Why You Need This: Today you'll learn why you "Don't Do Any Indoor Drills Before You Watch This"

Because of the unfortunate circumstances most of us are in these days...

...there's more and more of a need for ways to work on your golf game at home.

But there's a very important key principle that you need to make sure you're aware of...

...or your practice at home can potentially do serious damage to your contact when you get back out on the course.

The good news is that if you follow what I say, I can have you improving your contact...

...even if you can't hit a ball while you're practicing at home!

So I've prepared a special video for you today so you'll be ready to train indoors!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 16:53

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: It’s great to have you here today, and it’s unfortunate the circumstances that we’re all kind of locked indoors, not being able to get out to the course.

If you’re still able to get out to the course, that’s fantastic. But one of the hottest topics right now is how can I practice and do indoor drills to where I actually improve my game. Now there is a secret to this.

If you do these the right way, you get much better. I’m going to walk you through a couple of really key principles that can cause you to destroy your game if you don’t do those right, which I’ve experienced before.

Then some key principles that really help you to play your best golf of all time if you do it the right way.

So let me jump in, there’s a time back when I very first started teaching golf that I worked at an indoor facility, and I spent about a month indoors working on my swing.

At that time, what I worked on was I wanted to get that club perfectly square at the top of the swing. So I want to have this club shaft perfectly square in the swing.

Now there’s two pieces of this. Number one, I wanted to make sure that my right wrist didn’t suck the club back to the inside too early.

Typically what happens, if you look at the angle in my right wrist, you’re going to see that there’s a slight bend in that, and if I increase that bend bringing my knuckles back like this, that’s going to pull the club to the inside as I rotate back.

Now what does you imagine a plane of glass. So if I’m swinging along a plane of glass here, kind of the swing plane, if I pull that club inside, now all of a sudden it kind of tilts that swing plane to where now it’s going this way. I’ve tilted that swing plane inside out.

As I continue to the top, that’s typically going to get me a little across the line at the top of the swing. So the club’s kind of pointing to the right, which I was doing a little bit, and I didn’t like the look of that.

So that’s piece number one, I want to keep this right wrist very neutral. Rotate in the backswing, that keeps me on plane more, and then I would at a good position at the top of the swing.

Piece number two is rotating my elbows to the right, or from my perspective it would be clockwise.

So if you look at my left elbow, if I keep that left elbow pointing down toward the ground like this that club’s going to be across the line, this right elbow kind of flies out a little bit.

If I let that rotate out, so rotate this way, that takes that club and puts it more on plane. So when I put those two things together, right wrist kind of neutral in the takeaway and I rotate that elbow out, that gets me perfectly on plane, really, really good looking position here.

Now I did that for about a month and I’ve got to tell you, it was looking pretty dag-gone good. I was excited to get out and play.

The first round of that year, I was actually going to play with my boss that owned about a chain, of about three or four of these stores I was working at.

He wanted to play, he had dreams of maybe playing on the Senior Tour someday, so to be honest I wanted to beat the pants off this guy.

I was going to be nice about it, but I wanted to show him I’m a really good golfer, gain his respect, and if I could beat him by about seven or eight strokes, that would have made me feel really good.

Well, I went out that day, my swing plane’s looking great, I’d really ingrained that. I make the first swing and just like that one, didn’t quite top it like I did that one, but I hit it incredibly thin.

I hit it terrible, it even sliced off to the right. I’m like what the heck was that? I proceeded to play one of the worst rounds I’ve played in probably five or six years. 10-15 strokes worse than I normally shoot.

I actually skulled a couple of shots over the green which I probably hadn’t done in 10 years and kind of embarrassed myself.

Now he didn’t end up being quite as good as he said he was, so I ended up still beating him by a couple strokes. But by the end of the day, I was pretty embarrassed and I really was disappointed in all this work that I’d put in.

Now the problem with that, is that I went around, I went about that the wrong way of practicing. A few years later, I learned the real secrets on how to practice the right way.

I practiced less than I did that month I was talking about, I just hit a few balls every once in a while, and I went out and played some of my best golf of my life after that, practicing some of the least I’d practiced.

Then ever since then, to be honest, whenever I follow these principles I’m going to talk about in this video, I’ve always hit the ball really well.

Now I may have a little bit of ups and downs, but most people would be thrilled with the way I’ve hit the ball. There’s one principle that you shouldn’t do even one practice swing indoors until you really understand this one principle.

This is a make-or-break principle. What it is, is that anything I do in my swing, I should have that relate to what’s happening at contact.

So if I’m going to be on a better plane in the backswing, that should help me to be delivering the club better through contact.

If it doesn’t then I don’t have a real clear idea of why that’s making me deliver it through contact. I shouldn’t work on that.

So my idea at the time, the false idea, was that I was going to get this club on plane at the top, and then from there, I’d just swing down, and everything would happen. It looks good at the top, it’s all set into motion, all I have to do is make a downswing.

Well, unbeknownst to me, what I had done when I was practicing this that I didn’t notice, was I was losing my posture a little bit.

My hips were coming in, I was raising up like I see tons of golfers doing, and I took that contact point that I was having normally on the center of the sweet spot and it went lower on the face and more toward the heel.

As you guys know, that’s about the dag-gone worst place you can hit a golf ball on the club. You lose 30 or 40 yards, you thin them, you skull them, you may get a few of those weak slices in there. Really, really frustrating.

Well, years later when I kind of stumbled across this secret that I’m about to show you, I started to improve the contact on my face immediately.

I also found out even years after that, there’s tons of motor learning research that backs up exactly what I’m going to teach you.

Here’s the deal. Whenever you hit a golf ball, the only thing that matters is what’s happening to this golf club as it moves through contact.

If it’s moving squarely through contact, if it’s coming down and hitting the ball first, nice ground contact, good, clean divot.

If it’s hitting the center of my face, if I’m swinging with good speed, all of that is happening right when my club face touches the ball, right as I’m moving through contact.

If I do that well, then nobody will hit the ball better than me. So anything, here I can’t reiterate this enough.

Any swing change that you make, any swing that you make indoors, even if you’re doing one swing, it has to relate with how I’m going to improve my contact.

So now let me walk you through a couple of drills that I did when I played my best golf working indoors.

I’m going to go through step-by-step and show you some of the cool things that can get you hitting better right away.

All right, so let’s talk about what I would consider to be the number one contact fundamental which means if I’m going to hit this golf ball, and I’m going to hit it solid, I need to be able to come down and make ball-first contact and then brush the ground in front of that golf ball.

So I’m hitting down, I’m compressing the golf ball, but I’m hitting the ball first. If I hit the ground behind the golf ball, it’s going to be a chunk. If I miss the ground and I and I hit it thin, obviously not going to be very good.

That’s kind of the number one fundamental. I’m going to walk through how I would do that using a mat, and then also some technique things that I would pair up that work hand and hand with improving my contact. It’s really going to make this good.

So you don’t have to have – this is a really nice, this is a Real Feel turf mat, the company’s call Real Feel – it’s about a $500 mat. Really nice mat, super soft, great on your elbows, knees, arms, that kind of thing.

If you want to get one of these that’s great, if not, you can go down the street and get a rolled-up piece of carpet from your neighbor’s that’s remodeling their house and thrown out on the curb.

You roll that over, that’s basically what I was using. I was putting some carpet in this place I was renovating, and just had a rolled-up piece of carpet when I played the best golf of my life, some of the best golf of my life.

I just had that down, I was doing these same drills that I’m going to teach you right now. So what I did, is I started to realize that I can get more fine-tuned with my contact if I vary what I’m doing.

So on the first swing, what I would do is I would try to make a swing and I would try to hit where would be right where – and if you’re doing this on a piece of carpet, or if you’re doing this on a mat, if you pay attention you can see this happening.

I would mark where the golf ball’s going to be, I would take a swing right beside that, and I’m trying to make contact with this ground right where that golf ball is.

So I’m trying to hit the turf right where the golf ball would be sitting. So as I make a practice swing here, I’m going to try to do exactly that. There we go, and that was really good.

I noticed that the first contact of my club, and I can see the bristles, you may not be able to see that on camera, but I can see the bristles here is roughing up this turf just barely in front of this golf ball.

Now if I did that wrong, I might see the turf kind of ruffling up back here behind the golf ball, which looks something more like this. So there I could see the first point that my club started making contact with the ground was back here.

Now a lot of times, I see golfers ground out four or five inches behind the golf ball. Typically what they’ll do, is fall back to the right.

So what ends up happening is, they try to get that behind the golf ball to help lift it up in the air, and instead of getting to the right and shifting through the golf ball with the front foot, they will tend to fall back on the right foot and what to ground out back here.

Usually, if we chunk a couple times, we realize well I’m not doing that any more, the chunk really stinks, I don’t want to do that.

Usually what will end up happening is they’ll miss the ground and come up and hit this golf ball thin. So if you have a really tight lie, you probably struggle if that’s you.

If you find yourself on a tight piece of turf, not very much grass under it, and you really struggle, this is exactly what you’re doing. If you have to tee it up on a little bit of turf to hit it good, this is to a T what’s going on, this will be a great drill for you.

I started to realize with this mat I could see – or a piece of carpet or whatever it is – I could see where I’m hitting the ground.

What I did, was I really worked on my weight shift. As I go to the backswing, I want to feel like my weight transfers to the inside of my right foot.

So I am getting behind this golf ball, I’m loading up getting in a powerful position, and then as I come through, I’m going to feel like my weight shifts to my left foot, I swing all the way through, and I’m perfectly balanced on my left heel.

This is one of the things that’s great about indoor drills. You can take the time to slow down, you’re not worried about hitting that ball anywhere, and you can work on the true fundamentals here.

What I’m trying to do, is I’m trying to contact the ground at the same spot every time, and I’m focusing in on the weight shift of my feet.

Very early in the backswing, here’s the mistake that people make. They wait until way back here to start shifting their weight to the right, that’s too late.

I want to almost have a little shift to the right, and then start my backswing. So even when I’m here in my backswing, I already have pressure all the way up the inside of my right foot.

That gets me loaded up on the right. Then as I’m completing my backswing, I actually shift to the left, I get my weight left and then I’m swinging down.

That puts my body in a position to where I can hit in front of that golf ball every single time. Then finally, I’m going to make sure that I balance on my front foot nice and controlled.

Right foot is all the way rotated around, that ensures that I have club head speed and power, and my left foot, my left heel is where I feel all my weight. Everything all the way rotated around, and I’m just looking at that divot.

Now later on I learned I could fine-tune this even more when I was able to purposely hit a little behind the golf ball, and I would sense OK, I’m falling back a little bit there.

Then I would purposely hit a little too far in front of the golf ball where my first contact is up here, and I would feel like man, I’m really way up here when I do that. Then I would find that perfect sweet spot in the middle to where I can brush the turf every single time.

Now as I work through that, that’s one of the first drills that I did when I worked indoors. Again, rolled up piece of carpet, just a cheapo mat, hitting some foam golf balls like this, went out and played some of the best golf.

I shot in the 60s the first four or five rounds of the year that year. Played awesome, and I wasn’t even practicing very much at all. I was practicing 15 minutes a day.

Now the reason for that was that I’m practicing the right way, and I’m practicing contact.

So if there’s one takeaway from this drill that it’s worth 10 times more than you could pay for a golf lesson, is that contact is what matters and if you’re changing something in your swing, then it should help you to improve your contact.

I’m going to do that by focusing in on one aspect of contact like here we did with ground contact, and getting that perfect amount of in front or behind, and you’ll be surprised just in 15 minutes a day, how much better you can get when you really focus in on this drill like that.

Now here comes the real fun part. I’ve got another video that I’m going to make very soon that’s going to walk you through some of these other variables.

So here we talked about ground contact and just that one tip can help you to play some of your best golf, just by honing in on making that good, ball-first contact. Do it 15 minutes a day right here indoors, and it’s perfect.

You don’t have to have any kind of special ball, foam ball’s fine, if you don’t have a golf ball, used a wadded-up piece of paper.

Now we’re going to build on that, and I’m going to talk about how to control your ball flight, fades and draws, so when you do get back out the course, we’re going to be able to hit those nice fades and nice draws.

I’m going to talk about how you can improve some other pieces of technique and how those relate directly with how well you’re going to hit the golf ball.

I’m going to have some videos like that coming up in the near future. I’m also going to have an awesome course for you which is the 20-Minute Distance Fix.

I’m going to make some special at-home modifications for that. So for those of you who aren’t aware, if you haven’t gone through the 20-Minute Distance Fix yet, it’s a three-week course.

It’s just three times a week for 20 minutes each. You do it for three weeks, so it’s nine total sessions, 20 minutes each.

On average, players have been gaining in our pilot group or sample set of 85 players, gained 13.4 miles per hour in just that three weeks. That’s over 30 yards, it’s closer to 35 yards of increased distance on their best drives.

I get emails every single day, people talking about how much fun they’re having playing golf by doing this.

Now that course usually has two outdoor drills and one indoor drill. I’m going to be making some modifications that I release on the website soon that allows you to do the two outdoor session, also do those indoors.

We’ll tie in some things just like we talked about here today so that when you do that faster swing speed you get back out to the course and you’re actually hitting it straighter.

You’re more in control, your sequencing is better. I’m going to tie-in some specific ways that you can do those drills indoors to play the best golf of your life. Then the one that we have that’s indoors already, is going to be completely fine.

Now one thing that you need with this video course, you need something that allows you to measure your swing speed. That’s something that we didn’t go over here today.

I recommend, there’s a little launch monitor that’s called PRGR Black. It’s very inexpensive compared to the other ones, it is dead-on when it talks about swing speed.

When you make a swing with a club, it tells you when I compare it to my $18,000 launch monitor, it’s within one or two miles an hour of the swing speed.

The ball speed, if you’re lucky enough to have a net or something like that where you can actually hit a golf ball, that’s completely fine, that’s even better. It measures the ball speed within one or two miles an hour which is crazy.

You can hit a drive 170 miles an hour, and it will tell you within 1 mile an hour how fast the ball is going. Then it estimates your overall carry, and it’s pretty dag-gone accurate with that.

If you don’t have anything to measure your golf club swing speed, I recommend getting it now. The reason I say that, very soon it may be tough to get things in the mail.

Depending on how things go throughout the country over the next few weeks, it may be kind of tough to get things in the mail. I would order one now if you don’t have something.

Now if you already have something, there’s probably 15 or 20 other devices that are made, some of them hook on the end of your club, there’s in SC200 which is a great product that I’ve recommended.

The problem with that one is that you have to be able to hit a golf ball if you’re using that. But there’s all these different products.

If you already have something right now where you can make a swing with what you can do to practice at home right now, you don’t need to buy anything else.

Don’t buy the PRGR, you don’t need it, you just need something that’s going to give you feedback for how fast you’re swinging. Because over the next few weeks, we’re going to be able to vastly increase your swing speed.

Just 13 miles an hour, that’s average, I’m hoping that you can get up there 15, 16, 17 miles an hour. The record is 27 miles an hour, so take your current swing speed or your current driving distance, add 80 yards to that, and that’s kind of the record that we’ve had so far.

Not everybody’s going to get there, but it’s a blast going through it. Not only going to increase your swing speed, we’re also going to tune-in on what exactly is happening here at contact, and get it to where you’re swinging faster, but you’re also hitting it as solid as you’ve ever hit it in your entire career.

We’re going over all of that in the next few weeks. So I can’t wait to get started with you, we’re going to have a blast doing these indoor drills. I’ll see you very soon.