Right Arm Only Downswing Drill
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Once you've worked with the Throw the Ball Drill, you'll want to begin mastering this much more challenging drill and hitting balls with your new found club head speed.
- The Right Arm Only Drill follows on the Throw the Ball Drill
- Use a short club - a wedge, 7 or 8 iron
- Start out slowly - too much speed is hard to control with one arm
- Start with soft 50-60 yard shots & work up to 80% of your normal distance
- It should still feel like the Throw the Ball Drill - the right shoulder feels like it stops
- If you over-pull from the left, this drill may feel very right-side dominated
Now that we've done the throw the ball drill, now what we're going to do is actually take this out into the real world and hit balls with it.
And so when we pick up a golf club, you're going to start the right arm only drill with a golf club with a short iron.
You start with a wedge, seven, eight iron, something really short, we've got an eight iron here.
And this is to take that drill and put it into real world application.
There's a couple of things that you're going to feel that are different, but this is basically the exact same movement.
So go ahead and set up for me and go ahead and get to the top of your swing.
Obviously, we're doing this one arm only, so it's just your trailing arm.
If you're a lefty, it's your left arm.
For him, it's a right.
And now go ahead and make a practice swing and let everything go through.
Good.
Now, how does that feel compared to the throw the ball drill?
Almost the exact same.
I mean, About the only difference is the weight of the club head and the kind of momentum of the club takes you all the way through.
Exactly.
So in the throw of the ball drill, you pretty much stopped at impact, which is great because that allows us to check whether or not we're neutral, whether or not we pushed off the right side, whether or not we spun our shoulders open, all those things.
But when the club's involved, That's how you get into a full follow-through position because the momentum continues to pull you around, but you're still feeling like you're trying to stop at impact basically, right?
So do that again for me.
Good.
So, notice that he's in a good balanced position.
Everything's released.
He's on the left side.
So, this drill is basically the exact same thing, but it's a build upon of the throw of the ball drill.
So it's a continuation of what we just worked on so that you can actually go out and hit balls.
When you first do this, you're going to want to put a ball on a tee.
It's very, very hard.
And I'm going to show you a couple of really, really common faults that you're going to struggle with at first, especially if you're too left side dominant like Josh was.
So I'll just go ahead and set a ball up in here.
We won't actually hit this, but what I want to show is that the most common problem, go to the top, is for golfers to really keep shoving their right shoulder around.
So slowly come down to impact.
And if you kept pulling, notice that now the right shoulder's almost level with the ball.
It's too far forward, so the hands can't release, the club can't release.
And so at this point, he's going to top it.
And that's the most common problem.
So you've got to really make sure and now show where a proper impact position would be.
So now notice how his right shoulder stays back and it feels like, does it feel like your right shoulder, I should ask you, does it feel like it stops?
It feels like it does.
It feels like it does.
It doesn't, but it comes very close, just like how the hips really decelerate to let everything else snap through in the right sequence.
The right shoulder practically feels like it stops and for all intents and purposes, that's a good feeling.
So, but the difference, it's a big difference between continuing to pull and that right shoulder gets stuck out in the way.
And now the club is jammed up here and it can't release.
And if it does, it's going to happen very late, but most likely you're going to top it, especially when you use the right arm only.
The other thing, go to the top again, is that when you try and swing really, really hard, Not only are you most likely to really pull really hard from the left and end up getting back where you're topping it again, but because the weight of the club adds a lot to it, the left arm is really, really helpful for helping support the club and swing it on plane and all these things.
I'll take this away.
If you try and swing really hard, Josh, go ahead and try and swing really, really hard.
It's really hard to control.
And so everything's kind of out of sequence.
So the goal of this drill at first is just to teach you how to take the right, the throw the ball drill and put it into real world application, hitting soft shots, 50, 60, 70 yards, and then to slowly build in sequencing, Which is going to feel very different that if you're used to just ripping your shoulders around and spinning your hips out, and then as you get better with this, you should be able to hit it at about 80, 85% of your normal distance.
But you have to learn the sequence first.
So just swinging really hard at first, you went right back and drilled tendencies, which is to really rotate everything really hard from the left side, and so the club and arms are stuck.
So everything releases late.
So this drill is going to help you a ton, but like I said, start out with the ball on a tee and then slowly work up to hitting shots, but you are going to feel the things that Josh described.
He feels that he's still doing the throw the ball drill.
It feels like his right shoulder stops.
What do your hips feel when you do the drill?
When I'm doing the drill?
The hips feel like they're really starting to slow down too.
It's like I don't pull the same way I used to where I just kept going and going and going.
Exactly.
So you're going to feel a lot of different things, but this is going to, if you struggle with this, of course, if you don't, great.
For most people, I think that you're going to find that.
You really tend to pull too much from the left side and you keep rotating and nothing gets to release in the kinetic chain, And this is going to help you pick up a lot of club head speed and start to get that right arm to actively work.
And as I said in the earlier video, it's not that the left side's not working.
Trust me.
It is doing a ton of work.
You're just not going to feel it as much because it's already something that's ingrained in your brain.
You already know how to do it.
Your brain doesn't have to think about it.
So it's doing it.
It's doing the work, but we need to get the right side to more actively participate.
And so for a lot of you, you're going to feel like you go to the opposite extreme, that it's all right sided.
As long as you look at it on film and you've pulled yourself over from the left side and your hips are 40 degrees, 45 degrees open, that's perfect because momentum is going to continue to pull your hips on around.
Once you get to the top, you may feel like you don't move your hips at all.
Perfectly okay.
If you feel like your shoulders don't move at all, check it on film or have your instructor look at it.
It's very, Very likely that everything's still moving and this will help a ton for picking up club head speed and building the synchronization into your swing.
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