The Big Picture of the Golf Swing

Sometimes it's easy to get lost in all the details, to focus on the minutae and miss the big picture of the golf swing. Fear not, it happens to everyone! Especially when working on your golf swing. We can often get bogged down worrying about the tinyiest of details when we really need to take a look at the big picture and what we're really trying to accomplish. This golf instruction video does just that, gives a 30,000 foot view of the Rotary Swing.

The BIG PICTURE of understanding your  golf swing

Have you ever taken the time to ask yourself, “what is the purpose and method” that truly moves the golf swing?  For years, I have studied the golf swing from every aspect in order to develop and simple and fluid golf teaching technique that will actually work for any golfer, playing at any level of golf. 

Years ago, I developed a golf training video series called the physics of the golf swing.  In video one out of seven, I demonstrated how pulling, not pushing a trailer using a toy truck is the way you can visualize your swing.   The fact is, as a golf instructor, I spend more time trying to stop golf students from using their dominant hand than almost any other fault. 

To simplify the entire golf swing and your golf practice routine, I want you to consider swinging only with your left hand.  Once you understand that adding your right arm is where golfers run into swing problems, achieving a fluid and easy motion becomes easier. 

Step 1 in this drill - Take your trailing or dominant hand off the club.  Use just your left hand and swing freely back and through.  Using your left arm only in your practice golf swings will make it easy to see that your right arm is the component that complicates the dynamics of a proper golf swing. 

Step 2 –  Once you have created some fluidity with your left- hand-only practice swing, start to add in your weight shift.  Shift from the right, when back to the left.   

Step 3 – Think of your right hand as the passive element of your golf swing.  Try our Frisbee drill, which you can find on the website.  This Frisbee drill will reinforce a left hand pull-swing and then, when your feel comfortable, start to add in your right arm when it’s time to generate your power.

Remember:  Pull, don’t push your golf swing to a better spot.  Use the drills on the RotarySwing.com website and follow our program for a path to lasting golf improvement.   

Hi guys. Chuck Quinton here, founder of RotarySwing.com. I want to talk to you about the big picture. Let's go up to 30,000 feet and look down on the forest and see the forest through the trees and really understand what is the purpose of the golf swing. What is really the big picture? What are we really trying to do and what are we really trying to accomplish?

                If you watch the video of my seven part series on the physics of the golf swing, video one out of seven. You'll understand that from that little truck example of me pulling a trailer that pulling is the only way to truly stabilize and keep the center of gravity of the club moving in a consistent way. And so what most golfers and what we spend all of our time and lessons doing and working in clinics is helping golfers get out of this motion of using their dominant side and using the right, because most golfers are right handed playing from the left side of the ball, of course you're going to want to use your right side and when you do that of course everything starts going wrong. It's like trying to push that trailer down the street. It's not going to work out very well but it's going to be exciting to watch, kind of like your golf game right now.

                So, if you want to stop being the guy pushing the trailer down the highway at 70 miles per hour and getting into a bad accident, like your golf swing is, you have to start working through pulling. So the big picture is really if you're going to just dumb everything down, you just forgot everything else about the golf swing and said "Okay, let me just make it the simplest, moving components that I could possibly make." You would take your trailing arm off the club. You would use just your, I'm going to assume you're right handed playing to the left side of the ball, so your left hand and you would swing it back then swing it through. Then in its simplest motion, in its purest essence, that's the golf swing.

                I'm shifting my weight to the right, shifting my weight to the left and swinging and letting the golf club release. You'll notice as I'm doing that I'm making what looks like a golf swing. You don't have to be a tour pro to make a golf swing that looks like a tour pro golf swing when you take the right arm off. The right arm, generally, where everything starts going really bad because that's how you change the pitch and attitude of the shaft and start coming over the top. You generally will not be able to take the club from the top of the swing and then rotate it with just your left arm and make it come across the plain and come down really steep. Club will naturally shallow out as you shift your weight, and it will naturally release.

                So tons of great things happen when you start swinging from your non-dominant side. That's the hard part. This is what makes golf so challenging is that it is a predominately lead side dominant sport. So, that's why I have the Frisbee Golf Swing drill on the site where you learn how to use your left arm. That's why the right arm is once you've already learned how to swing and shift your weight and rotate and use your lead arm correctly the right arm is there just to help transmit energy from the body. Think of it kind of like a passive condo for adding speed. Now of course you can add a little bit of throwing motion, like throw the ball videos.

                Once your left side is really doing all of the heavy lifting. Once that's happening a lot of great things are going to happen in your swing. Next time you go to a tour event or you're watching a tour player on TV and he's sitting on the tee box waiting because they take five hours to play a round of golf out there you'll always see them not just making practice swings but always with their left arm. You're never gonna see a tour player going like this with his right arm. It just doesn't even look right, doesn't feel right. The challenge to golf is that it's predominately left side dominant for a right handed golfer. This is the hand that you don't do anything with usually.

                Imagine going home tonight, I'm going to challenge you, I always tell people in the golf swing clinics to do this. Take your toothbrush, start brushing your teeth with your left hand tonight and see how hard it is. Now understand that you're trying to hit a golf ball, which requires tremendous amounts of precision, with the hand that you're not very coordinated with. You can't even brush your teeth without poking yourself in the eye. It's going to be challenging at first. That's why you have to be patient and work through things in progression. Look at the "Five Minutes to a Perfect Release" video that walks you through these things in sequence.

                So, understand that the big picture is you're just trying to learn how to swing the club back and forth with your lead arm and your body. If you can do these things you can start to make tour pro quality swings but it will take time. Be patient. Work through things in the sequence that I've laid them out. Watch the videos in order, and I guarantee you your golf swing will improve.