This Simple Move Stops You Rushing the Downswing

This swing felt really quick, really fast, but it was a terrible strike and the ball went nowhere. Distance was terrible. This swing, on the other hand, felt really quite slow. It felt like it had loads more time, yet the ball went way further and the strike was way, way better. Now, I'm sure you've been on the golf course and experienced that. You've grabbed an iron, you've made a goal swing, it's felt rushed, it's felt quick, it's almost felt out of control, and yet it doesn't go anywhere and the strike is really poor. It could be because you've got a club-led swing, great players who have that great timing, that great rhythm, who look like they're swinging it really under control have a body-led swing. I'm going to teach you in this video how to create a body-led swing. We both know what those swings feel like, but I want to show you on a deeper level what's actually happening within the goal swing, specifically the downswing, the impact causing those bad results. I'm going to hit five shots doing that club-led swing that so many of you will be doing. I've got the hack motion sensor on, brilliant piece of kit. I'm going to hit five shots and it's going to tell me or show me what happened within my golf swing. We have some issues which we thought we might have. Mid-downswing, you can see the whole screen is red. It's never good when it goes red. Shows I'm casting. That means I'm throwing the club early, which right back at the start is what we say golfers tend to do with this club-led swing. When I look at all the data, you can see that my impact to extended. I'm flipping the club impact as well, which is why the strike is so bad. I can't hit down on the ball. It's high. There's no distance. You can see all of those red markers there suggesting I'm doing lots of things wrong. With the hack motion, it's going to provide some drills that I can do. We'll come back to that in a moment, but I want to run you through the drill first. This is the drill I give to almost all of my students who struggle with this club-led swing. Feet together. I want you to make some little swings where you begin the golf swing, not with a club head, because we already said that would be a club-led swing, but actually start the golf swing with a step to your trail side. You'll notice when I do that, it's not just my foot that's moving. It's my whole body that's moving. I want this step to be a pressure shift. It's not just simply moving the foot. I want you to feel this through your whole body. Notice that when I do that, what's the club head doing? It's not doing anything. The club head is staying on the ground. This is my body leading this movement away. The first move away is body shifting and turning. It's this moving away. Once we get this started off in the right sequence, we've got a way better chance of creating that rhythmical golf swing. You'll notice that little bit of almost like a delay in when the club head follows my hands. My backswing is this. This is phase one to this drill. Now, when we go back to a little demonstration, grip leads the club head. What about in transition? Same thing happens. Grip leads the club head. That's how we get that beautiful impact that we've spoken about. Once I've stepped and turned, when my lead arm gets around about level with the ground, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to take my lead foot this time. As my arm and the club are still moving away from the target, I'm going to step into that lead foot. Again, similar to what we said a moment ago, it's not just a step of the foot. I'm actually trying to put some force and some pressure through that. I'm trying to move into that lead side. You'll see me moving forward and a little bit down. Throughout this whole motion, the body is leading the club. That's really the big message here that I want to get across to you. If you can get the body to lead the club, you get sequencing. You get flow. Your golf swing is going to feel slower. It's going to feel more effortless. Yet, your down swing, which we'll test in a moment, that motion is going to be better. You're going to have better impact, better strikes, better distance. Already, I'm starting to see the drill having an effect. Based on those poor swings I did a few moments ago that got trapped with that motion, it's now recommending the casting drill. We're going to go through that casting drill. I'm going to do it in the way that we've just gone through. We're going to see whether that fixes this casting and the impact. Straight away, it captured that rep. It's green. It's perfect. That is measuring the angle that I'm using on the way down. Let's try that again. These balls are not going anywhere near full speed. You can see I'm nowhere near full distance, but the strikes are better. I'm landing the club in the right place. Because I'm doing that drill, notice how there's no casting there. Casting is when this club gets thrown early. The key to holding this angle isn't to try and think about holding the angle. It's to think about the sequencing. What is leading this goal swing? In these little exercises, you can see I'm literally stepping, then the club is moving, then I'm stepping, and the club is lagging behind. We get this natural resetting or rehinging of the wrist. That's why on these little exercises, I'm able to produce a great goal swing. Again, I'm starting to land the club in the right place. They're well struck. They're straight. They feel effortless. There's loads of flow there. That motion is telling me that these are good reps with no casting. You might be watching me do that drill. You might be thinking, I can't do that on the golf course, Chris. I'm going to get some really funny looks, and you're only hitting it 60 yards. I want to teach you now how you can transfer this to when you go and play. The first thing would be, don't get fixated on the clubhead. So many golfers, when I see them on the golf course, the club goes in behind the ball, it never ever moves from there. The club will go in, they build their stance around, there's a lot of tension building up through the hands and arms. Then when they're ready to go, the clubhead gets all of their focus and they snatch it away this way. What you'll see with great players is two things. Number one, the clubhead is always moving, and number two, the body's always moving, because they're going to start with this. What you'll often see is the club will go in, and they might place it behind the ball just to get the alignment, but then the club raises and the body, although it's subtle, is always moving. Because if the body is always moving, it means that the body is ready to start that motion. Don't freeze over the golf ball. That's the first thing. The second thing would be, give yourself some practice swings. As I'm about to walk into this shot, I want to build the right feel here. What I'm actually going to do is I'm going to hover the club some 12, 18 inches above the ground, feet together. I'm just going to start to make some little movements. Notice how, in this case, I'm actually setting the club forward, but what's starting? Body. These are my little practice swings. They're great for rhythm. I'm not overly focused on the clubhead, and I'm starting to build that real flow and that rhythmical nature to my golf swing. It's a body-led movement. Crucially, I'm going to start the golf swing with what I feel is my core. I cannot hit an 8-iron better than that. If you want the opportunity to practice like that and take advantage of all the drills that Hack Motion offers you, you can click the link in the description. For this video, I was using the core sensor.