I know many of you are eager to learn more about the biomechanical changes I've been making to my golf swing and how it relates to the powerful swings of elite athletes. Specifically, how to properly use your core in the golf swing to maximize distance and efficiency.
In this video, Chuck provides an accessible introduction to the key golf core movements that separate powerful, efficient ball-strikers from average amateurs. Using a side-by-side face-on comparison of Tiger Woods and Chuck's own driver swing, the video demonstrates how the correct sequencing of the golf core powers the downswing and creates effortless speed. Tiger's swing has long been regarded as one of the most powerful and technically sound in history — and watching how he coils and uncoils his body makes the biomechanical principles immediately obvious.
As Chuck is careful to note, the goal here is not to get every student to "swing like Tiger Woods." Instead, the purpose is to educate golfers on the proper use of the body in the golf swing — the same athletic coiling and uncoiling motion seen across every power sport, from baseball to tennis to throwing events. The mechanics of generating force with the large muscle groups of the body are universal, and golf is no exception.
A lot of compelling research has been done in this field, particularly as it relates to baseball and tennis, and there is valuable reading available that crosses over into golf biomechanics. An article that blends both can be found at https://www.aroundhawaii.com/lifestyle/health_and_fitness/2008-10-tigers-transition.html.
The most instructive content in that article is the animated rear-view photos near the bottom of the page comparing Tiger Woods to a top amateur golfer. Even without any background in golf instruction, it is absolutely clear how much Tiger uses his golf core — his hips and his lead glute in particular — for both power and stability throughout the downswing.
Without knowing anything about golf at all, it is obvious that Tiger simply looks more powerful in his movement than the amateur comparison — and he is. That's not a criticism of the amateur; you don't need to move with perfect biomechanics to become a fine player. But if you want to move at maximum efficiency, generate maximum power with the least amount of effort, and protect your body over a lifetime of golf, it is well worth your time to learn how to properly use your core in the golf swing.
Using a face-on, side-by-side comparison of Tiger Woods with a driver and a recent swing from Chuck with a driver, you can begin to see the movement similarities taking shape. Chuck is the first to acknowledge he is far from Tiger's level of technical mastery, but the progress is both visible and measurable — which makes it all the more exciting from a teaching standpoint.
Most importantly, the progress is quantifiable. Chuck's clubhead speed increased dramatically as a direct result of these biomechanical changes — including a memorable 112 mph swing with an 8 iron. At 5'9" and 155 pounds, that level of speed is only possible because of how the body is being used to generate force through the kinetic chain — not brute strength.
Of course, raw clubhead speed is only part of the picture. Without solid golf swing mechanics underpinning those body movements, the speed will be difficult to control and apply consistently. The real breakthrough happens when both systems work together.
The truth is that good biomechanics and good golf swing mechanics must be melded together — because powerful, consistent, pain-free golf happens when you learn to power the golf swing with your core. That combination is what allows players to compete deep into retirement without injury, hitting long, accurate drives while their peers are nursing bad backs. Want to see what that looks like in motion? Watch this video and begin to understand the proper use of the golf core to power the downswing.
If you want to take your analysis further, try a free AI swing analysis to see how your own core sequencing compares to elite movement patterns — or work on the foundational movement with the GOAT Drill video lesson, which is specifically designed to ingrain the correct lead-side loading and trail-side coil that makes this whole system work.
Video Transcription: Tiger Woods/Chuck Quinton Driver
I'm going to talk about our first Rotary Swing Tour golf instruction video. It's going to be very lightweight — I'm not going to get into a great deal of technical detail just yet — but it will at least give you an understanding of some of the changes I'm making in my golf swing, why I'm making them, and what the added benefit looks like at the end of the day.
I've got my swing up here that I posted recently on the blog, on the right, and a swing from Tiger Woods here on the left.
Again, don't get caught up in the idea of "trying to swing like Tiger." That's not what this is about. What we are focusing on are the body movements — the correct biomechanical movements that you see in all powerful athletes across all sports. From baseball to football to any activity that requires the body to generate a high amount of power with efficiency, you'll see the same dynamic movements, the same emphasis on the big muscles of the body. Golf is no different.
The "Golf Core"
Tiger is a guy who happens to do all of this extremely well. He is remarkably efficient in how he uses his body. The movements of the club, the arms, the hands, the release — those are all preferences, variables, things that can be adjusted based on how you want to swing the club, what you naturally do, what you find works best for your game.
Of course I have preferences for how I want the club and arms to move. That doesn't necessarily mean it moves the way Tiger does it. But what you are going to see is that the golf swing core body movements are critical precisely because they are the elements that generate power, do it efficiently, and do it safely — so you can play golf for a long time and generate more clubhead speed than you're used to right now. Let me walk you through what those movements actually are.
As I start back here, I'll draw a couple of reference lines. One important thing for me is that I have a tendency to get a little too far onto my trail side with the driver.
With the Bomb Your Driver series, we've talked about getting behind the ball to catch it on the upswing, launching the ball high, having it forward in your stance. All of those fundamentals are still absolutely true and essential to what we're doing.
The catch is that, like anything, you can start to overdo a good thing. My tendency was to get too far behind the ball and launch it too high, so my head would make a big lateral shift off the ball. As I start back — this has improved — but earlier in the process, by this point in the swing my head would be too far back to the trail side.
As I reach the top of my swing here, I've barely moved laterally, which is perfectly acceptable. I'm loading up into my trail side for power. Getting into that trail side helps me stay behind the ball, catch it on the upswing, and use my golf core to power the swing from the inside.
Tiger, by contrast, hits down on the ball with his driver, so you'll notice the ball is positioned slightly further back in his stance and he doesn't shift much off the ball at all. What Tiger does remarkably well is coil his body and use his core in the golf swing. You can actually see ripples in his sweater as he winds up — that's pure torso rotation creating stored elastic energy.
He's coiling around his spine and as he reaches the top, he has a tremendous amount of coil. He hasn't moved his hips a great deal, so there's no sloppiness or looseness in the legs. That tight hip restriction is what creates the X-factor stretch between the shoulders and hips that stores and then releases enormous power.
You can see the same pattern in my swing. My thought — my feel — is that as I rotate back, what pulls my lead leg and lead hip into the rotation is the rotation of my torso. I'm initiating from the torso, and at some point I simply cannot continue turning without the legs getting involved and contributing to the coil.
This is getting into a coiled position and using your golf core. And once you do this correctly, it becomes much easier to get back onto your lead side in the transition. If you are sloppy and loose, your legs travel too far in the backswing — exactly what I showed in the blog when my first attempts at this produced terrible swings. I was moving too far off the ball, too deep into my trail side, and my lead leg was collapsing inward.
Now it's going to be much easier for me to settle onto my lead foot in transition — and this settling move is critical. It is something that Tiger does, in my opinion, better than anyone who has ever played the game. He absolutely settles into that lead side. He uses his hips and golf core dynamically. He unwinds with his lead glute, lead oblique, and the entire posterior chain working in concert.
It's not a push off the trail foot. It's an unwinding with a pulling motion on the lead side. As he starts to come down, notice that his trail leg barely moves. If he were pushing off his trail side, you would see that trail leg and trail hip driving hard toward the target. That was a tendency I had to overcome as well.
But Tiger is not pushing — he is unwinding. You can see his lead glute beginning to stick out behind him as he unwinds from that lead side. Now he's getting his weight stacked over his lead foot, but his trail leg has essentially stayed in place — further confirmation that there is no shove from the trail side in this motion.
The same pattern appears in my swing. As I go back, you'll notice that even as the club is still traveling back in the backswing, my lead hip is already moving back past that vertical reference line. That's the same sequencing — settling onto the lead side before the arms have even changed direction. That is the transition move powered by the golf core.
Now I'm really using the core — pulling from the lead side. The club is still nearly parallel to the ground at this point, meaning I haven't used my arms yet. I haven't used my hands. This is exactly what we mean by passive arms and hands in the downswing — at this stage of the swing, nothing should be initiating from the upper body. All of the force is coming from this middle section of the body. This area is key to building power in the golf swing and the most important zone of the entire downswing sequence.
That's a significant shift from where I was before, when I would let my shoulders unwind too early. I would still turn my hips, but I would tend to spin out, never fully stacking onto the lead side first because I was trying too hard to stay behind the ball. Then my shoulders would chase and unwind rapidly — which actually costs power and accuracy.
As my swing continues to evolve, I don't want my shoulders to feel like they're unwinding at all in the early downswing. Just as in the backswing where I wanted my torso turning to pull my hip into the coil, now I want my hips on the downswing to pull my shoulders around — not the other way around. The hips always lead the shoulders, and the shoulders lead the arms.
As I come down, you can see that my back is still facing the target, yet I am clearly settled onto my lead side. As I continue to rotate from the golf core, my shoulders and everything above begin to unwind in sequence.
In Tiger's swing, you see the exact same pattern. We'll zoom in and focus primarily on that lead hip. Watch as his lead hip sets into position and actually crosses past that vertical line while his club is still traveling back into the backswing. The lower body is already moving toward the target before the club has changed direction — that's the essence of downswing sequencing from the ground up.
As he continues to unwind, his back is still facing the target. Now as we get into similar positions through the downswing, the comparison really comes alive — both swings showing the same fundamental pattern of lead-side dominance and core-driven rotation.
You can see Tiger coming up off his trail heel as he drives through. This gets into some of the finer details of the swing — it's perfectly acceptable and is actually a natural consequence of how fast he is unwinding his hips. When the hips rotate at this speed, particularly with a driver, that trail heel is going to tend to rise off the ground.
That's why you see it so often in Tiger's driver swing. He is unwinding his hips so incredibly fast — if you watch this at full speed, the rate of hip rotation is genuinely jaw-dropping — but from a pure accuracy standpoint, it introduces a variable. For most amateurs, keeping the trail foot more connected to the ground during the early downswing helps consistency.
The central point, though, is that Tiger is unwinding entirely from the golf core. This is the whole key. This is exactly what I'm working on in my own swing — really using this section of the body to unwind, building from the lead side outward, until I reach a position where the arms and hands can be released with maximum efficiency.
My hands and arms are still completely passive here. That is the only way I'm able to maintain this much lag coming into impact — my hands and arms are very soft, my wrists are relaxed, and I'm actually adding a small amount of wrist cock as a natural response to that relaxation.
Not intentionally — I'm not trying to do this. It happens because my arms and hands are simply relaxed. I am directing all of my movement, all of my downswing effort, right here: lead glute, lead side, lead oblique — the golf core.
Then as I continue to come down, if I want to add speed with the hands and arms at this point, I absolutely can. But I don't have to. My arms and hands can remain passive all the way through impact and I will still generate excellent speed from the core sequence alone. If you want to apply additional force from the hands and arms, you have that option — it's simply a question of how well you can control it.
Through the hitting zone, my hands are staying very soft. I'm not driving hard with my arms, hands, or shoulders. Everything is continuing to rotate from the core, and now my shoulders are starting to unwind and catch up with my hips. Now everything is releasing through the ball in the correct sequence.
We see the very same thing in Tiger's swing. Again, we are not analyzing the club movements — we are focused on body sequencing. The lead hip, lead glute, and lead leg must go first. That is the non-negotiable foundation of the sequence.
As he comes through impact, his shoulders start to unwind and his arms catch up — and he arrives at a textbook impact position with tremendous stored energy being released through the ball.
Right after impact, something important happens — and this is something I'll discuss in much greater depth in the future. Because I'm not unwinding my shoulders as fast as I used to, I now have the ability to allow the clubhead to fully release. My trail hand is crossing over my lead hand in what we call a crossover release.
Previously, when I would unwind my shoulders and hips at roughly the same rate, my shoulders would be much more open to the target at impact. That open shoulder position would pull the club around to the left — viewed from a down-the-line perspective — and that early shoulder unwinding was what was releasing the club rather than true centripetal force.
Now I can use centripetal force, with my hands staying soft through impact. You can see my trail hand crossing over my lead hand — the classic crossover release — and you'll see the exact same pattern in Tiger's swing, nearly immediately after impact. You can see his lead glove already showing, which confirms the release has happened naturally from the core sequence rather than being forced by the hands.
This release pattern gives you the absolute maximum amount of clubhead speed possible. Period. There is no other release pattern that creates more speed.
A push release is excellent for solid contact and controlling ball flight and trajectory, and it has its place in the short game and precision shots — but it will not give you maximum speed. For raw driver distance, the crossover release powered by a sequenced golf core is the answer.
This is a full, uninhibited release — letting the club fling and flail through impact with no restricting motion from the upper body. The club is releasing naturally because that is what it wants to do. The toe of the club naturally wants to release over. You can see that in my swing as well — I'm letting my hands completely release through impact. And critically, it is not a manipulated release.
It is centripetal force releasing my hands, and then the club continues on around to a full, balanced finish. You can see I've fully released my hands at this point, and you'll see the exact same thing in Tiger — the white lead glove visible here, the club continuing to release, and then the club pulling both of us through to a full follow-through. The same pattern, the same result.
Again, the main focus here — there are all kinds of additional details to explore. Tiger is on the ball of his foot, springing off the ground. These are ways Tiger extracts every last bit of available power from the sequence.
You obviously don't see this motion when he's hitting an iron — he doesn't jump up on his toes with a precision iron shot — but among the most powerful hitters in the game, this is a common pattern. They use the ground as a base of leverage and spring upward, moving their body in one direction so they can throw the club in the other and maintain their balance through the finish.
Some of the most powerful hitters I've ever seen — the Finau brothers, for instance, who were coming out of Utah at the time — quite literally leave the ground. Their feet lift completely off, and Tiger essentially does the same thing here. These athletes are, pound for pound, some of the longest hitters you will ever see. The distances they generate are genuinely staggering.
In my swing, you don't see that. I'm staying firmly planted. I'm rotating around my lead leg and continuing to drive through to a full, balanced finish — which is the appropriate pattern for a golfer who is prioritizing consistency and control alongside power.
Again, don't get so caught up in every single minor detail of what Tiger Woods does throughout his swing. We are not trying to mimic Tiger Woods' swing in every particular.
If we looked at Hank Aaron, you'd see the same thing — using the hips to power the baseball swing, generating enormous force from the lead glute and the lead oblique area, that entire pulling motion working through the kinetic chain. Tiger does it incredibly well in golf, and he's far from the only one. There are many players on Tour who use their bodies with exceptional efficiency. Tiger is simply the absolute best at using his golf core in the swing — and that is why he is the reference point for this kind of biomechanical education.
The club movements, the hand positions, the specific shapes — those are variables, things we can adjust and refine as needed. But the way Tiger uses the deep muscles of his body, the sequencing from the ground up, the lead-side dominance, the coil and the explosive uncoil — those are the fundamentals we're teaching. Not the feet, not the knees, not the secondary details. The core. And Tiger does it better than anyone.
Hopefully this helps explain some of the changes that are coming online in the RST system, and there is much more to come. If you want to see how your own sequencing measures up, get a free AI swing analysis and discover exactly where your golf core is winning or losing you power — or dive straight into the drills with the GOAT Drill video lesson to start building the lead-side loading patterns that make this system work from the ground up.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Note how, early into the downswing, the weight has moved onto the left foot. This is not new, but what is new is HOW the weight was moved using the proper core muscles.
Tiger Woods & Chuck Quinton Comparison - Setup
Chuck is too far onto the right side
Tiger coils his body - Chuck's head hasn't moved far off the ball
Tiger Woods & Chuck Quinton Comparison
Chuck loads into the left
Both golfers' backs still face the target
Tiger lifts his right heel
Chuck adds some wrist cock
Tiger unwinds his shoulders - Chuck releases
The right hand crosses over the left
Full release while the golf core stabilizes my spine
Tiger pushes off the ground
Chuck's follow through
