Why You Need This: Today you'll discover why I think "Everyone Can Make a Full Shoulder Turn in Golf"

Did you know that you may be leaving 20, 30, or even as much as 40 yards off of your drives?

Yep, if you're not getting fully "loaded up" with a nice powerful turn on your backswing...

...well, simply put, you're leaving a ton of distance on the table.

Now, before you start telling me about how your joints and muscles just don't allow you to have the flexibility that you once had...

...I want to let you know that I've got a solution for you.

Heck, I've never been a very flexible guy, so I can relate to those issues.

But in today's video, not only am I going to illustrate the significance of a good shoulder turn (watch how much yardage I add).

I'm also going to give you two simple "cheats" that you can use to make sure you can get fully loaded up...

...and stop leaving that extra distance on the table!

I can't wait to see how much distance you're going to add!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 11:08

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Awesome to have you here today. I’m joined with our Director of Online Instruction Quentin Patterson for Top Speed Golf.

Really sharp guy. He has something that’s called Office Hours. Five days a week, Monday through Friday, for an hour he’s on there fielding people’s questions.

So if you’re a member of Top Speed Golf, you can get on every single day, ask questions about your golf swing, ask anything golf related you want to, this is going to be your guy that can help you out.

What’s one of your common ones that you get, kind of as it relates to distance?

Quentin Patterson: Well, a lot of people ask me, they say, “I’m not flexible at all, how in the world am I supposed to get this big, full shoulder turn that you talk about so that I can get some distance?” What do you think about that?

Clay: That’s one of the things that’s one of our five keys is get that Power Turn, really get loaded up. If I’m stiff as a board, maybe I’m getting up a little bit in age.

I get out of my car and I feel like I can barely swing at all, how am I supposed to make this big turn?

Well, first let’s talk about how important is this? What if I don’t make a very big turn, how far am I going to be able to hit it then?

I’m going to set up to this golf ball here, and I’m going to talk very briefly about this, but we’re going to hit on this later.

I’m going to setup with both my feet square to this golf ball, straight ahead like this. I’m going to keep my left heel on the ground in my backswing.

I’m not going to make a very big shoulder turn, and I’m going to try to hit it hard. I’m going to try to hit this ball as far as I can, and let’s go ahead and see what I can do.

I mean I swung hard that that one, actually hit it really good, nice and straight. So it’s not that you can’t hit any good shots doing this, it’s just a lot harder to hit it very far.

So Q, what was the distance on that one?

Quentin: Distance was 258.5, and then the club head speed was 106.2.

Clay: So 106 club head speed, 255, 256?

Quentin: 258.5 was the distance.

Clay: So it’s not that that’s bad distance, it’s just that I have so much more in the tank. What if you’re a player that’s maybe your maxing out at 90 miles an hour swing speed?

Well maybe you have a lot more than 90 in the tank and you just don’t realize it because we’re doing these things incorrectly.

So there, not a very big shoulder turn, 106, 258. If you’re hitting it 220 and swinging 90, it’s the same thing applies here for you.

As you start to swing a little big faster, swing a little bit better, you’re going to see your speed increase also.

So here I’m going to flare out my back foot, again we’re going to talk in a minute why this is really a big key here.

As I go to the top, I’m going to make this big shoulder turn and I’m going to do something with my left here to really make this easier. Let’s see how much farther I can go when I do this the right way.

I actually even mis-hit that one a little bit, it’s down the left side of the fairway, it’ll be fine. Probably not my best swing, but I guarantee you it went a lot farther and I swung a little faster.

Quentin: Yeah, so distance was 293.1.

Clay: Picked up about 40 yards.

Quentin: And the club head was 120.3 on that one.

Clay: So 14 miles an hour and about 40 yards more distance by doing these two tricks that we’re going to talk about. The first one is one that I’m going to go over, and it’s to do with your left heel.

Now when I’m trying to make this big shoulder turn, whenever I’m rotating my shoulders in the backswing, if I keep my left heel firmly on the ground, I don’t lift my left heel at all, that’s going to limit how much my hips turn.

So if my left heel’s on the ground and I rotate my hips, that’s about as far as I can go. I can barely get to 45°. If you’re one of these players that tight, you’re not even going to be able to get to here.

Now when I rotate my shoulders with my heel on the ground, that’s about as far as I can go. I really feel tight through my midsection here, and I’m locked up.

Well I need to loosen up these hips. When my hips loosen up, now my shoulders loosen up and they can turn more.

In that first example, left heel on the ground, hips are turning maybe 45°, shoulders are turning right at 90° but I’m super stretched out. What happens when I lift my left heel just slightly now?

As that rotates, that loosens up my left hip. I can now turn my hips a little bit more, and now I can turn my shoulders a little bit more also.

So I’m getting an extra 10° or 15° more rotation. I don’t feel any tighter, that’s the big key here. A lot of times when players think they need to turn more, they think I’m asking them to stretch more.

I’m not asking you to stretch any more, you shouldn’t even feel that tight at the top of the backswing, you should feel fairly relaxed, but you have to move your hips and your feet in a way to make that easier.

I feel completely relaxed here, whereas if I put my heel on the ground, I feel really tight there. So it’s going to loosen you up.

So that’s piece number one, when you’re looking at that left heel, I’m not talking about lifting it up like this, I’m just talking about barely letting that come off the ground. That loosens the hips which gets the bigger shoulder.

We were talking about this earlier and you had a really good tip also for this. What do you recommend people do?

Quentin: Yeah, so I really like the heel coming off the ground, because that loosens up the hips, that’s one of the biggest issues for getting a big shoulder turn is just the hips not turning enough.

Another reason why you may not be turning the hips enough is because of the internal rotation of your legs here.

If I were to lift up my leg and try to turn my leg in as much as I can, you can I am actually fairly limited here. I can only turn my leg in about 20°.

So when I’m turning in the backswing, my leg is internally rotating. If I have a limitation there, I’m going to have a hard time turning my hips enough.

One thing that you can do is turn that foot out. Clay talked about that earlier when he hit the shots is that he turned this trail heel out. Now what that does, is that eases up on that internal rotation.

Now a lot of people ask me, how much can I turn my foot out? Now you can do as much as 45°. If you do more than that, you might be kind of falling forward a bit in your backswing. You’re going to lose you balance a little bit.

But to know how much you should? For myself, like I said before, I can only turn my leg in about 20°. You can stand up at home right now and just stand up and try to turn your leg in, see how much you’re turning that in.

The average hip turn on tour is about 50°, that’s typically where I like to see people turning their hips to. For me, since I can only internally rotate my leg about 20°, for me it would be good to turn my foot out 30°.

So 50° where I want to get to, minus 20° which is how much I can internally rotate my leg, that gives me 30°. When I set up, I want to angle this out 30° so that way I get that freedom of range of motion there.

So you show me, how much can you turn your leg in?

Clay: If I lift my foot up, I can go probably closer to 45° there.

Quentin: So you do a little better than me.

Clay: I have a little more internal hip…Basically what that means is my femur attaches to my hip socket up here, as I’m rotating my foot in, what’s happening is I’m turning my femur in from my hip socket.

This is the exact same thing as the golf swing. A lot of people don’t think about this way.

Quentin: Right.

Clay: If I have my foot straight forward, and my hips are straight forward, if I keep my foot pointing this way toward the camera, and I rotate my hips 45°, I have taken my femur, the ball socket there, and rotate it like this.

That’s the top of my backswing position. If my feet are square, and I’m like Q and I really struggle doing that, he’s only going to be able to get about 20° if hip turn without his right hip feeling like it’s on fire, it’s really tight.

So we’ve got to have that little cheat to turn the foot out. Now for me personally, I agree with you.

I like to have it a little bit flared out, even though I can rotate in 45°, I still like to turn it out maybe a good 10-15° just because it feels even better.

Now I feel like I can really rotate to the top, and I have no problem at all. So that’s one of the best drills and probably something you’re not going to hear very often.

Now let me go ahead and go through this, and let’s actually talk about a real drill we can do to ingrain this. It’s all one thing to say hey, these are good ideas, let’s talk about how to get this to feel natural for you.

So what I would do here, let’s start out with setting up with the club across your shoulders. Instead of having those feet forward, I’m going to go ahead and flare my toes out a little bit.

This is what feels normal to me, this feels comfortable. I’m probably about 20° flared out. Now if you’re really limited in your right hip, you’re going to want to go ahead and make that up to 45° flared out.

That way when you turn your hips, now all of a sudden, your femur and your hips are going the same direction. You’re basically just standing like this at the top of your swing to where your foot’s forward.

So I’m going to flare out my foot, I like to flare out both of them a little bit. That feels a little more comfortable to me.

As you go to the top, again, with this club across your shoulders, I want to go ahead and let that left heel come about an inch off the ground.

I’m not going crazy with it, just a little bit is enough to loosen up my hips. Well, between my left heel and my right foot, now my hips are really rotating, very easy to make that big turn, and when I rotate my shoulders, now I can get past 90°, really, really easily.

If you do this yourself, I have not seen anybody, I’ve had people with fusions in their back, fusing five vertebrae together.

Everybody I’ve ever tested can get a 90° shoulder turn. I’ve never had one person that couldn’t get at least to here when they use the lower body correctly.

Unless your thoracic spine is fused, you’re going to be completely fine doing this. Now we’re going to do about 30 reps just with the club across the shoulders.

So work on those same things in the backswing, there’s the big turn, and then here’s the key. Finish that Power Turn, come all the way around.

If I make this great big turn, and then I just kind of fall into impact and don’t have any power, I’m not going to hit it very far.

I want to go ahead and finish that all the way to where my right toe is barely touching the ground, my hips have rotated around, and again, the same thing. It comes down to your feet.

If my left foot opens up and my right foot swivels around, I can get this good, full finish. If I keep my feet facing forward like this, I can’t finish my swing, it’s impossible, there’s just no way to do it.

You have to let the feet rotate all the way to that good, full finish too, and make sure you get that right shoulder going as far down the fairway as you can.

Again, if you’re not very flexible, that may not go as far as other players, just get as good as you can. 30 reps of the club across your shoulders, another 30 reps practicing the same thing without a golf ball.

Big turn back, and then big turn all the way on through. Then you’re ready to hit the golf ball. I’m telling you, you’re going to add some serious power when you start doing these drills.

Now what we talked about here today is what I call the Power Turn. That’s one of the fived fundamentals in the Top Speed Golf System.

The reason they’re the five fundamentals is because they matter, and they matter a lot. If you’re going to hit it hard, and you’re going to be a really good golfer, you need to have a good turn, a good Power Turn.

That’s why all the pros are making that good turn. Now if you want to ingrain that, again, I can’t harp on this enough.

If you want to jump out of your car and make the very first swing of the day be a good one, you want to have that great turn, you want to see that ball just fly down the driving range as you’re warming up on your very first swing, you need to ingrain these motions.

The only way to do that is by working through a system. So go to the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Power Turn, start v=working on video number 1, level 1, video 1.

Add that to what we worked on here today. As you work through those videos, and work through level two and level three, it’s going to become completely natural.

That way you just out of the car, you make your very first swing of the day, and your buddies look over and they’re like, “Dang, he hammered that one. That was pretty good.”

That’s the feeling you want to have. Let’s go ahead and make that happen. Let’s jump in the Power Turn, let’s start ingraining it right now. I’ll see you there.