Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Keep The Left Arm Straight in The Backswing"

In today's lesson...

I'll show you exactly why keeping your left arm straight in your backswing...

...doesn't actually have much to do with your left arm at all.

And how much bend is okay?

Find out how much the pros are bending their lead arms on average...

...so you'll know if you're bending too much in your backswing.

You'll be much more consistent by doing this.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:52

Video Transcription:

All right, hit that one. Pretty dang on. Good. And I was able to turn and keep my left arm straight in the entire backswing. I know that get so many players' problems and it actually has nothing to do with your left arm whatsoever. And let's go ahead and jump right into this. Now we need to do a test. Now I'm gonna back up against this wall here to show you how to do this test.

Now, sorry if I came outta focus with the camera, but what we're gonna do is we're gonna put our shoulders flat against the wall. And we're gonna stick our left arm out just dead straight. Put your thumb this way where it's pointing across your body. Then as you keep this straight, try to pull it across your chest or cross your body this way as far as you can until it gets too tight to go any further.

Now from here, if I wanted to go any further this way, I'd have to start bending. That left arm. Now, if I went lower or higher, this is gonna adjust it slightly, but we'll get to that here in a second. So what that means is, now that we've seen, so when I do that test, I keep my shoulders, the reason I didn't cut my shoulders against the walls.

I didn't wanna rotate my body. I'm keeping my body still, and that's as far as I can go. So if I'm looking at my hand here, it's on the inside of my right shoulder. So what that means is in the golf swing is as I bend forward, So if I do that motion here, I bend forward into my golf posture. However much my shoulders rotate is how far back my left arm can go as I keep it straight.

Now, most people don't know, but PJ tour players actually do bend their left arm. It's not locked dead straight like this. They let the arm bend on average about 15 degrees when players have been tracked with using 3D kind of motion capture. So there is a little bit of bend, so keeping me dead straight locked like that isn't always the best idea.

And also you don't wanna feel like you're really tight and tense as you're making your swing or you're gonna lose feel from your hands. So we don't wanna try to lock this left arm straight at the cost of everything else. We might have a little bit Ben of Ben, like a PJ tour players, and we wanna stay fairly soft as we go back so that we can have feel of the club head.

Now once you've found your range of motion, if you're more flexible than me, you may be able to get your right hand outside of your right shoulder like this, or your left hand, excuse me, I said right hand. You may be able to get your left hand more across your body than me. If you're super tight, have a big chest, maybe you're fairly muscular, you may not be able to go quite as far as I did.

But the key here is, is to understand how far can you go And then when I bend down on my golf posture, How much would I have to turn to get a reasonably good length backswing? So for me, if I can turn my shoulders a little past 90 degrees in the backswing and I keep my left arm basically here, which is as far as I can go, keeping it straight, then that's about where my arm should be at the top of the backswing.

Some players that are much more flexible have that thing flying way up there like a Justin Thomas or a Davis Love iii. Somebody like that may be way more flexible than I am. But not that flexible. I could work on my flexibility a ton. Maybe I'd eek out another inch or two, but I just need to understand that.

So when I get my arm here and I rotate, that's as far back as I should be trying to take my left hand from there. How do we move to that position? Well, a lot of players will do this. They won't rotate their shoulders much at all on the back swing. So left arm across, they'll only go to here where I've only gotten, say a 70 degree shoulder turn.

And now all of a sudden, look how short my hands are. This is as far back as I can get my arms. So what will we do to try to compensate for that? We're gonna bend this left arm to get it all the way back there, and that's why your left arm is folding, so it's not actually your arm trying to lock it straight.

Being a good athlete, you realize that with that shoulder turn that you're making, This isn't gonna work. I've gotta get the club farther back. So for example, if I just made this shorter shoulder turn, got my arm straight, I can't hit it very far like that. I can hit it farther like this, even though it doesn't look very good.

So the real key there is realizing what your range of motion is, and then if you wanna make any as semblance of a full back swing, it's getting your shoulders to turn that much. So if my arm is here with good flexibility or with with poor flexibility. If you learn the good technique, you can still get your arms way back there.

You can still get a very nice full backswing like I just demonstrated, even if you're as tight as I am. So here's how to do that. I'm gonna walk you through it step by step. First off, your body can only rotate as much as your feet will let your body rotate. So if I'll keep my feet flat on the ground and I try to rotate, I'm not gonna be able to turn very much.

Good players that have a long free flowing back swing can keep that left arm straight all the way up the top. They're letting their knees move a little bit and as I move my knees, I go from this side. Look how my left heel is gonna start to come up off the ground slightly. So especially with a driver where I'm making a longer swing, you may see those heels start to lift up as I'm coming back and through that allows my knees to pivot.

And as my knees pivot, my hips are gonna rotate more, and then sure enough, my shoulders will be able to rotate more. So if I'm only getting a little tiny hip turn because my feet are flat on the ground and my knees are locked like this, I'm gonna get a tiny shoulder turn. And sure enough, I'm only gonna keep be able to keep my left arm straight to here if I let my knees pivot and my feet come slightly off the ground, like basically every single PJ tour player does.

My hips are gonna go closer to 45 or even 60 degrees in the backswing rotated, and then my shoulders just have to turn a little bit more than that, and all of a sudden I'm well past 90 degrees and my shoulder turn, and when I just stick my left arm out, that's gonna get it nice and high and it's still gonna look very straight.

So take a few minutes and start to do these little drills where you rotate your knees. First, let's get used to letting your knees. Move more than what you're used to. You're gonna have to move your heels to make that happen. Then bring it up the chain. Let your hips rotate more, and then finally go ahead and try to get your shoulders to rotate more in addition to the hips.

And you're gonna get to here. So a good way to check this is put a club across your shoulders like this. I'll try not tip my microphone and I'm gonna rotate enough to where I can get my club pointing well behind the golf ball. And I'd like to have my chest or my shirt buttons kind of inside my right foot.

That's maintaining good posture. If I stood up outta my posture, I'd be doing this more level. So if my club's pointing down at the ground, I'd have good rotation. If my chest is kind of over the inside of my right foot, then I haven't done this reverse pivot and swayed back this way. I've gotten a good turn, which keeps my spine angle nice and steady as I'm coming through the shot.

And then finally, I'm gonna look at. How far can I get it back there before I have to kind of stand up outta my posture? Go any further. So I'm gonna go to the end of my range of motion, if that feels comfortable. If I can talk. As I'm doing that, my left heel is probably lifting, my left knee is probably rotating out and I'm allowing my body to rotate like that.

Then it's simply just sticking out the arms. So lemme do this one more time. Letting my body rotate. I'm getting to here. Club pointing well behind the ball. I've stayed in my posture. I'm not up like this, and I've made at least a 90 degree shoulder turn. Then I'm simply gonna stick out my arm straight and that's gonna be my maximum back swing distance so I can keep a left arm straight again, a little bit of bend and left arm is okay, and definitely a little bit of movement in the knees and the feet is more than okay.

It's, it's required for most players to make that good term. So let's go ahead and try another one here. I got a nine iron. Last one, man smoke. That thing said 1 68 carry. That's what happens when you get a good shoulder turn. I was really focused on that. Let's give it another whirl here. See if I can keep the left arm straight and get a good turn.

There we go. That one felt good too. Think my camera might be lined up a little bit to the right or my, my launch monitor, cuz that felt pretty straight hitting in the center of the screen. But 170 yard, nine iron. That's, that's pretty dang on. Good. I'm gonna have to work on. Getting this good turn for myself.

Now, one thing that drives me nuts is having a great backswing, and then it all goes down the drain as soon as we start the downswing. So I'll see a lot of players that'll work on their backswing. They'll be in this great position at the top, and then as soon as they start down, they start standing up at their posture, their hips move toward the golf ball.

If you're looking for a face song, we start to cast it. We start to have the club race past our hands and get that flip or that, you know, early release at the bottom. And all that great work that you did in the backswing just goes down the tubes. Now one of the reasons for this is shallowing the club.

See what actually happens a lot of times is we'll get this good backswing, but we try to yank the arms down and it st. Steepens the club up to where the club shaft is pointing well inside of where the golf ball would be. So if you can imagine if I have a golf ball here, if I yank down on my hands and arms, the club shaft gets steep, and then the only thing I can do there to save this.

Is this standup outta my posture, which shalls the club out. And then now that I'm farther away from the golf ball, I have to flip or cast to be able to reach the golf ball, and I just see player after player struggling with that. Every single year, almost every player I see is doing that same pattern.

Well, there's a couple key things that once you learn those makes it all a whole heck of a lot easier. I call it the natural wrist position and the natural elbow position. You see, most players don't have a a grip. They've never been taught the right way to have a grip to where it will allow them to stay in their posture, to have a bunch of lag and to have this shaline just like the pros are doing at contact.

And that's because you're taught the grip at a dress. I want to teach you the correct grip at impact where it really matters so you can have all those great things in your swing. And that's exactly what I do in the 20 minute showering fix. So if you remember, top speed golf, head over to the instruction tab, top speed golf system, and then the 20 minute showering fix from there.

It's absolutely fantastic. In a single rain session, you can start staying in your posture, shallowing the club out and in the most solid shots of your life and all in just one rain session. It's pretty great. We had over 4,000 people comment just on the first couple days that we released this with tons and tons of positive comments about how it changed your game, and I can't wait to hear about you being the next one.

So head on over to the twin that shall fix right now. I can't wait to see you there and teach you your natural grip. That's gonna be a game changer for all those moves. Let's go and get started.