Hey everyone, this is Chuck Quinton, founder of rotaryswing.com. Today I want to talk about a really important concept that you probably have either misunderstood, or been taught completely incorrectly. Not only is it going to actually slow the club down, but it's actually going to lead you to potential for injury — just like what many elite players have experienced — because the concept of covering the ball is something that needs to be understood correctly. That's really what we're going to talk about today: how you interpret what it means to cover the ball and why you want to do it.
Well, let's first define what covering the ball really means. Basically what most instructors are talking about is your chest staying down and in the shot, being over the ball — versus if you've watched my how you lose your posture videos, you push off the trail leg. That's what causes you to stand up out of your posture. Now you're not covering the ball; you're coming out of the shot. You want to stay down and through it, and let the club release past your body — and that's what gives you maximum speed. That's what you see the tour pros do.
However, it's often taught completely incorrectly because people are teaching their students to take their trail shoulder and push it across their body, which causes the club to get stuck behind your body. The harder you turn your shoulders and push from the trail side, the more it's going to overpower your arms. Your arms get stuck behind your body. Technically you're still down in your posture, but your chest is very open.
Why is this a problem? Well, you're shortening the radius of your swing arc. I don't want to get too technical here, but the radius of your swing arc is one of the primary determinants of how fast you're going to swing the club. If you want more club head speed, you better listen up. For every half inch that you pick up in the radius of your swing arc, you pick up about two miles an hour of club head speed. It's pretty simple to understand. You pick up a seven iron and swing it at 90 miles an hour; pick up your six iron and it's automatically going to go about 92 miles an hour.
That's throughout your whole bag. That's why no matter how hard you try and swing your pitching wedge, it's never going to be swung as fast as your driver — it simply can't happen due to the physics of it. We want as wide of a swing arc as we can possibly create because it's free speed. The further the club is away from you, the faster it has to go to keep up with the rotating center — which, in this case, is you. Your body.
We don't have to work harder. We don't have to swing harder. We don't have to put ourselves at greater risk. We want to just increase that radius. To properly cover the ball, we want our arms to extend out away from our body and get close to maximum extension. Then get into this release position while our chest stays down. That is properly covering the ball. When you force the trail shoulder across incorrectly, you get into a position where you're not only shortening the radius, but you're not allowing the club to fully release. It's kind of like the same thing as swinging a baseball bat and hitting it down the first base line. You want the bat to get out in front of your body, and that means your chest has got to stay back while your arms release. That is the key to speed in golf — unlike in baseball where you want your arms to cross your chest because you need to absorb the kinetic energy coming into the ball with tremendous force.
In golf, the ball weighs an ounce and a half and it's completely static. There is no kinetic energy. You don't need your arms draped across your chest for power. What you need in golf is speed. If you want to understand how to increase your club head speed without putting any more strain on your body and how to properly cover the ball, watch this preview of this bonus video. What I'm going to talk about is the concept of your arms versus your body releasing in the golf swing. You can also use an AI swing analyzer to see in real time whether your arms are releasing correctly or getting blocked behind an overactive body turn.
Even if you think you know the right answer, take a look because you might be surprised. Make sure you like this video if you liked it, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We put out new video all the time. At the end of the video, I want you to click the link that you'll see up on the screen or down in the description. I'm going to take you to the whole video and I'm going to give you 50 bonus videos for free just for signing up today.
One of my favorite parts of the golf swing is the release. The time where we're releasing all this pent-up energy and letting the club head accelerate as fast as humanly possible. A lot of golfers don't get to feel what a proper release feels like, or even understand what it is. That's because there's a ton of information out there that talks about turning the body through impact as long and as fast as humanly possible, versus just letting the club head release by letting the club and arms turn over.
Now, why would you want to do one over the other? Let's talk about the first one. This is what I call the body release: taking the chest and turning it through the hitting area as fast as humanly possible to move the club. Well, first of all, that's putting a ton of undue stress on your spine. That shear force of rotating your spine as fast as you can through the hitting area — when there is already tremendous force going through there — is setting you up for injury. The last thing that your spine wants in life is compressive force and shear force simultaneously. Rotating as quickly as you possibly can through impact compounds both.
But let's just take the injury prevention piece out. Of course that's a huge part of RST — we don't want golfers to get injured. So many golf swing-related injuries are completely preventable. We think that's a big deal, but let's just ignore that for a second and talk about the speed that's going to be produced and where it's going to come from.
As you start rotating your body really fast, you create centrifugal force. Now, unless you've figured out a way to outsmart Newton, the result of that is going to be centrifugal force. What is that centrifugal force going to do? Well, pretty simple. If you go to the top with your lag angle intact and start rotating your shoulders as fast as you can, the club is going to get thrown out away from you. The centrifugal force is going to act on your wrist joint and release the club early. You're going to start casting.
The last thing on earth you want to do is release your wrist angle early in the swing, because that angle represents about two thirds of your club speed. You want to release that very late and maintain lag. You can't do that when you start spinning your shoulders as fast as you can. Physics are going to always win. You're not going to outsmart Newton.
But again, let's take that one out of the equation and look at the final release component. Let's just assume that for some reason you did figure out how to keep your wrist really, really soft and maintain your lag longer — you overcame the centrifugal force in your swing. Now you're going to release it at the bottom. Well, it's going to be pretty hard to do when you're spinning your shoulders through, because in order for something to release, you've got to transfer energy up the chain and slow down other parts.
As you're spinning your shoulders through, the club head is never going to get a chance to fully release — you're going to be leaving speed on the table. In order for everything to reach maximum speed, your body has to decelerate. Just like throwing a ball: think about that for a second. If you're going to throw a ball, what's the first thing you do? You take a step. You rotate your hips, and then they stop. You don't keep turning your hips to face the first base line. You turn until your belt buckle faces the catcher, and then your chest posts up as well. Then your arm releases.
But if you kept turning, you'd throw it into the first base dugout. You've got to let things decelerate because that's the most efficient way we transfer energy up the kinetic chain from our legs, from our torso, and then into the club and arms. In the golf swing, it's no different. If you keep rotating through, the club head will release at some point, but it's going to happen after the ball is long gone. That's not going to do you any good. The ball doesn't care at that point. You need to release at the ball — that's really a critical piece of the swing. The GOAT Drill system is specifically designed to train this sequencing in real time, helping you feel exactly when your body should post up and when the club head should fire through, rep after rep, until it becomes second nature.
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And that's exactly what our members achieve.
And that's why they say the AXIOM is:
Mind-blowing. Game changing. Revolutionary.
RotarySwing was founded out of frustration with the current state of golf instruction. Quinton knew a better way had to exist to learn this game we all love.
The GOAT Code is finally ready after 3 decades of exhaustive work -
you can now learn how to play the game like Tiger and have incredible
control over the ball. This NEW program is truly a step-by-step process
that takes you from green to tee and will teach you the secrets of how
to play like the Greatest Of All Time. If you would like to switch over
to the new GOAT Code program, simply click the green button below.
Don't worry, you can easily switch back at any time and will see a new
button at the top of your screen to switch back whenever you like.
What are the main advantages of the new program?
It cuts down on the clutter - the videos you will see are all
you need to play your best golf ever - nothing more, nothing less
It is truly step-by-step - no more wondering what you should be
working on, the program guides you through every step of the way
Faster progress - you will see improvements in your scores incredibly
fast and this will immediately begin to spill over into your full swing,
even while working on just your putting!
There's a reason that Earl Woods taught Tiger how to play the game
from the green back.
I admit, at first, even I didn't think it was necessary. I thought I
could skip ahead and learn the full swing without building a solid
foundation in putting, chipping and pitching.
All this belief did was cost me MORE time than had I started
at the beginning just like The GOAT did. Over the past 20 years of
doing golf clinics, my observations of thousands of students was
always the same - those who started the slowest at the beginning
always got there the fasted in the end.
In other words, the students I observed being diligent with the
small things like grip, setup, posture and the basics of controlling
the clubface on day 1 were always WAY further ahead of those who
didn't on day 1.
In the post above by member Everett, he said it all in a nutshell.
Go through the program exactly the way it is laid out and you
will have extraordinary results. Skip to the end and you'll end up
with the exact same swing you started with.
This is a system, not a grouping of random tips.
There is a method to my madness deeply rooted in learning psychology
and over 30 years of teaching hundreds of thousands of golfers
just like you how to hit a ball with a stick. Slow down and you'll
get there faster...
