Why You Can't Stop Overusing Your Arms in the Golf Swing

Ever wondered why, no matter how hard you try, you can't stop your arms from taking over your golf downswing? This is something that 95% of all golfers struggle with, so rest assured, you're not alone. However, this video will give you the inside track on how to fix it, and that will move you over to the 5% who can hit the ball a mile without even trying.

Speaker 1:
Sorry. No, it's my fault. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. Gosh, that was a rough year for me. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
Long time ago, but RST has always kind of been on my radar and you know, I liked kind of the anatomic basis of everything back then. And kind of through the years, I've kind of always kind of gravitated back towards you and your teaching because I've, I've myself kind of gone through traditional golf instruction and have been very frustrated with it. And I can, you know, personally admit to going to a lesson and getting told to do things that you, you know, frankly, I didn't really think I should be doing or thought that it could really hurt myself or, you know, I've been told, you know, don't let the club turnover, you want to keep it square, things like that. So I'm kind of a skeptic kind of, I think, as you are. And I kind of actually kind of shy away from a lot of traditional golf instruction because to me it's just not what I'm trying to do in my golf.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. So now, as an orthopedic surgeon, do you have an area of focus?

Speaker 2:
Mostly shoulders and knees primarily.

Speaker 1:
Okay. So have you, the stuff that you were being taught, did any of that stuff kind of bring alarm bells in your head?

Speaker 2:
You can just think just from a personal standpoint, I felt like some, you know, some back pain, to be honest with you. Cause I was told, you know, I need to really rotate my chest really hard. And I just conceptually I was like, well, I don't think I need to be working this hard in my golf swing to try to get the ball to go somewhere. And gosh, it, it kind of seems like I'm putting a lot of stress on my body for not a lot of output if you will.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. I mean this little thing only weighs an ounce and a half. Yeah. Doesn't need a lot of power. There's no kinetic energy. It's just sitting still like that, that type of stuff has just driven me nuts as you've know, for teaching people to rotate their body through and putting that sheer force on the spine. It's just, it's something that you could do for a little bit while you're young. You may still feel like some soreness and whatever, but people just kind of tend to accept that about, it's just part of golf, you know, you're going to be sore or whatever, but as you know, I vehemently disagree with that. You know, it's, it's always more efficient to post up and let the club release. There's so much energy there. Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
And if you, as I've studied the golf swing, I mean, obviously you see that in every good ball striker, especially the guys now who hit it a ton like Rory, for example, he and I are about the same size. You and I are probably about the same size don't weigh. I don't weigh more than about a buck, 60 a guy he's hitting it further than guys that are outweigh in by 50 pounds because he's obviously using the ground and using leverage and kind of just maxing out every everything he can.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, exactly. You don't have to be a big strong guy. You said the ball a long ways and that type of stuff. I get it just, I think there's two different issues here. One people receive bad information, right. And they're just being taught and it's just out of ignorance is the simple truth of the matter. And then the sec, the second thing is when people start believing that there's like some simple, quick fix, you know, the simple reality is that if, if golf was easy, none of us would play it. Right. We don't play chutes and ladders and go fish with carts anymore because it's not a challenge, but the cool thing is with what you're doing and getting back into. And I hear the story, a lot people it's, it's tempting, right. To be like, okay, I know what RSD is. I know what it stands for, why it's there. And I understand that there's work that has to be done. But gosh, if there was just a pill I could take, I would be all over. Right. And so people tend to kind of go off and go, I'm going to try doing different way or try different tips and quick fixes. And then they always kind of ended up coming back and we've seen that happen a lot over the years. So yeah, I mean

Speaker 2:
I'll say so just to, to, to transition my game I'm I played a six handicap. But interestingly, I feel like my I've really, I've never been a really good ball striker. My ball is striking. I feel like it has gotten worse than the last year, but I've really had to rely on my short game and my putting and minimizing the big numbers. And so I've by default, I've actually learned how to play the game and my scores have actually gotten better, even though my ball striking in my opinion has gotten worse or, or less consistent. And so I, I really struggled with my iron play. I just, I hit very few greens. I tend to hit the ball Finn and usually on the heel. And then even with the driver, I feel like I tend to hit it low on the face and don't ever feel like I really hit a lot of shots solidly throughout the course of around, but again, I can kind of scrape it around and shoot 80.

Speaker 2:
If I'm really playing well, I can shoot 76 if I kinda start compounding some mistakes or don't get up and down, I can shoot 85. And then I think specifically w and I did a bootcamp back in November. That was really good. I think it was the second one, my problems or the issues I've had. And I'll also say I was supposed to come in Colorado right at the end of March, I think right. When all this craziness started, I was really bummed about that. Cause I was really looking forward to spending some time with you, but here we are, we figured out a way next best thing. Right. but specifically I feel like I, I make a pretty good back swing and I can get into a pretty good backswing position. I've just always struggled with the transition and the post-up like through in the, in the bootcamp, for example, I feel like I'm a pretty good athlete.

Speaker 2:
Played a lot of sports, played college tennis. If you tell me to get into a position, I can get into it. What I felt in the bootcamp is as I was going through the reps and we were going through the live sessions, I could feel 10 different things in the transition and still get to the same place. And the same thing is probably true of the post-up. So then my problem is taking that out with the club, with the ball. And so basically every time I go out to play golf, I've got like a different feel or a different swing thought about how to try to transition and post up and, you know, depending on how it's working on the range, I'll just kinda go with it. I'll change the fields throughout the round, you know? And so it's just, you know, obviously that's not the way I want to be playing golf, but specifically, I guess I have an issue with trying to blend.

Speaker 2:
I know what I need to do. I know there's a lateral weight shift. I know that I got to get, I got to rotate my hips back to square. I know that I got a post up and that the hips go up and back and that's what takes the club down and out. And I can feel I was a high jumper in high school, played a lot of basketball. So the squat and the jump and using leverage feels really natural to me. And I can feel that that's where the power comes from or the speed and that I don't have to necessarily work so hard, but I guess my own assessment is I probably aren't getting my hip back enough as, as I go up. And that's probably why it hit it thin and maybe in the heel. But some days I'll think about a lateral weight shifts something times I'll think about the squat and the jumps sometimes I'll think about rotating, but I've never felt like the rotation ever felt very powerful to me.

Speaker 2:
It actually feels the opposite. It feels really weak for me to just rotate from the top. And I played last week and I, I, you know, I felt like I spun out of a couple of shots and just hit these big blocks. And then, then if right, when that happens, I'll compensate and I know the lower body then stalls, and then I swing all arms and I hit a pull hook. And so I, you know, I got a two way miss because I have a hard time sinking my arms and my body, and then probably theoretically trying to figure out exactly what I'm trying to do with my lower body in my transition and downs.

Speaker 1:
Perfect. So let me explain, what's most likely having, obviously I haven't seen your swing and, but the simple truth that matters when people kind of mentioned the same things going through the same problems of having, you know, as you mentioned, got a 10 different feelings to get into the same position that impact what's really happening there typically is that the load in the is not right. And it doesn't mean that you didn't load up your lower body, right. Per se, but it can mean that you loaded up your arms too much, too soon or too much at the wrong spot or not enough load in the hips, or, you know, the left side gets too passive and you can't get back over. And so it's typically, it may feel like, gosh, I'm just got a bunch of balls up in the air. I'm just trying to pick one for that day to play with.

Speaker 1:
But really what it comes down to is just understanding that if you load correctly in the backseat and then a lot of the downswing stuff will truly happen almost completely automatic, but not completely. You still have to understand what you're trying to do, but it will be so much more natural when that stuff happens correctly in the backswing. So that's going to be the first place that we're going to check is just to see, like, you know, did the arm start to run away in the backswing and you build tension in the shoulders and it happens so fast that you can't really feel it unless you're being super careful monitoring that kind of stuff, because then the lower body doesn't have a chance, you know, no matter you can try, but like, as you said, if you're not clearing your hips out enough, typically that's a time thing. You just physically don't have enough time because your arms are far too soon. Cause they loaded tour the back swing. And so it's typically, it's one of these things is kind of stacking on and then it builds and builds and builds and then that's where you're off. But the good thing is it's not, it's not usually that big of a deal to fix. You just have to understand that the, the true cost.

Speaker 2:
And that makes sense. I mean, I think that I I'm kind of built, I've got skinny legs and broad shoulders and I think I, I can feel I've got some tension in my upper body and I know that I, you know, tend to kind of power it probably more than the upper body and I really need to use a little body mower. And then I also know I can move. I can move my arms fast. I can move my hips fast again. I was a sprinter. I can move fast. I guess the problem is I've had a hard time sequencing it cause it's like, well, my hips can move fast and I'll spin out or my arms can move fast and I'll get a pull hook. And so it's like and I guess some of that tension in my upper body, it comes from not trusting as, as you've said before, not trusting that if I let the arms chill out and let things load and, and fire properly, there's plenty of speed and plenty of power there without having to feel like I gotta like go whale on it with my arms and my shoulders.

Speaker 1:
Honestly, that's the biggest mind trick with rotary swing, just a powerful, efficient golf swing in general is it really is going to feel like you're doing nothing when you do it. Right. And that's just so hard, especially if you, you know, if you're stronger and you have more muscles in your upper body and you can just feel like, yeah, I can get speed here. It's just, the speed is wasted back here instead of down here. And then I get, if I'm releasing it down here, then I can't control the club face down here. And so, and that typically happens too. If you're, you know, you're describing kind of feeling like you just rotate and spin out that is actually tends to be caused by your upper body. And that's when you don't feel that post up. And so this starts to fire and this just feels it's just ripping out of the way. And then you feel really out of control cause you don't have that stable base anymore. And then golf becomes, as you said, it's a two way miss. Then you're just like, ah, I'm not really sure where this falls

Speaker 2:
And then, you know, I, I can feel, I know that obviously I got to accelerate and then decelerate my hips and my lower body and let all that energy transfer. And yeah, sometimes I feel like I can do it when I, when I feel like I make that squat move, I can feel that energy transferring and you know, the speed feels effortless. But then yeah, other times I feel like everything kind of rotates through at the same time. And there was no acceleration deceleration then obviously there's no transfer of energy there.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure I have a pretty good idea what we're going to tackle, but I want to leave a couple of your swings screen capture them. So let's get the camera set up to where I can see

Speaker 2:
You. Yeah. Let me, let me see. I gotta adjust this

Speaker 1:
Part of you there. Let me

Speaker 2:
Get a little closer. I'm trying to figure out I'm on my laptop and I'm trying to figure out how to get it only getting my upper body. Yeah. I can at least work with that. Okay. I can, I can try to go.

Speaker 1:
I can work with that. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to screen capture these. So go ahead. Whenever you're ready. All right. That's all I needed. That's perfect. I don't even need it. Okay. So I'm going to share my screen with you real quick. Okay. Okay. Can you see this see your video here? Okay. So very simple to see what's going on. Even in your practice swing, watch your practice swing here. This is a hundred percent arms and shoulders. Your lower body has barely changed at all. Right. Okay. So if we're doing that in our practice swing, that's definitely going to probably be the same case in the full swing at speed in general. And in this case, it definitely is. As you start going back, you actually shift your hips toward the target slightly. Can you use this tree in the backgrounds or reference point or maybe this window over, and you'll see that you actually shift away from that right hip line toward the target.

Speaker 1:
And then you pick the club up with your arms and shoulders. You're not really turning at this point and you, because your pelvis isn't allowed to turn very much. And especially when you shift your hips kind of toward the target just a little bit, then that makes it even harder for your hips to turn. And so then you have to just pick a couple with your arms. And so you have, you've made maybe an 80 degree turn here. And so as you come down, there's no chance of really using your legs properly. And that's absolutely where all the spin-out stuff is coming from. So the cool thing is this is a hundred percent exactly where this is your lower body is not engaging from, from the very first move, you know, inch of movement of the club. And that's what we've got to get in there. And once we get that working, then the downswing transition and stuff has a shot. But if the back swing is not loaded up, right, there's, there's no chance. There's nothing you have left to hit with other than your arms and hands. And that makes sense,

Speaker 2:
Because I think what I think about in my back swing is all about that, my core and that right. Shoulder blade glide. And I probably, and I think probably I think about that and my back swing. And then I try to focus on my lower body in the downswing. But I guess, like you said, if I don't load the back, the lower body properly in the backswing, I've I guess I can't, I can't really get where I want to go out. That

Speaker 1:
It's impossible. Right? We have to create a stretching in those muscle fibers or we can't use them. Right. And so right now, when you're going back and you know, your hips are kind of frozen in place and then the arms start, the arms and shoulders start to move first, you are loading your core motor, the upper part of your rib cage. You're using the lats and Cerasis a bunch of muscles up here, but we need to move that down. And it needs to be from here to here, not from here up. And as soon as you do that, it's going to be a game changer, but it's gonna feel strange for sure at first, because you're not used right now when people really kind of freeze their lower body one, it takes all the athleticism out of the swing. But to, it makes us feel like we're more in control and it's an illusion, right?

Speaker 1:
We have to really kind of give up some sort of feeling of controls or truly gain control in the swing. But if I don't move my lower body and I just move my arms and hands, well, this is all my tactile sense in my daily life, right? If you're a surgeon, you know, you trust your hands, you know exactly where they're at. You can feel where the club is. And as soon as you start moving other parts, you start transferring that control to a different part of your body that you're not used to associating with control, honestly, in my own personal swing, I don't really talk about my personal feelings a lot, just because obviously I try not to be subjective or anecdotal about stuff. But the truth of the matter is my brain is in my left glute. That's where my focus is from the moment I start that club black.

Speaker 1:
And I know that sounds strange. So when people are fixated on the club, this and that, I couldn't care less where that stuff's going, because I know if I'm just not doing anything extra with it, it has no choice, but to go where it's supposed to, what I'm really focused on is not my position to take away. My shoulder blade glide position at the top is whether or not I'm going to be able to get this, to initiate the swing and post up correctly. Because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. I can screw up all kinds of stuff in the backswing, as long as it's in the right zip code, but I can't screw this up. If this doesn't fire, if this doesn't load during the transition and engage in, post up from the downswing, then you have to use your arms and hand and there's no way around it. That makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. So what I want you to do is we're going to do some exercises to kind of get this Mokan up. Okay. And then we're going to start transferring where your focus is away from the golf club and into your hips.

Speaker 1:
So the first thing I want you to do is we have to kind of do this progressive and a couple of little steps. The first thing is to really exaggerate some of this stuff because your hips are frozen and we're going to wake them up. So you said you played a lot of other sports, you know, obviously you're fit you're athletic. Did you play any hitting or throwing sport? If you feel how you rotate back to throw a ball, the truth of the matter is that big exaggeration. But when you start to feel, what's really happening here, you start to understand the kinematic sequence of the golf swing, right? Loading up these big. I'm not, if I was a pitcher getting ready to throw a ball and I'm winding up, I'm not loading up my arm first. Right? Right. But that's what you're doing in your swing by just doing this right now, we're going to get you to feel this.

Speaker 1:
I'm actually going to have you stand up and make a big exaggerated move. I'm going to have you literally pick up your left foot and pivot a hundred percent on your right leg. You're going to make a big hip turn. You're going to start to feel your glute load way different than what you're used to in your normal swing. Literally just like a baseball player pivot on that whole right foot. There you go. Not hard, right? But now you can feel out instantly. The transition is a balanced mood. I'm already pivoted here. I've got some wind up on this right. Hip socket. I've loaded that muscle and the supporting muscles on this hip. And once those are loaded, this naturally wants to happen. That's the transition right there. Once I transition, I'm moving weight. I'm moving pressure onto that. Left glute. Yeah. That's where your brain's going to go. You're going to feel this left glute engaged. Cause you're going to push that puppy squat down slightly into the ground and feel this left glute glute completely engaged and then post up on it. Yep. So, so wind up, push a squat down a little bit as you, there you go. You feel the difference in your muscle engagement there.

Speaker 1:
Good. So in the golf swing, this is the exact same movement. You any hitting or throwing sport from the time that were cave, men throwing javelins and Spears and stuff. This is the kinematic sequence that we figured out the most efficient way for the human body to do this stuff. Otherwise we're just relying on the arm musculature by itself. So if we want to use our glutes, we have to first engage them in the backswing. We have to turn our pelvis. We have to load up on this hip socket. So then it becomes natural to shift over now, obviously in the swing. But the hardest part about the golf swing is that the ball is static and we are static, right? You know, if you play tennis, you're always moving. And that's the challenge of golf is that we have to maintain that sense of freedom and movement while our feet are planted on the ground. So when you're thinking about artists, thing about golf is

Speaker 2:
Not reactionary. Like every other sport.

Speaker 1:
I can tell you how many guys, I, you know, thousands of lessons where guys get over the ball. They're just going through a pre-flight checklist. And they don't realize they'd been sitting over the ball for a minute. It's impossible to move dynamically, athletically possibly. So now as you're doing it, this is just going to be your freedom drill. You're just going to wake up and you're going to, before you hit balls, you're just going to get hit my legs. They got to wake up and this is time gonna wake them up every day and start to feel my glutes. If you can't feel them, when you plant that weight, squat down slightly really engage the glute. And then what we've got to do is we've got to make that step smaller, right? So right now I'm letting you pick your whole left foot up and make a big pivot on that hip socket.

Speaker 1:
And then eventually we're just going to kind of do it, let the left heel come up. Old-School Jack Nicklaus, seventies, sixties kind of golf. Right? But you can do that. Same thing. Feel the same movement, the same load in the hips, but by just lifting up your heel right now, cause that makes it easy to transfer that weight and then plant that heel on the ground and squat into it, push into it. There you go. And then post up and then you're going to start to make this more and more like your regular golf swing. So instead of having such a big hip turn and letting this he'll come up, you're still gonna make the hip turn. Still make the load still feel athletic. Your heel maybe just feels light in your shoe. Maybe they feel comes up slightly, but you keep just making those movements a little bit smaller, but you still try to feel the same amount of muscular load that you do when you pick your feet up. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:
There you go. Now give your weight off, get your hip all the way over to the left. So watch me for a second. So when you're shifting, you're doing this moving, but the hip isn't okay. Hip has to go move your whole pelvis over that left ankle. Now still knee knees going outside the foot. Okay. Still knee. So you're still doing this. The knee barely moves. It's just a little bit just to get over ankle, but then you're really getting your weight. So think of it this way, lift your right foot up. As you come into the fall into the post-up or the transition, if put all your weight on your left foot there, you now Dee. Now how much more load do you feel in the glue?

Speaker 3:
Okay. Yeah, a lot more. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
If there's not weight there, you won't, your brain is way too efficient when it comes to low loading muscle fibers. And so your brain has to be like, if it's not that much weight over there, I don't have to work that hard. So I'm going to recruit the minimum amount of muscle fibers humanly possible. But when you put all your weight over there, your brain is like, oh man, I have to really work there. You now, there you go. Feel the difference.

Speaker 3:
Yeah. And so I went and saw Chris Tyler two summers ago. Maybe you remember, I only spent a couple hours with him, but I do remember feeling like I had to make up much more. I had to make much more of a shift over to the left then, then I felt like I,

Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. I was having to do see the same thing here. You were just kind of getting just your knee over there, but not your weight, not your hip over there. There you go. So now as you're practicing this, I want you to be free to move around right now. Right? Because you've kind of frozen your body in place. And what you're going to do is you're going to start refining. These movements still maintain, focusing on muscular recruitment, right. Muscle fibers that you're trying to engage with pressure and weight and minimizing movement. Right. So right now I'm allowing this, you know, your head to move a little bit off the ball, your head, move back. That's okay. Right now. Cause you're waking your body up your lower body. Now we're going to start trying to refine that and feel, can I feel the same about a muscle load without my head moving? And I'm just moving my pelvis. Now

Speaker 3:
I can feel load in my, in my mood and my hamstring and my quad right here.

Speaker 1:
Good. Yeah. Perfect.

Speaker 3:
I guess what I've seen in my video and we kind of saw it today is that when I make that transition move and I try to get over to the left, I've certainly seen that my torso or my head leads, or it goes along with the lower body. Is that obey?

Speaker 1:
Yes and no. So first off your head is moved off the ball more than it would an irregular swing right now. Right? So you have to balance that out. Yeah. So right there is the maximum. No more than that. So what you're gonna find is that your hip is going to shift while you're turning rather than your upper and far. So moving to feel that same load on that, right? Yeah. There you go.

Speaker 3:
Felt centered if you will, with my head and torso. But I did feel in my

Speaker 1:
Good, maybe that's, it's hard to maybe a little bit too much hip turn, but you're in the ballpark. Right? And it's okay to overdo it a little bit right now. There you go. So now when you shift to the left, don't think upper body feet, your pelvis, moving back over to the left. There you go. You get a lot of weight on there. Feel that same, left it. There you go. So now when you're practicing that wall drill where you just go and put your head up against the wall and you start to, because that's going to keep your head. Your head can move a little bit. But when you're doing the wall of real, you'd be dragging your head across the wall. So it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but at least then you're starting to focus down here because now you can't move your upper body so much to cheat to create that pressure and load on the hips.

Speaker 3:
But I put the two, a set up where the walls on the left side of my, and

Speaker 1:
I usually put my head literally right on, on a flat surface. Got it. There you go. So now your head barely moved at all, but I can tell that you're loaded up on the right. Good. Now you're cooking with gas. Now your lower body is leading the entire Golfsmith. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's what you need to be that

Speaker 3:
Transition. Move where it feels like it's all lower body. That's going to create a little, there's going to be an increase in access to, because of other lower buys moving the upper bodies kind of staying back. Is that

Speaker 1:
Correct? Yeah. That's what we call secondary access to it. So you will have a little increase there as you go into impact and that helps shallow out the plane and shift the path. There you go. Now we'll shift

Speaker 3:
What feels like it's me. I can really feel the shoulders saying closed. Cause I know that's also a problem of mine because I'm so upper body driven in my swing.

Speaker 1:
Yup. A hundred percent. Perfect. So excellent shoot. We ran out of time already. Believe it or not, but you know exactly what you need to work on now is all of this. That's all that matters. Don't worry about arms, swing, plane, path, position, all that stuff. Focus on this for right now. And then start stacking your left arm in there and start feeling like, oh, do I start wanting to swing my arm? And it takes over my, this has to be a hundred percent where your brain is. And as soon as you keep getting that and you start stacking pieces on there, just see how soft you can, keep your arms and shoulders and keep the focus down here, the same load. And that's going to be how you get to that next step and get you back down to being a good ball striker again, because this is a huge, this is 180 degree flip from what you were doing 20 minutes ago. Okay. So it makes sense. That makes sense. Awesome. Do you mind if I share your lessons, a lot of people are doing the same stuff that you're doing. I think it'd be really helpful. Be great.

Speaker 2:
I think I saw a lesson that you posted where it was very similar to what

Speaker 3:
We're talking about today.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's quite a few. Oh, thank you so much, man. I'd love to see you again soon. I gotta run to the next lesson, but I want to see an update. Okay. Thank you Chuck. All right, buddy. Talk to you later.