How to Increase Your Golf Clubhead Speed by Someone who Swings at 129 mph!

Today I want to talk about one of the most frequently asked questions I get on RotarySwing.com and that is, where does golf swing speed come from? It’s actually from a variety of different places. Different parts of the body help you to produce maximum club head speed, and I’m going to go over the top four club head speed producers in this video.

Before we get started on that, I want to go over one of the biggest myths out there on club head speed and that’s that the hips need to rotate as fast as possible, and the faster we rotate the hips the more club head speed we get. That’s simply not the case.

You’ve heard all of the analogies that make it seem like this could happen, but I’m going to prove to today that that’s absolutely not how you get the club head speed. It’s not that the hips don’t play their role, they do add some club head speed to the swing, but they’re not the number one producer by a long shot.

First, let’s go ahead and bust this myth. If my hips were the number one producer of club head speed and one of the top producers of club head speed that would mean if I didn’t move my hips at all my club head speed would drop off the map. Here, I have my swing speed radar and this is going to clock some club head speed.

First thing I’m going to do, I’m going to go ahead and make some things here and I’m going to keep my hips absolutely still, and you’re going to see that my club head speed is still pretty high. Let’s go ahead with a no hip swing, and let’s see what kind of club head speed I can produce. All right, 109 miles an hour right there with absolutely no movement of the hips. That proves to you that most of the club head speed’s not coming from the hips. My normal club head speed’s only about 115, so I only lost about 6 miles an hour by swinging with no hips at all. Now, let’s go ahead and stay tuned to this video. I’m going to go over the four main producers of club head speed and I’m going to show you how to do this correctly.

We’ve seen how the hips only produced a very small amount of club head speed, so what are the main producers of club head speed? The first thing I want to talk to you about is the torso and that includes the hips. We saw that the hips roughly are accountable for about 6, 7 miles an hour club head speed feed. Let’s go ahead and add the torso to that and that means your spine.

My hips rotating would look something like this, this is me not moving my shoulders at all, this is just me rotating my hips and my torso and hips are rotating together. Now, this would be me rotating my shoulders without rotating my hips. As we put these together that would be torso rotation, so that’s from your shoulders down, all the club head speed that you’re going to get in the swing. That’s this motion here, I’m not going to use any arms at all.

Let me grab a club and I’m going to make a few swings, then we’ll take a look at how much speed that’s going to produce when we do that type of motion. Here, no arms at all, all torso, and we’ll go ahead and swing about as hard as I can there. We’re getting about 57 miles an hour, so that tells me that shoulders actually put quite a bit of speed in there when used correctly.

If I load my shoulders, one of the biggest key to getting a good club head speed is getting a good full turn with our shoulders and we have a great video on this called the Shoulder Blade Glide Video on the site, it’s going to insure that everybody can get at least 90° of shoulder turn.

The hips and the shoulders together account for about 58 miles an hour of club head speed. When we started start adding the arms in there the rest of the swing is the piece of knowing I call lag and release, which is three separate motions, that’s where we’re going to get the rest of the club head speed from. We’re going to get most of it from the arms themselves.

The second piece let’s add, let’s talk about elevation. Here, I’m going to go my torso, my shoulders and my hips plus I’m going to let my arms elevate, so I’m not going to get any wrist cock, I’m not going to let my right arm bend and extend at all, but I’m just going to let my arms elevate up and down. That’s starting to speed up a little bit, 76, 78 miles an hour, so that’s showing me that the elevation is another 20 miles an hour of club head speed.

That’s one of the reasons that we talk about with the rotary swing if you have low arms in the backswing. If I’m taking my club back and I’m only getting about this high in my backswing with my hands and arms I’m going to lose some elevation, I’m going to lose some club head speed from there.

That’s why a one plane swing, in general, will give you a little bit less club head speed, and a swing with some higher arms, not extremely high, but a little bit high higher will help you pick up a few more miles an hour. It doesn’t mean that you can’t hit it far with a one plane swing it just means getting a little more elevation is going to give you another 3, 4 miles an hour, which equals another 9 or 10 yards.

That’s the second piece is elevation of the arms and that’s just this movement here with arms are actually moving up and down as my torso is rotating, so there. I’m trying not to let my right arm bend or my wrist hinge at all and that’s elevation and torso turn.

The next piece I want to talk about is right arm and this is a big piece of the swing. The right arm and using the right arm correctly is going to help you get a lot more speed and you could imagine this right arm like a piston. If I use my right arm and in the downswing this arm is going to be bent here, so if I’m looking at it from this way you can see my arm is bent and then it’s going to fire like a piston as I’m making my golf swing. Here, if we look at it from face on, as I’m halfway down my right arm is bent and as I’m releasing this club my right arm is firing like a piston, that’s going to really help to add some speed.

Let’s go ahead and add that to the to the equation. I’ve got torso turn, elevation, now let’s add the right arm piston firing motion and let’s see how much swing speed that gets us. That’s kind of hard to without getting your wrist there. Let me try again. There we go, jumped up to 83. I think I can do better than that. There we go, all the way up over 100 now, about 102 miles an hour.

The last piece is going to be the second part of the lag and release, so the right arm is half of lag and release. The second part of lag and release is going to be your wrist angles and that means how these wrists are staying hinged in the downswing. These aren’t firing until the last piece of the swing.

My right arm is bent and my right wrist is fully loaded, my left wrist is loaded, and then I’m going to release those angles like a one-two punch as I come in to impact and that’s going to get a lot of speed. Here’s what I mean by the lag and release with just the wrist. If you can imagine, here’s your wrist, here’s the forearm, and there’s a line that goes right down through, imagine your middle finger up through this line. As I’m going in the back swing my wrists are going to cock upwards this way a little bit. That’s going to be the lag part of the swing.

As I’m swinging back that’s going to be this motion, so my right hand is cocking upward, and my left wrist is cocking upward, and that’s the lag portion. As you release this your hand is now going to be cocked upward, it’s going to go down, and that’s going to release that. Same thing with your right hand, it’s going to be cocking and uncocking, and you can imagine just like you’re hitting a hammer. The right hand here, let’s add that piston motion with the lag and release. This is cocked, bam. Now, I’m going to release that and we’re going to get the rest of our club head speed.

Let’s go ahead and try one more swing here with all four motions going together, and let’s see what kind of club head speed we can get. There we go, 116. 118, so you can get some pretty good club head speed if you do those four pieces correctly. We go over all these pieces in much more detail on the website, but I just wanted to bust the myth of the hips, if you’re focusing on getting speed from your hips not going to happen. Not that they don’t do anything, but it’s not going to be the main power supply. We need to focus on all four pieces working together. Torso rotation, arm elevation, right arm bending and releasing, and then our lag with our wrist lagging and releasing the club. Lag and release is elevation, right arm, and the wrist angle altogether.

If you’re joining us on YouTube I want to thank you for watching this video and I ask you, go ahead and subscribe to this channel up in the top part of your screen here. That’s going to allow you to be updated every time we come out with new video. I’m also going to attach, as a bonus, the first half of the lag builder drill and that’s going to go over how you can create lag with these arms and wrists and release lag to get some good club head speed.

If you want to watch that entire video, it’s usually only available to premium members, you can click the link in the bottom right-hand side of your screen where you can sign up for your free membership, you’ll be able to watch that entire video for free plus you’ll get about 3 to 4 hours of free bonus instruction, it’s never going to cost you a dime. I look forward to seeing you guys much more in the future and good luck with your golf game. I’ll see you soon.

I want to talk to you about one of the biggest myths in creating lag in your golf swing and that’s that we’re going to hold this angle and really pull down, we’re going to keep her forearm tight, we’re going to keep our wrist tight, and we’re just going to pray that we can keep this angle as we make our downswing.

Now, that’s never going to work and the reason for this is, as I hold a club, or a hammer in this case, in front of my body here the natural anatomical alignment of my wrist is going to be slightly cocked forward. Now, that’s not a position of lag. To get lag we need to keep these wrists really loose and soft, and let this club hinge back.

Now, if I get really tight and I try to hold this angle what that’s going to do is that’s going to contract my wrist flexors. When I contract my wrist flexors you can see it extends that angle of lag and you’re going to lose that angle. One of the biggest keys is to make sure you keep your wrists nice and loose and soft, as you swing down the heavy weight of the club head is naturally going to want to lag behind.

By this point, we understand why getting really tight with the forearm and the wrist can cause you to lose lag, but now we need a step-by-step process, some drills that we can work on to incorporate lag in your swing, and that’s exactly what this video is. I’m going to go through, starting out at very, very small steps, and working you through a process until you’re completing a full 9 to 3 drill, which is going to be the biggest key for you to creating lag in your swing.

With each piece I’m going to give you one new thing to concentrate on. I want you to focus on that, with that particular piece of the drill. You’re going to move on to the next piece, and then a new thing to work on. By the end of the video you’ll have accumulated a lot of different things that you want to check in your swing and make sure that you’re doing correctly. You can go to the swing viewer and compare those with either my swing or Chuck’s 9 to 3 drill swing and make sure that you’re performing these correctly.

The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to make some many swings. What I want you to do is grab a sling doughnut or weight for a golf club. Go ahead and put that on your club, it’s going to help you feel the heavy weight of the head. If you don’t have a swing doughnut you can still do this just with your normal club, but this is going to help to really feel the heavy weight of the head and that’s going to be key in creating glad lag in your golf swing.

Go ahead and start making some little mini golf swings just with your right hand only. As I’m doing this I’m really feeling like I’m keeping my wrist and my forearm extremely loose and relaxed and letting that club flow as I make these little tiny swings. I don’t want your arm going way back in a big back swing, I don’t want you to try to get any power in this. It’s not even really a golf swing at this point as much as just feeling the weight of that club head and keeping the wrist nice and loose and relaxed.

Now, after we’ve done this and we feel pretty comfortable with this we’re going to go ahead and switch to the left hand. As I start to make some of these swings with my left hand I’m going to have the same feeling, my wrist is nice and loose and relaxed, you can see that I’m not having any tension or carrying any tension in this wrist.
Then, I’m also going to start to get a little bit of a weight transfer. In my backswing I want about 60 to 70%, maybe even 80% of my weight to go to the inside of my right foot.

I don’t want it to sway all the way to the outside of my foot, but I want it to just go to the inside of that right foot just as it would in a full golf swing. As you’re about to complete your backswing I want to wait to start the transition to your left, so in a real golf swing, in a full golf swing we actually start to transition our weight a little bit before the club has completely completed the backswing. As the club is still moving back we’re actually going to transfer that weight to our left side, or transfer the weight to our left side, and you can see that’s exactly what I’m doing here.

Now, one big key I want you to focus on is that as you transition your weight I want you to make sure that you don’t go up on your left toe, so if you start to transfer your weight to your left toe you’re going to see that your hips are moving toward the ball and you’re losing room to swing the club. That’s a big mistake that I see on a regular basis. You want to make sure that your weight is transferring to the center of your left ankle, and if you do this correctly it should be very small swings and very effortless. Go ahead and do this for about a minute or two until you really feel that flow, making sure that your left wrist is saying nice and soft.

Now, that we’ve gotten familiar with feeling the heavy weight of the club head lagging behind our head hands, and staying very loose and soft with this I’m going to go ahead and do the same thing without the swing doughnut. You’re going to go start with just your right hand here also, make a little small swing. In these swings we’re only swinging back maybe about a foot or so and through a foot with our hands.

As I’m doing this I’m going to concentrate on the same things we worked on last time, but also I want you to concentrate on keeping your wrist pretty flat in the backswing. What I don’t want you to do is to get all of that wrist cock and lag in the backswing and then try to hold on. If I’m doing that it’s going to look something like this where I’m hinging these wrists in the backswing. What’s going to happen if you do that in your real swing if you’re going to fully cock your wrist on the backswing and as soon as you start down your going to start losing that lag.

What we want to happen is as you swing back your wrist is nice and flat and loose. Then, as you transfer your weight to the left the momentum of this club head is going to keep on going back and as I transfer my wrist, so it starts to move forward or my hand starts to move forward, that club head’s going to lag behind. You’re not really gaining the lag until you start changing directions and at that point, you’re building lag in the downswing.

Go ahead and make about 50 or 60 of those swings and really feel like you get very little lag in the backswing. Then, as you start to transition the weight forward and your arm changes directions then you’re going to go ahead and get lag. You’re just going to make these right-handed swings for a couple minutes until you feel like you’re doing pretty well with it. Then, you’re going to go ahead and take the left hand.

Now, at this point I want you to check these in the swing viewer. I’ve uploaded all these drills and swing viewer, so you can put your swing side by side with mine and see if you’re performing these moves correctly. If you get to your backswing and instead of the wrist being nice and straight not a lot …