The Tour Pro Downswing Sequence Drill
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If you are looking for a golf swing drill that can INSTANTLY improve your ball striking power and consistency, then look no further! This drill is designed to teach you the exact same sequence as the tour pros using the data gathered from the SwingCatalyst 3D Motion Plate.
all right guys I hope today is going to be the most impactful golf instruction video you've ever seen it's going to tie everything together to help you understand what the tour pros really do and the three most important moves in the golf swing period hands down the timing and sequencing of it which is really the golf swing if you're understanding how to sequence the downswing how to create power from the right places you're going to have an efficient consistent and powerful golf swing and there's three very specific things that you do at a very specific time that we're going to talk about today in this video so in the first part of this video I'm just going to walk through what those three forces are and then in just a moment the second part of the video I'm going to talk about two tour pros who may look completely different and swing what you may look at as being completely different but I look at them as being very much the same and we're going to explain why that is because you're looking at the wrong stuff you need to look at what the body's doing not what the arm and clubs and so on is doing and then the last part of this video I'm going to give you a drill that's going to tie all this stuff together that's going to walk you through how to do this in your own swing how to check it and how to start producing power exactly like the tour pro so once you see this I think it's going to really open up your eyes to understanding what you really need to focus on in your swing and stop worrying about the position of your left pinky at the top and all that stuff it's the big muscle movements that we really need to focus on first then we can worry about the details so let's take a look at this so on this on this screen I have the three things I want you to think about and that we're going to be focusing on today are the three forces in the golf swing now swing catalyst has done a tremendous amount of research they've had over 100 tour pros on this 3d motion plate and what they found has been very very consistent across the board with all the most powerful ball strikers that they follow a very specific sequence and the timing of that sequence is very very specific and so those three movements are that there's lateral movement in the swing that happens first and we're really just talking about the downswing right now so not not the backswing just the downswing so there's lateral movement back to the lead leg then there's some rotational force and then there's vertical force and those three things which may be difficult to see on video when you have a 3d motion plate you can see exactly when they're happening and that's what we're going to talk about today and that's what the drill at the end of this video is all about to teach you exactly how to do this movement so let's use justin rose as an example so during the downswing what you'll notice on this first graph the horizontal force is that the lateral movement in the swing which you can begin to see pretty easily when you look at his lead or his trail hip the right hip line that we talk about quite a bit on the site that as he's transitioning he's starting to shift back to the lead leg you can see that movement in the video correspond with the horizontal force that you see here now what i want you to focus on is when this horizontal force is done because most amateurs do one thing super super consistently and that is that they keep moving horizontally late into the downswing and that is not what the most powerful ball strikers do they peak this horizontal force during the transition and then they are beginning to rotate and stop moving laterally they begin to decelerate and that's what you see with this large drop off in the horizontal force here is that he's done moving laterally he's done you know driving over to the lead leg and now he's beginning to rotate and you'll see that the rotation which is the next graph down peaks shortly thereafter we're talking milliseconds apart here but in terms of what you're going to focus on in today's drill is the position of the lead arm so right what about when the lead arms about 10 o'clock or so we're going to be done moving horizontally which you'll see in the drill then lead arm parallel we're done moving rotationally per se in terms of creating maximum force and that's beginning to decelerate and then from the time the lead arm is parallel to the ground until the club is about parallel to the ground is when you see most tour pros peak in their vertical force and you can see that in the bottom graph here that he's now driving up hard off that left leg to post up and decelerate so that the club can release now when you look at amateur golfers this stuff looks radically different and when you look at even some tour players if you look at the tour players who are shorter hitters and don't have much power as i'll show you in just a moment you'll see these graphs being way off but justin rose is a great example of somebody who uses his body very powerfully and follows this sequence now let's take a look at justin rose against lucas glover who you may think have completely different swings but as you'll see they're actually very very similar on the stuff that matters when you look at the average tour pro you may think that all of them swing completely different and for years i have held the belief and shared that with you that most tour pros all follow the same basic set of fundamentals now of course what most golfers look at is the movement of the arms in the club and they think oh they all swing different i've always said that those are variables of the swing swing plane movement of the arms and so on is really dependent so much more so on how you move your body and so on so today i picked up two different golfers with data on force plates track man data etc to show you how similar swings that actually look very different are actually doing the exact same things and not just using uh you know subjective interpretation as a video but actual data of what's happening in their bodies to prove that so many tour pros actually do the exact same thing and most importantly the thing i want you to walk away from today is the sequence and that's what i really want to share with you is the sequence of the downswing the timing of it how you move your body is going to have the most profound of impact on anything you've ever done in your golf swing if your sequence is wrong which is the case of most golfers because the sequencing is the golf swing if you sequence your swing correctly you sequence the movements of your body correctly you will learn exactly how to swing like a tour pro so now let's take a look at this because i really think this is going to have a bigger impact on your golf swing than anything else that you've ever done because understanding this sequence is really the key to unlocking the golf swing so first i'm going to walk you through the swing on the left which is lucas glover now you're going to look at lucas glover swing and i say if i told you that lucas glover and justin rose swung the same way you would laugh at me right you're going to say there's no way that these two guys have a similar swing so you've seen lucas lucas's swing now let's take a look at justin rose uh for comparison's sake justin's hitting a nine iron here and lucas is hitting a seven iron so a little bit of differences there but for the most part basically the same thing so you look at these swings and they look radically different right however they are radically the same at setup they may look a little different justin doesn't have as much axis tilt as lucas does but as they start going back you're going to see changes even more justin makes a nice big full shoulder turn justin or lucas stops about halfway back and then really just folds the right arm lifts the left arm and has a big down cock motion here that definitely is not present in justin's swing so they look very very different at this point justin's much more on the left side at this point lucas's weight is a little bit more centered obviously you can see lucas has a lot of down cock but now as they get into delivery positions the club's angles are starting to look similar in relation to the arms but you can see lucas has his hands much further ahead at impact so these swings look really different right well here's the reality of they're sequencing things virtually identically and that's what we're going to talk about so there are three basic movements that all golfers do especially high level golfers in the downswing and that is that they move horizontally so you have lateral shift back and forward we're really just gonna be focusing on the downswing stuff today so you're going to shift back to the left in the downswing you're going to rotate and then you're going to move vertical in that sequence and the guys at swing catalyst have taken a tremendous amount of time and effort to go through and they've put over a hundred tour players on the force plate the 3d motion plate and have found this consistency amongst all of them but now of course these are averages that we're talking about everybody's going to be a little bit different but they tend to follow this exact same sequence that they move horizontally they rotate and then they go vertical and that is very different than what the average golfer does and even some tour players break this mold as i'll show you in just a moment but when you look at the average tour player the really good ball strikers the powerful ball strikers they follow this sequence so let's take a look at it starting with the transition so these graphs on the left are the first two phases the horizontal movement and the rotational movement or torque and so in both golfers now you can see a big difference from one club to the other as you go into longer clubs these force numbers will go up quite a bit but the big thing that i want you to understand today and in the second part of the video when i give you the drill on how to work on this in your own swing is the timing and sequencing of it so what you'll see here is that the horizontal movement back to the left tends to be completed during the transition now in most amateur golfers they tend to move horizontally too long they tend to keep shifting laterally they keep pushing hard off that right leg which is what i talk about a lot on the site and they keep driving so far that they never really get to rotate so their hips end up being very squared impact so they lose a lot of torque in their swing and they tend to slide past neutral and they start risking injury on that left hip that lead hip and labrum tears so you'll notice that in this case we can actually precisely pinpoint when that horizontal force is being let up on so in lucas's case he's peaking right here when his club is very near the top of his swing and now it's already beginning to decelerate he's beginning to shift left he's getting ready to start rotating and now if we move over to the torque phase when the lead arm is parallel to the ground and again in this drill i'm going to walk you through all of this stuff in the second half of the video so don't get caught up and trying to memorize where all this stuff is but you'll see now at lead arm parallel to the ground both golfers are at peak torque the timing of it is virtually exactly the same so during the transition we're at peak horizontal force we're moving laterally now we're focusing on rotation and they've both timed it exactly the same that they're both at peak torque at lead arm parallel to the ground now what happens with the vertical force let's take a look at that so now the vertical force tends to happen sometime between lead arm parallel to the ground and club shaft parallel to the ground according to swing catalyst research and that's been very consistent with what we'll see here so now at both times both both golfers here are at peak vertical force they're creating vertical force starting to post up push up off that left foot into the ground and they both do it at exactly the same time now this is what really matters in the golf swing swing plane and path and all that stuff obviously is incredibly important but it's how you create that swing plane and path the timing and sequence in which you move your body that's going to give you effortless power and control and consistency and again the tour pros all follow these sequences virtually the exactly the same with the exact same timing no matter how different their swings may look obviously lucas glover and justin rose couldn't look a whole lot different at the top but how they use their body how they use the ground how they use their hips and their legs is what separates them now as i mentioned earlier you can see some discrepancies and some outliers and we're going to take a look at one here who is going to swing quite a bit different so let's take a look matt kutcher and we'll use go through look at him exactly the same way so we know what you'll see here is as matt kutcher's obviously got a far less conventional swing than uh you know what you might see out there on tour and being a big guy he's a relatively very short hitter he's a great ball striker very consistent but you can see right here he already starts to look really weak or he's just picking up his arms he's not really coiling his body he's not generating much horizontal force he's not generating much torque the timing of it is relatively consistent in terms of torque about left arm parallel to the ground but you'll see he's still driving laterally late into the downswing and so this is really not helping his sequencing much at all and if we go to the vertical force the timing of it is a little bit late it's close but it's opening pretty close to impact and you'll see in most better ball strikers it happens quite a bit earlier relatively in terms of milliseconds but you'll see that this is something that you can start to measure and understand when you see golfers out there who may look very different may look very similar but the fact the the forces and the power that they're creating in their swing are radically different and you can see that justin rose is obviously a much uh longer hitter than matt kuchar is and now you can look at it not just on video and say oh well this looks really weak but why well now you can understand the timing and sequence of the forces that he's creating using the ground and his legs that's really what's costing him all his power it's the sequencing of the swing and the way that he's generating force so now in the second half of the video i want to show you how to take all this technical information and make it really really simple and learn how to move your body exactly like the tour pros okay so now how do we take what you just learned and apply it to your swing to actually start seeing some real results so what i want to do is give you the sequence of the downswing using a club to start seeing how to get your body in these right positions and the timing of it so that you can feel what it feels like to swing correctly efficiently and powerfully in your downswing so what we're going to do first is we're going to start with this initial move because this is where a lot of people go really really wrong really quickly as you've heard a million times you've heard me talk about in the dead drill you're really starting the swing from the ground up so what does that really mean well in contrast most golfers start turning their shoulders and firing their arms right away and so what their legs are doing is just responding to that instead of leading the downswing instead once you go to the top i want you to focus on getting back to this lead leg now yes you can push a little bit off of that to help that a little move most golfers do this anyway and they do it too much and incorrectly so they keep sliding laterally and that's not going to give you any power at all so i really like to just focus on really sitting into this left side a little bit of push is okay i'm not a huge fan of it i do some myself but i really like to feel that i'm just getting over onto this left leg really activating this left glute this left leg so that i can really get ready to focus on the most important part for producing effortless power which is that vertical phase but for now if you just feel this initial shift before your lead arm gets back to about 10 o'clock that you're getting really planted onto this lead leg and the vast majority 80 90 percent should be on that lead leg pretty soon during this phase of the swing so from here from the top to here i don't really feel much pushing i know i'm pushing a tiny bit but what i'm really trying to do is just feel that initial move over to the left and my left glute is really activated at this point so i feel like i could start to jump off of it from here once i've done this little lateral move and i've shifted my hip back close to neutral but my left hand as it gets to parallel is being brought there through rotation i'm beginning to turn my hips from down the line a little bit easier to see so here's the the horizontal the lateral movement now i'm beginning to rotate and i've got my hips back to square so if you look at the dead drill stuff that you've been working on step one back swing as you're shifting back to the left side by the time that you're back in that magic box or your hips are back parallel to the ground is about when your lead arm is parallel to the ground and that's all the rotational force that you're really trying to create in the swing again where people really go off is they try to create lateral movement too long or rotational movement too long and so that starts leading into a lot of inefficiencies in the swing and starts making you feel like you have to work really hard and puts more stress on your body when you think about it in terms of lead arm parallel to the ground you're done trying to turn now yes your hips are still going to turn but it's not just trying to rotate as hard as you can it's beginning to use that post-up move that we're going to focus on next the vertical movement so lateral rotational vertical and this is the exact same stuff that you've learned in the boot camps when you're getting walk through it step by step and then the dead drill we're going squat to square post right the exact same sequence of the dead drill is the exact same thing that the tour pros do now you just know precisely when to time that and the sequence of it so let's do it again we're going to go lateral rotational vertical so as you start to post up your lead arm the club should still be parallel to the ground or slightly above as you really begin to focus on that post-up move and as you get comfortable with this you can start combining this post-up move with the release and this is a great way to segment this drill to focus on just actually hitting balls because of course so many of us we get to the point we can do these drills really well but how do we translate that into actually hitting balls well a lot of the time the reason that you're not able to translate your slow motion drills is because you either try to skip ahead too fast you try to go from really slow to really fast which doesn't work out really well or you're just doing something incorrectly earlier that doesn't allow for you to generate power efficiently so you start trying to take over with your arms or keep turning your shoulders or whatever it may be this drill really just focuses on the actual hitting phase delivering the club from this delivery area back into impact if you're focusing on just the vertical movement i think that you'll find that this is a lot easier to translate going into hitting balls than you've ever found anything before so what we're going to do is we're going to go lead arm parallel you know that we've already shifted back to the lead leg we're stacked on this left side we've turned our hips as far as we're going to try and rotate them they're still going to get turned by this post-up move but from here you can start to focus on posting up and releasing and this is how i want you to start hitting balls so i'm stacked on my lead leg posting up and releasing the club and you can see as i do this even from this little short phase of the swing i can get a lot of speed here and start being able to hit balls really well and then you can see how using the ground your legs for leverage and the wrist for leverage produces a lot of speed in a really short period of time in the swing if you're used to going from the top and just turning as hard as you can this is going to feel way more efficient than what you're used to for sure so this will be a great drill to start feeling a lot of speed in just this last phase of the swing which is the only time you need to swing fast and then what you can start to do is make that a little bit longer and make it a little bit more dynamic and what i mean by that is like at first you're going to start static you're going to be really stacked on the left side your left arm is going to be about parallel or a little below and then you're just going to work on little baby chip shots these might go 50 yards or so and then you can start going a little bit longer let your arms stretch a little bit and get a little bit more momentum and start getting a little bit more zippity doodah at the bottom now let's look at it from down the line so you can see what my hips are doing at this point so i'm lead arm parallel just below loaded on this left leg i'm really getting ready to post up so now you can see the clamshell drill my left hip going back the dead drill the post up move the magic box all of these things tied together into a drill for specifically hitting balls you can see a lot of speed can be generated using the ground for leverage there so i hope this drill helps put everything together for you in your swing and ties it into being able to hit balls powerfully and efficiently and starting to feel how you use your legs and the timing and sequencing so you can build a safe and powerful golf swing
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