Why You Need This: Today I'm going to show you the "Best Golf Lag Drill."

Do you struggle to create lag in your golf swing?

Until you experience the correct "sensation" for what it feels like to have lag in your swing, it can be tough to know how to generate lag.

In today's video, I'm going to give you the perfect drill to allow you to feel that "sensation" in your swing.

I've had many students experience that "light bulb" moment once they were given the ability to experience the correct sensation for what it feels like to have lag in your swing.

I'm hoping to give you that light bulb moment today!

And the best news is that it can all be done from the comfort of your own home in just a few quick minutes!

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:29

Video Transcription:

All right. Check out the lag when I threw that club. This is an awesome video we’re going to talk about on lag.

Why is it so easy that when I just take my one-arm swing, take that club, release it out in front, it has crazy amounts of lag as we can see from the slow-motion video?

I was still able to clip that tee, I mean how does that happen? Then we add two arms on there, and all of a sudden we’re casting from the top and losing all our lag back here.

That’s exactly what we’re going to go over in this video. There’s two parts to this.

Number one, we need to learn how to use the body properly, get those hips and those shoulders opening up to allow it to clear out of the way so that we can release that lag in front.

two, we have to use the arms properly, and specifically this right elbow the correct way. I see a lot of players doing this the wrong way, that’s exactly what we’re going to go over in this video.

This is one of the best videos that I’ve ever done on lag, so make sure you don’t skip any part of this. Follow it step by step, and you’re going to have tons more lag. Let’s get started.

All right, so let’s train this swing, first with the right arm, and then we’re going to carry that over into both arms to make this happen.

So again, this is a drill where you need to stand up, grab a club right now, start working along with these.

You can do these in the comfort of your living room. A lot of the reps for this drill. That way when you get out to the course you’re going to be so much farther ahead.

If you sit and just watch this video and say, OK, that was a cool drill, and then click over to some other video or the next thing that you’re doing on the computer or your phone, you’re not going to get the benefits in this.

So grab a club, let’s get to work right now. It’s pretty dag-gone easy when we do these drills. Doesn’t take much time at all.

First let’s talk about the number one thing here that I see, that really kills people’s lag. That’s when they’re swinging, the body turns off in the downswing.

So my body kind of locks up, my hips don’t open, and now all of a sudden to keep this club moving forward, the only thing I can do is keep my arms kind of pushing the club forward which causes my lag to release back here and to start flipping it and casting at the bottom.

That looks something like this, you’ll kind of see your hips kind of stand up as you’re doing that. Your head backs up away from the ball.

Now all of a sudden I’m just kind of flipping and losing a lot of my lag when I’m doing that. So how do I combat that?

I think that right arm drill is really good for this. I want you to do 10 reps, put your left arm behind your back, grab a club with your right arm.

If you don’t have a golf club, grab any kind of stick. An umbrella, a broom, whatever you’ve got, and let’s practice as we start down, the very first move being I’m going to pivot my entire body so it opens up.

Notice how my right foot starts to come a little bit off the ground. If this heel stays down, it’s tough to open up my body.

If that heel comes up, now all of a sudden it’s easy to open up my body, my hips start facing in front to what we call the Straight-Line Release position. My shoulders also start to open up in front.

So when I’m coming to contact here as I’m doing these swing, you’ll notice how my shoulders are quite open. Very much open to where my shoulders will be pointing over here to the left.

Now that’s a little bit misleading, because what happens is when I add the left arm, my body’s still open, but now look how my shoulders look really square.

It’s this left arm coming across the body that gives it the appearance of being square. In reality, our rib cage, or thorax in PGA Tour players is going to be open 20° to 30° at impact.

That’s exactly what’s going to happen instinctively when I just grab something with my right arm and start to throw it to what I would say is my Straight-Line Release point out in front, or that’s the point where everything is going to be releasing all of its energy.

That Straight-Line Release is something that we talk about a lot in the Top Speed Golf System. In a nutshell what that is, is I’m going to open my hips to where they’re pointing about 45° in front of this golf ball.

My shoulders are going to be pointing there, and my arm and my club are going to be pointing there when this club is fully released.

Everything prior to that, my body gets there first, my arm is lagging behind. I have a big angle with my hands and arms.

Then as I release my hands and arms, they catch up to where my body was. So my body’s opening first, then my hands and arms catch up with that.

Now that’s a big complicated way of saying what goes on in the golf swing. Here’s a simple way of doing that.

Grab a club with your right arm. Swing 10 times, and you’re naturally going to start opening up and releasing that club in front.

I don’t see anybody who grabs a club and swings it one arm that tries to release out in front and doesn’t this. I’ve never seen it happen yet. I don’t see that casting motion happening.

When we just focus on this point, swinging a club with one arm only, our hands and arms and body kind of synch up, and I get that release point happening out there in front of the golf ball, or what would be the golf ball.

So 10 reps with that, opening up the body. Let that right heel come up, then we’re ready to add the next piece to this drill.

Now the next 10 reps we’re going to focus in on what the right arm and elbow are doing. The number one culprit when I’m losing lag is I start my downswing, or when a player starts their downswing, if this right elbow starts to extend and turn out this way.

So if you imagine a laser kind of coming from my elbow, I don’t want that to be pointing behind my body this way as I start that downswing.

That’s going to get that arm casting, that’s going to get you losing all that lag, big cast from the top.

I want to feel like that elbow’s in. The very first move there as I start my downswing, if I have that laser from the elbow, even though this isn’t happening, my elbow’s going to be pointing back here somewhere.

I want to visualize in my mind’s eye, that laser’s pointing to that golf ball. What that’s going to allow me to do again, is to open up my body first, keep that elbow tucked in.

Big angle of lag here, and then release it out in front. So having that visual of just right arm only swings again. Again here nice and soft, nothing fancy here, but just open the body, get that elbow in, that’s going to get that club releasing in front every single time.

Now once we’re comfortable with that, we’ve done those 10 reps, let’s put it all together.

I’m going to have this golf ball here, or imaginary golf ball practice swing here, and I want to have that same sensation. Let’s do 10 more swings where I have that same feeling, but I’m just grabbing the club with both arms now.

You can see how I created a lot of club head speed, and was able to get a lot of lag and release it in front, because I just kept the same sensation I did when I opened my body and threw the club ,and when I led with my elbow to keep that good angle of lag.

You get in the practice reps with this, when you add a golf ball, or when you add both arms, it gets way easier. Now let’s go ahead and take it where we’re going to hit a golf ball.

Now if we get comfortable doing this, we can actually just take our right arm only, make a golf swing, and hit a pretty dag-gone good shot while doing this.

There we go, right down the left side of the fairway. Just right arm only. Let’s see how far that one went from my FlightScope there.

My club head speed obviously isn’t going to be nearly as high, 85 miles an hour. The total distance was 211 after a little bit of roll, carried 190.

So we can see a lot of this power, a lot of the speed in the golf swing comes from that angle of lag and releasing that lag in front.

Now a lot of times you’ll hear coaches say, well we don’t want to use that right arm. We don’t want to have that right arm engaged, we want to take the right arm out of it.

That’s kind of the wrong of getting about it. We want to use the right arm a lot, and what the science shows is as we start our downswing, this right arm is adding speed to our club here.

What we don’t want to do, is use the arm a lot in the wrong way. We don’t want to have that elbow go out, that elbow push this way, our forearm flip.

We want to use that right arm to build speed, but we’re thinking about releasing that speed out in front. So once you’re comfortable with this, now again, let’s grab another golf ball, add the other arm.

The last key to this, to really tying this all in together, is we don’t want to feel like we’re pushing the club at the bottom of the swing.

I want to feel like I’m releasing the club, or letting it go. Again, I talked about earlier that Straight-Line Release, or that point where everything’s releasing in front.

I’m visualizing once I have all this lag, my arm is letting that go, almost like I’m throwing that club, letting it go like we did on the earlier part of this video, that’s sensation that I’m having.

If I can have that sensation, I can add this other arm and still get tons of lag.

So how do we build this? We talked about how to get started here. How to open up the body to release lag in front, to get the elbow working correctly, but how do we really get those long-lasting results?

To be honest, if you take the drills that are in this video, even though these are fantastic drills, they’re going to help to get you started.

You do these drills, it’s not going to solve your lag issues forever. It’s not going to just snap your fingers and now you have perfect lag.

The science has shown that each video, each drill gets you one step closer. So as you go through these drills we did in this video, that’s going to get you started on your way. It’s going to make lag easier.

You’re going to gain a few more degrees in your angle, you’re going to release the club a little bit farther in front.

We need to go ahead and build on that. Go to the Lag section of the Top Speed Golf System. Start at level 1, and work through those drills. That’s the second step, the third step, the fourth step.

Once you start to work through those, at a point in the future, when you’ve done the drills, you’ve worked through level 1, level 2, level 3, the lag becomes automatic.

We don’t even have to think about it. You’ll think back to yourself, and I’ve had students that have done this before, they say man, I can’t remember, I can’t even make myself cast it like I used to. I have tons of lag now, and I can’t really even get rid of it. I can’t imagine that I ever casted the club.

The only way that happens is by working through the system and knocking out those drills systematically.

If we just do one drill and then we don’t think about it anymore, it’ll help, but it won’t get those lasting results.

So do yourself a favor. Make this year the one where you go through the system. You make lag automatic in your swing. Start working through level 1, 2, and 3, knock out those drills.

Then go to the Straight-Line Release section that we talked about there. Get that club releasing in front, and it’s going to make the game so much more fun for you.

I can’t wait to share my lag videos with you, to share those Straight-Line Release drills with you. Let’s go ahead and get started right now.