Why You Need This: Today's video will uncover "5 Myths That Can't Die Fast Enough."

There are a lot of myths out there about certain things we should be doing when we swing an iron.

A lot of these aren't completely false, but can easily be taken the wrong way, or can be overdone.

These myths can really restrict our swings and can lead to inaccuracy and a loss of distance on our shots.

There's a good chance that you're doing some of these things right now and don't realize how much distance potential you're leaving on the table.

In today's video, I'll uncover what these "half-truths" are and will show you how to unleash all of your potential distance.

You don't want to miss this.

Let's get started......

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 20:08

Video Transcription:

There’s a few myths in golf that just can’t die fast enough. If we follow these myths on how to hit your irons solidly, we’re going to lose some distance, we’re going to lose compression of the golf ball, really just going to have a tough time playing well.

I’m going to talk about five of the most common ones out there. What isn’t so great about those, and then the right thing to do so you can start hitting the ball better today.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so the first myth is we want to shorten the golf swing. When we swing with an iron, the driver swing is going to be longer, more free-flowing. Our iron swing we want to keep it nice, short, and compact.

Now, that’s somewhat true. Mostly it’s just misleading. What’s really shortening here is how far back the club head is going.

So it’s OK, perfectly OK to stop short of parallel with an iron swing, whereas a driver is going to go to parallel or maybe even a little past parallel would be completely fine.

So the iron swing will technically shorter if we’re just looking at the distance that the club head travels, but what we don’t want to do is shorten up our body rotation, or we’re not going to be able to get very much club head speed.

In this first swing, what I’m going to do is I’m going to not turn my hips very much, not turn my shoulders very much.

Not only am I going to keep the club short, but I’m also going to keep my arms in a fairly short backswing.

So here, I’m going to make an abbreviated full body swing. I’m keeping everything compact from my hips, shoulders, hands, all the way up to the club, and let’s see what kind of distance we can get on my FlightScope X3 radar that’s going to be tracking this.

So that’s going to track exactly how far the ball goes. Let’s try this out.

I hit that dead solid, a little bit of fade, we’ve got some left to right winds, going to push it a little bit more to the right, but I hit that ball pretty dag-gone solid.

My FlightScope, this is about a $20,000 machine here, so it’s pretty high tech, it shoots out these waves, electromagnetic waves that bounce of club head, that bounce off the golf ball, and track exactly how everything is moving.

So it got my club head speed as 83.9 miles an hour. Now I did a lot of things good there. With that short, compact swing I still had lag, I still released the club out in front, I had a perfect divot.

I hit the ball solid, so I should be getting some pretty good distance, and when I look down I see that my carry distance was 173, and my club head speed just under 84 miles an hour.

Now that may not sound too bad, and I actually created a lot of force and a lot of speed through contact, but I actually left a lot of distance on the table there.

If you’re swinging maybe you would like to hit your 5 iron 170, but you’re only hitting it 160, or 150. Well, the same thing is going to apply there.

If you’re making this short, compact swing and you go to a longer, free-flowing, more body-loaded-up swing, you may go from 150 to 170, or from 170 to 190, or from 200 to 220.

It doesn’t really matter how fast we’re swinging, these same principles are going to apply across the board to get more club head speed.

Now with this swing, what I’m really going to focus on is letting my hips rotate, letting my shoulders rotate, I really want to feel like my shirt buttons and my chest get turned well away from the ball.

I want to feel like if I had my right hand kind of off the club, I would let that turn way behind my body there to really get loaded up. That’s going to get my hand path a lot longer.

Now you’ll notice when I swing this, the club isn’t going to go past parallel, but my body is going to make its full backswing, I’m really loading up the body when I’m doing this.

So even though the club is shorter, it’s not a short, compact swing with my body. My hands and my body are still getting pretty high as I make this swing.

Let’s go ahead and try that one out. There we go. So again, I’m almost in the exact same line. I actually didn’t hit that one quite as solid, wasn’t my best shot ever.

Kind of making that short swing got me a little tight there. But if we look club head speed it went from just under 84, 83.9, to 96.9, so picked up quite a bit of club head speed there.

My carry distance went to 200 yards, which would be about my normal carry distance. So from there, I picked up quite a bit of yardage.

On my first swing, I only hit the ball 173, and on my second swing, I hit the ball 207. So I picked up almost 30 yards of distance by making that full backswing with my body, even if the club is a little bit shorter.

Now the next big myth is that we’re going to keep our weight left throughout the entire swing.

This one actually makes a little bit of sense if we think about OK, I want to have my weight left in the downswing, I want to be hitting down and through this golf ball, and I want to have that divot in front.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to plant my weight left, keep it there, and then stay planted on that left leg the entire time.

Now I will agree, you could hit some solid shots doing this, without getting much of a weight shift to the right.

Your pressure in your right foot, no matter what, even if your weight stays over here, my pressure that I’m putting in my right foot is still going to happen.

I’m still going to feel a little pressure in my right foot, even if I stay to the left as I rotate to the top.

But if I stay left or I keep my whole body left, what’s going to end up happening is I lose some club head speed and I also have a tendency to fall back.

A lot of players when they keep their weight left, they’ll kind of sense OK, I’m too far in front of the golf ball, and from there, they’ll push with their left leg and end up falling back to the right in the downswing.

We actually want to have our weight travel to the instep of our right foot on the backswing. I want to feel like I’m pushing into the ground with my right foot on the way back.

As I transition to the left, now I’m going to feel like I’m shifting my weight to the instep of my left foot, and then pushing kind of down and out to rotate my body on through.

You’re going to notice if I do that, if I get that shift to the right, shift to the left, that makes it very easy for me to get everything moving forward through the golf ball.

Imagine a pitcher in baseball. He’s loading up fully onto his right leg, and then he’s stepping on his left leg and letting everything go toward home plate.

I’ve never in my life seen a pitcher load on the right leg and then fall back away from the catcher. It just doesn’t happen.

But if he loaded up on his left leg, maybe he would try to do that. We have to get that weight shift, we have to get that weight right, and then back to left to not only get speed, but to also make sure that we’re hitting down and through.

This first ball, let me try, I’m going to try to swing as hard as I can, and I’m going to keep my weight left the entire time, and see the best I can do.

It’s still going to go pretty good if I hit the ball solid, it’s not like I’m going to lose tons of distance, but I’ll definitely be losing a little bit of miles per hour. The last one was 97 miles per hour, 96.9.

Let’s see what this one does. Now on that one where I kept everything left, I went from around 97 miles an hour club head speed down a little bit to 92.9.

My carry distance went down from 200 down to 177, and it also made it tough for me, because when I’m stayed way left like this, even though I didn’t fall back I made sure that I kept my weight going left.

It felt like the club was swinging down more over top of the golf ball, and hit it a little bit thin.

Now if I kept on practicing with this, I’m sure I could get a little bit more contact, but I’m never going to be able to get the full amount of club head speed, my full potential if I’m just kind of keeping my weight left, keeping posted left the entire time.

It’s just not the way you can hit it with your maximum amount of speed.

Now let’s go ahead and try, again let’s get one with a little bit more of a weight shift, I’m going to feel like my weight transfers inside of my right foot, and then to the inside of my left foot.

Let’s see what my club head speed and my distance does. You’ll probably notice on that last one when I slid in front, I felt like I kind of held the face open, because it was very difficult for me to square the face up and that ball almost leaped out to the right a little bit.

Let’s see if I can get it a little bit straighter here also, when I get the proper weight shift. There we go, much better on that one. Just to the left-center of the green.

If I’m looking on my FlightScope here, actually drew right back on the target. 97.7, so again, I picked up about five miles an hour, right back up to around 200 yards, 197.5.

We can see how not only did I get a little better accuracy, a little better contact, I also got some more speed.

One thing I get asked all the time is how do I keep my head still in the golf swing. Now that’s a little bit true, there is some truth this and there is something that’s a little bit misleading.

If I’m making a good swing, I want to have what’s called a Stable Fluid Spine, which means if I put this club representing my spine angle, as I set up to the golf ball I want to be slightly tilted away.

As I go to the top of the swing, you’ll notice how my body isn’t going to shift a lot. My head stays pretty stable. Then as I come down, my head stays pretty stable and my spine angle is staying roughly the same.

It’s moving around a little bit, I know, if we get technical. But the general idea here is I’m rotating around my spine to simplify the swing and make things a lot easier, so my head won’t move around all over the place.

Now one thing I find when players tend to keep their head still, is they try to get that weight shift, but they want to lock their head into to where it doesn’t move at all.

What tends to happen when I do this, is my weight goes to the right, but my head stays here just dead over the ball, and I tend to bump my hips to the right, maybe get a little bit of a reverse pivot as that’s happening.

Also, when I do this I tend to restrict my backswing, not get that good hip, shoulder, arm rotation like I talked about in the first part of this video, and I tend to make a shorter swing.

So if I do one of those, let’s see what that looks like where I really try to lock in my head, I don’t move it at all. Let’s see what happens.

So even though I actually hit that one just about dead solid, couldn’t have been much better as far as contact on the face, I could tell that I didn’t really load up, and I didn’t get my full swing speed.

I was down, 86.9, so I lost about 10 miles an hour of club head speed. Even though I hit it just dead solid, it was 177. So about 23 yards shorter.

Whatever you’re hitting right now, if you’re doing that, you might have a potential more, another 23 yards that you could hit it farther, if you make the proper motion.

So here, my head isn’t going to move all over the place, but I don’t mind if my head rotates a little bit to the right in the backswing, that’s completely natural.

It should rotate a little bit to help me as I go to the top of the swing to get that good full shoulder turn.

If I don’t want my chin to move one inch, or one centimeter, it’s hard to get that turn. I really feel tight as I’m doing that. If I let that head swivel a little bit, that’s completely fine, nothing wrong with this.

Also, as you’re loading into the ground, it’s completely fine if your head drops a little bit. That allows me to use my legs as I’m coming on through this shot.

So in this one, notice, you may see a little tiny bit of head drop. I tend to not get a ton, but you’ll notice my head tilts a little to the right, and then as I finish, comes all the way through facing down the fairway which is completely fine.

Let’s go ahead and try one out and see how I do with my new head motion. All right, nice. Right-center of what would be the green. Sitting out in the fairway today.

I could tell that one was way faster. Again, it had a little bit of head motion in there. 96.8, so back up to 97. 205 carry, got a little more distance on that one.

Here’s one of the biggest myths I think can really slow down your club head speed, if I’m releasing at the ball.

So if I’m thinking about getting my club to release at the golf ball to get all my speed at the ball, then this can lead to some bad things.

Number one, it’s going to help, it’s going to cause you to add some loft to the shot, and release this club too early.

If I’m thinking release at the golf ball, what you’ll notice is now my club shaft is splitting my forearms as I’m coming through contact here.

What that’s going to do, is it’s not going to get me any forward shaft lean on this golf club. Pros typically are taking a lot of loft off this club, about 30 percent of the natural loft of this club off there.

With a 5 iron, you could be anywhere around 27 or so degrees of loft. At contact, they’re taking that natural amount of loft and they’re turning that down to where it’s only got about 18° or of loft on the face.

That means the shaft is leaning forward, that means that club head is closing down.

That allows you to compress the ball better, it also allows your hands to be leading the way so you can be much more consistent through contact and you’re not really flipping on there.

Let’s do one the wrong way. I’m going to have the idea of releasing at the golf ball. Let’s see what happens to my loft from my FlightScope and let’s see what happens to my overall distance.

There we go, so that ball went way higher in the air. I definitely scooped it up. I did probably get a decent amount of club head speed, I bet it’s pretty close to my full amount of club head speed, but you’re going to notice the total distance is probably way down.

So on here, again, my club head speed, I was right. I whipped that club through there, and I got a decent amount of speed. That’s not really the problem here. I got 96.6 miles an hour of club head speed.

But my dynamic loft, or the loft that I had on this club was 26.4°. What that means is, if this club naturally has about 27° of loft on it, what that means is that club shaft was straight up and down as I was hitting this shot.

That made the ball go way too up and in the air, instead of going through the air and getting more distance, it kind of floated up and then came straight down. Not really that good.

We want those shots to penetrate through the wind, and again, that dropped my total distance down to 174.

That ball had the potential to fly 200 or 205 yards in the air, but because of that flip it went all the way down to 174.

Now what I’d like to see is something closer to 20° of dynamic loft when I’m hitting this shot, and I’d like to see that ball flying a little bit closer to 200 yards.

On this one, I’m going to really feel like I get my hands low to the ground, that way it makes it easier to get the shaft leaning forward and still be able to reach the golf ball.

If I flip the club, look how much higher my hands are up in the air. So I’ve got to get lower to be able to get that forward shaft lean. That’s the sensation that I’m going to have here.

Let’s go ahead and hit one and see how this one does. There we go, that one was killed there. I really compressed the heck out of that right toward the middle of what would be the green or where I’m aiming.

97.8, so one mile an hour difference in club head speed, so it’s not how fast I’m swinging this club. I haven’t even looked at the numbers yet, I will bet as much money as I have if that shot went farther.

We’re seeing here, carry distance 193, really compressed that golf ball, total distance 200 yards. So I picked up about 20 yards or so, 15 yards or so, by just compressing the ball a little bit more.

Plus it felt a whole heck of a lot more solid, and even though we have a pretty stiff wind kind of coming slightly into the face more left to right, that ball penetrated through the air much better, much more controllable ball flight because I had my hands forward.

So making sure that you don’t release at the golf ball, but instead, you release in front of the golf ball is where it’s at.

For in the Top Speed Golf System, we call this the Straight-Line Release. If you imagine about an angle 45° in front, that’s where I’m going to be releasing the golf club.

If I imagine swinging to that point out here, then I’m going to get forward shaft lean coming through contact and I’m going to be releasing to that point out in front, the ball’s just going to get in the way. I’m going to hit a lot better shots.

Now the next myth is the left arm straight. In reality, everybody’s going to bend the left arm, or most people, unless you’re just absolutely as flexible as possible, you’re going to bend your left arm a little bit in the backswing.

A believe PGA Tour average, according to Gears which is a 3D motion-capture system, I believe is about 20° of left arm bend, 15° to 20°, somewhere around in there.

So what that means is, if my left arm, if we’re looking at my elbow, this would be dead flat. I’m bending that about 15° to 20° in the backswing which is completely fine. Nothing wrong with that.

Long drive guys, and guys that are trying to hit it as far as they can, they’d actually bend it a little bit more than that to get the arms moving back a little bit farther.

We don’t want to go to that extreme, but the idea of keeping this left arm just locked in straight, man, that’s going to hurt your distance and unless you’re just super flexible, it’s just never going to happen.

It’s like trying to beat your head against the wall, you just try and try and try, but you never can get it to look right on camera.

So let me talk about what this can be a little bit of a detriment. I’m going to lock my left arm perfectly straight, and I’m going to turn back as far as I can without bending that arm at all.

I can get to about right there, and that’s as far as I can go. You’re going to see some super flexible guys, guys like Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, a lot of the guys that are just kind of like Gumby, super, super flexible.

They may be able to get that left arm way up here and keep it straight. My body’s just not that flexible. I’d be willing to bet that you’re not that flexible either.

Let’s work with our own body, and what it can do, to get the best results that we can.

If I keep this left arm straight, what’s going to happen is that’s going to shorten up my swing and cut it off my backswing.

Now if I do that, on this one I’m going to really try to lock in that left arm, and I’m not going to swing any farther back than I can with that left arm really locked in.

So there, I feel like I really wound up, I hit that ball like a laser right down the middle, right center of the green.

Wind pushed it just a little bit to the right. 90 miles an hour club head speed, so I’m down 6 or 7 miles an hour, 186 total distance.

So I hit it pretty solid, but it’s going 15 yards shorter. If you’re locking that left arm in, your shots are probably going 15 yards shorter too.

What I want you to focus in on, is feeling like you’re a little bit softer with that left arm, and the key to get that full backswing when you’re doing this, and keep that left arm a little bit straighter and not do this, is make sure that you rotate the chest again.

If I don’t rotate my chest, and I try to keep my left arm straight, I can’t go anywhere. As I start to say OK, I’ve got to go farther back than this, if I don’t rotate my chest what I do is I bend my arms completely and they completely fold up, which is not good. We know that’s not good.

So if I want to keep some semblance of my left arm fairly straight, you don’t want to just pick up your left arm and fold it like this.

If I’m trying to keep it fairly straight and still get to a good turn, I have to make sure I turn my hips and my shoulders in the backswing.

If my hips and my shoulders turn, I can keep that left arm straight and go farther back. If my hips and my shoulders don’t turn, I can’t keep my arm straight and go any farther back than this, and I end up folding up.

If you’re completely folding down with the left arm, you feel like you want to get it straighter and still make a good turn, again, it comes down to the body.

I’ve got to get my shirt buttons feeling like they’re facing away from the target. If I had a logo on the back, in the middle of my back, I would face that toward the target.

If you’re not very flexible, lift up that left heel a little bit, and now you’ll see, my left arm bends a little bit, that’s completely fine, but I’m still making a pretty good backswing and I’m probably going to get a little bit more distance on this shot.

All right, so swung a little bit faster. Again, I lost a little bit of club head speed. Mis-hit that one a little tiny bit. My carry distance was 189, so even on a mis-hit, I picked up 3 yards from would be a perfectly hit shot.

That’s one thing to keep in mind, I’m not saying you’re going to hit every single shot perfect if you do these keys. I’m just saying on average, they’re going to be farther, they’re going to be straighter, and they’re going to be more solid.

You’ll still hit bad shots, you’re still going to have bad days, but as a whole, things are going to be a lot better.

Now if you remember the Top Speed Golf System, there’s several things we can take away from this.

Most of these drills came down to either turning more, keeping stable, or releasing out in front. Well that’s the Power Turn, the Stable Fluid Spine, and the Straight-Line Release as we talk about them in the Top Speed Golf System.

So if we want to really ingrain this super-solid swing, the right way to do that to get to where you don’t even have to think about these things, is to start working through the system.

Go to the Instruction tab at the top of your screen on the home page. Click on the Power Turn. Start there. Make that good turn, work through those drills and those levels so it becomes natural.

Once you complete that, work on your Stable Fluid Spine, work on your Straight-Line Release, and as you start working your way up the ranks and up the levels of each one of these sections, you’re going to start to find that these things just happen more naturally.

You don’t even have to think about them, and you’re swinging better. Best of luck, and I’ll see you in the Top Speed Golf System.