Common Golf Setup Faults and Fixes

Faults and fixes and checkpoints for your golf setup. If you're not setup to the golf ball correctly you have little chance of making a proper golf swing. Make sure you setup to the ball correctly everytime no matter how bad it may feel at first!

Hi. I'm rotary swing instructor Chris Tyler. Did you know that your setup position could be costing you a ton of power? Did you also know that your setup position could be making it nearly impossible for you to overcome a lot of those common swing faults?

                Yep, that's right. So in today's video I'm gonna show you guys some of the common pitfalls that we see right at the address position. And I'm gonna give you guys a very detailed list of checkpoints that are gonna help you get into a perfect setup position every single time.

                Even if you think you have the setup mastered you wanna pay close attention to this video because you might pick up one thing that's gonna change the way you dynamically move throughout the entire golf swing. Let's go ahead and get started.

                Okay guys so before we get into the real main substance of today's video. I do want to put a little warning or a little disclaimer here at the front in that, anytime we make an adjustment to our setup, it becomes extremely uncomfortable. I'm not gonna lie to you I've been there, I've done that. And the reason for that is, is that, we are so used to setting up over the golf ball one particular way. It feels comfortable to us, it feels natural to us, that even feels athletic to us. That to make an adjustment to that, you will feel maybe a little uncomfortable with it but I promise you, that if you put the time in. Doesn't need to be out on the range, doesn't need to be out on the golf course. You can do this stuff right at the comforts of your own home really. And go through that checklist that I give you at the end.

                You will get comfortable with this new setup position and you won't be putting yourself in a position where you could be costing yourself speed or even making it difficult to overcome a lot of your swing faults. So again, if you've played this game for a long period of time, I encourage you to stay committed to a lot these changes at the address position because you'll see that when you start working on things later in the swing, it becomes way easier to overcome a lot of those problems.

                Also, if I mention any videos during this whole process. Those videos are gonna be over on the right hand side of the video player under the recommended videos tab. Just go ahead click that tab, all those videos will populate. Okay guys so lets get into this now.

                Okay guys so in this first common mistake that we see has to do with weight distribution. Now what are we looking to achieve from an address position? We want to be as evenly balanced as possible. So we want to be really stable and we want to feel evenly balanced as possible. It's okay to have a slight fluctuation maybe five or ten percent one way or the other. Not a big deal. But the big mistake that we see from a lot of golfers is that. In order to achieve their access tilt, what they're doing is, is they're just leaning their spine away from the target and their getting most of their weight preloaded into their right side.

                K so you can see here that I have most of my weight over here. You can see that my right shoulder is pretty well outside my right ankle. Okay and now this can actually cause a number of issues in the golf swing as far as. Loading up those muscles too early they can start to fatigue, they can start to push and wouldn't want to fire. It could make it very difficult for you to get back over to your lead side before your hands and arms getting down to the hitting area.

                So you can see that there's a lot of chain reaction of events that can happen from not having proper weight distribution. So how do we fix it? Well the best way to get proper access tilt, you can try this out at home. Stand up with me. It's getting proper stance width and if you're not sure on what proper stance width is, check out Determining Proper Stance Width.

                But what we're gonna be doing here, is were gonna stand vertical. We're gonna feel like we're fifty fifty like we're having a conversation we could stand here all day. And all I want you to do is keep your head very quiet. And as your keeping your head quiet, I want you to move your hips just slightly towards where your target would be.

                Okay and as you notice, if I'm keeping my head still my spine is starting to lean away. Now because my mass, my lower half is moving towards the target my spines leaning away, it's acting as counter balance and that. When you have your spine now inside the lead knee you should still feel roughly fifty fifty on both legs.

                Okay guys so if you've been battling with some weight distribution issues or been really unclear as to what side you're being preloaded in. Stand up, vertical. Head still. And just move your hips towards the target just a little bit. And now I've met the requirements of access tilt. So you can see that as I move my hips here, see how my spine is now just inside my lead knee and I'm still evenly distributed. So try this out. Make sure that you have proper access tilt and proper weight distribution.

                Okay guys so in this second common mistake that we have with the address position has to do with access tilt as well and I'm gonna turn. This is gonna be a quick one here. So what we see from a lot of students is, is when they're moving their hips towards the target to get that access tilt. Okay when they move the hips this way, the hips tend to open up just a slight amount. So double check to make sure that your hips are nice and square.

                If you feel like they're open, you might feel your weight start to squeak to the forward part of our trail foot. So when you pulling back to square you'll feel really rock solid stable to the ground. So just double check when you get your access tilt, that you make sure your hips are nice and square.

                Aright guys so in this third common fault that we see at the address position has to do with hand position. Now a lot of us have been taught in the past that we want to froward press our hands but all that's doing is starting to create a lot of tension in your hands and your arms. So when you get into proper axis tilt, proper stance width, you want your hands and arms to be hanging freely from the shoulders. And what you're gonna notice here without pressing your hands forward, is that the back of my lead hand is just inside the back of my lead thigh.

                K so, make sure with proper ball position, proper axis tilt, proper stance width that we you look at yourself from a face on prospective, that the back of your lead wrist to your lead hand has right inside the lead thigh. Don't press the hands forward. Don't have your hands back here, that's probably a big reason why your hands would be back here in the first place and it probably has to do with weight distribution. So you want your hands and arms to hang freely from the shoulders. Proper ball position. And notice that your lead hand is just inside your lead thigh.

                Aright guys so in this final piece of the common faults or mistakes that we see with the setup position or your address position. I'm also gonna walk you through this detailed checklist of things that your gonna be able to do at home to get yourself perfect in your setup position.

                This common thing that we see is adding too much knee flex. Okay so when get too much knee flex here, you can see that my butt, my hips are kinda pulled up underneath me and in turn what you're gonna see is, you're gonna see some roundness from your thoracic spine up. So you'll see some curvature there and you'll probably see a lot of roundness to your shoulders.

                Now this is obviously an exaggerated look at this. And what I want you to stay focused on is that, even though this feels really stable, okay 'cause we feel like we can't be moving anywhere at all, we feel like we're stuck to the ground. In turn what that's doing is getting your quads more activated and gonna make it very difficult for you to load your glute muscles up believe it or not.

                Also, because you have roundness to the shoulders, it's gonna make it very difficult for you to rotate properly throughout your golf swing. So what you're gonna be looking for, and this is where I'm gonna start to go into this checklist, is that we want the back of the knee to be over the center of the ankle. We only need just enough knee flex just to relax the knees.

                Okay and this is the one that's really uncomfortable for a lot of golfers at home. So the checklist is, 'cause I want you guys to get proper stance width. We're gonna get axis tilt last on this list. K? Proper stance width and what I want you to do is just lock your legs into a straight position here. K? And what we're gonna do, is if we were to stretch our hamstrings we would keep our legs locked very straight here.

                Aright we're not gonna flex our knees at all. So I want to feel like I'm doing a hamstring stretch and I'm gonna push my hips back. Okay so you can see I'm hinging from my hips. My hips are going back. My butt's going back here. My chest is now going over the ball. Now what you wanna do is, you wanna continue to hinge until your toes start to feel really light. So you could see that my toes are starting to try and come off the ground.

                Aright so now what I wanna do form this, is just soften the knees. And then were gonna allow the arms to hang freely from the shoulders. Now, if you seen a lot of roundness to your shoulders, you want to double check the total amount of knee flex you have 'cause as you could see that, it feels like I've got just soften amount here but you want to double check to make sure that you have your hips back far enough and your in true balance with your weight locked underneath your ankles.

                Okay so encourage yourself to get your butt to stick out, chest a little bit more over the ball and make sure that we don't have a lot roundness to the shoulders so you might want to try find a neutral position for your shoulders.

                One of the common mistakes that we see when starting to hinge forward is because your shoulders start to bear mass. Okay? Shoulders bear mass not start to bear mass but you'll see that, because we're hinging our shoulders want to round. Okay that's our way of being a little bit lazy. So you want to kind of fight that with gravity kind of pulling in that direction. So good way to overcome that. Shrug your shoulders up to your ears. Depress them. Then go ahead and keep your legs locked straight, don't have any knee flex and just hinge forward slowly until your toes becomes light. And then just soften your knees. Arms hang freely form that shoulder line and now you're ready to rock n' roll.

                Now, the final bit and you thought I was gonna let you get away with it, is adding that axis tilt. So we're gonna do it from a face on perspective here. I'm gonna hinge forward till my toes become light, soften my knees. K? And all I'm gonna do is move my hip towards the target just a little bit, keep my head still. And now I'm in a good setup position ready to start to shift my weight, load things up and rotate properly.

                Aright guys. So now you've seen a lot of those common pitfalls. Double check that your setup position is perfect and you'll be well on your way to helping yourself overcome a lot of those nagging swing faults.