have before check it out on this lesson your hips are definitely getting very open it looks like okay your shoulder is popping up pretty hard pretty early your right shoulder and that's causing a little bit of a flip because basically at some point you run out of stuff to move and so you can see right here not bad but there's a little bit of a flip in there and it's really because you're rotating so much so soon like your right shoulders ripping out from under your chin very early and that helps you get your hips very open but if it happens too soon you run out of rotation so let me let me look it down the line real quick and I'll explain what that means yeah all right this definitely like kind of weird follow -through as well this is just a sequencing like a timing thing okay okay you can swing really fast and I can tell that you've been trying to like get as much as you can out of your swing you know you're going for it which is great but the true mastery of the golf swing is to move as slowly as you can while swinging as fast as you can right and right now you're swinging fast and your body's moving fast and you need to understand that to really be efficient and to get everything to kind of dial up the right efficiency level at every level of the swing you have to actually kind of calm some things down and you'll actually swing faster and that's the hardest thing in golf to understand it really is because it's a very complex machine when you think about all the forces are going we have rotational forces right coming from our hips our legs can generate rotation our shoulders can generate rotation our core can generate rotation and all of those things have to happen in the swing but they have to happen in sequence and same thing now you've got rotation creating speed and then you've got your arms that can do a lot right and when all of and getting all of those things to to interlock together perfectly is the secret to what the pros do really well okay and the one thing that you undoubtedly know about professional golf is that when you watch them swing what what does it look like free effortless that's it right that's the trick that's the secret to amateurs tend to swing especially a really high level better amateur golfers like yourself who are good like you've got a good golf swing but taking that secret step over like the boundary line to understanding what it's really like to be able to be truly efficient and consistent because those two go hand in hand you know if you're swinging hard on every swing it's damn hard to be consistent because you're just maxing out every shot right so so you have to understand that we've got to get like some of these pieces are interlocking and some of them are kind of out in fray and just interlocking a couple of these little things together leads to huge boosts and speed without any effort and that's the secret right so in your case what i was saying is that you're stalling out but you're not stalling out because you're stopping you're stalling out because you're running out of places to go you don't have any more rotation available to you right if you start down and take your lead shoulder and start rotating it right away by the time you get to impact there's nowhere else for you to go right and so of course your arms and hands flip over because the only thing left that you have okay and that's the trick to what's going on with what your swing is mechanically all those things it's it's such a subtle fine thing to tune this but here's what really has to happen you have to feel like that first half of the swing in your mind is waiting and it's letting your arms drop back down to get the club shallowed out and that connects all these pieces back together right when we take a back swing like it's set up you know everything's it's all glued together because we haven't started separating any of these joints right and then as we make that back swing we think of it like a zipper on your jacket as you make a back swing you start to unzip all this stuff because it's all getting stretched out and pulled in all these different directions and they're moving in different angles all this different stuff is happening right and as you pull them apart and all these pieces are disconnected what you do in the downswing is you move these disconnected pieces as fast as you can no that totally makes sense and instead we need that transition to do this and then we move it does that make sense no that makes total sense so i realize it's a little like what's that i said that's a lot what it feels like it's hard to put into words but that's definitely what i feel like it's very hard right yeah it's very hard to articulate this so but what what has to happen is you have to feel it and you have to experience it but you have to understand it first you have to understand that we're unzipping ourselves and we've got to zip ourselves back together and then once they're all zipped together everything can move together otherwise you've got a jacket that's moving into different places you can sunset yeah so to feel that and it's going to feel strange at first but you're as you go out what you need to do is this part needs to wait you need to feel that your arms can drop back down because this is part of zipping everything this is very unzipped and this is getting zipped back together right so as you start down it's not here and then turn because you'll up you'll wind you'll you'll run out of turn at some point you can only turn so far your turn as far as you can go okay so now instead you've got to wait for everything to kind of sink back up and get zipped back together and then once you're in here then you can release and get everything through the ball but you can't do that while everything's unzipped so i want you to feel that as you start down that you you're slow from the top essentially now slow is very relative i don't i don't like that word because it's not really slow it's happening quick but it's it's getting your arms back in sync with your body is key if your arms lag way behind your body because you're turning as fast as you can as early as you can from the top then your arms are unzipped the whole way into impact and then they just fling through and flip over that first little transition move is the key if you and back in the day i know you've been playing golf a while like i've been playing off way too long but i was taught like years and years like 20 years ago people used to teach the swing where you would kind of go back and then you would pick the club up and then you would drop it and wait and reset your arms and then try to turn through and stuff oh yeah that yeah that was crazy because it didn't work but the idea that i think that those instructors back in the day the old school 80 stuff and i was learning were trying to put this puzzle together in a way that what they observed happening but it they did they did in a way that was very unnatural nobody's going to like be able to reroute the club like this right that's what hank haney spent all the time with charles barkley trying to do it doesn't work you can't do that but that's kind of like what you're going to feel okay so like in my swing for example when i go to the top i have a tendency to to swing really hard and fast because i can and so i and i like it i like to swing really fast and so i always tell myself to like swing as slow as i because i'm not trying to i'm actually trying to slow my swing speed down so that i have more control because my tendency is to swing as fast as i can every time because it feels awesome it feels awesome right but i can't always guarantee where that's going so so what i do in my own swing and again this is more of a feeling it's not a mechanical thing we're just trying to re-zip that jacket back up because i go to the top and i just feel like i do this now this in and of itself does not work that's stupid you can't just drop your arms but that's what i feel but of course i already know that my hips are moving my weight is shifting i'm starting to turn so my feel and reel are very different but that's what i have to put in my brain that i just have to wait just wait wait wait wait once my arms get down here and i let gravity and a little bit of muscular effort bring them down and then i release the club and everything is all synced back up and i can get through the ball very easily and effortlessly but it feels in my own head and i've measured this and in fact i was doing it this weekend with the launch monitor and out on the range with a laser range finder if i swung what i felt like was like you know 85 90 capacity my eight iron was going like 185 but this is like a 3 000 feet altitude okay so any range balls though so it's a trade-off but but my normal eight iron at sea level is like 175 so it's probably a 10 yard gap distance right when i swung slow what i felt was slow and just waited on everything to sink back up and get everything glued together and it felt so much more effortless and it felt like i wasn't gonna hit the ball far i hit the ball the exact same distance and my good really really good one before i just nutted it perfectly would go maybe 190 at that altitude so the point is that i felt like two completely different golfers one i felt like i was like what you just looked like you know i'm going at it i'm swinging everything i'm having a hard time keeping balance it feels really quick and fast and then one feels like i'm just waiting and then let the club rip out at the bottom and the ball goes the exact same distance okay so you have to think about it in terms of the feel but the only way to really experience this is to go out on the range and see balls and hit balls the way that you normally do and then kind of let everything sync up and wait and feel like your arms as you come down to start to kind of drop back down here to get that this is part of zipping up your coat right you're getting everything back connected to your body and just this little bit of connection as you start to come through helps start moving your arms together and sync with your body and allows you to apply force together it's kind of like if you're throwing a punch like this yeah waiting for a second and letting your body move your arm and throwing a punch that makes total sense so i don't know a better way to describe it but that's the best i can do no that's good i definitely feel like that my swing like like you're saying like on the way through it's like everything's kind of doing its own thing i'm just trying to do my best to get it back without like you're saying like have it work together like like a zipped up jacket so that's definitely i've i totally feel that my swing okay good and so you can see that right like you start turning right away and it's just too soon it's just a little bit out of sync and you've got to wait just a second be patient the thing you got to realize about the golf club is that it's a lever right it's a really long tool and so much of what most golfers try to do and there's a balance to this stuff you have to use your body to provide power but then you don't want to overuse your body right you're really overusing that rotation that initial rotation to try and accelerate the club and you can do that but it's just inefficient so when you start thinking about what really needs to happen that club head just needs to move quickly and to move quickly doesn't mean you know swing like bryson de chambeau right like he's an extreme outlier but you look at the the luke donald of the world and you know the guys who swing fast but don't look like they're wailing on it and can play at a high level they're just trying to get that club head to move fast at the last second when you think about moving quickly we're getting the club head to move quickly it doesn't take a ton of brute force that's my point to it right like we're not hitting a baseball we're not swinging a baseball bat this thing is very light the golf ball is very light so you need to think about i don't need to build up all this power from the top of my back swing because that's what you're doing you're going to top of your back swing and then just firing everything at once right and well it feels like a lot of effort and power it is a lot of effort but it's not really getting the club to move as quickly as it can because quickly really not that much right i mean you can just sit here and do that's pretty quick right now that's a flip but it gets you the idea that okay well i don't have to use my body at all to move quick and then as i start thinking about what i want to happen down here and i start saying okay well i can be really patient all the way to here and just get a little extra momentum and then the club still moves quickly right instead of thinking about oh i gotta swing as hard as i can think about being patient and getting some quickness and some speed instead of trying to move this sledgehammer does that make sense yeah that makes total sense so let's try a couple just little practice swings but just get the feeling of going to the top and just kind of waiting for a second letting your arms zip back into your body and then you've got the club come through okay i'll try that okay so instead of doing this from the top i'm trying to get a little there's one up here yep it's taking a lot of mental power probably looks horrible there you go do you want to face on all right let's just take a quick look oh my gosh that was way harder than i thought it would be this is a lot easier when you're actually hitting balls because then you get to see it's the trick to this when you're hitting balls you can actually see the ball go and like okay i felt like i swung really slow but the ball went really far when you're making practice swing it's never going you're not going to believe it you're not going to be like okay that's really going to get me the distance that i need so uh this is one of those ones where you definitely want to be out so the club's shallowing out pretty quickly here and it's coming down from the inside and i'll explain a couple other things of why this all makes sense in a minute but this is the idea like you actually you know actually have more of a normal follow -through there because you're not slinging the club through anymore right you look more balanced you look more uh under control now obviously these are slower swings but so you can see how the club shallows out really well here and then you get this nice little zip of speed yeah that's what it felt like shoulders opening up a little bit there but it's better like before that right shoulder was just you're pulling the heart under your chin as fast as you could okay so that's closer now let me talk about a couple things really quickly to help you understand why this produces speed but yet it feels like you're swinging slow there are two things that in the swing that help reduce speed effortlessly down in the hitting area and the first one is this idea of of your hands in the club head traveling in concentric circles and all that means is just you know your hands are traveling on a smaller circle than the club head is right it's going on a bigger circle now if your hands were traveling really close around your leg right like super close it's a really small circle right the club head when it's being moved in this small circle your hand moving in a small circle versus your hand moving in a big circle that forces the club to accelerate right okay it has to keep up with your hands they're traveling on on circles that are concentric but one small and one big it's the same concept as the merry-go-round right if you're the kid in the middle of the merry-go-round you don't have to be going that fast but because the outside of the merry-go-round is attached just like the club head is attached via the shaft to your hands then the outside goes really fast but you can be really efficient as long as those those circles that your hands are traveling on is relatively small so you make that circle small versus you know making this big and if you swing like this and you just feel this actually just hop up and do this while I'm telling you make your on a really wide circle feels a little goofy right now let your hands drop and get close to your thighs and move them in a tighter circle yeah yeah yeah I'm not even trying that hard that's cool there you go so you can you can hear the difference right yes so that's the idea of concentric circles now when your hands shallow out instead of start going you know instead of your hands getting pulled out toward the ball making your hands travel on this bigger arc when they shallow out and they get zipped back up to your body and they travel on this narrow circle that's why you feel like you're not swinging very fast but the club goes fast it's the physics principle right versus you having this big wide arc of your hands that takes a lot more physical force so that's number one number two is this idea of parametric acceleration where essentially as the club is going down if you could somehow pull up on the handle at the time that you wanted the club to go down you would cause this angle that's in your wrist to release faster okay so this versus just pulling the handle through you know on a straight line this causes the club to bottom out and release quicker those two things together happen when you swing correctly and that's why pros and guys like myself we hit the ball a long ways we don't swing very hard doing it you can't see it because it's happening in this little space it's very hard to really realize how powerful that is but that's why i really feel like i wait and let my hands drop and i'm patient and then i use that concentric circle to speed up the club but i also this is why you can't run out of pulling from the shoulder if you do this too soon then you've already started to release the club and the club just getting put through but what i'm trying to do is i'm waiting getting my hands down here and then as my shoulder starts to go up that's my left hand pulling against the butt of the club this motion takes my hands from down here by my knee up to my mid thigh that is traveling on an arc up as that's happening that's forcing the club to go down and do it faster and that's like in the last second so that's not like well i'm doing this this immediately okay yeah exactly so this is happening super late and not really something that you need to try and create but you need to understand why this works right why can you swing slower and hit the ball or you know your body and everything feel like they're swinging slower yet the club goes faster and it's more efficient and that's the secret to this stuff is understanding some of these really simple but hard to understand hard to see physics principles like you know if your hand path is just a little bit in versus being out here like it's hard to see that on camera it's hard to know does that really make that much of a difference but you can feel it you can you can feel how the club works through but when you you know if you keep trying to push your hands through on a straight line there's no power in this i need this angle to be released but i also don't want to try and time that and you know push against the shaft so how do i get that to release automatically on its own well my wrists have to be soft and i have to go up right as my leg goes up my shoulder goes up it pulls the butt of the club up forces the head down okay that makes a lot of sense you know i remember you had a video on the site where you had like a little thing that you made where you you made a big circle and this little this the little ball or something was going everywhere but you made a real tight circle it was getting flung around really fast that makes me walk that's the simplest way of i mean that's oversimplification of the golf suit but that's what you want to try and emulate right is how can you move as slow and efficient as possible and get this club head to move quickly and that's really what you're trying to do so do you think just moving forward do you think the best way to practice this is like on the range and just video it or what do you think yeah well this is more of a you know your swing itself mechanically is fine what you need to do is develop the feel of the sequencing of zipping your jacket back up you need to practice feeling waiting being patient and i hate that word waiting because it's not really what's happening it's just letting everything sync back up getting your arms back you know more connected to the the rotation and the movement the body's trying to create and getting the hands closer to your body versus having them way out here you know if you watch the app next time you go to the range just look down the range and watch like the worst hitters right there'll be no shortage of them and what you'll find the guys who hit the worst and the shortest have this big arc to the club they cast the club at the top and their hands also get as wide and far away from their body as soon as humanly possible because they're extending this right arm so that's the only way that they know how to produce power right so they make their hands travel on this arc as wide as they can and then they have to scoop and chicken wing at the bottom right that will be the worst golfer out there and he'll be swinging as hard as he can the ball will just go absolutely nowhere right and then you'll watch somebody like me who looks really boring and my hands are really narrow and close because i again i'm trying to use these concentric circles and you and as i'm using parametric acceleration it's happening in you know hundredths of a second you can't see it yeah that's that's the secret to this stuff is using those physics to accelerate the club without your body having to work so hard for it yeah that makes total sense man because i think i told you before but i had surgery on the shoulder from golf on the road every time if i go after it and then you know i start getting wider here it starts hurting my shoulder and i'm like crap i'm not hitting this far i'm gonna go faster and then faster it really starts wearing that shoulder go with that little short zip at the bottom i don't feel like anything on the shoulder which is really good it's exactly right but you you you hit the problem golf on the head when we start hitting it not as well we start getting more out of sequence because we start trying to swing faster and harder earlier like oh well shit i need to swing harder i need i need more time i need to do it harder sooner right i'll tell you i always hit the ball decently far not like you do but like far from me and if i hit like my seven iron and i hit it bad on like a par three and it goes like 160 or something i'm like oh shoot i can't look like a weenie on here dude i gotta step it up a little bit you know and then just like you're saying it keeps getting worse and worse it's the worst problem in the world to have but the true answer to it is sequencing it's it's actually being swinging slower being more patient you know you watch guys on the range who are really really efficient ball strikers you know tour players who are really efficient ball strikers and they look like they're swinging so slow from the top right there's no herd it's a great example of somebody who hit the ball plenty far he moved quick but he really leveraged you know his build and the way that he swung the club as much as possible and i have really great old footage of tiger or of ernie because one of my old teaching pros used to he's from south africa as well and he knew ernie i used to play with him and trevor and so i have great old footage of these guys and the way that they swing and being up close to them in person watching how smooth and elegant these guys were but how the distance they got is radically different than how you see everybody else on the planet swing right and so when you start realizing like almost all the tour pros look like they're barely moving and almost all amateurs look like they're moving as fast as they can yet the the disparity in ball striking ability is vastly different you have to look underneath the covers a little bit understand like some of these physics things and the sequencing and the mechanics of what's going on it's not about swinging harder it's truly about swinging more efficient and when you get that and you understand these simple little things you'll realize gosh i can swing what to me feels really slow from the top and hit the ball the same distance or further than i am now yeah you're totally right man and i'm sorry to bother you just last thing is um does the tush line look okay and everything i've really been working on that too it looks great yeah again the problem is that you're you're just running out of rotation right like people who are going to use a little bit of right arm thrust in the swing again that can't happen early because now you've got nothing left to hit with right the people the golfers who use a bit more right arm in their swing their right arms tend to stay really close to their hip until very late right need that right arm to be able to hit with and extend and thrust the club down the line but if you do that too soon you run out of right arm you're just running out of rotation okay so that can't make you lose your posture a little bit more because at some point once you really rotate yourself you have to come out of your posture it's like wringing a towel you're just making everything shorter so you're eventually going to come out of it and so you may see it you're losing your posture a little bit but that's just because you're rotating way too hard too soon gotcha okay and well thank you for taking the time and that really like you couldn't put them into words but that makes a ton of sense to me so thank you yeah you bet well let me know how it works out yeah man i'll hopefully be back in a little while i can update you i know it's going so all right go out there and swing easy but hit it hard sure i'll try man you have a good one okay all right buddy you too thanks