Why You Need This: In today's video, I'm going to demonstrate the "Easiest Swing in Golf for Senior Players"

Have you lost some of the flexibility that you once had?

Maybe you've just never been a very flexible person.

Today, I'm going to show you ways to test yourself to see if you're getting the right amount of flex to unlock all your potential distance.

And the good news.......

Even if you're not the most flexible person in the world, I'm going to show you some "cheats" that will add the flex necessary to start booming your shots!

Watch me demonstrate how these simple changes can add 30 to 40 yards of distance.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 16:30

Video Transcription:

Now I have got a fantastic video for you. A lot of videos you’re going to see are just going to give you tips and recommendations, but they’re not going to test if you’re actually able to do that.

As we get a little bit up in age, maybe we don’t have the range of motion, the flexibly that we once had. Let’s put that to the test.

Let’s see what your range of motion is, and then build a swing for you that’s going to fit that range of motion.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so piece number one, we have to rotate in the backswing. We talk about in the Top Speed Golf System the Power Turn, which basically means if I take a club and put it across my shoulders, I want to load up my hips, and my shoulders, and my body.

Get a good shoulder turn in the backswing, and then the downswing I want to go ahead and rotate all the way around to a good, full finish.

That’s great. Everybody would love to do that. We’d all love to look like Justin Thomas, or Adam Scott, but can we physically do this with our body?

I’ve got a great test for you and a cheat that’s going to make this easier if you fail the test.

So let’s put this club across our shoulders again. The club’s going to go on the tips of the shoulders here, kind of on the edges. Then put your fingertips across there and hold this club in place.

I want the grip side of the club pointing out from my left shoulder. Now here this would be rotating level with the ground.

We’re going to go ahead and hinge down in our posture, so that as we rotate, I want this club pointing somewhere from the golf ball to a little bit outside the golf ball.

I’ve put this orange stick on the ground to kind of give me a zone of where I want the tip of this club to be pointing if I do this correctly.

Now what I want you to do is keep your heel firmly planted against the ground. Don’t lift that heel at all. As you rotate to the top of your swing, go as far as you can with that heel still on the ground.

To do this, if you can let that right leg straighten up a bit, that’s going to help to rotate the hips. You want to feel like your weight shifts a little bit to the right as that’s happening.

Go as far as you can go without lifting that heel off the ground. Now if you’re in say the first half of this stick, that would be kind of the OK zone, not the best, but I would probably like to get a little bit more.

If you’re over here on this half of the stick or farther back, that’s fantastic, you’re doing great. You don’t have to do anything else.

What that’s telling me is that if I can keep my heel on the ground, and get all the way back over here, then I can really make a good Power Turn, a good full swing without having to make any adjustments.

If I’m here and I’m short of the golf ball, absolutely 100 percent you’re going to have to make some adjustments here.

If I’m in the middle, or in the front back here, I want to go ahead and lift that heel up to go a little farther.

So repeat this drill again, again hinge forward, don’t lift that heel at all. Now from here, go as far as you can and then lift your left heel a little bit, and you’ll notice how you can get another 15° to 20°.

We’re going to test our self, see what zone we can get into, and ideally I’d like for us to get with lifting that heel, get somewhere back here in this zone. At least two feet behind this golf ball if that’s possible.

Now for some players, that may need to be even more exaggerated. Maybe I need to lift the heel like Jack Nicklaus or Johnny Miller to make that happen.

Those guys are pretty good, that’s a pretty good swing. They won some Major championships with that swing.

Nothing wrong with having to lift that much, that’s just going to help you to work with your own range of motion.

Now let’s put this to the test. I’ve got my FlightScope out here, let me try one without a heel lift, and with heel lift, and let’s see how much distance there is between those two swings.

OK, swing number one, we’re going to go heel down, it’s going to limit my shoulder turn a little bit, let’s see what kind of club head speed we get.

Hey, not bad. Hit that one right down the left-center of the fairway. Hit that pretty solid. Should be a nice shot. This would be a great test.

Now we’ll go swing number two, I’m going to lift that left heel up, see what kind of club head speed we can get on this one. There we go, just down the left edge of the fairway.

So those would be a great test, because those were hit fairly similarly.

Now swing number one, I’ve got 112.8 miles an hour. Not bad, 272 total distance. Not my best drive ever, but definitely not a bad drive.

Swing number two I got 118, so six miles an hour faster, and 292. So you can see, no matter if you’re swinging 70 miles an hour, lifting that heel may get you to 78.

If I’m swinging 150 miles an hour, it may get me to 158, so it really doesn’t matter how fast you’re swinging, these same principles help you to get more speed.

Let’s take it to the next piece that’s going to make your swing a lot easier. All right, piece number two how high should I left my arms?

Again, if we don’t test this, we don’t really know if we’re even able to do this. A lot ofplayers will have shoulder problems, and a very simple test you can do is stand, straight up and down, keep your chest facing forward.

I don’t want to lean back like this, keep my shirt buttons level with the ground. I’m going to take my arms, shoulder width apart, put my thumbs up toward the sky. If there’s a wall behind me, I’m going to try to put my thumbs into that wall.

Now you can see I can lift my hands fairly high. Some guys can go even behind their back when they’re doing that, I’m not that flexible.

But if you have a shoulder injury, you may only be able to get to here, and your shoulders kind of lock up. Maybe you’ll have one arm that goes way up, and the other arm doesn’t.

If either arm can’t get above your shoulders, then you’re not going to be able to have a high backswing, because if I rotate in the golf swing when I’m doing that, that’s as far back as I can go.

If I can get about 30°, 45° above my shoulders, that is plenty high. I can go as high as I want in the golf swing, no problem at all.

So do that test, and if you can’t get your arms to elevate above your shoulders, don’t worry about swinging high with your arms. It’s not going to be something that you’re able to do.

One little quick tip, if you do fail that test. Take a tennis ball, don’t do a golf ball, it’d be too hard. But take a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball, and what you’ll do is you’ll lay flat on the ground, and you’ll rub out, roll that ball on your back that’s going to push into these muscles, it’s going to loosen those up.

Josh, that is our co-founder of Top Speed Golf, he had the same issue. Couldn’t lift his arms above his shoulders.

He’d take a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, roll his back out, you go up and down and kind of loosen up that tissue and the muscle, and he was able to get his arms going from here all the way up well over his head now, and can now have his arms higher and picked up a little bit of swing speed doing that.

There is a solution, but it does take a little time and effort. Let’s see what kind of a difference that makes.

Again, I’m going to make two swings. I have my FlightScope running, should be ready to go. All right, swing number one I’m going to keep my hands fairly low and not go very far back with my hands.

All right, hit a nice, solid shot, right down the middle. Again, it’s not saying that you can’t good shots taking a shorter swing, just saying you’re not going to have as more of a free-flowing effortless swing.

You’re going to have to work hard for that distance with a shorter swing. So let’s take a look at that one compared to this next swing, where I’m going to go ahead and get those arms going well back higher feeling like my arms move up like they’re kind of going up toward the sky as I’m at my backswing.

Let’s see what happens with the club head speed there. There we go, right down the middle of the fairway. Let’s compare those two. So number one, again I hit that well, but I had to work for my distance there. Let’s see what the first one was.

On my lower arm shot, club head speed was 107.1, so I definitely dropped off some club head speed, and dead solid, carried it 259, total 267.

The second swing, I put out the same amount of effort and energy, I didn’t swing any harder when my arms went higher, I actually swung nice, and fluid, and easy.

I went from 107 to 119.3, my carry distance went to 294 and 304 for the total.

So in those two swings, I went from, let’s see here, 267 to 304. That’s a pretty dag-gone big difference there. We’re talking what would that be, 37 yards or so? So nothing to sneeze at.

Do that test. If you can’t get your arms high, work on loosening up your muscles in your back so that you can. If you have a shoulder injury it may not be possible.

If you can get your arms high, just feel like those arms come up towards the sky there, make that big, free-flowing arc, you’re going to get some easy speed.

All right, so the next one is a big one, and we’re going to test our internal and external hip rotation, specifically in this left hip in the golf swing.

When you take your leg, keep it straight and pull it forward in front of your body here. Now what I’m doing is I’m keeping my pelvis, or my hips facing straight ahead.

I don’t want to do this when I’m doing that test and move my hips. My hips are staying straight ahead, my belt buckle’s staying straight ahead.

I just lift my foot into the air and I’m going to internally rotate my left foot as much as I can. Then I’m going to externally rotate my foot.

Now what that’s telling me is in the golf swing, if you look at this foot compared to my hips, as I rotate my hips into the follow through, what that foot is doing is it’s turning inward in relationship to my hips.

That foot as it’s coming on through is rotating in. If I do it from this angle, that foot is rotating in this way. Now you can see how my left hip is going this way, my foot is in.

Now that’s a big problem if you try to keep your foot still on the ground, and I try to finish my swing.

So if I keep my foot planted forward and I barely can rotate through the shot, my hips can’t open, now I’m going to end up doing something like this and cutting off my swing.

How many times do you see players that look like they’ve lost a little bit of range of motion, and they end up doing one of these type swings where their hip just folds down and they don’t really finish their swing.

Versus, you watch everybody on Tour and all of a sudden they’re getting these long, free-flowing swings, hips rotate all the way around.

If you fail this test, if your hip can’t turn at least 45° inward, you can’t have your foot square. You can do one of two things.

Everybody on the PGA Tour basically does it this way. When they come down, their heel lifts up off the ground, their foot swivels open and they finish with their foot more open.

On average on the PGA Tour, I’ve measured this. The foot may start square, on average players end up with their foot 45° to 60° open in the follow through.

I don’t see anybody, not a single person that I’ve measured, and I’ve measured almost a hundred different players when I’m looking on slow-motion footage, nobody keeps their foot perfectly square like that in the follow through, where it doesn’t rotate at all.

If they do keep their foot facing forward some, you may somebody like Jordan Spieth that does that. He’s trying to not move his foot, and he just rolls it. Probably not the best thing to do for your ankle.

If you fail the internal rotation test, if you fail this little test we did, what you have to do, and there’s really just no way around it, either open that foot up during the swing which I find some players struggle to do. Or, open that foot up about 45° at the start.

Let that foot face forward, now I can rotate all the way to here, to where my hip and my foot are lined up straight and just rotate a little bit more to my full finish. That makes it way easier for you to rotate through the shot.

Again, let’s try that out. I’m going to keep my feet square. I’m going to hit this golf ball, and when I finish my swing, my foot is not going to rotate open at all. This is definitely not how I normally swing, we’re going to show you how this just kills your distance.

Now I hit that dead solid. That’s about as good as I could ever hit one doing it that way. If that doesn’t have good numbers, I’m never going to get to good numbers, because that thing was really nicely hit.

My swing speed was 105.6, and my total distance was 258, so again, I just hit one 304, I know I have a lot more in the bag.

Now let’s do it the other way. I’m going to open up my foot and as I finish, I’m going to let my body rotate all the way on around to where my hips and everything are letting the momentum of my body go toward the target.

Now if I test this one out, again, we know what’s going to happen here, but I’ll go ahead and swing another one just to prove a point.

There we go, even on a mis-hit, not even as good. A little bit thin on the face, my swing speed went way up, I know I could just hear the sound of the ball coming off the face.

My total distance went up to 284. So even on a mis-hit, 30 yards farther. Club head speed went up to 117, so 10 miles an hour or so faster there.

Do that test. Again, if you can’t rotate your foot in, you can either lift your foot and let it rotate during the swing, or you can start with it rotated open. I find everybody does better or most players do better if they start with the foot open.

Maybe you don’t like the way it looks, but you’re going to like the way it feels when you hit the fairway.

Now finally we’re going to test something that I rarely see people test, and that’s your rotation from your neck, or your cervical spine, how much can I rotate to the right and to the left as I’m going through here.

I want you to go ahead, if you can set up against a wall with your shoulders against a wall. Keep your shoulders nice and steady and level. Don’t move your shoulders around very much.

Then I want to keep my chin or head up high, and I’m going to rotate to the left as far as I can.

Now if I’m going this way, I’m going to rotate down, let’s imagine I’m hitting it towards you. I want to let my chin get all the way over my shoulder.

A lot of times players can only rotate to here, maybe they have a little bit of stiffness in their neck, and they can’t rotate on through. What does that matter?

In the backswing, in order to be able to see this golf ball and make a big shoulder turn, I have to let my chin come over my shoulder. You can see how my chin is over my shoulder now.

If I can’t get that kind of rotation, what’s going to end up happening is my neck locks up here, and I’m going to have to turn my head away from the ball a little bit. Or, I’m going to say OK, I don’t want to do that, and I’m just going to shorten up my swing.

Either way, I’m killing my distance. So do the test. If for any reason you have trouble rotating your neck to the left, again, do a little therapy. Get with a physical trainer, physical therapist.

Work to loosen up the neck a little bit so you can rotate more easily. But if you can’t do that, a little cheat here is that if I let just my left eye look at the ball, focus in on your head turning, but don’t worry if your chin turns away a little bit.

If you happen to barely lose a little sight of the golf ball, I would rather you do that and make a bigger turn, and be able to see it with just my left eye, than I would to shorten that turn, make a compact swing, and not swing through it.

Because you’re going to lose 30 or 40 yards when you do that, that’s just what we tested. So make sure you go through that test.

If you can’t get the full range, do some exercises to get the full range, but then make sure you go ahead and let your head swivel a little bit and just look at the golf ball with your left eye.

To prove that, and we’ve seen great players do this. Even look at Jack Nicklaus, he kind of set up that way a little bit with his golf swing.

But I want to prove to you that you can hit some great golf shots doing this. Let’s go ahead and make a swing here, and I’m going to let my head pivot a little bit and just look at the golf ball with my left eye as I go on the backswing.

So watch my head on this one, and you’re going to see how it rotates a little bit which is completely fine. I hit that one right down the middle, one of the best ones.

My head swiveled a little bit, it’s not the end of the world. Is it the best thing to do? Probably not, but it’s better to hit it 30 yards farther and let your head swivel, than to go 30 yards shorter and try to keep your head still. So 116, 293 total distance there.

Follow those tests. One thing that really kind of drives me nuts is when we’re trying to work on our swing, but nobody ever takes the time to test you and see if you can actually perform these motions.

Can you rotate your body, can you lift your arms to get the swing that works best for you.

OK, so with all these drills, let’s talk about what are we really trying to do here. This is all Power Turn drills. Every one of these is an effort to get the hips, that’s the heel lift, the shoulders, also the heel lift and the big turn going back.

The eyes are helping me to get a bigger turn coming back, and then when I finish coming through, that was the external rotation of the heel or my internal rotation of my femur, testing that to see if I can come all the way on through.

All these are, are tests to see if you can do the Power Turn and make it easier, and easier for yourself to swing that way.

Now that’s great. Now that we’ve tested our self, let’s jump over into the Power Turn section. Let’s work through level 1, level 2, level 3, so that this becomes completely natural and we don’t have to think about it anymore.

We just set up and make a swing, and we always get that great Power Turn, and start hitting the ball with tons and tons of distance and speed.

Let’s go ahead and get started. I can’t wait to share with you the great drills I have in the Power Turn. Let’s work through those together, let’s start right now.