STOP Rushing Your Downswing And Get Effortless Power In Golf

If you listen to golfers in the bar or on the driving range, they're always telling their mates, "You swing too quick." Now, in reality, most of us swing slower than the best players in the world. So, why would we want to swing slower? We obviously don't. But what we want to do is have great rhythm and timing and structure so we don't feel like it's rushed. Everyone hates that rush feel in the golf swing. So, today we're going to look at how we can give you that feeling of having a slow swing but creating lots of speed. So, one of the big reasons in why people feel like they rush the back swing is because they never complete the back swing correctly. So, what do I mean by that? Well, in the back swing, what we see a lot is a narrow arm swing and an underturned rotation in the terms of the torso. So, we want to see both those things change. We want to see you create a big turn and a wide arm swing. Now, as a rule, what I like to see is the hands finish outside your trail foot at the top of the back swing. So we want to feel that these hands finish outside there in terms of width. We have this kind of stretch and extensure action. Both hands feel like they're moving to the side. In order to do that, we have to shift our mass and we have to rotate to transport these arms back here. So even just doing this, pushing your right hand on top of your lead hand and making a swing and pushing the lead hand away as we turn gives us the feeling of swinging and turning and loading to this trail's side. So that's a great way of feeling the width and structure we want with the arms. In regards to the turning, we want to make sure we facilitate the turn with the correct units. So if I turn my torso, that's about as far as I can go. If I keep everything else stiff, then if I turn my hips, we start to see I relieve the tension. I can turn more. Then if I let my knees move, I can go even further. So we want to very much work our body like a cog and work it from the top down with our arms stretching to the side. What I would suggest we do is if we take a golf ball and place it about two club head widths outside our foot, use that as a bit of a reference point and try and feel at the top of our back swing. I'm trying to get my hands to the side of that golf ball in that kind of space. And it's very simple just using the golf ball because we have that when we're on the range. In terms of the setup, flare the feet and make sure the hips are pushed a little bit towards target. This push towards target with the hips helps facilitate rotation and also gives us a very slight tilt to the spine which helps us then move our mass behind the golf ball. So creating this bigger more coiled back swing with more width means then we don't have to rush down on the golf ball. When we make the underturn swing and the narrow swing we are on top of the ball very quickly. So there's no space. So then we have to hang back and create space. So that's why it feels so rushed. So getting the back swing wide is the first step of making sure we don't rush the back swing. The second step, which we're going to share with you in a minute, is going to be a nice drill to create the right kind of sequence and width in the down swing. First things first, let's try and focus on that back swing we talked about. So flaring the feet, creating a nice big hip turn, keeping the arms nicely to the side, and making the back swing feel nice and slow in tempo. So that one there definitely didn't feel like I rushed at all. It felt quite effortless. It felt quite big turn. I don't have a huge turn anyway before any of you say that. I am 50 and I am a little stiff in my spine. So I am at the chiropractors all the time. So we have to try and mobilize ourel as best we can. So I might have more knee action than some other golfers. That's absolutely fine. If it gets stiffer again, the lead heel just coming slightly off the ground in the back swing to enable me to complete that back swing is absolutely fine. So the down swing we talked about basically it should happen pretty much automatically if we get that back swing fully loaded and getting the arms nice and wide. We also want to feel that we are patient. We feel like our back stays the target and our arms drop into the slot. The only thing that would happen kind of consciously for me would be a bit of a lateral move with the hips. Again, as the hips move laterally, it creates space for the arms to do this and then the arms can wind the golf ball. We're not getting on top of the ball early, which is what we see with golfers that feel like the rush. They are underturned. The hands move out and forward too early and then they have to put the brakes on. So, they get to the ball too quickly in terms of their body relationships, the top of the body and the hands generally. So, we want to feel that when we're hitting golf balls that we are making that big turn and then keeping that back to target and feel like we are patient. I don't even mind you feeling you're a little bit more head behind the ball at contact to get the feeling of staying back with the torso. Ideally, if the lower half's gone forward laterally, it will kind of pull you and drag you through. Now, the last thing we're going to share with you is a drill that's going to give you a feeling of width and timing in the down swing. I recommend you tee the ball up for this because it is difficult, but it's just a drill for a few shots and then go to normal shots afterwards. So, quite simply, all we're going to do is swing onehanded. So, right hand only. If I swing my right hand, it creates a wider swing on the way down. Again, it's much harder to go here on top of the ball. We try and keep our back to target and just go right hand only. This creates a much longer right arm earlier in the down swing. It also helps you release the club maybe a little bit more too. So as a byproduct, it'll do that. But generally just feeling some practice swings like that. And then when you feel brave enough, you can go and hit a golf ball again onehanded. Try and feel that you keep your back to target nice and long. and let yourself just clip the ball for tea nicely just to give you that feeling of time, space, and again, not rushing. The big take-h home message from this video is not rushing the down swing, but not losing speed. We never want to give up speed because that gives up distance. Distance is our friend. Generally, having more distance will lower your scores, but we definitely don't want to feel that we're ever rushing. So, let's get rid of the rush feel. Create a better back swing. Create the right down swing timing and structure to allow you to play better golf