Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Swing Perfectly On Plane | Elbow Plane Test"

In today's lesson...

You'll discover exactly how to measure your "Elbow Plane"...

...including how to set up your camera, how to draw the line, what exactly you need to be measuring, and when to measure it.

In addition, if you're struggling to get onto this "Elbow Plane"...

...I'll give you the perfect drill to make it happen!

Everything gets easier once you're "On Plane."

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 14:23

Video Transcription:

Hey, it's great to have here today and I realized a while back that I've never done a video talking about how you precisely measure swing plane and how that affects your ability to hit straight shots in golf. So I'm gonna dive right into it. Now, before we get started, this is a very detailed video. I'm gonna give you exact camera angle setup.

So I'm gonna give you exactly how to draw the line. I'm gonna give you exact, the positions to be in with the club. So this is really gonna be the video If, if you're in the swing plane at all, you wanna watch one video, this is gonna cover everything. A lot of stuff that you've never heard before. Uh, so I just wanna forewarn you, there's gonna be a ton of details in here.

You may wanna save this as a favorite. And come back and visit if this is something that you wanna practice. All right, so first let's get into how we would measure a swing plane. Some people measure it up the shaft, some people draw a line from the golf ball to the shoulder, and all those are okay. And you can get a general idea of what swing plane would look like.

But there's one that really matters for the most important part of the swing, which is how this club comes through the golf ball at contact. Now our club is designed to, when we set up an address, it's actually gonna be a little bit lower with the shaft than it will bid impact. You see if I set the club flat with the ground or the sole of the club, the bottom of the club perfectly flush with the ground, it's gonna be fairly high.

It's gonna be up here. And that probably looks a bit like a weird setup. Like my hands are out this way. Well, the reason is there's a lot of mass, a lot of weight on this club that's on this side of the shaft. And as this gets swinging faster and faster, it wants to pull the club down like that. What's called droop.

And that droop means that the shaft actually bends or kind of bows this way. And you can really see that it's probably five or six degrees with most clubs. And the reason for that is the force you're putting in with the hands, what's what actually is going on here is the center of mass of the club head is trying to line up in a straight line with that and that causes the shaft to bend a little bit and also causes you.

As you swing faster and faster for your hands to rise a little bit. So that's a big fancy explanation. I just wanted to know, you know, what's going on, why I'm picking this particular plane. But because of that and the hands coming up, what I have found measuring tons of pros is that if you draw a line from the hale of the club at a dress and you take it up through the elbow of the right arm at address, so if I go ahead and set up and I drop from thele of the club up through the elbow, That's gonna gimme the elbow plane.

And that plane gives you a very good idea of where the club should be traveling as you're coming through contact, and whether or not you're inside that plane, which would be more of kind of getting a feeling of being stuck under which we'll get to later. Or if you're over top of that plane to start down, which is gonna cause it more over the top type slice.

Uh, we'll talk about the po the correct position you should be in. Now, one thing to know when you're measuring this is you have to set up the camera right, or it just flat out won't work. Right now I've got the camera set up almost 20 feet behind where I'm talking, and the farther you go that way, when you're setting it up, the easier it is to get the right angle.

You see if I'm right on my body, let's say the camera person is standing here and they move just a couple inches this way or a couple inches, that way it really distorts what you see in the frame. But if I move back that way, say a hundred feet, which wouldn't be very realistic, but you'll get the idea if the person steps a foot that way or foot that way it barely changes the angle when you're looking through the screen.

Um, so you wanna be far away as you can. You wanna set that camera up? So that if you imagine that the camera was, when you push the record button, it shot a laser out of the lens. I would want that laser going directly through my elbow because it is, the elbow plane had a dress and I'd want it to shoot and hit my target in the distance.

Now, I know it looks a little bit weird right now as it's set up, you're like, well, your elbow's not in line with your target, but that's because it's being projected on a screen here. If I'm looking at a screen that th this was a real scenario where I'm aiming at something 190 yards this way with a six iron.

Uh, I would be hitting the screen somewhere around in here, so it's a little tough to visualize. I won't get into all that, but if you're indoors, just realize you're gonna have to be shooting that, you know, laser outta the camera, through the elbow, and a little left of wherever the center of the screen is.

All right, so now that we got that outta the way, you've drawn that line on there, what should we be looking for here in a good swing? Well, what I find with most players is that as soon as they start their downswing, that club gets steep. And the main thing I wanna focus on of hands and the club head and in relationship to this line, and the first part that I like to measure to see if I'm on playing is kind of halfway in the downswing when my club is around shoulder height.

They're just a little bit above, maybe about a foot above shoulder height. Now if I'm out here on that elbow plane, when I draw that elbow plane, you'll see my club is well on this side of it. Now, that's impossible to hit a golf ball from there. You see, if I kept swinging down on this angle, I'd hit somewhere down here by my feet and I wouldn't hit a golf ball.

So people that start down steep do two things to solve for this. They swing more to the left, which would kick the club out more and more and more. That would keep it from hitting the feet and get it more out toward the golf ball. But the result is a giant slice or. Better players realize, yes, I'm a little steep, but what I can do is I can kind of stand up and drop the club in to the inside later in the downswing.

So when my clubs maybe around waist tie or just below waist tie, they go from steep to bringing the club inside. And the problem there is you have all this momentum getting the club stuck behind you and you end up hitting these big blocks to the right or snap hooks. That's the main reason that most players, better players, uh, if they don't have this swing plane down, you know, down pat.

They tend to hit their, their big miss is gonna be a block to the right and the occasional snap hook when their timing isn't going that great. Now I'm gonna wanna be a little bit more shallow and ideally what I'd like to see is I'd like to see my hands on that red line, that elbow plain line, when my club is right around a little above shoulder height.

And I wanna see my club starting to get on that line or slightly inside that line. And you may ask, well, what's the point of all this? Is it truly just to get it lined up with the ball? It's actually not, you see, you don't want the club on that line unless you're gonna hit a little bit of a fade. If you wanna hit a draw, you actually want it to be a little bit inside that line, and it has to do with momentum.

And I'm gonna give you a feeling of what that's like. Go ahead and just take the club with your left hand. Go to the back swing. Let the club come on this side of the line significantly. This would, you'd never do this in a real swing, but it's a great way to feel what's going on. Then I'm gonna pull with my hands just like I would if I was making a normal swing.

So my hands are kind of on this plane, a different plane, a hand plane, and as I pull with my hands, what does the momentum of this club wanna do? Well, if I'm out there, it wants to slam back into my body. So that's that stuck under filling that people have when they block it out to the right or snap hook it.

Yes. Now if I do the opposite of that, then almost like a Sergio Garcia a little bit here, I'm gonna take that same hand position, put the club on this side, and when I pull my hands in the exact same direction I just did in that first example, the club wants to kick out this way. It wants to actually come in front of my body and the face wants to almost rotate closed.

So when the club is too steeper on this side of the plane, it wants to kick under and get stuck, and the club face wants to actually rotate this way or open up. It feels like I really have to flip it at the last second to square up the face and not just have it wide open and go in a mile to the right.

If I have it more shallow, the club wants to, the momentum of the club wants to move more toward the direction that I actually wanna hit the ball kick back in front of me. And the face of the club actually wants to release and close on over and square up under its own momentum. So most golfers that I see when I measure them on the sailboat plane, they're steeper.

They either come over the top and that causes all kinds of problems, or they go from steep to shallowing. Out late, the momentum of the club's going back, the face is wanting to open up, and now it's all just timing. The between hitting a block, releasing at the perfect amount, hitting a great shot, or over releasing it, and the club slams shut and does a hook.

So five videotape a thousand recreational golfers 990 are probably doing exactly what I just said there. So now that we understand what the momentum does, we understand how to draw the elbow plane. Let's do a couple drills to actually get exactly where we'd wanna be. Now, let me hit a shot here first and I'll kind of show you.

Uh, obviously I can't see the elbow plane when I'm swinging, but I'll make a normal swing. And what I'm looking for here, if I'm doing this correctly, is I'd like to get my hands on the elbow plane. And again, I can't tell if I'm on the plane right now, I'm just giving a demonstration. But I'd like to get my hands roughly on this elbow plane about this point of the swing.

And I'd like to have my club a couple inches inside that elbow plane. So I don't want it on this side of the elbow. Plane for sure. And if I overdo it and get it too far in here, it's just too much. So again, most people are way too far that way. So if you feel like the club head gets more behind you, then that makes it easier.

So let's go ahead and take a look first and see what that looks like when I do a good job with it, and then we'll kind of move forward from there.

There we go. So hopefully that one's pretty nice. Haven't really warmed up today. Hit a decent shot with a, it's a seven iron here. I thought I had a six a hundred eighty nine yards. Carry a nice draw. And I probably overdid it a little bit where I was trying to get a little bit more shallower. I may have gotten a little bit more inside, and that's gonna promote more of that draw type pattern.

Now the benefit of that is as long as the club gets a little more inside early and I release it, the club momentum wants to release that way, and it's gonna be very easy to hit a draw if I'm really feeling like I get it from the inside and kinda shift that plane more to the right. But what do I need to feel if I'm not doing this enough?

Well, I like to do a slow motion drill that can really help you a ton to shallow out this club. Get the club head on that side of it. And remember, I don't want to, uh, get it inside late. I don't wanna go from steep here. I'm trying to get that club more behind me as I start the downswing and as the club starts the transition, I wanna get this shallowing out.

So here's what I wanna feel. Number one, I wanna feel like I make a slow motion swing. I'd say like a five second backswing. And what I wanna visualize here is I bring this club more vertical, where I feel like it's straight up and down in the back swing, and I get the club on that side of the plane going back.

Then I'm gonna go really slow as I start my down swing. I'm gonna feel like I turn a steering wheel to the right. My left elbow should kind of point out this way. If it's pointing down, I'm gonna yank down on it. It's gonna be steep. My left elbow's gonna go that way. My right elbow's gonna turn in. My hands are gonna turn that way and that's gonna get that club a little bit more shallowed out.

Now I'm doing that as I start my downswing. And one thing that a lot of people get wrong here is they think, well, I wanna shallow this out. And it gets really easy to shallow it out. If your hands pop way out here, they go too much this way. I basically want my hands to ride down that elbow plane. I don't wanna get 'em too far that way.

That'd be me opening up too early. I wanna feel like my shoulders stay a little closed. I let my club shallow out, but my hands are staying on that plane. Then once I get in this good position, I can go ahead and turn on through it as much as I want. And because my club's coming down the right plane, the momentum of the club wants to release.

It's gonna be a great shot. So let's go ahead and try another one. I'll really exaggerate the feeling that I would have if I'm doing these drills. So I'm gonna go really slow here. Five second backswing on the outside of the plane. I'm gonna shallow it out, get those elbows to rotate, and then I'm gonna come through contact.

Now, when I come through contact, I'm gonna feel like the face is nice and square here. I don't want the face to be wide open like this. I want that face to be squared up, and I'm gonna do about five reps of that until I really get the feeling of that shallowing out. Now, once I get the feeling, I can go ahead and make some fuller swings and what I like to feel in a real swing.

I don't worry so much about the technical aspects. I just wanna feel like the momentum of this club is wanting to. Release all the way through the downswing. So if I get it to the inside, like we just talked about, the momentum of this club wants to turn on over, the club face wants to release, and if I can feel that club's momentum coming from the inside and releasing in my real swing, I know I'm pretty daggone close to getting on the right plane.

All right, so let's go ahead and give it a whirl here. We'll do another one. I'll try to get a nice little tight draw on this one. Not quite as much Curvature.

There we go. Hit that one. Good. Barely drew it a little bit. You can see it wanted to start to curve back. If you look at the tracer, the black line on the bottom, you can see it's a nice little tight draw. And I got a little bit after that when I went 1 95 on that shot. So definitely, you know, that's about as good as I can hit a seven iron.

And what I found is when I measure PJ Tour players, I've measured hundreds of them. Almost every single one of them is getting that club head. Inside the red line where we talked about starting the downswing and their hands are roughly on that red line. If you can do that, golf gets a heck of a lot easier.

Now, one thing that I talked about a little bit earlier is when you're making your downswing, the club feels like it's getting way over, way under late, and it feels like it's stuck. This club face is wide open. And then you feel like you have to slam it to be able to square it back up. That's the first thing that I would recommend tackling.

That's exactly what we do in a 20 minute Shallowing fixed course. So if you're a member of Top Speed Golf, click the Instruction tab, top Speed Golf System, and the 20 minute Shallowing Fix in there in a single range session. I can guarantee you that you will experience some of the most solid shots of your life and shallow it on every single swing with just one single rain session.

I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to do that. It's a progression that I've worked through thousands of players. Uh, tons of great feedback on there. And that's the best next step here. So you're understanding what swing plane is now. Uh, you'll hear me walk you through a step-by-step course on how to get that shallow every single time there.

So we, we touch just the tip of the iceberg here. Now, lemme make it way simpler for you. Let me lead you through 1, 2, 3, 4, what you do next. And in the next rain session, you've put out the video camera. I can guarantee you you're gonna be getting shallower. So best of luck. Head on over the 20 minute showering.

Fix now, and I'll see you there.