Why You Need This:

In this video we will test your Lag 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 Lag 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: 7:15

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, so we’re ready to take the test for our Level 1 in the lag system, and this is really going to help you to ingrain this and get a lot of muscle memory.

Now we’re going to do 3,000 total reps in this section, it sounds crazy, it sounds like a lot, but you’re going break those down into a lot of sub-categories. You can break them down into however many you want to, I recommend doing at least 100 repetitions with each practice session though, or each day.

You can break that down into 100 reps really only takes 5 to 10 minutes, doesn’t take that long as we’re working through these. If you want to do more than that, you want to do 300 or 500 repetitions in a day, that’s fine too.

Just realize to really get that muscle memory going, what’s really happening is your body is having to come in there and actually put a bunch more myelin in your neurons and make those neurons faster.

It sounds really complicated, but just realize that’s going to take several weeks for that to happen. So we can’t just jump out there, do some lag videos, have tons of lag, and be ripping it the very next day. It happens over a period of several weeks, and we’re going to continually build on that.

So we’re going to do 300 total reps, we’re going to do one pausing, and then one full practice swing, and as we get into Level 2 and Level 3 of the system, we’re going to be hitting a lot more shots, doing a lot less pausing and that kind of thing, and going into more of full swings.

With this video, the only way we’re going to know if we have this correct is if we videotape our swings. So I recommend there’s an app called “Huddle Technique” that I use, a free app out there, or you can really use any app that you want as long as it has an angle finder, and you can kind of measure the rough angles of what you’re doing.

So first let’s go ahead and go over some of the key checkpoints that we want to make sure we’re doing correctly. The very first thing I want to do is make sure the camera is facing directly toward me. If the camera is kind of to the side like this, or one way or another, it can throw off what the angles look like.

The checkpoints that I’m going to give you are looking from the camera from face-on. So as I’m starting down, the maximum point of lag is really going to be about when your left forearm is parallel with the ground.

That’s where we going to be really maxing out this angle, in the rough idea. We can be a little bit above or below that, doesn’t have to be exactly, but that’s where we’re going to be checking this to see if it’s about right.

Now I’m going to measure my lag from the butt end of the club through the middle of my elbow, and when my left forearm is parallel to the ground. I’m going to measure the other angle of that with the shaft itself. So there’s going to be a line going from the middle of my elbow to the butt end of the club, and then up the club shaft.

I’m going to measure and see how many degrees that is. With most pros, you’re going to see a wide range, it really depends on how flexible your wrists are, some people have super flexible wrists, some people don’t. But you’re usually going to get a little bit sharper than 90° if you’re just hinging the club this way, and it’s going to look like more as this club is flattened out, we’ll get to that here in a second.

You’re going to roughly be about 65°, or a little bit less, or tighter. Some people have very flexible, very flat swing planes. Like a Ben Hogan, he’s probably closer to 35°. Doesn’t have to be like that, it’s not realistic for me, not realistic for anybody, but as long as it’s 65° or tighter, then we’re doing pretty good.

Let’s go ahead and do some pausing drills to get you started, and the way that I would do this, I’d set up just without a ball. I’m going to go into the backswing and I’m going to again make sure I’m increasing lag as I’m starting down.

I’m going to pause with my hand parallel to the ground, I’m going to look at my video, and I’m going to check that angle and make sure that it’s 65° or less.

Now I also want to check to make sure that my left wrist is nice and flat. I don’t want to start bending this left wrist, cupping that left wrist, to try to get more of an angle like that. I want to keep that wrist nice and flat, and we’re only going to go as much as our wrist will let us do, that’s completely fine.

Number one we’re increasing, number two this left wrist is flat, and then number three I want you to check to make sure that your swing plane is getting fairly flat. If I start to get very vertical like this, if we look at this from face on, that doesn’t look like a lot of lag.

As that starts to lay down, when we’re looking at the camera, that appears to be a much bigger angle of lag as I start to lay that down. In reality, that angle is the same, this is my wrist fully flexed, but as I lay that down that appears to be sharper.

That’s why you’ll see a lot of players like Sergio looking so sharp, and Hogan looking so sharp, is because they’re also getting flatter.

So make sure as you’re setting up this golf ball, as you start with your lag position, your butt end of your club would be facing outside the ball as you’re about halfway down would be really good.

Those three checkpoints, 65° or less, increasing lag as you’re starting down, flat left wrist, and make sure you’re shallowing out the swing plane. Keep those things in mind as you’re doing these practice drills.

So what I would do, is I would go ahead and grab my camera. I’d go through and videotape this. Check to make sure you get the first couple correct. So we’re going to do a couple practice swings, get those correct, then we’re going to move on from there.

Then after you get them correct on camera, they look good, then you can start doing four or five practice pausing reps, and then four or five reps where you go ahead and make a full swing trying to recreate that same feeling.

So we’re getting a lot of lag, good angle of lag as we’re coming down, and then releasing that, check them over and over again. So make sure it looks good on camera, get in those reps, knock them out, you’ll have the best lag of our life.

Good luck to you guys, I’ll see you all soon.