Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How To Stay In Your Posture AND Swing Perfectly On Plane"

In today's lesson...

Top Speed Golf instructor, Michael Derr explains what MUST happen in your swing if you want to hit the ball solidly AND on target (hint: most aren't doing this).

Michael will then give you an incredible drill that not only makes sure you're doing the vital key that I just alluded to...

...but it will force you to stay in posture as well! Now that's a win-win!

Golf gets a lot easier once you start making this move.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Michael Derr    

Video Duration: 8:49

Video Transcription:

If you want to hit the ball solidly, you have to get your clubhead underneath the plane line. So let's go ahead and jump right into this and understand exactly how the plane line works. It's a very simple concept, but if we don't understand it, everything we're about to go over in this drill that's going to massively help you come into this ball correctly is is a little bit easier to understand if we do understand the plane line.

 

So if we go ahead and draw the line up through the halls of the club, up through the base of the elbow, that's going to be our plane line. Anything on the top of the side of the plane would be over the plane. Anything on the bottom side would be under the plane. So if I was my Clubhead is down here.

 

I'm under the plane. My clubhead is up here. I'm over the plane. Now, when I talk about hitting the ball so solidly on the target line, what that means is if my clubhead is over this plane on the downswing, I can hit this ball solidly, but it cannot start down my target line. It's going to start left if I hit it solidly.

 

What I'm going to have to do and what I see a ton of players do all the time, is leave the face open and then we're going to cut across the ball. And it it just results in just such a glancing blow and everything's weak and a lot of things happen. You can stand up. There's a lot of things that go on.

 

So what we need to understand is that we want that clubhead underneath the plane line. When it's underneath the plane line, then with the natural rotation of the swing, it can come into the ball, hit the ball solidly and start down the target line. So it at least gives us the ability to hit this ball solid where we're aiming.

 

That's one of our biggest pieces of the swing we have to have. If we're going to be consistent and we're going to have a fundamentally sound swing. So where you're most likely messing up when you're working on this is focusing in a little bit too much on the Clubhead Yes, we want that clubhead underneath the plane line. But what you're most likely not focusing in on is body movement and things that cause this club to go over the plane line.

 

So this drill that we're going to go over is going to help with two things. It's going to help us, first and foremost, get a movement that's going to allow that to happen much easier. And as a secondary bonus, just kind of as a byproduct when I'm working with my students, it helps us maintain our posture so much better in the swing.

 

So we know this dreaded early extension where the pocket starts coming towards the ball and we stand up this drill tends to help out with that a lot as well. So we're going to get kind of two for the price of one in this drill where we're going to understand our body movement that's going to allow us to help us get that clubhead under the plane, but also staying in posture.

 

So let's go ahead and jump right into this drill. So this drill, I like to use a chair for this drill. I always like using a chair for a lot of things because it's something we always have around. You can use your ball bag, you can use a bag stand. Anything really helps, but you want to make sure you set this up correctly.

 

So what we're going to be going over here is how to move the body to get the clubhead under the plane. And we're going to take the hands, arms and clubs out of it. So we have a give our body a chance to get this clubhead onto the plane so we can see here and other drills. Let's just imagine we're making a swing and we're trying to come underneath the plane.

 

I can stand up, do everything wrong and actually execute getting my clubhead underneath the plane line, but that's not what we want to do. We don't want to just get the clubhead to the plane. We also want our body to be able to support solid, consistent golf. So what we're going to do is we're going to get our body to move in a way that's going to allow that to happen so much more easily.

 

So what we're going to do is we're going to set this up very simple. We are going to set this up on our toe line. So we want the top of our structure here to be on our toe line here from the down the line view. And we also want it to be about hip height and then from the face on view just off of our back hips.

 

So if you hit those three checkpoints, you're this is going to be set up nicely. And then what I love about this drill is it's so simple. What you're going to do is take a club, put the clubhead on your left shoulder and leave a ton of room on off your back shoulder. So that we have an extension of our shoulders.

 

This is going to show us our shoulder playing and the swing. And what we're going to do is we're going to get into our set up position. Now, this is key. Before we do anything else, we need to make sure we have a spine angle away from the target. So if you're familiar with the stable fluid spine course and the top spec golf system, that is a vital, vital course to make sure that you are set up to make this so much easier if our spine is straight up or down or even worse tilted towards the target, this drill and getting the club head under the plane becomes so much more difficult to work on.

 

So once we have this set up and we have our spine tilted away from the target, again, this is going to be tilted away from the target. The entire swing is we are going to take this back and we're going to take the club, the extension of the club, and we are going to make sure we move so that the extension of the club misses the chair or misses whatever we're putting by us.

 

So I'm sure you've seen drills where we get the club head to miss this. Now we're going to teach our body how to move so it'll support this because you'll see when we add this into the full swing, it makes it very, very easy to come under the plane. So again, we've got we have our spiny golf. We're going to turn and then from here you're going to see the secondary thing.

 

I have to maintain my posture in order to get this club or to get the extension of the club to miss this chair. If I stand up out of my posture, I'm going to hit that chair so my shoulders can move correctly. But if I lose my posture, I'm not going to be able to execute this real correctly.

 

So what this is going to do, it's going to give us a good feel for how the body wants to work through the swing. And once we have a feel for how the body needs to work through the swing we've done, you know, I would say get a good 100, 200 repetitions on that, really feel how the body moves.

 

And now what we're going to do is make some easy swings with that same feel in the body movement. So let's go ahead and do one right here. So I'm going to use that same exact sensation. It's even good when you're practicing to get a couple of those feels really imagine that chair is there and you're going to feel how your pockets stay back and the shoulder works under so that you can see how much this is going to promote that clubhead coming underneath the plane.

 

So I'm going to do now is make an easy swing. I'm even really care too much where the ball goes and we're going to check our plane like we're going to check and make sure that Clubhead is coming underneath the plane. So nice little easy swing. Very, very smooth. And I could tell that I felt that same sensation and well, that feels really, really good.

 

This is something I drilled a lot in my swing that massively helped with, again, the two big things it massively help with my path. And then again, it was kind of like a two for one bonus. I started staying down so much longer in my posture. Now once we have that feeling, we can make some easy swings and we can do two things.

 

We can make sure we stay down better and the clubhead is underneath the plane, then we can start speeding it up. And what you're going to notice is when you get under the plane for the first time, or if you struggle with it, maybe sometimes you do, sometimes you don't and you stay in posture. These balls are going to be starting off a lot more solid and you're going to be able to play a lot more consistent golf.

 

Because when you aim at a target and you hit a ball solidly on your target line, it's so much easier. It's just almost like throwing darts versus, you know, just kind of sling a one out there and hoping for the best. It's a completely different ball game, so get really good. Get used to that drill, make sure your body is moving correctly, and then always make sure you're checking your plane line so that Clubhead is coming down from underneath the plane.

 

Okay, now, there we go. Nice, easy swing. 171, total distance. Nice, easy swing with an eight iron. That's I'm going to take that every single time. So as you can see with the correct body movement and having that club coming into the ball from the right angle, we can maximize our energy into the ball and get that ball to carry right down the target line.

 

It is so nice when your body starts moving correctly because it's almost automatic, almost automatic. When you get that club to start shallowing out and playing into the plane correctly. Now if you're already a member or something, I really want you to make sure you do because again, it becomes extremely difficult if your spine angle is incorrect. What I want you to do is I want you to head over to the stable fluid spine course.

 

So if you look up in the top where it says TSG instruction and you scroll down to the top speed golf system, I want you to go to the stable fluid spine course and make sure that you at least go through the first the first course in the stable fluid spine course. That's going to show you exactly how to set up that spine angle, because if we get up to the top of the swing and we do what we call a reverse pivot, where our spine starts tilting away from the target, it's going to be impossible to do this drill.

 

So what I want you to do when you go there is make sure you understand that if you're stable, fluid, spine mechanics are correct. It's not only going to make this easier, it's going to make it very doable for you to get good at it. And then when you get good at it, it can transfer to the golf course.

 

And that's when your ball striking number is on the golf course, you really start to explode. So make sure you go through the entire first section of the stable fluid spine course. Couple it with this body motion. Make sure you're checking to see if your clubhead is getting underneath the plane on the downswing and then enjoy the benefits of coming into that ball and being able to hit it solid on the target line.

 

We'll see you here in the next lesson.