Why You Need This: What is the "Perfect Swing Plane?"

Can you get the ultimate consistency in your game by swinging on plane?

If you have ever watched a PGA Tour tournament, you probably notice how most of the pro's swings were extremely on plane.

There's no re-routing, over the top, or looping swings.

So how can you get this in your own swing?

You would be surprised to find out it doesn't have to do with the club, but in fact starts with the knees.

In today's video, I'll show you a drill that will help you swing on plane.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:53

Video Transcription:

All right, we all want to be perfectly on plane in the golf swing, but how do we do that? I think a lot of players are visualizing how to swing on plane in the incorrect way, and my opinion, not being taught exactly the right way.

Whereas what most people are focused on when we’re trying to get this club on plane is we’re not worrying about our hips, our knees, our legs, our body, which is the main part that moves the club, but we’re just focused in on the club itself and trying to put the club in a specific angle or a specific position.

Now if our body isn’t working in a way that that club wants to go into that position naturally, it’s really just not going to happen.

If we’re trying to place the club on a certain angle, man, that’s going to be really tough to do, because it’s not working with your body.

I want to talk about how swing plane actually happens from your knees all the way up, and if we can learn to build this in our swing, it gets a lot easier and a lot more consistent to hit good shots.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s start with the swing plane from the knees.

Let me go ahead and grab a golf ball on a tee, and what I want you to do to visualize, this is a general idea that I think really helps players to visualize the correct swing plane and how to get their entire body working on plane rather than the setting the club at a position.

What I want you to imagine is that from my knees, let’s start from the ground up. From my knees out to the golf ball, imagine there’s a plane of glass kind of shooting down toward the golf ball there.

What’s going to happen is as I rotate back and forth, if I was to put this club across my knees, my right leg is going to straighten a little bit in the backswing.

Now it’s not going to slide this way, and I’m not going to have a hip sway, I’m going to stay relatively centered, I’m going to have a little bit of a shift to the right, but my right leg is going to straighten a little bit.

Now when my right leg straightens, that makes my knee a little bit higher up and that kind of works on that plane of glass.

You’ll notice my left knee is going to bend a little bit, and when that happens, that knee gets a little bit lower. You can see how these knees are rotating on an angle now.

As I come through the shot, the same thing’s going to happen there where my right knee gets lower as it goes forward, my left knee gets higher as it extends.

So if you imagine all the way down from the knees, that close to the ground, there’s a plane of glass going to the golf ball and as a very general rule of thumb, my knees are going to be rotating back and through on that plane of glass.

Again, my body is angled forward. Another way to visualize this before we get too far into it, the golf swing is really no different than taking a swing with a golf club out in front of your body.

My knees will be rotating level, my hips, my shoulders, everything’s rotating level. The only difference there is now we’re taking this level plane and we’re angling it down toward the golf ball. That’s going to make it a lot easier to swing on plane as we’re doing this.

So instead of swinging level, everything, knees, hips, shoulders, arms, club, are all angled down and rotating toward the golf ball rather than more level from this.

Let’s go up one more piece from this. The hip sockets. Now as I hinge forward, what’s happening here is my hips are now tilted toward the ball.

If my hips were sitting level with the ground, now they’re tilted forward and you can imagine a plane of glass going from there down to the golf ball.

As my hips rotate, my right hip goes higher, my left hip goes lower. As I come on through, my right hip gets lower, my left hip gets higher. They’re rotating on a plane of glass, kind of down to that golf ball, or that’s how I’d visualize that in my mind.

If we now move up to the club, and again, put a club – we don’t want to just sit there and watch this video. We can’t get any better just watching a video.

Go ahead and grab a golf club, be working through these drills with me. Take the next two minutes to improve your golf game, right from the comfort of your house.

Put this club across your shoulders. As I start to rotate back from here, I want to imagine that line or that target line’s going through my golf ball again.

There’s a plane of glass going down to that. I’m going to go rotate back and have my club pointing down to that target line.

As I flip this club around to point the other way, as I rotate on through, now my club is pointing on that target line also.

That’s why you see a lot of pros in this kind of position. You won’t see very many pros with their shoulders level, they’re always tilted to stay in their posture, to allow their arms to swing on plane, allow the club to swing on plane.

Now let’s extend it out from our arms. Again, do these drills right along with me. Set your arms out to the side, this would be level with the ground. I’m just going to tilt my entire body forward, my hips drop back, my upper body tilts forward.

As I go from there, let that arm trace down to what would be the target line of the golf ball. Imagine this is a plane of glass as I come on through, now my arms are coming through that way.

Same thing’s happening in the golf swing, my left arm is rotating up that plane, down that plane, and I can be very consistent.

Now finally, my golf club. We started from the knees, shallower plane. As we went to the hips it got a little steeper, shoulders got a little steeper from that. My arms got a little steeper from there. Now my club is going to actually rotate on its own plane.

As I go into the backswing, it’s going to be the highest plane way up here. Again, pointing down somewhere in the general ballpark to that golf ball.

When I’m talking about being on a plane of glass, that’s more of a visual for you. You don’t have to be down to the exact angle.

What I have found is anywhere in the general vicinity of this golf ball, you’re going to be completely fine.

But as I rotate now, my knees, hips, shoulders, and arms are all going toward the golf ball, if I just go ahead and swing my club, that club is naturally going to want to work on that plane and stay really, really nice and consistent.

So that’s the general idea. Do some reps practicing with your knees. Go ahead and let your knees, put your arms on your shoulders and focus on those knees going back and forth to that golf ball.

Let my hips go back and forth to that golf ball. Let my shoulders go back and forth to that golf ball. Let my arms come out and go back and forth.

Then eventually grab that club, let it swing back and forth with the same idea there, and you’re going to be well on plane.

Let’s talk about a couple mistakes that I see with players that are off plane, where they get across the line or really late off, what’s going on there?

What I typically find with players that are across the line, if we’re looking from face on instead of them staying in an overall good posture, a lot of times they’ll take their shoulders, their upper body, and they’ll start to sway away from the target to the right.

What happens when I do this with my shoulders, if I sway away from the ball, look how my shoulders are now very level. This club isn’t pointing toward the golf ball anymore, now it’s level with the ground.

So if I rotate on this line, look how I’ve taken that plane of glass and now it’s going this direction, that plane of glass is going out here somewhere if I rotate around my spine, because my shoulders are so flat.

If I do that same thing and I let my club go back, now all of a sudden, I’m across the line. So if you’re struggling being across the line, instead of rotating toward the golf ball, you’re probably rotating way too flat, and getting back in here like this, swaying off the golf ball. That’s a very common one.

Players are coming back and they’re picking the club up, or maybe rerouting the club, dragging the club inside. Again, the same thing’s happening.

If I’m dragging the club inside for example, again, I’m probably shifting my body off the ball, I’m letting that club come in here, and now my shoulders again are rotating on this angle, way too far to the right, and all of a sudden, I’m inside, and then across the line. That’s where that’s coming from.

Again, if you want to ingrain this, do the drills. Knees, hips, shoulders, arms, club, you guys are going to be able to swing much more on plane, your swing is going to be way more consistent, you’re going to have a lot more fun playing golf.

All right guys, so we don’t want to stop here. We talked about how we’re going to get on plane, have the entire body working to promote a good swing plane and to be consistent in the swing.

But really that starts with the Stable Fluid Spine. I want you to go to the Stable Fluid Spine section, start working through level 1.

Now if I can get this spine angle set, and I can rotate around that, that slight tilt away from the target is going to help me to promote a little bit of an inside-out swing path, and to be really consistent.

Remember we talked about in this video, when my spine starts to sway to the right, or sway to the left, that throws everything out of whack.

It really starts with the number one fundamental that we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System, getting that spine angle right. Rotating around that, makes golf a whole lot simpler.

So go to level 1, don’t miss out on this, work through those videos, get those reps in. I found that once players start to build in those reps, and they get the feeling of the consistency of the Stable Fluid Spine, they don’t revert back to the sway, and the hip slide, and the big weight shift, and that kind of thing.

They’re allowed to stay a lot more stable throughout the entire swing. If we can get that built in, we can get that muscle memory, then it’s just going to become automatic.

So start on level 1, work through those videos, you’re going to pay big dividends throughout the rest of your golf career, I know it’s going to help you a ton. I’ll see you in the Stable Fluid Spine.