Why You Need This: You want a better golf swing right?

We all do!

Are you going to see an instructor?

Are you going to catch some quick tip videos?

Have you noticed that when you practice to make your swing look better on camera, it actually installs distance killing habits?

If you’re looking to keep your distance and gain even more, this video on "How Golf Lessons Kill Your Distance" is for you.

We have the golf swing and your total game broken down to the 5 Real Fundamentals in the Top Speed Golf System.

In this video I’ll cover how modern instruction has been leaving you with a camera quality swing, but killing your distance, and your overall game, while improving key Real Fundamentals!

Start having real control of your game. Be able to hit any shot in golf!

Let's get started...

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 15:30

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, great to have you here today. I’ve got a couple questions for you. Now I know everybody wants a beautiful swing. We’d all like to have our swing look really good on camera.

What if I gave you three tips that could help your swing look really nice on camera, you could break it down in slow motion, but as a result you’re going to hit 30, 20-30 yards shorter.

I have a feeling you’re probably not going to want to do that. How would you like to sit in your living room making practice swing after practice swing?

Looking in the mirror, checking your swing, working really hard, going to the range, trying to hit positions that look really nice on camera, but then you go out to the course and you actually play worse than you did before.

Well, I think we all would agree that we don’t want to have those things happen. Now that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video.

I think modern instruction is going that way. A lot of coaches out there are trying to make your swing look beautiful on camera.

In the meantime, they’re killing your distance and you’re not actually hitting the ball any straighter or any more solid.

I’m going to talk about three of these big myths out there, three of these tips that you may have heard before, how to avoid those and then the correct thing to do to play your best golf.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

OK, so piece number one. One of the things that I see that’s really killing people’s distance, it makes it looks nice on camera, is the idea of the short, compact swing, keeping in front of this.

Man, that sounds good. When I hear about somebody talking about a short, compact swing I think, man, that’s good. I would like to have that.

Well the problem is, in order to create speed in the golf swing, we have to get a little bit more space and have a longer swing, especially, and this is a big key, especially if you’re not very flexible.

If you’re not very flexible you need to be doing everything you can to make your swing longer, looser, more free-flowing so you can get easier power.

If you’re already tight and you’re trying to constrict that even more, you’re going to really miss out on some distance.

Let me talk about a couple of keys here that would be pretty important when you’re doing this short, compact swing, and why we don’t want to do those.

So one of the things that’s very popular over the years, has been to keep this left heel down. Now, some players can do this.

If you take extremely flexible players, Adam Scott’s like Gumby, Tiger Woods, extremely flexible.

If you can put your hands and put your knuckles into the ground without bending your legs, you may be the kind of person that could keep that left foot down and still make a full backswing and get some pretty good power.

If you’re anything like me, I don’t have that kind of flexibility. I’ve got to stay pretty loose, let that left heel lift a little bit so that I make sure I get a little bit more of a turn.

Another thing is, making sure that our head stays very still and stable on the ball. So when we do the first piece, if I keep my heel on the ground, I can go to about right here and I start to feel pretty tight.

If I stay very laser-focused on the ball, I don’t want my head to move at all and to stay very, very still, that’s going to also shorten up my swing.

Look where my hands and my club are going there. That’s not very far back. So me not being the most flexible person in the world, that’s going to kill my distance.

Let me go ahead and keep my left foot on the ground, I’m going to keep my head stable, and I’m going to have that idea that I’m going to make this short, compact, tight golf swing, that in theory is supposed to help  be more accurate, and more consistent, and just overall better golfer.

Let me go ahead and hit one on my FlightScope, and let it see what it says as far as my club head speed and my distance. I hit that one dead solid, right down the middle. Couldn’t really have hit one any better.

Maybe it’s up in the air as far as could I be a little bit more consistent? Could I be a little bit more solid if I struck it that way? Maybe, maybe not. But my distance is going to fall off the map.

That’s actually the way I used to swing. I always tried to keep my left heel down. I saw some guys on tour keeping their left heel down, I heard coaches promoting to keep the left heel down.

Back in college, even on the mini tours, I swung about 112 miles an hour, 111-12 miles an hour, that was pretty much my full swing.

That’s exactly what I got here, I got 111.2 miles per hour. I hit that ball pretty solid, a little bit off the heel, maybe. 257 carry, 278 total distance. Pretty good, nice solid straight shot, just down the left center.

Most players would think that’s just all I’ve got. If I’m trying to keep my left heel firmly on the ground, I’m trying to keep my head steady, I’m trying to have that short, compact swing.

I’ve always thought of my swing as being short and compact, because I bought into the idea that that’s going to make it more consistent. But then it just sucks away all your distance.

All of a sudden you lose 20-30 yards off the tee. So that’s the first myth number one. I actually found that once I started to loosen up my swing, because I’m a little bit more on the tight side, that actually got me a little bit easier distance.

Now when I swing nice and easy, I’m actually a little bit more accurate, or decently more accurate than I was when I was short and tight, but I have another 20 yards because my swing feels a little bit easier.

If I really want to go after one, I’m 30 yards longer than I used to be, if I try to really get after it. That helps for par 5s trying to get there in 2.

The next thing that I want to talk about is having that shorter swing, so basically being where I’m going to go ahead and take a shorter not ever go back parallel.

The way that I always used to play was I never wanted to see my driver farther than that, and I thought the shorter my backswing with my driver, the more accurate I’d be.

Again, I would feel like I was still swinging pretty hard, and not really getting over 111, 112. For you guys, depending on where you are, maybe that’s 120 for you as your nice, compact easy swing, if you’re super athletic.

Maybe if you’re not quite as athletic, you’re getting up a little bit in age, maybe your short more compact swing is 90 miles per hour.

So it doesn’t really matter what your current speed is, if I’m a little bit shorter, I’m going to feel like I have to put out more effort at the top of the swing and I’m going to get lower speed.

If you look at that short, compact swing again, the one that I just did, that’s exactly what you’re going to see. The club doesn’t get to parallel.

The third piece here and the one I think is actually probably most important, is you have to swing hard at the ball, especially when we’re practicing.

If you look at the guys that are really ripping it out there, your Rory McIlroys, your Dustin Johnsons, those guys are really taking an aggressive swing at that ball.

Now if you practice on the range, swinging 100 percent as fast as you can swing, what’s going to happen is your maximum speed is going to start to go up and up.

When you start to relax this left heel and make a bigger turn, and let that club go a little farther back to parallel, or past parallel, there’s probably been more major champions that swing past parallel the last 100 years than there has been ones that swing short of parallel.

What’s going to happen is, your maximum speed is going to start to go up, and up, and up.

Then when I back off of that a little bit, let’s say when I want to actually play on the course, if I swing it 90 percent or 95 percent which is what the pros are swinging at, they’re not a hundred percent.

Even when I back off of it, that’s going to be higher than my normal playing speed. So if I practice this on the range and I try to go for speed, I start t learn where I can generate speed and how to generate speed, and I can get more playable speed from that too.

So now let’s go over these three concepts, let’s go one by one here. I’m going to lead you through a specific practice plan.

Don’t sit here and just watch this video if you’re sitting at your desk, stand up. Grab a club, if you don’t have a club just mimic these swings and wait until you get to the range and hit some balls trying these same things.

We’ve got to stand up and do these. If we just listen to them, you’re not going to be any longer, you’re not going to play any better. Number one, let’s talk about that left heel. Here’s what I want you to do.

The first thing I want you to do is go ahead and let that left heel lift, and what we’ll see is I can get to about right here with that left heel firmly into the ground.

If I loosen that heel up a little bit, I’m going to notice I can go another 10°-15° with my shoulders. If this is my shoulders, there’s the left heel firm on the ground. As I loosen that up, I get a little bit extra.

I want to let my hips go ahead and rotate, too. I want to let my arms go as high as I can. As I let that left heel loosen up a little bit, that can happen and I can get that good club head speed doing that.

Here’s what I want you to do. 10 swings, let that left heel lift a couple inches off the ground. Then try to swing for maximum club head speed.

Let’s do 10 swings, I’m just going to do two here to show you want this would look like. Lifting that left heel, big shoulder turn, and I’m going to swing as hard as I can.

Once I’ve done 10 and I get kind of familiar with how that would feel, now I want to try to do that same thing hitting a golf ball.

Now at first this golf ball may go anywhere. I may hit it out of bounds, I may top one, I don’t care, I’m looking for maximum speed.

So we start out around 111, let’s try now and make sure radar is ready, let’s try out now I’m going to see if I can get at least 115.

I’m lifting that left heel, instead of having that short, compact swing, I’m thinking about my hands going really far back. Think Davis Love, think Bubba Watson.

Think all these great players throughout time. Jack Nicklaus, long, free-flowing swing. Let’s see what that does when I try to give it a good rip for maximum speed. Again, not worrying where this ball goes.

There we go, I actually hit that straighter than the one that I did before, and I would bet, I haven’t looked at my radar yet, but I would bet $100,000 that that was more club head speed.

Let’s see what it spits out here. 121.3. 10 miles an hour more club head speed. The ball went straighter. It carried what the last one rolled out to, and I picked up about 20 years.

That was just over 300 yards, and I got about a 5 mile an hour wind into my face. I’m really happy with that.

Again, 10 swings, practice swings, lifting the left here one to two inches, letting the arms go as long as you can, and then finally, the final piece on that, that I go 90 or 80 percent swing speed, no I want 100 percent.

I’m actually going to take that as a challenge to see if I can beat that 120. I want to see if I can get 121, 122 to really break that.

So I’m at 121.3. I’m going to do everything within my power to get to at least 122 miles an hour here. If my swing gets a little loose, maybe my club goes past parallel, which we’ll get to here in a second.

I’m not worried about it. I’m just talking maximum swing speed and I don’t care where this golf ball goes. There we go. I felt like I swung a little harder, let’s go ahead and see what the radar says here.

Again, right down the pipe. What you guys are going to find is if you put out a lot of effort, you actually have a little bit more control.

Maybe the first few go kind of crazy, but once you get the feeling for the timing of it, it’s actually just as consistent as your more controlled swing, it just goes a heck of a lot farther.

Oh, 121.7, so I only picked up about a half a mile an hour of club head speed. Didn’t hit it quite as solid, a little off the toe, but again, 286, not too bad.

Now let’s go ahead and try to get one a little past parallel. So this is the big one when we start thinking about these short, compact swings.

I don’t mind if your swing is short as far as the club, as long as you’re making a good turn going back, as long as you’re doing the other things correctly.

What I’ve found, since so many players struggle to get the maximum distance that they can, what I’ve found is let’s go ahead and get it a little bit longer.

I think what you’ll see, you’ll pick up a few miles an hour club head speed, but in reality, it’s going to go about as straight as it did before.

On this one, I’m going to go ahead, again, 10 practice swings. I’m combining lifting that left heel, getting that high hand path, and I’m going to go ahead and let that club get a little past parallel.

Again, does it look perfect on camera? No, it doesn’t look perfect on camera. Does that matter? Not if you’re hitting it 20 yards father and it’s still in the middle of the fairway.

I would much rather be 20 yards in front of my buddies in the fairway with a little long backswing than I would have in this really pretty swing and shooting strokes higher.

Let’s go ahead and try to ramp up the speed a little bit more, letting the club go just a little bit long. Again, like I said, this isn’t a crazy thing, there’s tons of players that’ve gone past parallel in their backswing and won major championships.

This is what the pros are already doing, it’s just all the new instruction is kind of coaching this out of the game, and killing people’s speeds.

Let’s go ahead and try to go a little bit long with the shaft on this one, and combine that with the bigger shoulder turn and the heel lift.

I know I made a little bit more distance there. Again, it’s not going to look perfect on camera, but I swung a little faster, 124.7, that’s pretty good for me. That’s getting near as close as I can go.

I over-drew that one a little bit, didn’t hit it perfect, but I still got 307 yards of distance. Again, that would be left-center fairway, left side of the fairway. Not really losing a ton of accuracy.

Now you’re going to get to where if I just swing all-out 100 percent as hard as I go, you may lose some accuracy, but again, we’re trying to get that top number up and then you can tone it down from there.

You don’t have to swing 100 percent every time, you just have to practice it 100 percent. Then when you get on the course your 90 percent is going to be faster than it ever was before.

So 10 swings, lifting the left heel, letting that, thinking of that long free-flowing swing.

All right, so to recap, we’re going to go 10 swings, 10 practice swings lifting the left heel, thinking of a long, free-flowing swing, really letting those arms get back there.

Then we’re going to hit a couple balls going for maximum speed, 100 percent effort on each one of these.

Then we’re going to do 10 swings where we still do the heel lift and the long, free-flowing swing, and we’re actually going to let that club get a little past parallel.

Again, not going to look perfect on camera, but if you drive it 20 yards farther, you hit it just as solid, just as straight, who cares? Play with it.

So 10 practice swings doing that, then we’re going to hit a few ball, again just going for maximum club head speed.

Now when you take it out to the course, all I want you guys to do is the exact same thing, you can just tone it down a little bit.

You don’t have to lift the left heel way up, just soften it up a little bit so it comes barely off the ground. Your club doesn’t have to come way past parallel, but if it goes a little past parallel, that’s completely fine.

All right guys, so those of you that are members of the website, where do we go from here? There’s really something that I see with both types of players.

Players that bounce around from one idea, one video to the next are typically going to ride the rollercoaster.

You get up to a high, you’re playing really well, you find a tip that works for you, and then you’ll have a low and a lull, and you’ll start playing worse.

Then you’ll find another tip and you’ll start playing better, that lasts for a day, or two days, or a week. Then you’ll have a slump for a couple days or a week or two.

So it’s kind of that rollercoaster of up and down. What we want to do, it’s still always going to be a little bit up and down, but I want the overall trajectory to be higher and higher and higher.

I want that rollercoaster to be trending in the upward fashion. The players that I see that have the most success with this, are the ones that follow and stick with the program.

That’s exactly why we developed the Top Speed Golf System. If you really want to be better this year than you ever have before, and the next year, and the next, and keep on trending upward, you’ve got to stick with that program.

Don’t bounce around form video to video which is so easy to do out there with all the tips there are, all over the Internet.

So what I want you to do here is get started in the Power Turn section. That’s what we talked about here today.

Let’s get that good, full backswing. Go to the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Power Turn. Work from level one, do those drills, then work into level two and level three.

Those are going to help you to build this so that you have it the rest of your life. You’ll never have to be wondering, man, could I do this to get a couple extra yards?

You’re going to know what gets you more distance, and you’re going to have great success with it. So best of luck guys, and I’ll see you all in the Power Turn. I can’t wait to hear your amazing results.