How to Keep Your Left Arm Straight in the Backswing
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The secret to why you can't keep your left arm straight at the top of the golf backswing.
hi guys Chuck Quinton here you know by now that I love crushing golf myths anybody anytime somebody says something out there on TV or in a golf magazine and just says this is the way it is but they don't back it up with any real facts or science and it's just their opinion well I generally have issue with that and one of those things that I see all the time and I hear from students writing in asking questions on the forum or sending in emails is I'm just not flexible enough or not strong enough I'm just too old to keep my left arm straight at the top of the backswing it's not true everybody can keep their left arm straight at the top of the backswing no matter your age no matter your fitness level no matter your flexibility I'm gonna prove it to you but first I want you to understand the two key reasons why keeping this left arm straight is so important in the first place the first reason is understanding where club head speed comes from now of course I've done a video on exactly that the three primary sources of club head speed which is on the site one of those things I talked about in there is width or the the radius from the center the rotating center to the club head for every half inch that you increase the radius of your swing arc it increases club head speed by about two miles an hour that's huge two miles an hour think about that and this is really easy for you to understand because every time you pick up a longer club you pick up about two miles an hour club head speed from your seven iron to your six iron is gonna go about two miles an hour faster and they're only a half inch diff difference in the clubs so when you make a really narrow collapse swing by folding this left arm early you're shortening dramatically the radius of your swing and you're costing yourself free club head speed you don't have to swing any harder to use width to your advantage to increase your club head speed you simply just have to make a wider arc so that's a no-brainer you absolutely want width in your golf swing so you want your hands to be traveling in a circle an arc as far away from your body as humanly possible so that's one of the huge reasons that you want to create keep this arm straight as much as humanly possible now the second reason is variability by now if you've studied rotary swing you know that I hate variables I want everything to be black and white hard facts wider black hard science right or wrong I don't like variables and I certainly don't like increasing variables in my swing and by folding this left arm that's exactly what you're doing if you go to the top of your swing and you let this left arm bend well now at some point coming into impact it's going to get back to straight when you do that and how you do that it's just increasing a tremendous number of variables into the swing that are completely unnecessary by keeping this left arm straight you're making your golf swing much simpler you're not worrying about timing the release of this arm and how much force you put into it and how hard you push it down and how much you do all this extra stuff with this left arm make your golf swing simple that's what the rotary swing is all about it's about making the simplest smallest move movements humanly possible while still increasing having maximum power in your golf swing so we use physics and science to our advantage rather than just a bunch of opinions so when you want to keep this left the reason you want to keep this left arm straight to recap within the swing and reducing variabilities extra club head speed fewer variables equals more consistency and greater distance so those are huge now how do we keep that left arm straight or more importantly what's causing you to not keep that left arm straight that's really what I want to talk about first one of the things I preach in my golf clinics is something I always tell people to write on the bill of the cap and that is big body turn tiny little arm swing that's the mantra for your backswing if you think about turning your body rather than swinging your arms you're gonna have a head start on keeping that left arm straight now what I mean exactly well most people when they take the club back all they do is they start pushing this left arm across their chest tightening the left shoulder girdle reducing their turn reducing the width of their swing etc and not loading these big muscles in your body which of course is what we want to do we need to recruit maximum muscle fibers to generate club head speed and if you just push your arm across your chest you're only tightening up the muscles in your arm you're stretching this left shoulder girdle so but what that also does is by the time you get to the top your arm doesn't have anywhere else to go because it's running into your chest so what does it got to do in order for you to finish your turn or to get the club up to the top your left arm has got a bend so instead of taking your arms and swinging them across your chest think about turning your chest to move your arms in fact I like to tell people if that club heads moving it's solely because your body's turning not because you're doing anything at all with your arms or hands if you think about rotating your chest instead of moving the golf club well guess what the golf club is going to move and ironically it's going to move exactly where you want it to that's the beauty of rotary swing when you start focusing on these big core body movements the club starts going exactly where you want it to instead of you trying to move it there with your arms and hands which is what everybody does so stop swinging your arms and that'll keep your left arm from bending almost immediately focus on turning your shoulders stick your arms out boom left arms dead straight why wouldn't it be the second thing that causes people to fold their left arm is taking this right arm and starting to bend it early trying to load up this right arm to try and get a false sense of power and this is a huge limiting factor how much club head speed you can create if you just focus on loading up this right arm going back you want to keep this right arm in fact I call it the governor of wit in the clinics as straight as long as humanly possible now in order to move that golf club what have I had to do well I've had to recruit all of these muscles in my core and torso in order for that golf club to move halfway back now I'm going to keep turning cheap turning keep turning now look my left arm is dead straight why wouldn't it be so now I'm going to show you a little trick and I covered this in the video five minutes to the perfect backswing but I'm going to do a quick recap of it here if you take your arms stick them straight out in front of your chest elevate them to the base of your elbows about the base of your pec you can have a little lower a little higher I'm going to move a little bit lower and now fold your right arm till your left arm swings across to you square over your shoulder guess what that's about exactly where you want it to be at the top of your backswing now notice that my left arm is still perfectly straight your left arm if you get up and do this with me should still be perfectly straight if it's not straight you've either folded your right arm too much and this is what I see all the time they have too much flexion in this right elbow and that forces your left arm to bend well guess what your right arm doesn't need to bend that much you're thinking about creating width in the swing which is free club head speed so keep your right arm wide and you don't need to fold it that much and your left arm will stay perfectly straight another fault that I see all the time is not letting this left arm rotate at the shoulder socket in order to let this left elbow point out because now I feel really tight now I feel like my left arm needs to bend your left arm needs to rotate while you're doing this drill in order to set the club on plane at the top so as you let this left arm rotate now it makes it much more relaxed and my left arm can stay straight now look at my arm holding it out here in front of my body why would this left arm ever bend just move it up here across your body let it rotate it's running your shoulder bring your right arm up there to support it now guess what as soon as I go to the top of my backswing none of this should ever change how do we do that well again in five minutes perfect backswing I get in my posture get a little axis tilt my arms are exactly where I just had them and I rotate to the top why would my left arm bend my left arm is perfectly straight at the top why would it change the only reason it's gonna change is if you start moving it don't move your arms you set your arms in the perfect position get in your posture and then rotate your body to move your arms and club to the top don't use your arms your arms have already been set in position and then as you keep doing this drill you slowly go down to address and you pump them back up voila your left arm is staying straight your left arm is bending because you're moving your arms too much remember my mantra for your backswing big body turn tiny little arm swing and your arm will stay straight at the top
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