How Your Wrists REALLY Work (It's not what you think) - Unlocks AMAZING Golf Shots

Let's talk about the wrists in the goal swing. Now this is super important and the reason I'm doing this video is because I want to make this as much about you as possible. I did a poll recently on YouTube asking what you'd like to see a video on. You can see the results here, what the wrists do in the goal swing got voted number one and I would agree with that. It's super important, we're going to go through why that is the case today. Now we're going to split this video into three different sections. We're going to look at what the wrist should be doing from setup into the backswing, really important. We're going to be looking at what the wrist should be doing through impact. That is often something that people get wrong and then the final part, exercise and a drill which everybody should do. I absolutely love it and it is going to change the way that you think about how you play the game of golf. Let's go through what the wrist can do. They've got two movements, only two movements. If I was to sort of set myself up here, hold my lead forearm, in fact I'll do it in a slight angle so you can see. My wrist, my left wrist and obviously my right wrist will do the same, can do this. You can see how my fingers are sort of changing where they point. I have that movement in my wrist. The other movement I have is this. The only thing that my wrist can do, can't do anything else. I've got myself a six iron here, let's take a setup. When I take a setup, notice how my left wrist has got a significant amount of cupping in it. If I took it off the club you can see how the back of my forearm, the back of my wrist is not flat, there's cupping there. What we're looking to do as we move from setup to backswing is we are looking to, number one, set the wrists. That was this movement here, looking to set the wrists. That will give us pretty much this sort of 90 degree angle here, give or take. As I do that, I want to try and take that shape that was in my wrist, this sort of cupped position here, and I want to flatten it. You can see here from that camera that that wrist, compared to my forearm, is now flat. When I go from setup to backswing, I'm looking to do two things. I'm looking to add in some wrist set and I'm looking to flatten my wrist. As I get to that point there, both of those have been done. Now, the earlier in the golf swing things happen, the less speed is involved and it's generally easier to do. I'd be looking for you to rehearse taking a setup. Can you get left arm level with the ground with pretty much that 90 degree wrist set there and the back of my wrist and the back of my forearm flat? What have I done effectively there? Well, by using the wrist this way, I've created some leverage. That gives me the option to create more speed, more power down an impact. When we look at flattening that wrist, what we're doing is we're controlling the club face. As I go to a more cupped position in my wrist, you can see how that affects the club face. If we quickly look at impact, that will tell us why we need to do that. Notice there's some cupping in my wrist. If I went to my impact position, notice how that wrist is now flat. That's enabled me to deal off the golf club a little bit, which all great players do, yet keep it pointing at my target. If we want this wrist to be flat at impact and it's cupped at setup, at some point between setup and impact, we've got to flatten it. Why would we try and do that in milliseconds in the downswing when we can do it in the backswing? The first little exercise I'd love to have you do is just hit some shots doing that. You're going to take your setup. I'm going to go halfway back. Have I got my wrist set? Yes. Have I flattened my wrist? Yes. That's my halfway back position. Look at the ball and then just go ahead and swing through. I say this all the time in these videos. When I hit those shots, I'm not looking to hit a perfect shot that goes full distance. I'm just looking to create what potentially, for many of you, might be a new position, a new feeling. Try and get your head around what that feels like and try and put some context. When I say context, there's a ball, there's a shot. Doing it at home is one thing. There's no concepts because there's no outcome. Doing it with a ball is really valuable. Now that is your backswing in order. You have created some wrist set. You have flattened out your wrist. What are you going to do in the downswing? Well, we need to undo some of those things that we did in the backswing. If I took my setup and added in the wrist set just at the start, that would be this movement here. You can see how the club rises up. Going back, we've said that it's important that we create this wrist set, but as I come down, if I never got rid of that, the club would never reach the ball. I have to undo that wrist set. That's super important. Over my years coaching, I've spoken to and helped and worked with so many golfers who have this idea or this concept of lag, believing that lag is this angle here. They're trying to hold that for as long as they can in the downswing. If that's you, if you are trying to hold that angle for as long as you can, it's really common to get to a position where the club is too high and too far outside the ball at this point. Then you start to push the thumbs down to the ground far too late. As that happens, the golfer often jumps and it can feel like you're getting a bit stuck and you feel like you're in your own way. The club swipes across the ball, really not efficient. The wrist set is effectively, what we've said in that first section, is me taking my thumbs and moving them more up towards the sky. The opposite is actually taking my thumbs and pointing them down towards the ground, or in this case, the ball. In my downswing, I want to be taking my thumbs and I want to be pushing them down towards the ground. That's undoing that wrist set. If you can do that and time it well, it's really going to help you deliver the club on a pretty efficient path. Especially if you're someone who's looking to reduce the out-to-in path or stop an over-the-top move, actually allowing your thumbs to work a little bit more down towards the ground earlier in that downswing can actually be a really, really good thing. Obviously, I'm not advocating that we kind of throw the club out this way with no body turn, but if done correctly, really, really powerful. We know that we need to undo the wrist set. That's going to help you, but the one that so many golfers get wrong is this movement here. What have we done in the backswing? We've taken our wrist from a cut position and we have flattened it. Many golfers, many great golfers, actually go slightly further than that and actually create a slight arch or a slight bow in that wrist. That slight arch and that bow would still be present at this point in the downswing. My lead wrist is slightly arched here. Now, if we look at those great players and we look at them sort of post-impact and we get them through to round about here, what do we see that left wrist doing? Well, you can see how it's now very, very cupped and almost as cupped as I can have it. So cupped here, arched here. Why is that important? Well, have a look at this. This is a video of me throwing a frisbee. Now, I'm not suggesting it's the best technique ever. I'm certainly no frisbee thrower, but for me to throw that as far as I can, look at what my wrist does. For me to throw that frisbee, I arch it going back and then as I rotate my body, I do two things. I fling my arm off my chest as I let my wrist go from this arched position to a cupped position. My arm is moving off my chest and my wrist is doing this. Why do I do that with a frisbee? Well, it allows me to create speed. Why would you do that in the goal swing? It allows you to create speed and it also allows you to create some height in your shots. If you want to hit higher, softer landing shots that go further, it's almost like the holy grail, isn't it? Hit the ball further and with more height, that's what you need to do. So, a little exercise would be just doing that without a ball. Down to here, I'm feeling my wrist is slightly arched and then I'm going to go through into this position here and you can see how my wrist is now cupped. Now, we don't want that to happen here. Clearly, that's not going to be good. I've got my cupped position and you can see how the hands are going back. Timing here is everything. If you can do this and land the club target side of the ball, that's key because if you land in the club target side of the ball, it means that you've got the handle forward and that is so important. So, if I hit a little shot here and show you just what I mean, my wrist goes flat. I'm going to actually slightly arch it so it's almost bowed at this point here and then as I go through, I'm going to let it release and you can now see how it's very very cupped. That wasn't a full swing but it actually went dead straight and I struck the ground after the ball. So many golfers are trying to keep this wrist flat on the way through. That's you. You're robbing yourself of speed and you're robbing yourself of height. That feel can be good for some golfers and I've seen it work wonders for some golfers who release the club early and I will certainly advocate, you know, drills where we're trying to hold this position but the key thing is that's a drill. It's a drill to help a golfer correct the right feels and impact. The reality is when we're trying to hit shots which are high speed, good distance, good trajectory, this wrist has to go from bowed to extended in order for you to do that. If I go ahead and hit one at full speed, so what is that one drill that I said I would suggest all golfers do? Well, there's two things that you want to be doing or you should be doing if you want to improve your golf. Working on technique. That's important. Improving the things that we've spoken about. Making sure our technique is sound and solid. That's absolutely going to help but the other side of it which gets neglected is the skill acquisition. Great golfers have a high level of skill. What we said at the start was your hands, your wrists can change that golf club and make it do lots of different things. So you can see I've got a golf ball. I'm aiming down the middle of the fairway. I'm going to hit four different shots here over a very short distance but I want to show you the difference in the ball flight. So I'm taking a normal setup for all of these shots. I don't know if my body kind of got in the way there but very very low. What about if I was to do the same thing but this time I'm going to try and hit it higher. Much higher ball flight. Then I could take a setup where the club face is square and I could easily, if I wanted, hook the ball left into the trees. Notice how to hook that ball. I kept my wrist flatter. I rotated my forearm and then the last one, I'm sure you can guess where we're going with this. Normal setup. Leave the face open and we get the ball going right into the ferns over there. I hit all of those shots and I was able to control the trajectory, high and low, the direction, left and right. I was doing that through skill. I did not change my setup. I did not change my backswing. What I did do is I changed how I was delivering the golf club through impact. I was basically using my wrists and my hands to make that club face arrive at the ball in the way that I want it to and that made the ball do what I want it to do. That's skill. If you're simply thinking your technique is the only way you're going to get better, you're missing a whole part of the golf thing that can be unlocked. Developing skill is super important. Now I know what you're thinking. You're going to say, Chris, I'm not good enough to do that. That's why you should be doing it because everybody who does this exercise at some point wasn't good enough to do it. The more you do it, the more you think less about technique and just think about positioning that club face differently and making the ball do different things, you'll start to develop your skill. If you can develop your skill and improve your technique, wow, that is a really powerful way to become really, really good at this game.