Why You Need This: Today, you'll learn to "Avoid These 3 Killer Moves in the Backswing"

While there are a variety of different ways to bring the club back and have a great swing...

...there are a few things you really want to avoid doing, or your consistency will really suffer.

So, if you struggle with consistency...

...check out today's video to see if you're doing one (or more) of these big no-no's.

And you'll also get some great drills to make sure they don't creep back into your swing anymore (including an awesome key focus at the 3:45 mark)!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:30

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: All right, so what if I told you that you can could be incredibly consistent not only with your irons but with your driver too?

If we got rid of this idea that our weight shift is only this way, which causes the hip sway and some other problems, reverse pivot, our spine angle to be moving around, and the weight shift is also going that way?

I’m going to describe exactly what I mean in this video, plus two more great tips to get that backswing looking really good and to get you hitting the ball really crisp and clean.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right into it. Let’s talk about that weight shift. Now, everybody’s heard that they need to shift their weight to the right.

A lot of times when you’re thinking about target, you imagine everything as just being straight back and straight through. So my weight goes this way, and then my weight goes that way. Straight line, both ways.

Well, there is a bit of a weight shift to the right. I should feel some pressure going to the inside of my right foot very early. But a big key for this is making sure that this right hip actually goes this way in the backswing.

I want my right hip to be going back that way, and I don’t want it to just slide laterally. So when it slides laterally, and I feel like I’m just going to the right, then my hips go this way. That right hip bumps out.

What that does is that tilts my spine angle here, and then as I shift back in the downswing, I end up having to tilt my spine angle the other way.

My spine starts moving around a lot, my head starts moving around a lot, and my contact point on the ground starts moving around a lot forwards and backwards.

So here’s the key to this. As you’re getting that weight shift to the right which is good, I also want you to feel like your hip is going this way. Now you do that by pushing kind of out with your foot.

This is something that’s been really cool that I found through lots of testing with ground reaction forces where you get these force plates and you stand on them.

What I found all the great players are doing in the backswing, is they’re actually pushing with this right foot this direction.

So imagine if I’m on a clock here, and 12 o’clock is right in front of me. In my backswing, I’m pushing with my right foot kind of toward 1:30.

So as I get some pressure into it, my right hip is going that way so I can turn my hips. I can now turn my shoulders, and I can get loaded up with a lot of power. So that’s the first tip. As you shift to the right, the hip goes this way, it doesn’t go that way.

Let’s go ahead and try that out again. You’ll notice how my spine doesn’t move around a lot as that’s happening, and my head’s going to stay nice and stable.

There we go, it feels very easy to make consistent contact. This is my shot right in the middle of the green.

So the second piece there we’ve touched on a little bit, which is my spine angle. Whenever this hip slides, the bottom of my spine moves.

Now, being the good athlete that you are, you start to realize that if I slide this way, I can’t take my head over there with it, I’d fall down or I’d be moving way too much.

So you keep your head pretty steady and you end up in a move something like this, or a little bit of a reverse pivot, even if it’s not a reverse pivot, it’s kind of sliding that way to where now your spine angle is angled this way.

Then in the downswing, again, being a good athlete you realize, well that’s not going to work, I can’t just chip down on it, so you start to reverse that angle and it goes this way.

Well, again like I said, when your spine starts moving around like that, that gets very inconsistent. What I want to do is I want to keep my spine angle fairly consistent at the bottom.

As I shift to the right, I don’t want it going this way. I want to just rotate, this hip goes back and my spine stays very, very consistent.

As I make my downswing, I get a little bump to the left. My hips start to open up, and then at contact, I’m angled back slightly.

So I’m really keeping that same, or roughly the same spine angle, I’m just rotating around it in the golf swing. That’s what I call the Stable Fluid Spine.

Here’s how to get that. We’ve already got the hip action going good, now I want you to set up, a little bit of tilt. Your nose is going to be behind the golf ball.

It doesn’t matter if I’m at address, at the top of the swing, or back at impact, my nose doesn’t really move a lot in the swing, it’s staying behind the golf ball.

So if you can keep your nose behind the ball as you do this, you’re going to be really nice and consistent. So again, watch my nose as I swing. You’re not going to see a ton of movement on this.

There you go, I was able to come down, hit that ball nice and clean.

Now a third piece is making sure I don’t pick this up with my hands and arms. What happens is, like I said before, I want this hip going back, I want my shoulders rotating, I want everything loading up so that I can make a good, powerful swing.

Well, if I just pick this club up with only my hands and arms, it’s going to look something like this. I’m really throwing my hands and arms at it, I felt like I put out a lot of effort with my hands and arms. My body did nothing, and that ball basically went nowhere.

So here’s the last key. I don’t want to pick this club up with just hands and arms. I want to get the hips moving, and I want to get the shoulders moving.

Here’s a great way to feel that. Let your arm swing and feel like your hips are starting the momentum. Again, they’re not doing this, they’re rotating in place and then rotating through.

I’m going to feel like my hips are moving, and that’s swinging my arms.

From there, I want to feel like my shoulders are moving, and then that’s swinging my arms. So I’m creating a little bit of momentum.

The shoulders are kind of leading the way and that’s throwing my arms back. They’re leading the way in the downswing, that’s throwing my arms through.

So I’m letting the momentum of my body let the arms swing, I’m not trying to take my arms and make them swing my body. Wouldn’t work very well, wouldn’t be very powerful.

So do some swings where you focus on the hips. They’re starting the movement, then the arms go back, the hips start down, and then arms come through.

Then think about the shoulders, they move, the arms move, shoulders open up, the arms come through. Then lastly, think about that club head. I want it to be the last link in the chain.

My hips, my shoulders, my arms, then my club comes back. Then my hips, my shoulders, my arms, club still lagging behind, then it comes on through.

It’s that whip-like action that allows us to have a lot of speed without feeling jerky and just throwing our arms at it.

So here I’m going to focus in on my body starting the action, and carrying the momentum of the club all the way through contact.

There we go, right in the middle of the green. Focus on those three keys and you’re going to have a lot success.

Now, what do we do from here, though? We’ve talked about how to get this feeling pretty good, let’s ingrain this for a lifetime.

What I’ve really been talking about this entire video is the Stable Fluid Spine. Getting that little tilt, rotating around my spine in the backswing, rotating around my spine in the downswing.

That way you can come and make ball-first contact time and after time after time, even when you feel like you make a bad swing, if your body’s moving correctly, that ball is going to get up in the air, it’s going to go pretty dag-gone solid.

Even your mis-hits are still going to be very, very consistent. To ingrain that, we need to work through the Stable Fluid Spine system. As you go through week one and week two, you’re going to get the handle of it.

You’re going to feel very comfortable with it. As you go all the way through week three and you’ve worked through this, it’s going to feel second nature.

Your very first swing of the day after you’re tight and maybe had a long night and you’re stiff and you show up to the golf course, you feel like you can’t move, your very first swing is going to be a good quality swing once you build this into your game. It’ll be second nature to you.

So make sure you follow that program. All you need to do is go ahead and click the Instruction tab, click on the Top Speed Golf System, and then click on the Stable Fluid Spine.

Work through that, I promise you it’s going to be a game changer. I’ll see you there.