Why You Need This: In today's video, "How to Bomb Your Driver | The Chair Drill," I want to introduce you to a really helpful drill that includes something we all have access to...

A chair.

You'll find out exactly what both the upper and lower parts of your body do in your golf swing.

With the help of my FlightScope, I'll analyze a few swings with actual statistics that can't be denied.

Make sure you aren't focusing too much on one half of your body...

Remember your body all works together!

Watch this video today so you can swing to your full potential!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:14

Video Transcription:

All right guys, so we’ve all heard tons of videos, tons of discussions of where distance comes from in golf. I’m going to put it to the test today. I’m going to sit in this chair so I completely can’t use my lower body at all, just going to be using my upper body, my shoulders, my arms, to generate speed.

Let’s see how far I can hit the ball. We’re going to go ahead and test this out on my flight scope radar, so it’s going to track the ball all the way through its flight, we’ll try a couple drives out and then we’ll compare that to my normal drives to see what kind of distance I can get.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

Uh-oh. [laughs]

All right, so hit a couple on the range from the chair, had to switch over from the range to one of the tee boxes here. With the chair shots, I was averaging about 101 miles an hour swing speed, 250 yards for the several shots that I hit.

Then I came out and made a few swings, my normal swing average is about 116 miles an hour and 310 yards, so we definitely will hit it farther when we’re standing up. I’m not trying to say that we can hit it just as far out of a chair, but we realize that the hips, the lower body doesn’t add all that much distance or club head speed.

About 15 miles an hour club head speed are from the hips, 100 miles an hour from the upper body. Then with the distance we get an extra 60 yards or so part of that was just because it’s really tough to hit a good, solid one sitting down out of a chair with the club kind of sideways there. But we can see that most of it is coming from the upper body.

So that’s the piece if you really want to get good distance, you really want to hit the ball far, we’ve got to learn to us the upper body properly, get that good lag, and then release the club. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you in these next drills.

As we can see from those videos, I was averaging almost 250 yards of total distance, and my average swing sped was almost 102 miles an hour. What that’s showing is, is our upper body, our hands, our arms are generating a lot of the speed.

I’m going to go through a couple drills that are going to help you work on this, get you using your upper body properly, and we’re going to do them out of a chair so you can work along with me right here in your living room.

First one we’re going to do is really activate our shoulders. We want to make sure we’re getting a good shoulder turn going back, a good shoulder turn coming through, to be able to get that kind of speed.

What I want you to do is go ahead and put a club across your chest here, and sit nice and tall in your chair so you really feel like your spine is elongating. All your discs that are in your back, so each vertebrae is stacked on top of each other.

If I get slouched over they’re going to start grinding together, so I want to feel like I’m elongating between each vertebrae and getting the most distance between each vertebrae so they can rotate as much as possible.

If you go ahead and rotate to the right sitting in the chair, we’re going to go as far as we can, about 45° is pretty normal, maybe a little bit extra. There we go, that’s on the shoulders, so there’s 45°. As I come on through there’s 45° coming through.

Obviously as I stand up now, I’m going to do the same eating except now I’m going to allow my hips to rotate. The hips don’t create a lot of sped, but they create momentum and they allow you to smooth out your swing.

So if I’m getting a good hip turn going back, now we can see the tip of my club pointing to the right of my ball, and as I come on through, I’m going to let my hips rotate all the way on through to the target. My belt buckle’s towards the target, and now you can see my chest is pointing all the way over here into the left rough.

I want you to do about 50 repetitions just focusing on getting turned back, and then getting turned through just like I’m doing there. So we’re going to do 25 in the chair, 45° back, 45° through.

Then 25 and 25, 25 standing up, club past the ball, and now I’m going to get my club head pointing over to the right rough or my chest pointing over to the left rough, and allowing those hips to rotate the entire time.

Now once I’ve done that, I’m getting my shoulders to work pretty well. We can go ahead and make some swings as you’re doing that, recreate that same motion. Then we’re going to lose the club for a second, I’m going to grab a basketball or any kind of ball that you have laying around.

I want you to imagine that you’re hitting a ball out of the chair just like I did. Now one of the keys to creating speed with your upper body is allowing the forearms to rotate on through.

What we’re going to do, we’re going to grab this ball on the sides, and as you’re making your backswing I’m going to let this ball turn sideways, and as I’m coming through, the inside of the ball is going to be facing the ball on the ground.

Then as I get to where my club would be almost hitting the ball, then I’m going to let the forearms rotate on over. I’m going to go ahead and do this a good 50 repetitions of letting that ag come in there, the ball sideways, and then bam, the forearms are rotating over each other, that allows the club to whip on through.

Then finally once I’ve done at least a good 50 reps with that, I’m going to lose the basketball and I’m going to do the same thing with the golf club. So now you don’t actually have to hit a ball or anything, I’m actually going to knock that off the tee so we can swing.

As I go back, good shoulder turn, now I have that lag position. The ball would have been sideways here, I’m doing that same with the golf club and ten I’m letting that whip on through as I come through my follow through, and you can see how much club head speed that creates.

I was averaging almost 102 miles an hour club head speed sitting in a chair. So go ahead and do another 50 repetitions like that, no we’re ready to lose the chair, go ahead and stand up, and let’s put all these things together.

Good full shoulder turn going back, good full shoulder turn coming on through. Chest is pointing to the left rough. As we’re coming down, the inside of that basketball would be pointing to the golf ball, that’s going to give me my lag position here.

Then I’m going to release that lag position to let that club whip on past and get a lot of speed there. So finally, 50 more reps doing that, and now I’m going to go ahead and make some full swings, and we’ll see what kind of distance I can generate adding the full power of my lower body and how much that’s going to add on top of that.

So lower body creates momentum, upper body creates a lot of speed to add to that momentum.

Good luck, work on those drills, and let’s go ahead and I’ll hit a few balls, and we’ll try that out.