Proper Muscle Activation
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Understanding how to properly activate muscles is critical for producing effortless power and speed. This video shows you exactly what proper muscle activation is for the golf swing.
- Allow yourself to feel how much energy is needed to move the lead arm to the top of the swing
- Try and remain as tension free as possible within the arms and shoulders
with the rotary swing I talk a lot about the specific muscles that you want to use and how it needs to feel and what exactly we need to move to produce a great golf swing and a lot of times people don't they hear the term muscle activation but they don't understand exactly what it means and the truth is it's incredibly simple and most people overdo it and so for instance with the takeaway video I talk about pulling that right shoulder blade back and down and in and pulling that right shoulder behind your head and a lot of people turn that into an exercise program it's not what this is all about you don't need to wrench that shoulder back if you're sore or tired after doing that you're doing something wrong muscle activation is much much simpler than that in fact it needs to be much more relaxed in order to produce proper club head speed so here's how simple muscle activation needs to be thought of take your right arm or left arm and hold it out in front of your body and hold it there right now this shoulder is properly activated to hold your arm up here with no more tension or no less tension than it takes to hold your arm up here now if you had a dumbbell weight in here it would be much harder or if you were trying to hold it here really tight it would be much harder but you need to hold it up there as softly as you can and still keep it from moving that's activation that's the proper activation level that we typically need in the golf swing so to feel it in the swing take your left arm and swing your left arm up to the top and you can feel the proper activation that it would take to hold the club up here it's a little bit high because the right arm's not on there but what it's going to help you feel is how little the right arm needs to do to help hold this club up here now what we typically see is people go to the top of their swing and they get like this because they're trying to generate all this power the arms get really over activated the shoulders get really over activated and we get this nasty over the top movement instead of just letting our left arm sit up here nice and soft and if I didn't have the right arm on here the club would drop down and swing to a little too far from the inside but it would do so very quickly because as my arms are soft and the wrists are soft the club can then release very quickly your muscles need to be soft to allow the joints to move very quickly especially in your wrists and your arms they need to move very fast in the swing to produce speed but they don't move fast by you putting a ton of muscular effort into it by being soft the muscles can actually fire faster and the joints can be more supple and move faster and that's going to allow you to produce more speed and that's all about properly activating muscles so again just hold your arm up here gets a little heavy because we're doing it one arm only take your right arm up there this is how soft your right arm should be at the top just barely holding it it's making the left arm's job easier by supporting it it's not tight and mashing it up here and I'm definitely not squeezing the club tight I'm staying here in an activated motion where I could stay here all day but I want to be soft as I as I'm soft the club can shallow out if this shoulder is over activated you're going to go like this and you're going to start to come over the top your right shoulder needs to be very relaxed at the top in order for that club to naturally shallow out if you see yourself coming over the top you're over activated with the right so take it out of it and just find the balance point of how little it needs to be there to help support the left arm and that goes for every part of the swing muscle activation is very very soft and we talk about shifting weight and you know maybe loading into this right leg a little bit again not trying to do a lunge it just needs to be activated no different than holding your arm up here so as you start to understand muscle activation what it really is you'll start to pick up more effortless club head speed which is what we're all about and you'll find that you can do it with much less power put into your swing by learning to move fast rather than trying to move very aggressively and all you got to do just take your arm hold it up here keep it nice and relaxed that's the same amount of tension that you should have in most parts of your body during the swing and that's properly activating your muscles
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