3 Reasons: Online Golf Instruction Videos are Ruining Your Swing

Hello, everyone. This is Chuck Quinton, founder of RotarySwing.com. Welcome to another RotarySwing University podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about why you’re not improving your golf swing by just watching a bunch of online golf instruction videos. The simple reality is if you continue down the path that you’re going, you’re going to keep getting the exact same results you’ve gotten so far, which are what? You’re probably still a high double-digit handicapper, and you haven’t gotten any better. Yet you spend more time on YouTube and online Googling for different golf instruction videos and working on all these different golf tips and golf swing drills and tricks and all these things, but yet here you are looking at yet another online golf instruction video, or in this case, a podcast and still looking for some secret answer.

Let me give you the three reasons why this doesn’t work and what you need to do to actually improve your golf swing.

Reason 1: Online Golf Instruction Videos Are Mostly Junk

First, online golf instruction videos, in general, if you are looking on YouTube, in particular, are junk. Now, that’s not to say there’s not some great golf instructors out there. Of course, there are. But for the most part, there’s a reason that adages are adages. And what I mean by that is that there is a reason that people say you get what you pay for. If somebody is putting out a bunch of stuff for free on YouTube, what do you think the value of that content is. That should be a pretty simple thing.

Now, of course, some people like myself included, along with our Certified RotarySwing Instructors, we put videos out on YouTube because we want to introduce people to the Rotary Golf Swing method, and we want to help them get better, but all of those videos, we generally want you to come back to the site at Rotaryswing.com and watch our other online golf instruction videos, which is where the good stuff is, which of course, yes, we have to make a living just like you do, and you don’t give your stuff away for free anymore than we do. So yes, of course, we have to charge a membership fee to watch the rest of those golf instruction videos. But like I said, you get what you pay for. And in Rotary Swing’s case, we’re the most expensive online golf instruction video website out there!

Wow! That’s not really a great marketing tactic. Is it?

There’s a reason for that. Well, first of all, everything that we do is effective. The Rotary Golf Swing actually works as evidenced by our thousands of golf swing reviews. We have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students who have gone through RotarySwing University and have improved their golf swings because what we do actually works. The reason that it works is that it’s backed by a group, what we call our medical panel, a group of experts who have studied our golf swing methodology and validated it from their own professional expertise.

“I can already tell this is the best presentation of the RST fundamentals you have done yet. The sequencing is fantastic and much more efficient than looking up videos on the website.  This is even better than the clinics. The legend on the left of the screen makes is super easy to find and review those areas you want to work more on. Well done.” Carver Wickman, Premium Member for since 2005

So for instance, we have numerous orthopedic surgeons on our medical panel. But one of them is Dr. Brian McKeon, and Dr. McKeon is the team surgeon and team doctor for the Boston Celtics. He operated on Tracy McGrady’s multimillion-dollar knee. He’s done tons and tons of surgeries, and people put, literally, their entire careers in his hands, and he’s also a very, very avid, passionate, single-digit golfer. And he’s even invented a couple of golf training aids that we used to sell on the site that are great for helping with posture and all these other things.

So long story short, Dr. McKeon has been on our medical panel for close to a decade now because he saw what the value the Rotary Swing provided. He saw that we can not only help golfers hit the ball further, with less effort, but more importantly, especially from his perspective, we could do it injury-free. And that’s huge for Rotary Swing is because, I think, the number is 81%, according to the National Golf Foundation, 81% of the golfers on the PGA tour will miss about eight to nine weeks at some point in their career for a golf-swing-related injury.

Now, think about that. Supposedly, the guys on the PGA tour have the best golf swings in the world, right? Why are four out of five of them having to miss over two months of work for hurting themselves hitting a ball with a stick? Now, certainly, you could argue that the golf swing is very unilateral, it’s one-side dominant, and it’s easy to get injured and so on and so forth. But the simple reality is that RotarySwing golfers don’t get injured. When they’re following the RotarySwing methodology and doing all of the fundamentals that all of these orthopedic and neurosurgeons have gone through and validated, you don’t get injured. That’s the whole point. You should be able to go out and hit a ball with a stick and never hurt yourself. That ball weighs an ounce and a half. It’s not hitting you back. It doesn’t weigh that much.

Where injuries in the golf swing come from is always faulty mechanics. When you have faulty golf swing mechanics, you should bank on the fact that you’re going to get injured. And so when you’re going back and watching these golf instruction videos on YouTube, ask yourself, “What is this guy that’s telling me this golf swing tip or trick or some other hocus pocus stuff, has it been validated by a group of medical experts and group of surgeons? Does he know what he’s talking about from a biomechanics perspective? Is this going to get me injured? Has it already injured people?”

Speaking of biomechanics, we have also on our medical panel a PhD biomechanist from the US Olympics Committee, Dr. Jeff Broker. Dr. Broker used to be the Chief Biomechanist for the US Olympics Committee in Colorado Springs. And he’s worked with every single great olympian that’s gone through that facility there to help them biomechanically be as efficient as humanly possible with their mechanics in whatever sport that they’re competing in.

And Dr. Broker got with us back in 2009, and said, “Chuck, I love what you’re doing. I think you’ve got basically the concept and method for the perfect golf swing.” And then he helped us understand things better and did a bunch of tests for us and helped us understand grip pressure and all these things that led us to further advance the RotarySwing methodology to the point that it is at today.

So, first understand that you’re probably not going to improve your golf swing by looking at a bunch of online golf instruction videos from people who you know nothing about. And quite frankly, most golf instructors learn how to teach by fixing their own golf swings, if they have even gotten that far yet. That’s the simple reality of it. Most golf instructors learn golf instruction by what they did on their own golf swings, and then they also learn based on what they see their current top pro doing in their golf swing.

What the Tour Pros Do Should NOT Be Your Guide

They look at tour pro’s swings on video and then say, “Oh, well this guy is doing this. Rory is doing that. And Tiger’s doing this. And Dustin’s doing that,” and so on and so forth. And so they base their teaching methodology on a bunch of golfers who are all going to get injured. Trevor Immelman, injured. Rory McIlroy, injured. Tiger Woods, severely injured. All of these guys, four out of five, 81%, according to the National Golf Foundation, are going to get injured because of their swing mechanics. So pay attention to what you’re watching because you have no idea … It’s probably bad for your health. Simple truth.

Reason 2: Your Brain

So, that’s the first reason. The second reason you’re not getting any better is because you’re not working with the way that your brain learns new movement patterns. Now, this is critical because your brain learns a new movement pattern in a very, very specific way. It’s a tested and proven way that your brain actually learns a new movement pattern. And most golfers who are searching for golf tips and other random online golf instruction videos, trying to fix their swing, have no idea how their brain learns. Actually, you do know how you learn. You just choose to ignore it.

No Quick Fixes, Only Temporary Ones

Think about it this way, when you learned how to drive a car, if you’re an older guy like me, I’m in my 40s, I learned how to drive on a manual transmission. You probably did as well. If you learned how to drive on a manual transmission, where did you do that? Well, you probably did it on a quiet back country road or in a parking lot somewhere. I started in a parking lot. The next day, I went and raced the Indy 500. Right? No, of course not. That’s stupid. Why on earth would I go from the parking lot to the Indy 500? I use this analogy all the time with RotarySwing students because it helps beat in your head the idea that taking a golf tip, watching a golf instruction video on YouTube or some other random online golf instruction video, and then going out to the range and swinging full speed and trying to implement that tip and expecting some dramatic grandiose result.

It’s not going to happen. How on earth would it? You’ve never learned anything in your entire life like that. You’ve never gone from the parking lot to the Indy 500. And watching a golf instruction video online, and then going out to the range and swinging full speed is just as foolish. You’re going to get the same results. You’re going to crash at turn one because you don’t know how to make the car turn at turn one at the Indy 500 at 230 miles and hour.

The golf swing is exactly the same way. You have to start slow and break things in chunks. When you learned how to drive a manual transmission, you were consumed with two things, slipping the clutch out while giving it enough gas to get it rolling without lurching or stalling the car or whatever it may be. That consumed 100% of your focus.

Now, think about it when you go and play golf. Let’s say you watch a golf instruction video online today, and you’re going to go out and say, “Oh, I got this. I totally get it intellectually.” And you do. Intellectually, you totally understand what you’re wanting your brain to get your body to do. But kinesthetically, your body has no freaking clue how to perform that movement especially at speed.

So that’s why with RotarySwing, we always, always, always practice these movements in smaller pieces at first, and at a slower pace. We break them down into small chunks, like slipping the clutch and giving it gas. You’re not worried about anything else yet. You’re going to worry about weight shift, nothing else. I don’t even let you use a golf club at first. In fact, you’re not even going to hit balls.

The Most Expensive – But Worthwhile – Golf Lesson On Earth

In fact, I’m probably the most expensive golf instructor in the world pound for pound for how many balls you hit in a golf lesson. Do you know how many golf balls a typical Chuck Quinton RotarySwing golf lesson student hits in an hour?

Two.

You hit one so I can film you face on. And you hit another one so I can film you down the line. And then we go and we sit down on the golf cart, and I walk you through on my iPad, showing you everything that’s going on and what we’re going tackle first, what steps we’re going to take, what drills we’re going to do, and then for the next 55 minutes, we’re going to stand in front of that mirror and start doing drills and stacking these golf swing drills on top of each other because that is how your brain actually learns.

So if you work with how your brain learns, you’ll actually improve your golf swing – assuming you’re working on the right golf swing fundamentals. I bet if you haven’t driven a manual transmission in 20 years, I bet within 15 minutes, you’d be right back to where you started because you did enough repetitions, that’s the third key, is doing enough repetitions of the same thing over and over again. So, that one golf lesson where you hit two balls $250 bucks a piece. Right? My golf lessons are $500 bucks an hour. Completely, ridiculous. You’re going to pay $250 bucks to hit two crappy range balls, but that’s the way it works. Your brain doesn’t care if it’s hitting balls, just that it’s doing the movements the same way over and over again. That’s the most effective way to teach you is because that’s how your brain learns.

Reason 3: You’re Not Doing the Reps

So, then the third reason why you’re not improving, still chasing all these online golf instruction videos and not getting any better, is because you’re not continuing to stick with the stuff that you’re working on from that lesson. My students, I typically won’t see an average amateur golfer more than once a month. Not the best business strategy. I get it. But it’s the most effective way for you to learn because I know that you need 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions to master a new movement pattern. Doesn’t mean you’re not going to be good at it in 100 repetitions. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to be great at it 500 repetitions. But at 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions is where you can start to do that movement pattern and start to handle other distractions.

A distraction can be stacking another piece on your swing. So let’s say you’re working on weight shift because you tend to hang back off your right leg and hit the ball fat and all kinds of other stuff. And so we’re just working on weight shift, weight shift, weight shift. And then you do that, and we’re like, “Okay. You’re shifting your weight great. Now, let’s start worrying about posting up and getting your hips to turn getting your proper impact position.” Whoa. Your brain just freaked out. All of a sudden, we stack a couple of things on there on top of your weight shift, but you haven’t done the weight shift drills enough, and now your brain is like, “Wait a second. All of a sudden, I can’t shift my weight because now my brain powers focused on the other stuff you just gave me.”

That’s why you have to do at least 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions. It’s an industry standard fact for neuromechanics for how your brain learns new movement patterns. It was done by studying stroke victims, and that is the way that we know how the brain learns a new movement pattern. When you master it, then you can stack something else on it. But before that, why on earthy would you keep stacking one thing on top of another on top of another and then expecting that to all work?

That’s again, parking lot to Indy 500. We’ve got to go parking lot to back country road. Now, we got to deal with stop signs and oncoming traffic and shifting gears. That’s another huge distraction, right?

So, in the golf swing, we have tons and tons of little distractions. That’s why it’s a process. It takes time.

And that’s why with RotarySwing University, you’re actually going to get better because we walk you through, step by step, in an online golf instruction video course that literally walks you through learning each phase of the golf swing using our proprietary RotarySwing Five Step Process. So the first thing we actually start with, since I happened to mention it, is weight shift. We’re going to teach you how by watching our online golf instruction videos and doing the drills and getting your swing reviewed by our instructors, going through our checkout process.

Once you master weight shift, we’re going to stack on the next piece, which is core rotation. Once your core is rotating correctly … It’s going to probably take you another month. We’re going to get you adding that lead arm. Once the lead arm is working correctly with the body, we add the golf club. Once the golf club and everything is working correctly with the body, the weight shift, etc., then we add that right arm to the golf swing.

And that is the RST Five-Step Sequence, and it works. That’s the bottom line. We’re going to make you better, but we’re not going to do everything in a week. It’s not possible. Your brain couldn’t possibly absorb and create pathways in your brain and myelinate these pathways in such a short period of time. Even tour pros that I work with, and I’ve worked with literally hundreds of professional golfers, I won’t even see them more often than every 10 days. Now, granted if we’re working on something different, we can see you back to back. In two days, you want to do some full swing stuff and some short-game stuff the next day. But anymore than 10 days is not realistic and actually counter-productive

Now, where do all these numbers come from? Well, I’ve done a bunch of online golf instruction videos on how the brain learns, but I’ll give you a quick run down on it. The average amateur golfer can realistically spend 45 minutes a day practicing. You’ve got a job, you’ve got a family, you’ve got kids, you’ve got a dog, you’ve got whatever it is that takes your time away, but you can squeeze in 45 minutes if you really want to improve your golf swing.

During that 45 minutes, on average, you’re probably going to get 100 proper perfect correct repetitions in doing the drills correctly. If you get 100 in, how many days is it going to take you to get to 3,000. 3,000 is kind of our minimum target number for mastering the movement pattern. Well 3,000 divided by 100, that’s 30 days, hence, why I won’t see you again for a month. I’m not trying to make money from you. I’m trying to make you a better golfer, but you have to work within the confines of your DNA, the way we are engineered. We’re all the same when it comes to learning, and we have to work with the way our brain learns a new movement patterns.

So the basic thing is if you’re just trying to chase a bunch random golf tips and looking at all these random online golf instruction videos on YouTube, and trying this tip one day, and trying the next tip the next day, guess what you’re going to get, the same erratic schizophrenic results that you’re getting right now.

If you’re tired of all the BS that’s out there, and you want to actually learn with the only golf swing platform and method online and on the planet today that actually works with how your brain learns new movement patterns, go to Rotaryswing.com today, sign up for free, and start watching our online golf instruction videos. They’re going to show you the facts about the golf swing and finally get you on the path to achieving your true potential in the golf swing.