Why You Need This:

In this video we will test your compression line on video and see if you are hitting the key checkpoints. For level one I give you several checkpoints to be sure to do correctly. Keep up the hard work on the reps!

What's Covered: In this video we will test your compression line on video and see if you are hitting the key checkpoints. For level one I give you several checkpoints to be sure to do correctly. Keep up the hard work on the reps!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:29

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back. We’re on the Level 1 test on the compression line. This is where the rubber meets the road, we build that muscle memory so that eventually these motions, we don’t even have to think about them. We just make a swing and they happen, and that only happens when we do a lot of reps.

We’re going to do 3,000 reps in this test, and again, it doesn’t matter, we don’t have to do these all in several days, or definitely don’t want to try to do these all in one day. It takes a little bit of time, takes several weeks to really build up muscle memory and to get our body to actually rewrite some myelin, lay down some myelin so that our neurological system can work better.

So that’s a big fancy way of saying we’re going to do enough reps to build muscle memory. So here’s what we’re going to do.

For the compression line, there’s two things that I really want you guys to measure. Let’s go ahead and start out with a driver. The driver, my compression line is going to be tilted away the most.

So as I come down to contact, I’m going to go ahead and pause. I want you to take out your camera as you’re working on this. Videotape yourself from directly face on, and I want you to draw this line, and you’re going to need an app or something where you can actually measure the angle of that line.

I want this with the driver, or we’ll get to that in a second here, but as we pause I want you to take that line and go from the center of your ankle. So actually imagine the joint of your ankle, dead center of the ankle, and then we’re going to do the same thing with the hip.

Imagine the femur or the bone in your upper leg as it comes to the top there’s kind of a ball at the top of that. Imagine drawing the dot that you’ll be measuring right from that socket itself.

So not from the outside of the hip, or not from the middle of the hips, we’re going to go from the left hip just in that joint, and then at the top in your left shoulder, imagine that same joint where your shoulder would be, right in the center of that.

So we’re going to come down and pause at impact, and as I pause here, I want those three points – ankle, hip joint, shoulder joint – to be lined up in a straight line. So that’s going to give me a straight line compression line.

Now that overall line from my left ankle to my left shoulder, that should be tilted away from the target a few degrees. So on average, I’d like to see no matter which club you’re using, somewhere around 6° to 8° is a good window.

If we’re using a driver, since it’s a longer club, since the ball is farther forward in our stance, we may get a little more tilted away from that. You could probably even go up to 10° with the driver.

If we’re going with a wedge, since it’s a shorter club we’re a little bit more vertical over the ball, not quite as much angle away because the ball’s going to be off the logo of our shirt or our left ear. Now we may see that just barely tilted away, or almost even straight up and down is fine on the other extreme.

But in general for testing this, I want you to find that 6° to 8° away, that’s pretty much going to be for any club in your bag. You could do 6° to 8° for your driver, you could do 6° to 8° degree for your wedge, and you’d be fine with any of those.

Just realize it doesn’t have to be dead on 6° or dead on 8°, I know sometimes people get so locked into those numbers that that’s all they’re worried about. What I really want you to be focused on is to make sure that is in a straight line.

A lot of times I see people bumping this hip forward, or I see people coming over the top and now their shoulder’s way out in front like that. That’s the main culprit we’ve got to get to.

So I’ll give you a margin for error of kind of an inch either way with this left hip when you draw the line from the center of the ankle to the center of the shoulder. That way you have a little bit of a margin for error there.

After we do that we’re going to take out our camera, we’re going to setup, we’re going to make a practice swing, we’re going to pause at impact. I’m going to use a driver here for this one.

One thing to keep in mind as you’re doing these reps is that as I pause at impact, because I don’t have any momentum shifting to my left, I’m actually going to have more weight on my right side when I’m pausing than I would in a real swing.

So since I’m tilted away, my spine is tilted away like we talk about in the stable fluid spine, everything’s tilted away from the target, I would fall over if I just pause in that position. My right foot is going to have more weight on it.

But as I get into a regular swing, since I have momentum moving to the left, now I can push back up with that left side of the body, everything is angled away, and I’m still moving on through.

So when I do a pausing repetition I’m going to feel a lot more weight on my right. When I do a practice swing, or a fluid motion which is going to be the other half of the drills, I’m still going to have weight moving to my left because I have that weight shift, and that’s completely fine.

Two things to check. That 6° to 8° range would be great for just about any club in the bag. We’re going to make sure that those are in a straight line going from the joints themselves.

Then lastly, I want you to be kind of in the ballpark where if I turn this way, let me go more toward the middle of the camera. I want my hips to be about 45° open as I’m coming into contact, and I want my shoulders to be roughly straight.

They can be a little open or closed, I’m not super worried about that. But in that general area would be great. That’s going to put you in an awesome impact position, get those reps in, work hard, and I’ll see you guys soon.