Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn about the golf weight shift in crazy detail.

You'll be introduced to the science behind your weight shift and you'll see the weight shift in action from studying long driver Jamie Sadlowski.

Jamie produces a silly amount of power, so it's great to see how he shifts his weight in the swing.

Here are a few topics explored in the video...

• How your weight shifts during the takeaway and backswing,
• When you should start your weight shift to the left, and
• When you should max out your weight shift in the downswing.

The shocking discovery when analyzing powerful swings is how early you need to start your shift.

Watch this video now to discover exactly how big hitters like Jamie Sadlowski shift their weight throughout the swing.

Learn these moves to add tons of power to your swing!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 11:21

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, and welcome back. I’ve got a great video for you. I’m going to go into some really good detail on weight shift. I’ve actually never gone into this kind of detail before.

We’re going to talk about some real science thanks to Dr. Kwan, he has some great footage up on his Facebook page. We’re going to be using an example of Jamie Sadlowski who actually has a really nice weight shift.

Tons of power, I think it’s a good one to use because you can really see the examples of this. We’re going to talk about when you should start shifting your weight to the left.

I bet it’s a lot earlier than you think, and when should we max out our weight shift in the downswing, so that we can really get the club whipping through impact. That’s probably a lot earlier than you think, too.

Everything happens with the weight shift before things happen with the body. So you’ll find pressure and weight shift happening when we measure this scientifically that leads the way and then the body just reacts to that.

The most important thing to realize here is that I’ve got to make a weight shift no matter who we’re talking about, and there’s all kinds of different people say, OK, we’re going to keep our weight on the left the entire time.

Nobody really does that, everybody has pressure into the right side of the ground. Everybody turns their body back to the right by putting pressure into the right foot. Everybody turns their body coming through by putting pressure into their left foot for the majority.

There are different schools of thought, but what I’m talking about here today will be uniform, it will be the overall idea will be the same for every good golfer, or very similar for every good golfer.

If you’re looking at like a Tiger Woods, and Adam Scott, players like that, this is exactly what I’m going to be describing, very similar to what you’ll see with Jamie Sadlowski, just not quit the same amount of force because he’s swinging 140-something miles an hour.

The first thing we’ve got to talk about here, is if I want to get my body to rotate, the only way I can get my body to rotate, if I was floating around in outer space, I wouldn’t really be able to rotate very powerfully because I wouldn’t have anything to press against.

If I want my body to rotate back, I want to get that good Power Turn like we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System. I want to get my hips and my shoulders to turn as I go to the top.

I have to put pressure in the ground with my right foot. If we’re looking at address, I may favor my right foot just slightly at address. But as soon as I’m starting to move, what I’m doing is I’m putting pressure in my right foot.

My weight is shifting into my right foot right off the bat. Before my club ever moves an inch going back, my weight is starting to shift into my right foot and if you can imagine this is a giant clock.

So 12 o’clock is in front of me, 6 o’clock is in the back, 3 o’clock, 9 o’clock. I’m looking down at 12 o’clock right now. I’m putting pressure kind of down and out towards 1:30 on the clock from my perspective, this direction, to get my hips to rotate right off the bat.

Now that’s going to get my hips and my shoulders turning as I talked about. So if we look at this 3D animation of Jamie Sadlowski, that’s exactly what you’re going to see.

Those arrows that you see, those are forces that he’s putting into the ground. The longer the arrow gets, the more force, the more pressure he’s putting into the ground.

The shorter the arrow gets, that means he’s putting less pressure in there. So we’ll notice as soon as he does the takeaway, he’s putting pressure, that arrow in his right foot is getting longer and longer.

Since he’s pushing kind of down and out when we’re looking from this direction, that arrow is coming this direction. It’s actually going kind of behind him.

He’s pushing down and out, the force from the ground is pushing this way and that gets him to rotate his body.

Now as he gets his hands about waist high, that’s actually the end of our backswing weight shift. So it’s pretty crazy to think about that.

It’s happening really soon, but I’ve got to put pressure into my right side very early, as soon as my hand gets about waist high, that’s actually when you’ll start to see the pressure in the right foot get shorter and shorter or less and less in the begging of the weight shift to the left.

Even though for his swing, Jamie Sadlowski, really long swing, goes way past parallel, gets a lot of distance. He’s starting to make his weight shift to the left right here when his hand is there going back.

Then his hand and his clubs go way back, where we don’t to actually do that unless we’re doing long drive, it’s a good idea for maximum distance.

But as soon as my hand gets about right here with all good golfers, in this general vicinity I’m going to start my weight shift to the left. Then from there, I’m completing my backswing.

As I start my downswing, my weight has already been on its way to the left for a while, and then I’m starting to put pressure into my left foot. Just like we did with our right foot, as I put pressure down and out, that caused me to turn my body going back.

As I shift to the left and I start putting pressure down and out with my left foot, so if this is the big cock again, I’m going down and out towards about 10:30 on the clock. That’s going to cause me to rotate going this way.

So in the downswing, you’re going to see that pressure max out, you’re going to see this arrow coming out of my left foot absolute maximum force, somewhere in the general vicinity of when my hands are right around shoulder height in the downswing.

That’s when I’m really wanting to put some pressure down and out, the pressure from the ground back up into me is coming this way. That’s going to be maximum pressure about right around in this area.

That’s about where we talk about the maximum lag position or maximum lab pieces of the swing when you begin your release in the Top Speed Golf System.

Here we’re getting maximum lag, and then as we put pressure in the ground, we’re going to release to that straight-line release point 45° out in front.

We have a lot of lag here, we’re getting that pressure in the ground to let that club whip on through there and then we’re releasing it all 45° in front.

That’s pretty interesting when you’re looking at this graphic because you’ll actually see the lines kind of go crazy. After he gets to down in here somewhere, you’ll see the lines start to crazy, they’ll get shorter and move different directions.

That’s because he’s actually coming off the ground a little bit. Again, it’s kind of an extreme example, he’s putting a lot of pressure into the ground to swing 140-something miles an hour.

But we’re not going to be doing it quite to that extreme, but that’s why you see those lines going a little bit funny there.

So that’s the overall idea wit weight shift. To recap on this, to start the swing very, very important, we have to put pressure down and out with our right foot.

That’s going to be our full shift when we’re about right here. Somewhere around belt high in the backswing we’re going to be completely done with that weight shift to the right.

We’re going to be kind of maxed out and shifting the left, we’re going to be putting maximum pressure into the left foot about right here in the downswing. Then from there, we’re just going to let it rotate all the way on through.

Now the last piece I want to talk about here is what are the angles with both feet. I talked about the major foot is the right foot going back, and the left foot or left leg going through. What about the opposite foot? How do those work together?

If I’m looking from down the line, in the backswing I talked about my right foot is pushing down and out. My left foot is actually pushing kind of down and back a little bit.

So you can imagine if you put your, if you were to twist something, twist a top, twist anything you’re going to twist, one foot’s going one way, the other foot’s going the other way.

When that happens, that’s going to rotate my body. You’ll only see a little bit of pressure with the left foot going back, and then the downswing as my left leg starts to push down and out.

This is pushing my body, having my body rotate open, my right foot is going that way a little bit to help my right side of my body. That’s why there is a little bit of pressure on the right foot, kind of driving you forward.

So you’ll see that arrow from the right foot kind of going that way, the arrow from the left foot going back this way if we’re looking from the down the line view. That’s going to get your body to rotate as you’re coming on through.

If you’re having trouble rotating, think about if you’re feeling any pressure going this way with your right foot.

So I should feel like I’m kind of driving a little bit off my right foot in the downswing, not nearly as much as I should feel like I’m pressing down and out with my left foot as I’m coming into the downswing.

But that’s the overall idea of how ground pressure works. Now, before I leave you here today, let’s talk about some of the big-time problems that I see with players with their weight shift.

One of the things that I’ll see is players trying to keep their weight on their left side the entire time, and then they end up not completing their weight shift.

We talked about earlier how we’ve got to put some pressure into this right foot. We’ve got to push down and out to get that big shoulder turn going back.

Well if I’m trying to keep my weight on my left side, there’s multiple instructional systems out there that try to get you to keep your weight the entire time.

What I have found is most people will do something kind of like this and they won’t quite turn their shoulders the whole way.

They’ll abbreviate their shoulder turn because they hadn’t really put enough pressure into the right foot to turn going back, and then as they start coming down, now they’re like oh, now I really got to get kind of falling back.

They’ll have a hard time getting enough pressure into the left foot unless you’re really thin and athletic to get your body to clear out of the way in the downswing.

So typically, if we try to keep our weight on the left the entire swing, it’ll typically cut off our backswing and this is just my personal experience in what I’ve found.

It will also tend to have us not really accelerating through the ball as quickly as we could, cutting into our distance a little bit. That’s one problem that I see.

Another one would be kind of a reverse pivot. Sometimes people the idea they’re going to keep their head over top of the ball, or they’re going to stay on their left like I mentioned before.

What will happen is their hips will kind of slide this way, the upper body will go that way, and the tough thing with this is, now we need to be putting that pressure on our left leg as I’m starting my downswing.

Well if I have a bit of a reverse pivot, well I’m still trying to get in position where I can do that, and it’s really typically later in the swing to where I get lined up to where I can clear on through the shot.

So when I have a reverse pivot, that’s really going to cut into your distance, and you’re going to have to feel like you’re falling around to get that speed.

That’s why we talk about in the Stable Fluid Spine, how we want to be tilted away, put that pressure on the right foot, put that pressure in the left foot, now we can rotate all the way on around.

Those are a couple mistakes I see. If that sounds like you, the I would really work on some of these drills.

To cap this off, what I would do is let’s do a little mini drill here where I want to feel a little bit of pressure like if I had something under the ball of my right foot, I’m going to press down into that as I start my takeaway.

As I start my downswing, I want to feel like I have something under the ball of my left foot, and I’m going to push down into that to rotate me all the way on around. I want to finish all the way toward the target with my shoulders almost facing in to the left rough.

Do about 20 or 30 reps of those, that’ll get you rotating back and through, and you’re really going to feel like your weight shift is much more powerful. Let’s try it out.

There we go, guys. I’ll show you one of those in slow motion. Best of luck, see you guys soon.