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Role of the Right Arm - Takeaway
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Collapsing the right arm early is something that at least 90% of amateur golfers struggle with that I see on a daily basis. It is crucial that you understand what the right arm should do during the backswing and how vital it is to keep it straight long into Move 2.
- Folding the right arm too soon is common fault at takeaway
- The most common cause of folding too soon is pushing from the left
- Folding too soon can keep you from rotating, taking your big muscles out of the golf swing
- Focus on turning your body correctly, not on where you're trying to place the club
So in the first video we talked about how the shoulder blade glides across the ribcage moving in towards center, in towards your spine, and how that if you leave everything intact, how that keeps everything moving correctly on plane and path without you having to dictate anything.
So it's a very simple way to understand how to take the club back.
Now I'm going to talk about one of the most common faults, by far the most common fault that we see, is that right arm starting to fold early.
And there's a lot of reasons for it, and I'll talk about some of those, but what we really want to do is focus on how we want to do it correctly.
So what we need to do, once you've set up to the ball and you start to take the club back, you need to understand that your hands are going to be about in the center of your chest.
And we call this center line.
Think of your body in terms of two halves, an upper and lower half, and two sides, a left and right.
And center line is your sternum or your spine.
Your hands, as you take the club back, should stay in the center of your chest.
So as I move back, I keep my hands about two inches apart, my hands are still in the center of my chest here.
Now if I let my right arm or my left arm start to push across my body, now you look at my fingers and now there's a big gap.
My left hand is much shorter than my right because I've swung my left arm too much across my left.
Now of course, when you put a golf club in your hand, the only way that you can do this would either be to slide your right hand down the grip, which you're not going to do, or to fold your right arm early.
You know that if you're folding that right arm early, it's very likely that you're starting to push your hands, your left arm, across your chest.
And crossing center line too early, okay? So if we take the club now, I'm going to put my hands, my club, the butt of my club right about the center of my chest, and now I'm going to rotate or glide my shoulder blade back.
Now I look down the line, and my shoulder, my chest, the center of my chest and the club are just about in alignment here.
It'll start to go back just a little bit, but that's okay.
But that movement there is ideal versus this.
See I can move my right arm a lot.
I can move the club a long ways without turning.
I've not turned at all here.
I'm just folding my right arm and cocking my wrists.
Instead of actually making a turn, if you want to use your big muscles, why would you just fling your arms all over the place? In fact, you can't.
So it's very important that that right arm stay straight.
You're going to feel the upper bicep of your right arm and your upper chest stay connected during this whole time.
We don't need that to be swinging out away from us, drifting out away.
That would be this motion.
So put your hands two inches apart, glide your shoulder blade, make sure your hands are still two inches apart.
Perfect takeaway.
When you start bending that arm early, the club can start to get inside.
You're going to stop turning because by the time you get to the top, you're going to feel fully loaded and you haven't turned your shoulders at all.
So of course, if you want to turn your back to the target, you need to turn your back.
So is that a goal? We need to make sure that that's the focus and rather than focusing on moving the club, we need to move our body.
And remember from the first takeaway video, we need to move our body in the opposite direction we want the club to go.
So, make sure that you practice keeping that right arm straight as long as you can in the backswing.
And in fact, it will stay straight all the way up into move two and it will fold very late in the swing.
That's going to help you maintain width and keeping the club from swinging around all over the place.
So, keep that right arm straight longer in the takeaway and you'll have a much, much better takeaway.
Kevin
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