Dramatic Student Swing Change - Get the Same Results With These Drills

Hello, everyone. Chuck Quinton here with Rotary Swing Golf. I wanted to show you what kind of progress you can make when you're following the videos on the website, and so I pulled up this student here who I've given four lessons to. I'm going to walk you through the sequence. A lot of people have requested this. What's it like taking a lesson, and getting several lessons? What can you expect in results? How does it apply to the videos and learning on the website, and so on and so forth? That's what I'm going to show you here.

                I have a student up here, we're going to do before and after here. We're going to walk you through videos from all four lessons. They were followed once a week for four weeks. Here's where we started with, on the left. There's going to be a basic trend here that you're going to see. As we start, a couple things that you're going to notice right away.

                One, notice how that right knee is starting to get into a really weak position, bowed out left knee starting to get buckled in, and almost has the look of a little bit of a reverse pivot, where his upper body's starting to want to fall back. This is because his hips and his knees have shifted out from under him. He's in a pretty weak and unstable position here, to say the least. The cause of this, the culprit, is because he's a little bit too right-side dominant, or a lot too right-side dominant, in his backswing and downswing. He's trying to heave this right arm up into a powerful position and dominate the swing with just the right side of the body. Of course, this is going to create a lot of problems in the downswing.

                As we start down, you'll see right away that he's starting to move his hands, throw his hands out away him. He's going to throw the club away a little bit, and he's going to start to lose a lot of lag. By the time he gets about halfway down, he's already lost a tremendous amount of lag. As we near closer to impact, he's pretty much spent everything he has left in his wrist. He has nothing left to hit with, so he's going to scoop and flip into impact. You'll see that left wrist breaking down, the right wrist fully extended. It's flexing that left wrist back, so his left wrist is cupping, breaking down.

                As I mentioned, this is all a culprit from starting the swing, trying to get the right arm into a really loaded position at the top, and then throwing the club, throwing the right arm at the ball, the right wrist at the ball, dominating the swing with the right hand. Of course, the first thing that we do is we start trying to get him to be more left-side dominant. Here's how we started that. I actually walked through even his drills here.

                The first thing you're going to notice, and I'm going to walk through a few different things. Even from his drill, I'm going to put him back at the top of his swing right here. Just going left arm only, notice the massive difference in these two positions, just making a practice swing. Here, he's obviously loading up the right arm. Here, his right arm's not even involved, I've taken it off the club. But notice the massive difference in his lower body. This should tell you something.

                When you're very right-side dominant, you're trying to load that right side too much, trying to get all your power, because again, as I talked about in many videos on the site, and on YouTube, how we all tend to be right-side dominant. Most golfers are. We do everything in our normal daily lives with our ride side and our right hand. In the golf swing, it's no different, of course. But when you see all these tour players, they look very similar at the top of the swing and at impact. The reason is, is they know the secret that you don't, is that the golf swing is primarily lead arm, or left arm for right-handers, lead arm dominant.

                You can see all of a sudden, by just getting him to just focus on swinging the club back with his lead arm, he still makes a nice big full shoulder turn, in fact a bigger one, because he's got more weight on the right side. It's easier to make a full shoulder turn. His left knee is not buckled in, and his right knee's not bowed out. All of a sudden, all these great things happen. It's amazing what you can do when you just understand very simple mechanics of the swing.

                Now, as we start down, notice halfway down, we'll get his left arm parallel to the ground here, roughly parallel, a little bit off there, frames aren't quite exact here, but you're going to see a big difference. We'll get him as close as we can, roughly about the same spot, in the positions of the club. Ignore this bowing of the shaft. This is shot with an iPad, and the processor can't keep up with this stuff. It's moving too fast, so that's what it distorts it. Don't worry about that. The shaft is not actually bent like that. If you see that on your videos at home, don't worry about it.

                But you can see that the amount of lag that he has now, with his right hand's taking off, and it can't be pushing against the shaft to cause it to throw away, that he has a tremendous amount more lag as he comes into impact than what he had before. Massive difference. In fact, at this point, I'd say actually he's bordering on having a little bit too much. He'd have to really work hard to release that club in time at the last second there. We would also notice that his left hand, long before the club ever gets into the impact area, his left hand's up here by his left thigh, like I preach in the impact videos, and here he's already released the club long before that.

                Just by making one simple change, by taking the right arm out of it, getting him to swing left arm only, just having him go back and forth, not even giving him a lot of mechanical instruction. I'm just having him start to learn to train the left arm, like I do in the Left Arm Downswing Drill on the website, just working on that and focusing on holding onto the club with the last three fingers of the left hand, not pushing against the shaft with the thumb. That's critical, because that can also push the club out and cause you to throw the lag away.

                This was the first lesson. This is what we accomplished in lesson one, and he did great with it. We just focused on nothing but that.

                As I wanted to work up to hitting balls in this hour long lesson, which we don't always do, but I wanted to work up to actually hitting balls. You'll notice how I have him holding his right hand on the club. I don't want him to mess up all the good work we've just done. I have him basically open palming, what I called him palming the club, his right hand, so he can't grip it and wrap his fingers it, and start to want to get back into that right-side dominant mode. He's just basically mirroring the movements and helping support the club a little bit with his right hand. You'll notice as he gets that, he's going to want to get back in his old habits a little bit, not quite as good as he was at the top before, but still better than where he started.

                Again, just by taking that right arm out of the equation here, now as he comes down, not letting him use it, like you see in the 5 Minutes to the Perfect Release Video and a lot of other videos on the website, right hand is coming off long before impact. You can see we're in much, much better positions here, maintaining the lag a lot longer. Then he actually gets into a little bit better impact position. It's not great yet. Of course in the next lesson, that's what we tackle, so here he's got a little bit of breaking down, a little bit of pushing with that thumb that's causing the left wrist to cup a little bit. We'll work into that as we come back. We'll leave this guy up here for a second, because that one's going to be pretty bad. But again, we haven't worked on impact yet.

                Let's go to lesson two. In lesson two, we're reinforcing what we did before, again, continuing to get into focus on swinging left hand, but he's had a week to work on it now. You're going to notice, looking pretty good, starting to look like a golfer here, big shoulder turn, knees aren't so buckled out, his body a lot more stacked. Now he's gotten a lot more comfortable swinging with his left arm only, but he's able to get into good position all the way down, losing a little bit of lag, still. It's not perfect. It's only been a week, but he gets into a really good impact position.

                This is after we've worked on the impact alignment, the stuff you see in the Impact Alignments video, and the 5 Minutes to the Perfect Release. I'm having him focus on getting his wrist into a proper position here. Again, the shaft's not really bent this much. It's just the camera. His wrist is in an excellent position. It's up here by his left thigh, so now he's able to get into a really good position and start to work on releasing the club. Notice how the club is releasing by his left forearm rotating over, rather than his body releasing, so his right heel's still staying on the ground. When you're swinging left arm only, there's no need for your right side of your body to come through the shot. It only happens when the right arm is still attached to the club. That's what we worked on in lesson two is getting into a good impact position.

                This is lesson three. He just happens to be wearing the same outfit. As we come into lesson three, he's had more time to work on the left arm stuff, and we worked more focusing on getting into a better impact position. Now you can start to see, we'll go back on the first lesson, massive differences in the angles that he has created here by learning how to use the left arm and the body to start to move the club, instead of just his right arm like you see here. That difference in lag is night and day, especially for being two weeks after his first lesson.

                Here, this is an excellent position to be in. Again, left hand is getting into perfect impact position that you can see here, and shaft's not really that bent. Left arm is in a great position. He's no longer scooping and flipping it, and he's learning to release the club. You can see how much wider his release is here, because he's learned to release the club and let it go with his left hand by rolling those knuckles under on his left hand. I gave him a few different thoughts or visuals here. Sometimes I'll have people feel like they're backhanding me here, so I'll put my hand right here and have them try and hit me with the back of his left hand with the wrist of the left hand. Then I'll talk about pointing that logo down at the ground if he's scooping it and flipping it, or talk about rolling these knuckles, your last three knuckles on your left hand, rolling them under so that the club rotates over, and the toe rotates over. This is a beautiful impact and release position here, again big difference. Now, keep working on those moves.

                The last lesson, this is lesson four, four weeks into it. Now that he's trained the left arm, the left arm has a great idea of what to do, the right side's not so dominant. They're learning to work together a lot better. Now I wanted him to have something else to help move the club. We want to always have momentum, and we're basically managing momentum in the golf swing. You don't want to have to be yanking the club down with your arms, but if you're not using your body correctly, that's going to be what you're forced to do, because you don't have anything else to create momentum in the swing.

                What I had him do here is in that RST step drill. Basically, I'm having him start to create some momentum with the big muscles, with his body, with his mass. As he steps to the right, it's helping move the club and get some mass and momentum moving to the right. Then as he steps back to the left, now you'll notice one of the things that you see all the time in the tour players, and all amateurs always wonder how they do it, notice that his weight is beginning to move. He's taking a step back with his left side, but the club is still traveling back. His lower body is transitioning into a downswing mode, but the club is still clearly traveling in the backswing mode. Now as he pushes that left heel on the ground and stabilizes his pelvis, pushes the left foot in, he starts to get where he can have a really stable impact position and a great impact position with his left arm, right heel still down, rolling to the inside, club's releasing properly. Everything is looking great here, and he's learning again to use that RST tempo drill to add momentum to the swing, so he doesn't have to just try and muscle the club.

                All of these things are starting to come together, making a much more powerful athletic move. You can see at the top that he is obviously getting much more loaded on the right, compared to where he was if we look back earlier. You can see how that right knee's buckling out. Now he's got his weight over it, and this falling back to the target position doesn't make any sense. He's set up where he's gotten a little bit of axis tilt. He's more behind the ball, and then as he makes a good assertive move into it, he's got to use some power from his lower body, from his glutes, from his quads, from his hamstrings, that he can use the ground for leverage. He's got tremendous lag at this point, again, massive difference from where we were just three weeks ago. It's a massive, massive difference in the angle of the shaft.

                As he comes down into impact, he's doing a great job. He's worked hard on getting this left wrist into a good impact position. He knows exactly what it should feel like now. Beautiful impact position there, perfect. This is just about textbook for this drill. It's perfect. Obviously, you don't need a lot of hip rotation at this point. Shoulders are nice and square, right foot's rolled in, weight's planted on the left, beautiful.

                Now, the proof is in the pudding, as we go to hit balls. This is the challenging part. We put that little white devil in the way. As we go back, he's going to take a step back to the right, again, to help, gets him momentum to get the club started without just having to pick it up with your hands. He's made a big step over to the right, big turn. Now he's starting to look like a real golfer here. He's got that nice separation. His lower body's starting to move back to the left. He's got a great big shoulder turn here. We talk about the squat move a lot on the website. A lot of people just don't quite understand. They think they've got to lunge down at the ground and their head drop 18 inches or something. It's not like that. As he's stepping over, watch.

                Ah, get that line in the right spot. All right, this line does not want to go in the right spot. Let me try this one more time. Tend to draw it up here, there we go.

                Now, watch how, as his lower body begins to flex, and he increases the flex in his knees just a little bit as he's making the step, which is instinctive to do, he's getting lower to the ground. He looks in a much more powerful position, because his legs, if they're fully extended, they can't do anything else. If your legs are straight, your hips are straight, your knees are locked out, you can't do anything with your legs to create any power. That's why you look like you have this head drop.

                Again, tons of lag, posted up, impact position is fantastic. Left wrist is perfect here. Right ankle is rolled in. Left leg's posted up. He's going to release the club really well. You'll see nice good release of the toe of the club here. Notice how his hips aren't spinning around like they used to. We can flip back through that, get the club in the same spot there, roughly. Notice how high his right heel is on the ground, and he's turned his hips a lot more. Now his hips are much more under control, which is critical for stability and safety, and being able to control the flight of the ball, and he gets around to the finish.

                In four weeks, if you work through Left Arm Downswing Drill, 5 Minutes to the Perfect Release, that Vijay Release Drill. You saw that in there a couple times where I'm having him release the club with the right hand, literally let go of it. There's a reason it's called the release. Release means to get go. And that RST Tempo Drill that you saw used here at the end, you too can make these tremendous changes in your swing in no time at all, and start hitting the ball further with less effort, and start doing it today.