Why You Need This:

Today’s video is on the humerus, the link between lower arm and shoulder. This part of the arm is responsible for some rotation and elevation in the golf swing. You can tell by the position of your elbow as you start the back swing if the humerus is in the proper rotation. If it’s not, you can experience crossing the line at the top or maybe start casting the golf club. And on the other side, if your humerus is too high you may experience the same kinds of problems. Let’s see more about the roll they play.

What's Covered:

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration:

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, welcome back. Hope your instruction’s going well. Hope you’re stacked up with some lessons and making some good money out there.

In today’s video we’re going to talk about the humerus. That’s the bone that goes from your elbow up to your shoulder, and we’re going to talk about how this has a rotation aspect and also an elevation aspect in the swing.

This is widely misunderstood. A lot of times when players are maybe across the line at the top, so let’s start out with that.

As I come to the top, let’s imagine that I’m across the line. You can see my elbow is kind of pointing down to the ground and my humerus really hasn’t rotated.

If I’m way across the line, my humerus is angled in a way that our elbow is pointing down. Well in the golf swing, what we really want to have happen is I can grab my left elbow.

You may have players, you may do this with players that are struggling to get the club a little bit more on plane as they’re going to the top.

But as you go back, my humerus is going to rotate. So it’s actually happening from this socket up in my shoulder. It’s going to rotate this way, so my upper arm is rotating in the backswing.

If you look at it there, now my elbow is more out, so the more that I rotate my upper arm this way or this way, the more steep or flat my swing is going to be.

So in the backswing there’s going to be a certain amount of rotation as I’m going back. As I come down, my elbow is going to rotate a little bit open as I’m coming down.

My elbow is roughly going to be pointing to the target at contact. So I’m here, it’s going to be pointing slightly back that direction, or if you’re looking from this way if I come down to contact, you can see that my elbow is pointed a little bit to the left of the target.

Then as I come on through, I’m going to have rotation in the exact same way coming on through there to externally rotate that.

This would be internal rotation in the backswing, external rotation in the follow through. I don’t have a lot of rotation in my arms, so it’s kind of hard for me to demonstrate that.

But that’s going to be happening to set the club on plane, and then to release the club on plane as you’re coming on through.

If you have players that are maybe just kind of holding off on it, their elbow’s kind of flying up, they’ve got the chicken wing type motion, they’re not getting that external rotation, they’re just keeping their humerus kind of moving toward the target instead of letting it rotate on over to release the club. That’s a very, very important one.

A good test for this to see how much you can get, internal and external rotation, is if you put your arm out at an L-shape like this. You lift up your hand as far as you can go, you’re going to see how much rotation that you can get.

This is very limited, that’s as far as I can go. So in the backswing, I can’t get a ton of rotation from my shoulders with my humerus or the right side humerus going back. That’s the second part we’ll mention on it.

As I’m going back, this upper arm has to rotate this way to get my elbow more down. I’ll kind of force it, you can see how my elbow’s down now, that’s really rotating that.

Then as I come on through, it’s going to rotate to get that on plane. It’s going to rotate the other way to get it to release on plane so I don’t chicken wing. Again, if I’m chicken winging, I’m kind of forcing the arm like this.

So I have to get that rotation going back and through, and again, you can test the range of mobility. Something like that would be closer to being normal, and that’s going to determine how you make your backswing plane.

Somebody with a very limited external rotation doesn’t have a lot of mobility rotating this upper arm, they’re not going to be able to have a flatter swing very, very easily. Then as they’re coming on through, the same thing.

That’s the rotation aspect to the humerus. There’s obviously other muscles, other bones that are involved in that. I’m not getting into the details of exactly how all that’s happening, I’m just giving the kind of a general overview of what’s going on.

Now with the elevation piece, as I set up in my swing, y arms are going to be hanging down. If I was to drop that club and just stand up, my arms are about like this as I’m at address.

As I come to the top of my swing, my hands are going to elevate, or my upper arm, my humerus is going to elevate, kind of across my body like this.

If I had a very vertical swing, it’s going to elevate more. If I have more of a flat or a one-plane swing it’s going to elevate it a little bit less. But everybody’s upper arm is going to elevate just like we talked about in the deltoid video.

If you get more of that or less of that, it’s going to look something more like this. The right arm is doing the same thing where it’s elevating, and then as we come into the downswing, it’s going to decrease and then it elevates over the shoulder again as we’re coming on through.

So that would kind of look something like this as we add rotation with this. Elevation, there’s the swing, and then elevating up here again.

My arms, my upper arms, should go up and down throughout the swing. That’s completely normal. They should rotate open and rotate closed, or internally and externally rotate, depending on which arm you’re talking about. Completely normal.

Probably the most common that I see when dealing with this is making sure that they rotate open to get the club to set on plane, and to come down on plane, and then release on plane.

A lot of times you’ll see people that are more this way over the top, club across the line, they’re not getting these upper arms to rotate, and then bam, they’re coming over the top that way. They’re not getting it to release and rotate as they’re coming through the shot.

That’s very, very common, and if you can break it down and explain to them, grab their arms and say hey, it’s supposed to be doing this. It’s supposed to be releasing like that, it just clicks like a lightbulb.

They’re like ah, I never realized that’s what was supposed to be going on. I never realized I could get speed from the club that way and it really helps.

Good luck to you guys. Hopefully this helps you out with your instruction. I’ll see you guys later.