Why You Need This:

Do you ever feel like your arms are fighting against your body in the golf swing? Like you want release the club with more speed, but your hips and body feel like they are blocking you?

If so, this could be a great video for you.

In this video I will go over how to free your golf release by using the right ankle.

Free up the ankle, and free up your rotation. Lets get started!

What's Covered: How to sync your body and right ankle in the release.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 4:09

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Golf, and today I’ve got a great drill for you guys to really help you to free up your hips, get some momentum from your hips, but not to overdo it.

I’m going to show you the right amount and we’re going to talk about how you can practice this, so you get a lot more consistent in your golf swing.

So in the down swing, let’s imagine I’m going to hit this ball here, in the down swing as I’m rotating I want my hips to be rotating open toward the target.

As I come to contact, I want my hips to be roughly about 45° open here.

So if my hips are open like this, that’s going to allow me to release the club down and through the ball, and to really get some consistent contact.

Now if my hips don’t rotate enough, so let’s say my hips stay facing toward the ball and I’m really trying to push this club through.

What’s going to happen is I don’t have any separation between my hips and my shoulders, and my tendency is going to be to try to push this club through with my hands and my arms.

It can often result in the chicken wing, and it also results in something that’s called early extension.

What that means is as I come down, if I don’t open up my hips enough, I’ll have a tendency to stand up out of the shot to try to push the club through with my hands and arms, and that’s where a lot of people is stand up, is their hips aren’t rotating enough.

Now in order to have the hips rotate enough, our right heel has to start to come off the ground.

So as I’m coming into contact here, my right heel should be starting to come up and I should be able to put the club head under my right heel or maybe just a little bit less than that, just barely, about an inch or so off the ground, as I’m coming into contact.

If my right heel, one of the most popular drills out there is to keep the right heel on the ground, often what that can do is keep the right heel on the ground all the way through here, now I feel really tight in the hips.

I don’t feel like I can rotate through the shot, and that causes me a lot of trouble.

So I want that right heel to be barely coming up off the ground as I’m at contact, my hips are going to be about 45°.

As I come into the release, my right heel is going to now be up off the ground about two inches.

So let me turn this way, so you can see this.

Here’s my lag position, as I come into contact, right heel’s barely starting to come off the ground, hips about 45, as I go into the release my right heel’s going to start to come up even more, and you should be able to start to see a little daylight under that right heel.

That’s going to allow me to stay down and through the shot, and if I don’t rotate my hips I’m going to have a tendency to stand up like this to try to push the club through with my hands and arms.

So that’s the correct amount. I want to make sure hips are 45, right heel’s about an inch off the ground at contact, two inches at my full release.

Now let’s talk very briefly about if you overdo this.

So sometimes I’ll see better players, they get used to using the hips a lot, and they’ll this to where at contact their hips are really open, they’re probably almost 70-80°, maybe even 90° open, and the right heel is way up off the ground.

What that can do is often when I spin that much, I’m going to get the club in behind my body.

I’m going to get the club in behind my body like this and I’m going to block it out to the right.

So if you really spin the hips a lot, you really get aggressive with lower body, very easy to get that club in behind the body, so I’ve got to find that sweet spot.

I’ve got to do that by finding a balance between how much is enough, and how much is too much to rotate my hips.

So I’m going to go ahead and do a little drill here, where I pause at impact twice, and then I’m going to hit a ball.

So I’m going to go my full back swing, going to do lag, I’m going to come to impact and I’m going to pause.

Right heel barely coming off the ground, hips open about 45, and then I’m going to rotate all the way on through to my straight line release and I’m going to pause there.

Again, I’m going to go all the way back, let the right heel come up, straight line release, I’m going to pause and fill that, I’m going to do that twice, and then on the third swing, make a full swing.

There we go, so let the right heel come up just as I’m coming into contact, it’s going to allow me to come down and through the ball, allow my hips to rotate on through, and I’m going to get a lot better compression on the golf ball, because my body is freed up.

So good luck to you guys, focus on that right heel and you’ll start hitting some better shots.