Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to swing in balance in golf.

One of the biggest misconceptions in golf is to be in balance.

Well, you're never really in balance during the swing.

In the backswing, you're shifting your weight to your right leg.

And in the downswing, you're shifting your weight to your left.

What's key is that you shouldn't sway your body much and you need to maintain your spine angle.

In the Top Speed Golf System, I refer to this as the Stable & Fluid Spine.

Your spine angle should lean away from the target, so you want to avoid big changes to your spine angle such as a reverse pivot.

But is there more to having a nice, balanced swing?

I mean, how should you finish the swing?

Find out in this video.

You'll discover what it takes to make a balanced swing!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:00

Video Transcription:

Great to have you guys back here today. We’re going to talk about one of the biggest misconceptions in golf, in your balance, your weight shift.

We’re going to talk about how to swing in balance. The first thing to realize is that we’re never really in balance in the golf swing.

When somebody’s saying you’re swinging in balance, all that means really is that you’re finishing in balance.

So in the backswing, what’s happening is I’m shifting my weight to the right. If we can imagine, I’ve talked about this in a lot of videos, if we imagine a clock face just kind of a big circular clock face all around my body.

If this straight ahead is 12:00 , 6:00 is directly behind me. Here’s 3:00, here’s 9:00 over here. I’m going to be pushing down and out kind of towards 1:30 or this direction with my right leg as I go into the backswing.

That’s going to help me to rotate my hips. So I’m kind of going off balance, I’m pushing myself off balance to rotate my body.

If I was to stay in balance, I really wouldn’t be able to move. I have to push into the ground and change my balance to really load up.

So don’t worry about feeling like you’re falling slightly off balance in your backswing, as long as you’re pushing into the ground.

Now a key to this, to make sure that we’re not swaying all over the place, and what would typically be called falling off balance, is just to make sure that our spine is staying in a pretty consistent angle.

This is what we call the Stable, Fluid Spine in the Top Speed Golf System. In a nutshell, all I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and bump my body slightly away from the target.

If you can imagine this is my spine angle, I’m going to let that bump forward until that’s lined up with the inside of my left leg.

Now from here, as I’m bumped back slightly, now my spine angle’s tilted away from the target. Now again, I’m going to push out and away, get those hips to rotate, get those shoulders to rotate, make that good Power Turn like we teach in the Top Speed Golf System.

I’m staying slightly angled away from the target. I don’t want to let my spine angle change, I don’t want to let it fall over here in my backswing.

Where as I make my backswing I do this, now I’ve got a reserve pivot and I’m going to tend to fall back to the right. Again, falling too much off balance or moving around a little bit too much.

That’s the first key there. As we’ve set up at address, get slightly tilted away from the target. As you go to the top of the swing, feel like you stay in that same spine angle like you’re looking down at the back of the ball, even though I am pushing and loading up into my right leg.

Now in the downswing, here’s where it gets a little bit tricky. Most people will say, well I want to stay in balance. You’ve been told I’ve got to get to my left lag. I’ve got to get stacked, I’ve got to get posted on my left leg.

Oftentimes what happens is, we get all the way over here, we’re stacked up on this left leg, now we don’t have a lot of power from this position. We’re too far forward, and we can’t rotate through there.

We feel like we really try to go with everything we have, but we don’t have a lot of speed.

In order to get speed, what we need to do is we do have a slight shift to the left, but I’m keeping my center of mass, or my belt buckle behind my lead leg. I’m keeping it behind there.

That way I’m going to do the opposite in the downswing. I’m going to push down and out with my left leg toward 10:30, and that’s what’s going to rotate my body open.

If you look at the longest hitters in the world and the best drivers of the golf ball in the world, you’re going to see that they always stay slightly behind the golf ball from their ankle to their hip, to their shoulder, is tilted away rom the target.

That’s what we call the Compression Line in here. So in a nutshell, let me give you a couple really simple things to get this to happen, and then I’m going to give you one final thing to finish in balance.

As I do my takeaway, tilted away from the target. I’m pushing down and out with my right foot, that’s going to rotate my body and I’m staying nice and consistent here.

In my downswing, I get a little shift to the left, but it’s really with my entire body. I don’t want to bump those hips, or I’m going to start sliding too far forward.

I’m going to let my entire body weight shift just a little bit to the left, and then I’m going to push down and out with my left leg, and you see that I’m in a nice angle away rom the target.

Now here’s the key. Since my body weight was moving to the left, I didn’t have to get all the way up here, my body weight was moving a little to the left.

As I swing all the way on through, now on my full finish, now I’m going to be balanced over my left leg.

This is the only time in the golf swing where your weight isn’t shifting and moving, and that’s in your follow through.

As I come through to the finish, now I’m nice and balanced over my left leg. I want you to go ahead and make some practice swings just holding that position for 5 to 10 seconds.

I want you to feel like your chest, nice and high up toward the sky. My chin is high, my hips have rotated all the way around to the target, and my right foot is completely off the ground.

If I’m hanging back on my right side, I’m going to be kind of like this, I’m not getting through there. I want to shift to the left but still be slightly angled back, and then I’m going to come all the way around.

You’ll also notice my shoulders have come all the way around. So we’re going to hold that for 5 to 10 seconds, just like this.

I’m working on a good turn going back, staying behind the ball, rotating all the way through, and then in the finish, that’s when I’m coming all the way up to the left.

Now one thing you’ll notice there, is my left foot has turned out. Every single good player on the PGA Tour, good driver of the golf ball that’s long and straight, their left foot is not facing forward toward the ball.

Their foot will turn out. Some players like Jordan Spieth do it like this. Some players like Bubba Watson get up off the toe, and then let it turn out. You’ll see a lot of different variations on that.

To simplify things, I want you guys to go ahead and turn your left foot out at the start. Now when you make these practice swings, and I’m finishing on my front foot, I don’t have to move my foot very much and I can stay balanced on top of that.

So I put you to the test. Do 5 practice swings holding for 5 to 10 seconds in that follow-through position, see if you can get that chest high. Nice good balance.

Then I want you to go out, go to the driving range. I want you to make some good aggressive swings, and I want you to finish in that balanced position, but I don’t want to stay in balance throughout the entire swing.

I want to go ahead and rip it. I want to go ahead and shift my weight t the right and the left. It’s just in the finish position that I’m going to do that. So my left toe’s open, big swing back and through.

There we go, nice and balanced on the finish. Best of luck to you guys, I’ll see you soon.