In today's golf instruction video, we're going to be discussing a simple yet highly effective golf swing drill that's going to help you get more compression at impact and become an overall better ball striker.
One of the things that we're going to be discussing today is the actual position of your shoulders at impact. If you've been unclear as to whether you're doing something right or wrong, you want to pay close attention to today's entire video, because I'm going to show you a really simple drill at the end that's going to help you correct this.
One of the most common mistakes that we see from amateur golfers is actually the position of their shoulders at impact. A lot of you at home are probably going, "Okay, what in the heck does that even mean?" Well, that's exactly what we're going to talk about today.
Let's talk about where we're trying to go first. Then I'm going to help you identify your problem second. Then third, we're going to help you identify a solution that's going to help you overcome this problem.
First things first. Let's go ahead and talk about axis tilt at address. We've talked about this in quite a few other videos, but if I set up here, you'll notice that my set-up position has my spine going just inside my lead knee. You can see that I have enough tilt just to have it just inside my lead knee. The importance of this is to help us get the head behind the golf ball. It also helps us rotate around our spine without running the risk of reverse pivot.
What we're looking for at impact is, we want to have our spine — if I were to take this address position and shift my hips all the way to the lead side and then open them up a little bit, keeping my head nice and quiet — we want to have enough tilt to where our spine is now just outside of our lead knee. You can notice that my shoulders really haven't increased much in that tilt in order to get to that position.
The issue that a lot of people run into here is that they've got too much of this tilt. One of the problems with this is, number one, it changes where the club is going to bottom out, which in turn can start to change the way that you release the golf club. Typically what we'll see with people who tend to have too much of this is they're going to start to cast the club, which means they're going to be losing lag. Then they're going to start flipping a little bit at the bottom of the swing.
But also what it does, from a down the line perspective — when I turn my body to the top of the swing and lean my spine back — see how the shaft plane starts to flatten out quite a bit? Why is that an issue? Chances are, that's going to start to shallow you out too much, causing your swing path to swing too far from the inside. But also it's going to cause you to swing on an ascending blow to hit the golf ball, rather than a descending blow. In order to hit your irons or fairway woods nice and solid, we typically want to be hitting down on those. That's what helps create that compressed feel.
You can see that the position of the shoulders can affect, number one, where the club bottoms out. And number two, it can also affect the angle of attack and the path the club is on, which makes it much harder to actually get that compressed feel at the golf ball. If you've noticed yourself on camera with too much secondary axis tilt at impact — where your lead shoulder's way back and your spine is way outside your lead knee — let's go ahead and get you a drill that's going to help you overcome that. You can also try an AI swing analyzer to instantly identify whether your shoulder position at impact is causing your ball-striking issues.
Okay, good news. This is a very simple drill today. It's going to take a little bit of time to correct this problem, so every time you set out to practice, aim for right around 100 to 150 total reps. I want you to break your session up and start out very slow, just so you can make sure that you're doing these movements correctly. Then as you start to become more proficient, start to increase the speed.
This is a drill I call the lead shoulder low. Go ahead and grab a golf club, put it just in your lead hand, and get your trail arm out of the mix for a little bit. This is a pretty common theme around Rotary Swing — we want to eliminate our troublemaker at first, and then slowly add it back in.
What I want you to do is go ahead and make a backswing up to the top of your swing and freeze. When you make your first initial shift to the lead side, I want you to try and feel like your lead shoulder stays really low to the ground, and your trail shoulder stays up and behind your head. You can see — lead shoulder low to the ground, almost working down into your lead side. Now from here, this is what we call the post up move. This is just where you take all that weight you shifted over into your lead leg, and once your lead knee, lead hip, and lead ankle are all in line with each other, you're just going to push your heel into the ground and start to clear your hip away from the target.
The way that looks from this perspective is: once I shift, you're going to see me pushing my heel into the ground and pulling my hip away from the target. That's going to happen simultaneously as the club is swinging in front of your body. I know it sounds complex, but you'll see that this is pretty easy once we get the hang of it.
We're going to turn our body up to the top, shift to the lead side, keeping the lead shoulder really low to the ground, and then I'm going to post up and let the club release. What you'll notice is that my golf club bottomed out way up here underneath my lead shoulder, instead of way back. You'll also notice that it's much easier to start to swing down, and you'll start to see that you can take those nice little brush divots. For structured rep tracking and coaching cues on this exact movement pattern, check out the GOAT Drill system — it gives you real-time feedback so you know every rep is actually building the right motor pattern.
Let's do that again. Turn to the top, shift lead, lead shoulder low, post up, and let it release. You can see I got the club bottoming out in a good spot. Turn to the top, lead shoulder low, club releases. Up to the top, lead shoulder low, post up, and release.
Once you start to do maybe your first 50 to 75 reps at that speed, then try to make it all one movement. You're going to go up to the top, lead shoulder low, let the club release. Up to the top, lead shoulder low, let the club release — you can see that my club is bottoming out right in the same spot every single time. Lead shoulder low, let the club release. Now do another 50 to 100 reps of that, and then slowly start to put the trail hand back on there.
You'll structure your drill sessions like this: you're going to go for 100 reps, do 33 of them really, really slow. Then the next 33 of them, try to make it all one fluid movement. Then the next 34 of them with the trail hand on the golf club. What you're going to be looking for at impact is that your spine is just outside your lead knee, and your lead shoulder is stacked right on top of your lead hip socket, lead knee, and lead ankle.
Okay, so there you have it — a simple little drill that's going to help you start to control the bottom of the swing arc and help you get a little bit more compression in your golf shots. I wish you all much success with this drill.
I also want to let you know I've got a great bonus video today that's going to talk to you about the number two fault that could be affecting your ball striking, and that's early extension. If you want to see that video, there'll be a link in the description below, or you can go ahead and click the link on the screen now. That'll take you over where you can watch that video, and it's free in its entirety.
Also, do me a big favor — if you like this video, go ahead and click that like button below. Also, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post those up. I will certainly do my best to help you out as much as I possibly can. One other thing — just remember to subscribe to our channel. Go ahead and click that button below. There's also a bell button you can click so you get notifications any time we put out our latest videos.
Let's get out there. Put this drill to use. Hopefully you all become really great ball strikers. I wish you all the best. Make it a great day.
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