Understanding how much shoulder elevation — or more precisely, arm elevation — you need in the golf swing is one of the most overlooked keys to generating consistent power and protecting your body from injury. Let's break down exactly what elevation does and how to dial it in for your game.
Hands start at about belt height
We've covered the concept of elevation before: it refers to the vertical movement your arms make in front of your body during the backswing. At address, your hands sit roughly at belt height. By the top of the swing, they've risen to chest or shoulder height depending on your style, flexibility, and what you're trying to accomplish with your ball flight.
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Shoulder elevation is a variable in the Rotary Swing Tour system — and in any golf swing, for that matter. It is not locked to a single "correct" position.
The movement of your arms is not a fundamental of the golf swing because it is dependent on what your body does first. By definition, a fundamental is the primary driver of motion. Since arm movement responds to body rotation and torso positioning, it qualifies as a dependent variable rather than a root cause.
We do have clear guidelines for how high we prefer to see you raise your arms, but the ideal height will still depend on factors like your physical condition, how aggressively you use your body, and what kind of shot shape you're targeting. Below, we'll walk through the full range of elevation options and explain why you might favor one end of the spectrum over the other. If you want to see exactly how your current arm position affects your scores, try a free AI swing analysis to get an instant breakdown.
The elbow moves up to about the base of the pectoral muscle
The two extremes are obvious — very high hands or very low hands — with a wide spectrum in between. We'll explain the mechanical effect of choosing each extreme and reveal what we teach our students as the optimal amount of shoulder elevation for most golfers.
What We Teach
A moderate amount of shoulder elevation delivers the best combination of leverage, speed, and body safety — and that's precisely what we teach in our clinics and online golf instruction programs.
We start by referencing how much the trail elbow moves. It's an easy landmark to feel. From address to the top of the backswing, we teach that the trail elbow rises to approximately the base of the chest muscle — the pectoralis major.
When you stand straight up and flex your trail arm, picture resting it on a bench. The base of your pec sits just under the arm, and your trail elbow will be roughly at that level. That is our target height.
This moderate amount of elevation allows you to use your arms, your body, and all available power sources to the greatest advantage in the golf swing without overloading any single area.
That middle range of elevation is the standard we teach in our clinics, but it's certainly not the only way to swing effectively. Consider a golfer like Davis Love III, who plays with very high hands, versus a player like Tiger Woods, who keeps much shallower hands — and of course every position in between. RST accommodates all of these approaches because the fundamentals of body rotation remain the same regardless of arm height.
How Do I Choose?
The RST fundamentals apply universally to every golf swing. They're grounded in the facts of biomechanical body movement and the physics of the golf club, making them immutable. How much you move your arms up and down is simply a variable layered on top. Let's examine the effect that variable has on your swing plane, timing, and overall performance.
Having the arms very high (above) can leave them buried at impact (below)
Put in broad terms, if you want to use your body aggressively in the golf swing — firing your core, shoulders, hips, and every muscle group available to strike the ball as hard as possible — then the less elevation you carry the better.
The reasoning is straightforward: if your arms reach a very high position where your trail elbow is up at shoulder level instead of the base of the pec, then when you start to fire everything aggressively in the downswing, your arms are going to tend to arrive late.
You'll end up looking like the lower photo in the image at left, with your arms buried back behind your body. This causes you to block the shot and hit block slices — what we call "blices." They're terrible shots and a sign that your arm height doesn't match your rotational speed.
The club will always want to come in late if you're driving hard with your arms elevated too high.
You may eventually learn to time a flip to save the shot, but the reality is that if your hands are way up in the air and your body is working aggressively through impact position, the physics simply don't match up.
Your shoulders only need to move about 6-8 inches to travel from the top into the impact position. Your hands, on the other hand, must travel roughly six feet, and the club head has to cover even more distance than that. Synchronizing everything becomes extremely difficult when you combine an aggressive body move with a club that still has a long way to travel back down into impact.
On the flip side, if you keep your arms very low and don't use your body aggressively, you won't generate much leverage in your swing and you'll sacrifice a significant amount of power. This is the fundamental trade-off, and it's exactly why you need to find the elevation that matches your body and your goals.
Happy Medium
Ideal elevation
We believe that a moderate amount of elevation offers the best of both worlds for the vast majority of golfers seeking consistent power and accuracy.
We teach our students to reach the top of the backswing with enough elevation to position the trail elbow at the base of the pec — no higher, no lower.
This allows you to use your body and arms together, and still get everything squared up and delivered back into the impact position. You can be aggressive with your torso and arms, and the timing will still sync up naturally.
Now let's say you want to be extremely aggressive with your body. We'll discuss the pros and cons of that approach in a moment, but some players simply want to hammer the ball as hard as they can with body rotation. Maybe they enjoy that feeling of explosive power, or maybe they've been coached that way for years.
If you're going to drive your swing as hard as possible, you need to keep your arms shallower at the top and bend over slightly more to help steepen the shaft angle. When your arms stay shallow — with an elevation below the pec — they're able to get back in front of the body in time simply because they don't have as far to travel during the downswing.
Your body will be moving at high speed, so your arms can't travel a long distance and still arrive back down in front of your body and into proper impact position. Shallow arms are a perfectly valid solution to this timing challenge.
Shallow arms work best for an aggressive swing
The downside, however, is that the more aggressively you use your body, the more stress and strain you place on it — and the greater your risk of injury. You need excellent flexibility, significant core strength, and a resilient back and hips in order to swing this way over time.
That's not necessarily our preference at RST, but if that aggressive approach appeals to you, go for it. We prefer to teach the happy medium between the two extremes because it maximizes club head speed while minimizing wear and tear on the body.
A shallow arm position permits an extremely aggressive swing, but it doesn't inherently provide much leverage on its own.
The higher you raise your arms in the swing, the more leverage you create and the more potential energy you store. If your arms and club are elevated, you'll receive a significant assist from gravity along with plenty of time for that gravitational force to accelerate your arms and hands on the way down into the impact position.
From the lower position, that gravitational benefit largely disappears. With the hands low, you must use your body very aggressively to generate any meaningful speed or power in the swing. Again, if that's your preference it's a legitimate one, but we don't find it ideal for most players looking for a sustainable, repeatable motion. A free AI golf lesson can help you identify whether your current elevation is costing you distance.
Drawing Power From All Available Sources
Holding the club high (above) provides more leverage & potential energy than a lower position (below)
RST teaches an optimal blend of the two extremes. We generate power for the swing from every available source — leverage and gravity, as well as body rotation and core strength — without relying exclusively on one mechanism or the other.
As always, the Rotary Swing Tour emphasizes moving and swinging in ways that are safe for your body and protect it from excessive stress and injury over the long term.
We reduce stress on the hips and spine tremendously by getting a bit more elevation for added leverage and potential energy, then moderating body rotation speed while accelerating the arms. This approach maximizes the advantages of each position without overloading any single joint or muscle group.
Now let's look at the other extreme. Perhaps you don't want to use your body aggressively at all because you have a bad back, limited flexibility, or you simply can't get into the steep, side-bend, aggressive positions you see from Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson.
You want to remove as much stress from the golf swing as possible. You want your back and hip to be as protected as they can be, so you don't want to spin your body at high speed. What do you need? The obvious answer is you need more leverage from your arm height and wrist mechanics.
Get some downcock for additional leverage
As we've established, more elevation provides more leverage. It's perfectly acceptable to be more upright in your swing to achieve this. Think of Davis Love III as a textbook example of this approach.
With good elevation, you've created potential energy. Even if you simply stand there and let gravity bring the club down, you'll be moving incredibly fast by the time you reach the impact position. It requires almost no muscular effort on your part; gravity does virtually all the work.
All you need to do is keep your hands soft and allow the club to downcock as it descends for additional leverage, and you'll have plenty of power and speed at the bottom of the arc.
With higher arms the emphasis shifts more toward speed generation through the whip-like release, although technically speed and power accomplish the same thing as far as the golf ball is concerned at impact.
Ultimately, the goal is to get the club moving fast. You can either move your body fast to move the club fast, or you can accelerate your arms and hands efficiently. Both paths produce impressive club head speed when executed correctly.
It's Your Choice
Think carefully about what you want to feel in your own golf swing and what your body can handle over hundreds of repetitions.
- If you want to use your body without placing excessive stress and strain on your spine, aim for the ideal — two or three inches of elevation. Just bring your trail elbow up to the base of your pec and you're set for a balanced, powerful motion.
- If you want to use your body really aggressively, putting everything into the downswing, keep your arms a little shallower so they don't get trapped behind you on the way down.
- If you want to take all the stress off your body, then get a generous amount of shoulder elevation and slow your body rotation down, because using the body aggressively from a high hands position will cause the club to get stuck and everything to arrive late at impact.
RST teaches the middle of the range in terms of ideal biomechanical movements, but you can position yourself anywhere along the spectrum depending on your physical needs, your goals, and your personal style.
High hands provide leverage
High Hands - Picture a Hammer
Here's a simple drill to show you exactly what it should feel like to swing from the different elevations, so you can make an informed choice.
Whether you've chosen to swing with a lot of shoulder elevation or very little, grab your impact bag and hit some practice shots to feel the difference firsthand.
If you've chosen a high hands position for maximum leverage and vertical energy potential, the sensation you should have on the downswing is one of slinging the club into impact — like cracking a whip rather than pushing a heavy object.
Think of the club like a hammer. You wouldn't use your body to swing a hammer — you'd use your wrists. Keep your wrists soft and supple through the downswing, then snap the club to generate explosive speed at impact.
Imagine the club as a very long hammer, and you're making it even longer by maximizing leverage and width through full arm extension.
The torso stops at impact
You won't be coming into the impact position with the body turning aggressively, pushing against the shaft with your torso like you would in a body-dominated swing. With the high hands position, your torso actually slams on the brakes at the bottom so you can sling the club head through impact with maximum velocity.
You create extensive leverage and elevation going back, and then your body decelerates sharply to pass all that stored momentum to the arms and club — a classic energy transfer sequence.
You really don't do much muscular work in this type of swing. There should be virtually zero stress on your body, yet you're still able to launch that impact bag without any problem. You simply accumulate plenty of lag coming down, then sling the club head into the bag with a wrist snap.
That's one extreme of the elevation spectrum. There's minimal stress on the body, abundant leverage from the wrists, and significant potential energy from the vertical movement of the arms. It's a highly effective way to swing the golf club and extremely gentle on the body over time.
The shallow, aggressive swing
Aggressive Swing - More Like a Sledgehammer
If the high hands swing feels like swinging a regular hammer — relying on gravity and a snap of the wrist for speed — the shallow, aggressive swing will feel more like swinging a sledgehammer, where you put your entire body behind the strike.
Don't elevate your arms very much for this type of swing. You're not relying on gravity here because your arms won't be traveling far enough to accelerate significantly on their own. Instead, you'll make up for the reduced leverage entirely with aggressive body rotation and muscular force.
Get a shallow elevation, then use your shoulders, hips, core, and everything you've got to drive the club back through the downswing and into the ball.
The torso turns through impact
As you'll see immediately, this approach creates a very different impact position compared to the high-hands method.
The club keeps traveling well past impact because your body is moving so aggressively at the moment of contact. You're using significant torso and shoulder rotation to launch that impact bag, and the momentum carries through the follow-through.
Theoretically, you could possibly generate even more club head speed by being slightly more aggressive with the body at the upper end of the effort range. The gains may be marginal with irons, but if you're chasing maximum distance off the driver, you want to leverage every single component of the golf swing as efficiently as possible.
That will obviously demand a high level of athleticism, strength, flexibility, and overall fitness — but it is absolutely achievable with dedicated training. To see how your current swing stacks up against elite benchmarks, try a free AI swing analysis for a detailed report.
Blend the Two For Speed & Safety
Once again, the RST philosophy strives for an ideal blend that delivers the advantages of both extremes without their respective drawbacks.
A moderate amount of elevation will give you plenty of Tour-caliber club head speed — as much as most golfers will ever need for competitive play. It's only if you're truly trying to push your physical limits and extract every last mile per hour that you'll need to engage your body at maximum aggression.
Think of the long-drive professionals. They use every ounce of muscle they can muster to move the club as fast as humanly possible. They generate tremendous lag, tremendous leverage, and they use every bit of body rotation available to them.
They typically need a stronger grip so they don't have to rely on precisely squaring the club face, because their aggressive rotation tends to get the body out in front of the arms slightly.
There's a lot to time in that sequence, but it represents theoretically the maximum club head speed a human being could possibly generate with a golf club.
Of course, swinging with every possible ounce of power and body is also going to put you at the greatest risk for injury, by far. It's a trade-off that professional long-drivers accept but recreational golfers should carefully consider.
RST teaches an ideal blend of all of these elements, but you are free to favor one side or the other in your own swing. You just need to understand the pros and cons, what each approach is designed for, and how it feels when you execute it properly.
With shallower arms you'll feel more body rotation driving the swing, while with high hands you'll feel like you're slinging the club into impact with your wrists and arms. Hopefully this helps you understand and decide how much shoulder elevation you need for your particular type of golf swing.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
