How The Right Shoulder Works in The Golf Swing | The Correct Movement

Do you have a question about how the right shoulder needs to move throughout the golf swing? There's a big difference between what we see with the professional golfer and the amateur. If you're interested in this video, I'm going to show you the differences and exactly what you may need to do to level up that ball striking, help you get a little bit more compression off that clubface. Let's get stuck in. Welcome back to the channel guys, Kerry Gray here on the range today at Junilup Resort. Today we're going to talk all about the right shoulder movement for the right hander, exactly how you should do it, some of the big mistakes that we see the recreational golfer make relative to the professional and give you a better understanding of exactly the movement that is required to deliver that golf club back in a consistent fashion. But before we get into it, please go down below, click subscribe, click that little bell so you get notified of all the upcoming videos released two times a week at the moment and then moving forward we're going to be looking to go three with a lot of shorts in between as well just to make sure that you're getting the most out of the channel to help you improve your game. Also if you're interested in personalized online coaching, I do swing analysis so I can do lines over the top of your swing then stand back in front of the camera such as this and give you personally prescribed exercises and drills relative to your golf swing to relieve any of those frustrations that you have. But on to today's subject, we're talking all about the right shoulder for the right hander. Flip that around if you're a left hander and the movement in which we would see the difference between the professional and the recreational golfer. So first of all let's talk about what we see with the amateur, the player who would struggle with their ball striking. What we would tend to see just using this golf club across my chest as a reference, they would get to the top in this position here and one of the key moves that we would see with the amateur golfer would be that the right shoulder from the top of the swing would start to move out towards the golf ball too early. Now this happens at an effect and a lot of what we see in the golf swing relative to the movements in the backswing happens a lot earlier on. It can start from the setup then extending all the way to that first initial backswing takeaway movement that then gets the shoulder in such a position where it makes it very challenging not to perform that sort of motion. Well where does this right shoulder movement at the top where it works out towards the ball generally accompanied by a shaft which is steepening, a club head which is moving outside the handle and then a cutting across motion at the moment of impact. Why does that occur? Well generally what we see in the backswing for the amateur golfer is as they would start to make their move they tend to get this look that their left shoulder, their front shoulder would start to strangle them or look at the appearance as if it was really choking them to the top of the swing and the reason that happens is generally a lack of rotation of the body. So for example if I set up to this golf ball I don't turn my body, I lift my arms, my lead arm is going to lift up in front of my neck, my right shoulder, this back shoulder here doesn't get far enough behind me and then the first move down from this position is going to be straight down towards the ball and you can see in the follow-through it's almost like this right shoulder is trying to knock me out. So not only is the left shoulder in the backswing trying to choke me but in the right shoulder coming down is trying to knock me out. So the golf swing is not really moving in the most efficient manner. Effectively the arms and the upper body are not working in sync. So what would we like to see? Well one of the big differences here would be this big chest turn rotation with the professional golfer with the arms staying relatively in front. Now they're not staying all the way in front but they're certainly not getting pinned across the chest. What we would like to see is at least this back shoulder, this right shoulder moving far enough behind us into this orientation here. From there that little downswing move that we would like to see is that the right shoulder instead of moving out towards the golf ball with the professional we would see that the right shoulder would get behind and then it would actually have this sort of dropping move. The right shoulder in this position here would go down towards the ground rather than out towards the ball. Now there's a lot of instruction out there that'll say that you need to swing to the top and have a big rotation or something similar to that but that is all relative to the individual. And really high level ball strikers who have their sequencing down pat by this stage, yes certainly they can feel that. But most amateur golfers who tend to slice the ball, if they haven't created enough rotation in the backswing, their right shoulder hasn't moved far enough behind them, they're going to start down. They're simply just going to cut across the ball even more. So once we've actually loaded all the way up into this really strong top of swing position this right shoulder is right behind me as you can see from that angle there. Well then as we start down what we would see with the professional instead of this movement coming straight out there would actually be a dropping of the right shoulder. Now as we do that, that is accompanied by this sort of shifting of this pressure towards the target which will allow the arms to unload underneath our body giving us room to then come through and strike that golf ball first and the ground second. Once again if we get to the top we don't create enough rotation, the arms tend to lift, we're going to start down you can see that right shoulder moves out that's just going to give us this cutting across motion that's all too common with the recreational golfer. The professional, let's look at the differences in the quality of the strike but also the delivery of the club. From this address position we're going to get that right shoulder all the way back and behind us and then as we get it feeling as if it's coming down rather than out towards the ball we'll start to see that the club will drop underneath and we can start to get a swing path which is a little bit more from in to out and we can start to get some curvature on that golf ball with a draw assuming the club face is in the correct position. So as you can see how that right shoulder moves from the top of the swing starting down that transition it's a very commonly researched term of players trying to figure out how to move that upper body in the downswing. Well if we create enough rotation in the backswing and then we start that downswing sequence in the correct fashion this right shoulder will tend to move down and that's essentially what we'd be looking for. So how do we practice this? Well very simply put what you can do is I would turn this golf club around we're going to get the grip side on that back shoulder here and simply just watching yourself in a mirror and getting a feeling and an understanding of exactly where that should move. You can see the end of the grip is starting to in that transition move down towards the ground rather than shoot out towards the ball and if you look at my body from face on as I do so that'll allow me to shift that pressure towards the target giving me lots of room to swing through and then strike the golf ball. Simply having an understanding of how that shoulder needs to move can change your concept can change your idea of what you should be doing throughout the motion and if you're struggling with a cutting across of that golf club the ball's not coming off nearly as powerful as you like just knowing what the shoulder should do can play a major role in improving your golf swing. So I hope you've enjoyed today's video if you've got any questions at all please ask me below but until next time I'm Kerry Gray thanks for watching.