How to Shallow Your Hands During Transition

Do your hands go straight out toward the golf ball and don't shallow out during the transition in your golf swing? Here's why and how to fix it!

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Yes, can you hear me?

I can hear you great.

All right.

So what's going on?

The angle, which angle are you referring So like on my lead hip, it was coming out toward the ball almost as if I was standing up and this right hip was stationary.

So when we worked on getting this right hip back, Okay.

Gotcha.

So you see, as far as the angle goes, what you're trying to do is more or less maintain the belt line that you have it addressed.

So, you know, if, if I'm hinged forward here, if this is roughly my hip angle, because of how much I'm hinged forward, as I go back, that's going to stay roughly about the same.

What you're mentioning is a lot of people kind of do this.

And that's typically your arms kind of taking over a little bit and pulling you out of your posture.

And that's just indicative that your brain is saying, well, I got to really fire my arms hard.

And then your hips don't ever get a chance to work right in the first place.

So really, if your goal is to try and.

Use your big muscles to hit the ball and swing the club so that you're not just relying on your arms and hands.

Because it feels like a lot of work and it's harder to control.

You really got to make sure that this angle is roughly maintained.

And then as you start down and get ready to push that left hip back, this angle actually can increase a little bit.

And that'll really help you steepen your angle with your body, your spine angle, and helps bring the club back out on top of the plane.

What most people do with what you're talking about, if you get a little flat and your arms pull you out of your posture a little bit, you get a little flat, and then you're going to get a little bit stuck underneath or swing really over the top.

But to prevent that is more or less just keeping this angle, increasing it, I call it kind of tipping a little bit so that you kind of get your hips further back behind you.

And then as you're pushing back, then it's going to change.

But does that answer your question?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, let's let's hit a couple I'd love to see where we're at Whenever you're ready Good, let's do one more.

Okay, can you do just like a swing face Okay, perfect.

Swing looks really good.

It looks like you're losing the tush line just a little bit, which we'll talk about.

Let me pull it up here.

Back swing looked, you know, as far as your hips and stuff looked really good.

Okay.

Let me share my screen.

Okay.

And then you get.

A ton of depth in the backswing with the right hand, for sure.

Oh yeah, I mean, it's going back really deep, that's great, but what, what, what's going on here?

Watch, so if you use this, uh, like this, you know, the screen back here in the background and watch how your hips go back.

So you've moved like one, you know, you kind of move back like a, you know, inch or two, and you maintain that.

And then as you start down, you'll see that the club gets a little bit steep.

Ideally, your hands would not be this far out in front of your chest.

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk through all this stuff in a second.

But this what's happening is you're losing your posture a little bit, Because your arms are outrunning everything.

So then, you know, you stand up.

So, and this is where, you know, you look like you lose your posture just a little bit during this phase.

You can see, I'm going to put my mouse cursor right there.

So now you've lost it and your spine angle has gotten more upright, right?

So this starts leading it.

This can really quickly lead into blocks and hooks really quick.

And so I'm going to explain why there's, I mean, otherwise did.

Your swing looks beautiful, but this is going to lead to some, some ball striking issues.

So let's just take a quick look.

Face on.

Yeah, so stance width is just a hair wide.

Not that you can't play from there, but it's going to.

Typically, you're either going to not get enough weight over to the left side in the downswing, or you're going to have to have a pretty big slide.

You make a really good move there.

That's pretty solid.

But the biggest issue, really, so many great things going on here, is just the arms firing too soon.

And Chuck, like I said, I don't know if you remember or not, but I've been in Craig's group now for a year in July.

Okay.

Okay, okay.

Nothing I can do.

I just can't seem to figure out what in the world is causing me to not let those arms just drop and allow the legs to work, you know?

Yep.

Have you filmed your swing working on this stuff with like a driver or a three -wood?

Oh, yes.

And you still find the same thing happening?

Yes.

Okay.

All right, cool.

Let's talk about what's causing that.

So in your swing, you rotate really well.

You get your hips really well.

Everything looks really great.

And then your arms start to go up, right?

And so as you start to elevate your arms quite a bit, totally normal.

It looks great.

There's nothing wrong with it.

But as your arms start getting up on a steeper plane, then you need shallowing moves in order for that club.

to get back down to the ball from up here, right?

Now, if you were down here, you wouldn't need any shallowing moves, right?

Your swing's already really shallow.

Here your swing's really steep.

You're somewhere in between.

And that's the trick of figuring out where your hands need to be and what moves you need to put in your swing to get the swing to all gel.

So what you're doing is you go to the top.

You know, this is really nice.

And then the arms start to fire a little bit soon.

And that's impossible for them to shallow out because you've started moving them this way, right?

So what your body does, once you get this way a little bit, where your hands are moving back out here, obviously, one, that's going to pull you out of your posture a little bit.

But then also because that's a steeping move, right?

You're, you know, hacking down with your arms a little bit.

And that's a big exaggeration.

Your swing's not nearly that bad.

But as you do that, you're going to start to stand up to keep the club.

From digging into the turf because your arms are steep.

They're going down on a much steeper path than what they went back on, right?

So it's really more of a.

It's a timing thing and a sequencing thing that's causing you to not be able to shallow out.

So in order for your club to your hands to do this, instead of this, you have to kind of look at it holistically.

Okay, so one if my arms fire at all from the top, If I pull down hard with my left arm or push with my right shoulder, any of that stuff can move the hands out toward the target line, out toward the ball.

And both of those are no bueno, especially if they happen, which is what's typical, ahead of your hips starting to get out of the way, right?

If your hips start to get out of the way first, then your hands naturally kind of drop down in.

But if they don't and your arms get just the tiny, you know, a tenth of a second, a split second head start, There's no shallowing out that's going to happen.

In fact, what your body's going to do, you know, from there to there is only two tenths of a second anyway, right?

So there's just not a lot of time for a lot of stuff to happen.

So once you start this little tiny tug from the top, then your body, your proprioception, your subconscious starts saying, okay, well, what do we need to do to hit the ball?

Because that's my top priority.

So shallowing out doesn't, it's not even on the radar anymore, right?

So really what it comes down to is two things working synergistically.

One, getting your hands to not fire from the top will automatically help them shallow out with number two, which is getting your hips to go a little bit sooner, right?

And so one of the things I've been doing, I've been talking about a little bit here and there, I've been researching for the past seven months is having your hands high versus having your hands low in the backswing, okay?

I don't know if you've followed any of that stuff.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so one of the things that when you think about it as a big, do you do?

You have time this morning?

Because I can, absolutely okay.

So I want to explain some stuff to you.

That may be a little bit outside of the scope of the lesson, but it'll kind of help you think of it a big picture thing, right?

So, if you think of your golf swing entirely as as shallowing moves and steepening moves, okay, then the golf swing starts to make a lot of sense.

Because we've seen, you know, there's 40 million golfers in the U .

s with 40 million different golf swings with you know 100 different variables each, right?

So how do you get everybody to kind of make their swing work?

Well, it's pretty hard, right?

That's why golfers haven't really gotten any better.

So when you think about it, most golfers don't really understand what's going on in their swing.

Your swing, as you start elevating your arms, you've added a steepening move.

Totally fine.

It gives you a lot of leverage, but then you need to get those commensurate compensatory sallowing moves to get the club to not come down steep, right?

In my opinion, after the seven months of research and 50 ,000 swings that I've made in that time, I believe that it's much easier to simplify your arm movement in the swing.

So that the club does what it needs to do without having to try and compensate for it, right?

So having high hands, in my personal experience, gave me about three miles an hour average club head speed more with my driver.

I've got more time to accelerate the club.

I'm making bigger movements, right?

My arms are moving more.

They can move faster.

The swing arc is bigger.

And so it's about a couple percent of extra club head speed, right?

But there's so much more complication to all of those moves.

It's not natural for most people.

to shallow out the club from a higher hands position.

You really have to kind of think about your swing, like what do I really need to do to get the desired ball flight and all of those things that I'm trying to do from this position.

I believe that it's going to be much easier if you shallow out your arms a little bit at the top by removing elevation.

Not that you're not going to remove all of it, but you're going to feel like there's no elevation, okay?

And when you think of it that way, when you lift your arms up, And then want to push them out toward the target, like you do a little bit, it's you.

You now have to kind of revamp the entire way that you think about the swing, right?

You've.

You've got to get your hands to go do the exact opposite of what they're doing now, and that's a huge change.

It's a lot easier, in my opinion, to think about getting your hands here and this right arm shallower at the top without elevating it so much.

And then as you feel that instead of getting your body pulling, kind of, you know, pulling your body out of posture and out of position, as your arms go back in there here and you start to shift back in, which you do really well, the hands are naturally going to start to shallow out because they don't have nearly as far to go in the first place.

The biggest trade-off, like I said, is consistency versus overall distance.

You know, you have plenty of club head speed.

So if you gave up, potentially gave up.

You know, a mile an hour, two miles an hour average speed with the driver, but you hit it on the screws way more often.

That, to me, is the, you know, a good trade-off.

And so what I'd like to do, if you're willing to experiment with me a little bit, is let me kind of walk you through.

How to remove some of the elevation, some of the complications, some of the, you know, steepness in the swing.

So that you don't have to try and go from this high hands position to this, you know, this big shallowing out move and see how it feels for you.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely, but you said that I had plenty of club head speed.

My driver speed, I just got fitted a couple months ago.

It was only around 105 miles an hour.

Okay.

So, look, I'll do anything to get better, you know, to get this shallow out, because I know that's what I've got to do to play golf.

I can't keep firing from the top.

They're getting out ahead of the lower body, and I know that.

But, yeah, can you lower it and give me more club head speed, too?

Yeah, so my kind of standard cutoff for club head speed is about 110.

With low hands, high hands, or whatever, you should be at least at 110, especially with all the good stuff that you have going on in your swing and your athleticism and your.

you know, the way you got your body moving, you should be much faster than 105 for sure.

So, so what I'm saying, like you might lose, like my club head speed with low hands average is 119 and it's 122 with high hands.

So it's on a percentage basis is relatively small, right?

But you should still be swinging much faster.

Now the catch is there's always tricks in golf when it comes to producing speed.

One of the biggest ones is that when people are kind of stuck at that level that you're at, the way that they try to produce more speed is by firing their arms sooner and harder from the top.

Right.

And so it's counterproductive, even though you're working harder, but you actually end up just you end up swinging slower than you will when you start letting the swing sequence properly.

And that's kind of the key.

At the end of the day, you know, all this force plate stuff studying that I've been doing.

It's really just about refining the sequence so that it's as effortless and as efficient and safe and fast as humanly possible, right?

And easy to learn because that's really the end of the day.

If you have to work on your swing for six years to get a reasonable swing, that's kind of crazy.

I want to spend some time working on it, get it to where I can go out and play really consistent golf for the rest of my life with the same swing without ever having to change it again.

And that's really what I've been trying to boil it down because With high hands, there's things that you have to do.

With low hands, there's things you have to do.

There's compromises on both.

But I believe at the end of the day, everybody just wants to be able to swing at least 110.

Especially your ability, you should easily be able to swing 110.

And be able to.

And we will get you there.

And just go out and have a simple golf swing and not have to work on this thing all the time.

And the things that.

people do to, you know, when they're working with higher hands, it's just more complexity.

It's not that it's bad or good.

It's just more complexity because you're now trying to blend a rotational movement of your thorax, of your hips with, and your, you know, and your shoulders with a vertical movement of the arms.

Right.

And it's not tons of great players do it.

Right.

I mean, obviously you can play phenomenal golf doing that.

From Bubba Watson to Davis Love and everybody, Colin Montgomery.

You got these guys with mega high hands and they, you know, Colin Montgomery is a great example.

Super high hands, big lateral slide to the right going back and on the way down a big lateral slide.

That's how he chooses to shallow out that club.

That's pretty complex.

He's not a long hitter.

And if you look at the trend, I like to look at stuff like a macro scale.

I always look at like 20 year increments in golf.

So if you look at the last 20 years of golf at the highest levels, one, the swings have become much more compact, much more rotational.

You don't have like the big lateral drive, the massive high hands, the Nicholas Weisskopf, Watson Montgomery stuff.

You don't see that as much, right?

And part of that, I think, is an understanding of just how to.

Biomechanically leverage the body and the ground more efficiently, with tools that didn't exist in the 70s, right?

We didn't, we didn't know how to measure this stuff.

But also, I think there's a there's a trend to be as consistent as humanly possible.

The guys on the PGA Tour now, it's crazy how consistent everybody is.

You know, everybody relatively has a chance to win every week, to some degree or another.

Because they all hit the ball so freaking well, You know, it's not like you have somebody just out there slapping it around anymore and then just making every putt.

Golf is just, it's too high of a level now.

So you look at the Tony Finau's of the world and the John Rahms and Tiger and Rory, and these guys have all gone to much shallower arm positions.

Tiger used to have really high hands and he's gone lower and lower and lower, and then kind of brought it back and he's kind of somewhere in the middle.

I like where his swing is now in terms of taking the stress off his body, right?

Because you look at, again, Steepening and shallowing moves.

You got really high hands and like Colin Montgomery and you have a big lateral drive.

Well, you start creating side bend and then you add rotation to that, which is another shallowing move, and then you've got this torque and side bend.

And so, you know, you look at how Tigers had to adapt his swing to his back to preserve and reduce as much stress as possible.

I think you can look at his swing now and say, man, it's relatively, you know, pretty easy on his back compared to things he's done in the past.

So, long story short, I believe that you're seeing more and more consolidation in terms of what people are doing with their arms and why.

And I've been trying to figure out for years, which is better, which is more ideal, both from how do you get somebody to hit the ball well enough to shoot in the low 70s consistently?

Do it as fast as humanly possible, right?

I don't want to spend 10 years teaching a golfer how to start shooting in the 70s.

It shouldn't be that hard.

you know, it's, it's a mechanics, it's a technique thing.

What's the fastest way to do that?

You know, and to me, when I was like, the more I think about it and the more I study the forces that I'm generating on the force plate, going with shallower hands, the biggest compromise is a tiny bit of top end average speed.

But again, you know, you know, again, my speed's much higher than average, but if the average guy is swinging at 112 and hitting it solid every time, he's going to be stoked.

Right.

Right.

So.

So, and that's really kind of how I started thinking about things.

And it really, it's a longevity thing, right?

You know, if you're firing your arms from the top, there's two issues that are going to come from that.

One, timing becomes more important aspect of your swing, right?

Because you got to go to the range and you got to get this timing of your arms going up and your body going around and all of this stuff working together.

It just takes more maintenance, right?

It's just more work to glue all the stuff together.

And if you do it enough, you'll be able to do it and not think about it, but you'll still be always subject to timing in your swing because the more stuff you have moving in different planes and different directions, the harder it is to glue all this stuff together, right?

So if you think about reducing elevation and you reduce the dependency on firing your arm from the top, you'll start to feel how your body.

Can do stuff just the tiniest bit sooner, right?

You?

You're able to transition to the left a little bit sooner, you're you're able to finish posting up a little bit sooner, and we're talking milliseconds.

But that makes a huge difference in terms of transferring energy, you know, into the club from the ball or from the ground, from your feet.

And also not relying on your hands and arms for speed.

So it starts to get shift.

You from, you know, putting a lot of effort into it from your arms and hands, to feeling effortless and swinging the pendulum the other way.

And I think that, you know, in the end, you'll find that you'll, you'll get the big payoff without having to work so hard at it.

So long story short, what I want you to feel at first is a couple things.

We're going to do a couple things to exaggerate some movements so that you can see a big change in terms of shallowing out the club.

Getting your body to work, because you know your body, your brain's got to adapt to these things and start getting.

It's like, Oh wow, if my arms are here and now they're here, that's a big change, okay, right?

So we're going to do a couple things to experiment and help you feel some of these things.

And then as you start to get comfortable with it, we'll start stacking some stuff in there.

So what I want you to, what's that?

I said, Absolutely, yep, okay.

So what I want you to do first to get this feeling is I'm going to have you kind of keep your right upper bicep and your right peC kind of touching each other throughout the whole backswing, okay?

So you'll feel how your arm's going to want to slide up a lot.

This is elevation, and we're going to reduce that to make this swing simpler.

So you're going to feel that this stuff is kind of connected.

You're going to go right arm only, and you're going to go up to the top, just like your normal move with your hips, because that stuff's all great.

And now, because you don't have the left arm on the club for a second, To pull it out this way, you'll feel how the right arm naturally wants to do this and that's going to get you that hand drop.

Now.

Of course, there's all kinds of variables with this stuff, so I'm telling you stuff that's specific to you.

A lot of guys who if they go right arm only, they just push this way.

I'm going to help you feel how this is a little bit more of a little sidearm kind of flick instead of pushing out over the top.

But I believe most of your problem comes from, you know, starting to try and pull the club down with both hands from the top too soon.

So we're going to take one out and we're going to see how your swing shallows out with just this arm.

And then we'll see how, if we need to, shallows out with just the left arm.

They both have to kind of learn to work together for this to happen.

But it's a lot easier for this to happen from here.

than it is from here.

Because as soon as you elevate a lot, not that you elevate a lot, but you have a fair bit, you've activated this right front delt, your shoulder muscle and the medial delt.

Both of these things, once they're tight or activated, they don't just all of a sudden relax.

How would they do that?

You've worked to lift your arms up.

And so, of course, all of a sudden, these muscles don't just deactivate.

And that's why it's difficult.

So when you have high hands, you know there's a lot of little.

There's shallowing moves that you have to kind of do to work with that again.

If we don't, activate this delt and lift this arm up and it stays more relaxed because it's moving in sync with your body.

Turn instead of trying to move on two different planes as much as the AR in your case, then this shoulder stays more relaxed.

And as soon as you make that nice transition move that you guys have been working on, my hand is going to drop straight down in front of my chest with zero, you know, effort in trying to do that.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's try that right arm only for a moment.

Okay.

I just want you to make some practice swings and just feel that those two are connected.

You can choke up on the club as much as you like.

Good.

And now just come down from there.

Okay.

So once you've got your arm there, just relax it.

Go to the top.

Now feel your right shoulder should be relatively relaxed at the moment.

Yeah.

And then just forget about it and just focus on your transition with your lower body and see what happens.

Okay, still a little bit steep.

Close there.

All right, so still a little steep, and that's good.

Let's take a look.

Okay, so this is where I was telling you to feel relaxed.

So you can see now that your bicep is just a little bit, or excuse me, your elbow a little bit beneath your pec right there.

That's very shallow.

It's a big difference.

It's felt very low.

Yeah, it's going to feel insanely low.

It probably feels like it's down around your waist.

But when you get the left arm up there, you'll see that your left arm would be just above your shoulder plane and it would all be just about perfect.

So while this feels very different for you.

It's going to be much more compact and much simpler, it's just fewer moving parts, right?

But then as we came down, you still started to kind of get the the arm to go and the shoulders to go.

And the hips didn't see how your hips are dead square.

Basically, yes, okay, so this is normal.

But this is important for you to start to understand the steepening and shallowing moves that you need to get all of this stuff to gel.

So in your case, when you go right arm only, you basically got to just forget about your arm for a moment.

And just get your hips to go.

Because your hips work way better when you're swinging at full speed, right?

Okay, so, and that will help.

The club shot, but now your hand's a little bit far in front, so what happened there is, you're in this position, but then you start moving the club, forget about the club and start using your hips to get out of the way.

And you'll feel, as your arms start to stay more relaxed, that you're not trying to push the club through.

This is where you're losing speed in your swing, even though you've got reasonable speed.

But as you start trying to move the club, there's not enough speed and muscle mass in your arms and opposition to really be able to generate any speed.

So you can't rely on that.

So you just got to keep it kind of chilled out here and then use your body.

And once you do that, you'll see.

my hand drops down because as it's moving back this way while my body is beginning to transition back to the left, that creates this little bit of separation.

So my right bicep, that's why I'm telling you in the backswing, these two are connected.

But during the transition, there can be a little bit of separation where my body gets a little bit afraid of these hands.

Again, it's a shallowing move, right?

If you keep this connected and you start turning right away, your hands start moving out toward the ball.

You go back and you start to transition while the club's still going back a little bit, create just the tiniest bit of separation between these two, and you'll feel that little dynamic drop of your hand to get here.

Yeah, there you go.

Relax the arm even a little bit more.

Yeah, I can feel it's really tight.

It's wanting to do something.

Yep.

That might have been a better one.

All right, let's take a quick look.

So this was just like your first little practice kind of drill.

But you can see how your hands are staying back behind, your hand is staying back behind your chest now, right?

Yes.

And then as you started to do a couple, you said, you know, I started to feel your shoulder or your, you know, your pec start to kind of tighten up.

And there I can see it.

And then you're starting to kind of turn that right shoulder.

It's better.

The club obviously shallows out there.

And then you get a much better to good hip turn there and a good release.

And then as you started to kind of feel a little bit more dynamic there, you can see it there.

And again, you won't, you won't be able to get that, you know, big of a separation when your left hand's on there too, right?

Okay, yep, but as you you can see, it buys you that little bit of time.

So your hips are already back to square.

You're still trying to get it out there a little bit, but it's closer.

But you can start to see now like, okay, gosh, when I feel super shallow, I feel like my hands are really dropping and I feel like my arms are staying way back during the transition.

They are, but then you can see like, oh gosh, right here, I start to really turn my right shoulder to try and get it, get the club back out there.

And then it kind of puts the club out in front of you a little bit more.

And so you can exaggerate that now and get a little bit even more shallow with But that's not bad right there.

It's pretty darn close.

So now we're going to go ahead.

I didn't say anything.

Oh, sorry.

I keep getting an echo in here, I think.

Let's check the last one.

That was pretty good there.

There you got pretty dynamic with it.

Yeah, it looked like I had maybe a little more speed in that one.

Yeah.

But you can see now that separation I was talking about between your upper bicep and your pec.

Yes.

And again, this is exaggerated because your left hand's not on there, right?

You won't be able to do that.

But you get the idea now, instead of your hands normally moving immediately out toward the ball from the top, they're just kind of floating.

Right now, it's kind of hanging out.

It's buying you that tenth of a second or those milliseconds.

To get that body a little bit out in front, to get the hips a chance to clear out of the way.

And then, you know, now your arms are still way back.

Normally your hands would be already, you know, close to impact at this point, right?

Yes, so now you're just staying back, staying back, staying back.

And then you get that little flick of the wrist, that little release, that little boost to speed right at the bottom, instead of doing it so hard, so soon from the top.

So as you start to kind of think about your swing and those perspectives, my goal for you, I wanna help people understand their swings, right?

So that you don't need me, you don't need anything else.

You just, you know what you kind of gotta do.

You get some really basic stuff that's really easy to understand and follow.

And then that's it.

For the rest of your life, you just work on the same crap and you shouldn't take that long, right?

You just kind of get it dialed in and then you're done.

And in your case, You can see now by just removing some little extra variables in your swing and getting a little bit more time in the downswing for your hands to just wait, to give your body time to get out of the way, that now the club and your hands are back here.

And so you start to understand, okay, well, that feeling of this.

is what I need to feel when now I have both hands on the club.

So now as I come back, instead of you normally going this way, you're going to feel the same thing, that little right arm separation at the top during the transition.

And you can see my hands as I'm halfway down are still back here.

And then there's that little effortless boost at the bottom.

And that's where your speed really comes from instead of you trying to get your speed so soon from the top.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does.

So let's go ahead.

Do you have a question?

Yeah.

I was thinking about something with those arms.

I've lost my thought now on it.

Oh, I know.

So in my swing, typically what I'll see is that it looks like a tiny bit of a closed hip shift.

And it's probably from.

I'm here, and I've made this big old turn, and I have started.

And so that's why they look close, and I never get the left hip open.

So I kind of need to be the opposite of a hip spinner, and I need to feel that going a lot quicker, right?

Not necessarily.

I understand what you're saying, but not necessarily.

Because it looked like that's what I did in that video right there.

When I got to here, I just really, I really started my engine down here and this just hung back and it's blown out, right?

Yes.

So yes and no.

You're correct and not necessarily 100% correct in the same sentence.

Okay.

So as far as what you're saying, there is a little bit of a closed hip slide during that transition because as your hip is turning and going back, this right hip, It's starting to move because you're rotating around the base of your spine back here.

So as you're starting to do this, it's starting to help you shift back to the left.

But this is happening super fast.

If you're going really slow, it would look like this.

But that's happening in the blink of an eye.

So yes, you do need this tiny little bit as this right hip is getting depth and moving around and starting to.

you know, shift your weight back to the lead leg.

There's this, you know, milliseconds of a closed hip slide and then you go.

Gotcha.

What's really important is the muscles that are loaded during that phase of the swing and when they're firing, right?

That's really your issue.

As you elevate your arms, like most golfers, obviously you're going to use your shoulders to do this.

This is what raises your arms up and down.

right?

That's the only muscles we got.

That and our traps, right?

So we see a lot of really high handicaps, you know, do this kind of stuff.

They really shrug their shoulders up.

That's really high handicap stuff.

You're obviously not doing that, but you're still elevating your arms and activating these shoulders.

The trick is then figuring out how do I get that club to shallow out?

A lot of golfers like Colin Montgomery who have really high hands will add a lot of lateral move to do that, right?

All of this stuff is buying time.

That's really what it is.

the most precious commodity you have in the downswing is time.

It's, it's invaluable because there's just not a whole heck of a lot of it.

Okay.

So you're, you're doing everything in a quarter of a second, which means if you're fast twitch muscle fibers, the hands and arms, the stuff that can move really quick, get the slightest bit head start.

There's just not enough physical time to get all the other crap done.

And that's what you're really experiencing in your swing.

And that's what you saw different there.

You're like, Oh, well now, Because my hand's not doing this, moving out toward the target, it looks like my hips are just getting way out in front, right?

We don't want that either.

And we don't want you spinning your hips out.

What you're finding is because, you know, the arms aren't connected.

So when the arms are connected, if you start turning your shoulders at all, the hands are going out this way.

There's no way around it, right?

But when it's just right arm only, and even if you make a mistake and turn your shoulders really fast, well, your arm is just still going to stay back.

And that's what I'm trying to get you to feel is what I really did is just buy you time.

I bought you a tenth of a second at the top to get that little shallowing move, but it's much smaller from here than it is from here.

Because then you need more than the time I just bought you.

We need more lateral or more rotational or whatever it may be.

And I'm just trying to make it simple, man.

I just want it to be as tight and compact and boring as humanly possible.

I love that.

Okay.

So let's put, yeah, do a couple right hand only again, just to get the feeling.

Use those hips.

And then as you get the feeling of your arm, your hand kind of staying back a little bit behind your turn to buy that time, go left hand.

Wow, this feels like my nine to three swing.

All right.

So your hands are still going out there.

So I want you to exaggerate that.

Yeah, there you go.

Good.

You're still kind of hanging back on your right foot there.

So get your hips going out of the way and let the arms stay back.

All right.

So let's take a look at that.

So you're still firing the arms, but I want you to see it so that you can start to recognize what's going on here.

So first couple, right hand only.

Pretty good transition there.

The club's starting to shallow out.

But you can see that you're still wanting to move those hands out toward the ball, right?

And this is normal to you.

So this is why this is the trick here, is that if you're still trying to move that golf club with your hands out toward the ball, you're going to kind of keep running into this same circumstance.

And now.

you won't have as much time to get your body out of the way, your hips out of the way, and you're a little flat-footed here.

So you're kind of hanging back on the right side there a little bit.

That ankle should be rolled in slightly.

Yeah, you should be shifted more to the left side at that point, but you just didn't really have enough time to get everything all the way over, so you're hanging back.

Now, as we put the left hand back on there, this is where you said you felt like you were making a 9-to-3 swing.

Yeah, that felt so.

That felt just like my nine to three.

I promise if I send you a nine to three, it's probably like it's on my bike.

That's normal, man.

That happens for everybody, right?

And that's kind of the beauty of this is when you start really understanding how, because you use your lower body really well, it just doesn't have enough time and your arms are kind of taking over a little bit.

Your swing should feel like a nine to three swing.

That's my favorite feeling in the world personally is that I feel like I took the club back to parallel and I still hit it full distance, right?

That's kind of the goal, because that's how we're going to boost consistency is we're making a swing that just doesn't have that many moving parts.

So your hands are still a little bit, they're pretty close there and you had a good separation there, but the hands are still moving out.

But you shallowed out right at the bottom, which was totally fine.

Right here you're in a good spot, but you can see now that your hips are dead square.

Yes, right.

So now if you're hitting a dead square, by the time we get to impact, there's just no chance.

There's no chance of them getting out of the way at that point.

And they don't.

Okay.

So let me pull up something.

Show you kind of a pretty big example of taking this to the extremes.

All right, so we'll pull up Tiger here.

Now watch during the transition.

So his, from down the line anyway, you know, he's starting to shift back to the left right here.

But his hands, and obviously I don't have the face on view of this swing, but I can see that his, you know, his belt buckle and his hips are starting to move deeper, his left leg starting to move.

So that's kind of the beginning.

Of the transition from this view, he technically probably started a little bit sooner, but anyway, so let's watch how far his hands keep going while he's transitioning to the left.

So they went in, the club, went up another couple inches, yes, but he's already transitioned to the left.

And now his hands really haven't moved much.

They have, but they haven't moved much.

In relationship to his body.

This.

This right arm angle is starting to widen a little bit, the distance of his hands from his shoulders are starting to widen a little bit.

But it's not.

But in your case, you're widening a lot at this phase of the swing.

Your hands are firing soon, and as we keep walking Tiger down, you'll see that.

That is something that he does as well as anybody, if not better than anybody in the business, is.

His hands are still really high up.

I can start to see his left butt cheek already.

His left arm is barely below parallel.

Now you can see obviously the other side of his belt line here.

You can see how much his hips are open at that point and how much his hands are behind his belt buckle at that point.

That's a much bigger hip turn, but The trick is that move can't happen if your arms get a head start.

There's just not enough time.

You can't move your pelvis that much that far.

And that's why it's happening in your swing that if your hands get the slightest bit too antsy from the top, or your shoulders start to go from the top, your hands go this way.

And as you saw in Tiger's case, You know, he has much lower, shallower hands on top of his swing now.

Now, in order to compensate for that, he's got to have a steeper posture, steeper shoulder plane, steeper spine angle, because that's steepening moves in his swing, right?

So once you start, if you swing really upright with your hands, again, call him Montgomery.

Well, your posture is going to tend to be, I'm going to exaggerate this, you know, flatter shoulders, more upright arms, right?

What you'll see in Tiger's case is that he's got.

steeper shoulders, shallower arms.

Those two balance each other out.

Your hands still got to get up here somewhere.

You got to have some leverage, right?

But as your hands are here, then you've got to be steeper with your spine, which makes it easier to get your hips out of the way.

And so from here, now, if I do any of this, I'm screwed, right?

If my hands, arms and shoulders are going because my hips will just never get out of the way in time.

So what he's doing, hands and arms are chilling out, buying time.

For those hips to get out of the way, and that's why his hands look like they're way back behind where his hips are pointing.

And then, at the very last second, he's letting the club release.

That's what you have to feel.

And again, as you remove all the extra arm load and tension from your swing.

Where they want to go and fire hard from the top, and you start prioritizing getting your hips out of the way.

and getting your hands a little bit shallow in relationship to your shoulders, then all of this stuff starts to kind of blend together a little bit easier so that you're not just standing straight up and firing your arms.

Your posture, if you were a little bit steeper, that would help a little bit.

As you get a little bit flatter with everything, your hands kind of tend to want to go out this way.

Because as you're a little bit flatter with your shoulders, then this move to shallow it out, Starts to really get you coming way too far from the inside, feels unnatural and so you just kind of start goofing around with it.

So anyway, long story short, a little bit steeper with the shoulders will help a little bit the spine angle.

But the biggest thing is just again getting your hips to get out of the way while your hands stay back.

Okay, so set up a little steeper.

Yep, a little bit, Yeah, a little steeper at setup, tiny bit.

Okay.

How's that?

That's fine there.

Let's work with that.

All right.

Good.

There you go.

Better.

Again.

Yeah, the hips are a lot better.

All right, let's take a quick look at those.

I can really feel my core a little more engaged than I typically do.

Good.

That will definitely be a big change.

If you can start to feel that, that's very helpful.

All right.

So I know you probably feel really bent over here, but you can see your posture looks totally fine.

So now normally your hands would already be working out.

you know, immediately toward the ball, right?

Yep.

So there is much better in terms of the path that your hands are traveling on and the club is traveling on.

You can see now your hips are much more open.

Yeah, exactly, so you can feel now how that starts to happen.

Naturally, as you're not trying to move your hands out toward the ball, your right arm.

The way that it's going to work in the swing, let me just get you down to impact here.

Yeah, way better, all right.

So what you're doing is kind of immediately straightening and throwing the club ad out from the top, right?

And that's why your arm, right arm gets out like this at impact and is fully stretched out.

And you saw in Tiger's case, now he was hitting a pretty big cut there.

So it's a little bit different, trying to come down pretty steep and come across the ball a little bit and get the handle working left.

But you'll see that that right arm, the strangest way that I've ever been able to feel this in my own swing.

And the only way that I've really been able to kind of feel it and help other students understand it is basically.

I'll show, I'll give you a kind of a simple drill to exaggerate this.

It's going to feel pretty strange.

Okay.

But it's going to help you understand when you have high hands, like you did at the top, not, not very high hands, right?

But like, you know, a little bit higher than this move to straighten this arm out and get your body away and turn a little bit flatter with your shoulders works.

Or even doing this kind of like the old sidearm throw where you get this elbow way, you know, doing this, that's a shallowing move.

Wouldn't necessarily recommend doing it quite that extreme, but it works because it's shallowing out the club, right?

When you get steeper with your shoulders and you have shallower hands, the movement, you need steepening moves in your swing, which seems kind of counterintuitive, right?

Most golfers have way too much steepness in their swing in general.

You're on the other side of it, okay?

So to steepen.

The hand, the path, like if you notice when I showed you the last video, your left arm at this point was vertical.

And a lot of times your left hand is out like this.

Always.

Your left arm, excuse me, right?

Yes.

So again, that's a shallowing move, okay?

But in order to feel this correctly, the steepening move is, the way that I describe it, is I take the club.

What's that?

Trace the plank.

Yeah, it's like tracing the plane line, but this is a little bit different because it's kind of focusing on what my hands and arms are doing to change the pitch and attitude of the shaft.

So I actually feel like I'm stabbing myself in the leg with my shaft.

Okay.

These are big exaggerations, and I'll show you how to tone this down, but I want you to think about this again as steepening and shallowing moves, right?

So if I do this, my hips aren't going to get out of the way.

It's a shallowing move, right?

It works.

There's guys that play on the tour that do it, right?

And then this is a steepening.

This looks just as crazy as this, but that's what they have to feel like because there's so much force acting on the shaft, on your body.

It's happening so quickly.

So this is one of those cases where it kind of helps to really exaggerate something to the extreme.

And then slowly start toning it down and watching what happens on video, because it feels bizarre, as can be.

And then you see it on video, and you're like, oh, wow, this actually starts to, it doesn't look anything like it feels, okay?

This is one of those things.

So here, your right arm, you're normally doing this.

It needs to do this.

Again, exaggeration.

Yes.

Right, so it's going to straighten out a little bit, but you can't go this way.

This will cause you to stand up, okay?

Yes.

So now, as I'm doing this, with my arm, you can see that that pulls my left arm in to my body instead of going out this way.

Huge exaggeration.

So I go here and then it helps me as I'm doing this, helps me get my left hip out of the way.

And you can see my arm, My right arm is more into my body and then it's more connected.

And then releases here, where I can get rid of that final last little bit of elbow bend for speed at the bottom.

Okay.

As I start to tone this down, so I'm not like stabbing myself in the thigh, that's a big steepening move.

Then I start to kind of feel like it goes to the front of my thigh and then it goes to the middle and then it goes to my left thigh.

And then I start thinking about, oh, that's getting my left thigh out of the way, my, you know, my left leg.

So now as I keep this back, it brings the club out on top, as you mentioned, like tracing the plane line this way.

Again, these are exaggerations, but you get the idea of this is very different than that.

That's the huge exaggeration.

Bingo.

Yep.

Exactly like that.

Yep.

Do it a couple more times.

It starts to work naturally.

Yeah.

Now do that again.

Keep doing that, but just let the club kind of swing through, through the hitting area while trying to maintain that feeling.

All right, cool.

Let's take a quick look.

Okay.

So that feel pretty extreme, I'm assuming, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So you'll be shocked when you see what happens with that.

So naturally, you can see your hands are shallower at the top, right?

You're starting to kind of put this stuff together.

I love that top position right there, like just the way it looks.

I would love to say that.

Well, what's cool about this is when you start thinking of the swing holistically, you start thinking about the whole thing of what you're trying to do.

Part of me, let me pause this for just a second.

So I think for a lot of golfers, the swing gets really disjointed because they look at the swing in components, right?

And certain components work really well with certain things and certain components don't work at all.

Okay.

And again, I think the simplest way to think about it and how all of my research started with high hands versus low hands is understanding the swing of like, okay, if you have this, you need a lot of shallowing moves.

You have this, you need a lot of steepening moves.

Okay.

But when you think about the swing in terms of like, okay, well, what's the purpose of, you know, mastering a takeaway like this?

Well, honestly, there's not really much purpose in that.

Because what really matters is the downswing.

It doesn't really matter.

You can see guys like Ray Floyd do this crap.

That's a hard position to recover from, but you can do it.

My bigger point is that everything that you're doing in the downswing is the top priority.

And so when you start thinking about how your downswing needs to really work, based on the elevation of your hands and what you're trying to do with your swing, then the backswing starts to happen in a way that automatically allows you and it sets itself up for the priority, which is the downswing, right?

So if you think to yourself, okay, Chuck's telling me I got to steep in and my left hand, my left arm is going to be much steeper and vertical instead of swinging out away from me.

And so now, you know, as you're taking the club back during the takeaway, you start to set yourself up so that this becomes possible because this steepening move is not possible from here.

You know, or taking the way outside that doesn't make sense, right?

So what I?

My goal is again trying to simplify this stuff for everybody to be able to learn faster.

Is that?

As you start thinking about, Okay, if I'm gonna be, you know, have a shallower arm plane at the top and I start wanting to do.

Add these steepening moves.

Well, then everything I'm doing from the moment I start that club back is all about setting that up.

So the takeaway and the position of the backswing all starts to become instinctual.

Because all you're trying to do is make these priority moves happen naturally, and so that's what you'll see.

You'll start naturally getting to a shallower position at the top.

Without me trying to tell you to do it.

Because it makes sense with how you're trying to bring the club down to downswing.

And so now your swing isn't a big bucket of parts.

It's one cohesive unit with all of these steepening and shallowing moves that work together.

So you can see there, like, I didn't tell you to, like, lay the club off, or, you know, shallow it out right here, you're doing this.

Because in order for your right arm to work in the way that I told you in the downswing, you have to, yeah, wow, so you can see now the club shaft, your arm are all basically on the same plane.

I didn't tell you to do that, I didn't teach you that, but I knew it would happen as you start thinking about this stuff in terms of what is it going to do to my downswing.

And so now you can see that the club is going to, it needs, because your hands are much deeper than they normally are, you need steepening moves.

And that's where stabbing yourself in the thigh.

But look where your hands are.

Oh, they finally dropped straight down.

I honestly didn't think I was capable of there.

Well, from your position at the top before with your high hands, it's more challenging.

You need to do, you know, honestly, one of the best shallowing moves for high hands is losing your tush line.

That's a big shallowing move.

As you move your pelvis into the ball, it drops the shaft because your spine gets more upright.

It's not ideal, but it works, right?

So as I got your hands shallower at the top, but your shoulders steeper.

Now your hands need to work in a steeper fashion naturally.

And so by giving you that little, my little goofy stab yourself in the thigh drill, you can see the club gets steep on playing through your forearm, but your hands are way back.

And again, this is an exaggeration, right?

We want your arm to be about vertical, not quite inside, but normally it was way out here, right?

So you can see that even though this move feels insane, as you start to do this with a little bit of pace, it all starts to gel together as you start fighting the forces that are acting on the club.

You can see now there is no chance of you swinging your hands out toward the ball.

Nope.

Right?

Yeah.

So then I said, okay, let's try to do it with a little bit of pace.

Let the club kind of keep coming through.

You can see the club keeps shallowing.

And as you notice, which is great, your hips start to naturally do what they need to do because they need to get out of the way because your hands are coming down steeper.

That's a steepening move, right?

So you'll see that this all starts to gel together.

And so now instead of thinking about, okay, I got to make sure I shift to the left and push my left hip out of the way and all that stuff.

It happens automatically, right?

Because of the way that your hands and arms are coming down with these steepening moves.

You can see now, like, look how shallow your left arm is now, right?

Again, you're doing this naturally.

And this is why I personally believe that this will be a faster way for people to learn the really important complexities of the swing, the stuff that has to happen to have a good golf swing.

Naturally, you're a perfect example of the clubs now totally shallowed out.

It's coming down on plane.

And then as you started to come through, even there, like, your hands are going straight down, staying back, hips getting out of the way, that's it.

Make sense, Yeah.

So, I mean, on those last, you know, you said first to the thigh, then the leg, then to the middle, then left leg.

When I was going through, is that kind of the last stage of that drill?

Say that.

I didn't catch the last part.

Your volume was a little – I'm having a hard time doing some of these.

you said when I started this drill, I needed to focus on the right thigh and then gradually work it through the – Yeah, so as you saw, when you really tried to stab yourself in the thigh, your hand stayed way back, right?

Yeah.

You may still feel that, but as you start adding speed, you're not going to be able to, right?

You're not going to be able to stab yourself in the thigh because your body turn, hip turn, all that stuff's happening so much quicker that you may still feel this.

But it's actually going to be way out here because everything is turning right, so that's part of the dynamics of the swing.

When you're doing stuff slow, sometimes you have to really exaggerate these things because when you add pace to them, you've got centrifugal force.

Trying to fling your arms out, you got your hips ripping, you got all kinds of stuff going on, right?

And that's why when I was working on this drill, I'm like, I have to feel personally so extreme with it.

Because of the forces that are acting on the club, right?

Like, As I'm going back, especially as you start really adding pace to your backswing, right?

Now that you're swinging more around.

As you're going this way, gravity is pulling the club this way.

The force of the club, inertia is pulling the club this way.

You need to steepen it now, right?

Whereas before, if your hands are up here, steepening is the last thing you need to do, right?

You start steepening it, you're going to miss it.

You're going to whiff it, right?

So again, that's why, as you start swinging shallower to simplify things, you now have to think about it.

In terms of what forces am I fighting now?

And that's why I have to feel such an exaggerated move, because I've got all this momentum going this way.

I need to overcome that and get that club to be steep.

Because if I let this happen and then go the old school way of shallowing it right, I'm coming a mile from the inside and blocking it off the freaking planet.

Okay, yep, That's where I think a lot of players, especially low handicap players, good players with good movements like you have, they kind of get in this no man's land in terms of the steepening and shallowing moves, right?

It's not that somebody telling you to feel like this is a bad thing per se, but if your hands are up here, if your hands are already down here, first of all, there's not much else for them to go, but you're already shallow.

Because your arms are already shallow in relationship to your shoulders.

So if you're already shallow and you try to add more shallowing moves, well, now all of a sudden, you went from being a good golfer to a shitty golfer because you're blocking it and hooking it off the planet.

It's not that that information is wrong.

It's wrong for that set of steepening and shallowing moves.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So you may feel, to get back to that, you may feel like this on the way down.

as your body starts moving fast.

Or you may start to get to the point like, oh, I feel it's pretty natural.

I feel like I'm doing it more into my left thigh.

But my point is the feeling of that will be dependent on just kind of how all the forces that you're fighting, how fast you're moving and all of that stuff.

So don't give yourself a hard and set rule with it.

Don't say, okay, I need to start working it forward.

Look at what your swing is doing dynamically.

Are your hands still shallow?

If you start trying to go to your left thigh, like some people may feel, you know, are you now getting steep again because you're trying to move the hands or what have you?

So think of it more holistically is the kind of the end story there.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So I'm going to work on that.

I mean, that kind of took.

You know, that separation that we were working on, that girl takes care of it.

I mean, that really is all I need to be focused on.

As you do this, again, exaggerating, this automatically separates this stuff, right?

Gotcha.

At first, I was just trying to get you to feel a little bit more dynamic and the natural shallowing of it and your body and all that stuff.

And then as you start doing this, you'll feel how this starts to happen naturally.

But again, it's going to feel really goofy at first, but you saw it on video.

Even with the big exaggeration.

it's not nearly as big as you think, right?

Yeah.

Cool.

All right.

That's great.

So I would just work on that for a little bit, watch it on video, see what's happening, do some drills, exaggerate it, and then add some pace to it and be like, holy crap, I can do this a lot more than I thought, or maybe I'm doing it too much.

And then you've got to find that happy little medium.

Gotcha.

Man, thank you so much for your time today.

Awesome, man.

I hope it helps.

And do you mind if I share this?

I know this is a lot of new stuff that I've been working on and I'm putting out on videos.

Do you mind if I share this lesson?

Yeah, that's fine.

Cool.

All right, dude.

Well, let me know how it works out.

I will.

Thank you.

All right.

Talk to you soon.

Bye.