Why You Need This: How would you like to have "No More Chicken Wing" in your swing?

You know how folding your arm after contact causes inconsistent contact, loss of speed, and the feeling of forcing the shot.

I give you 2 sure fire ways to "extend" and kick the chicken wing forever.

Let's get started .....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:37

Video Transcription:

The chicken wing. Man, it is frustrating. We feel like we’re putting out so much effort coming through contact, we feel like really pushing with our hands, our forearms, our arms, really trying to accelerate that club coming through.

But in reality, it slows the club down. Not to mention we’re going to see that left arm really start to fold up.

So if you’re not familiar with exactly how to see if you have a chicken wing, let me show you how. As you watch your swing on video, so if you don’t video of your swing, very easy to do on today’s phones.

Just go to the slow motion option in your video, click on that, and then video tape your swing from face on.

What I’m looking for here, is as you come through contact, I want to see this left arm be nice and straight as you’re coming past the ball, what we call our Straight-Line Release in the Top Speed Golf System. I want to see that nice and fully extended.

If at that point in the swing, or just past impact, you notice that from your upper left arm to the elbow, and then down to the wrist makes an angle, that’s what we call the chicken wing.

Now I’m going to go over exactly how to solve this from your swing, how to get more speed and acceleration coming through the ball, and make the swing feel like a whole lot less effort, and get rid of those hands and arms pushing through contact.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

So what is the root cause of the chicken wing? Really it comes from actually your hips and your body stopping from rotating through the shot.

In a really good golf shot, what we should have happen is what we call the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System. Meaning that we make a good turn coming back, and then as we rotate on through, we want these hips and shoulders opening up.

We want your body opening up toward the target, and that allows you to release the club out in front.

Now if my hips slow down, let’s imagine they stop rotating, the only way to keep this club moving forward toward the target is to now use my hands and arms.

When I push my hands and arms toward the target, there’s nowhere for my left arm to go, because my body’s in the way. It’s not opening up.

So as I push it across my body, you’re going to see that this left arm starts to fold up, and that’s with my left elbow moving toward the target in that direction.

Now if I open up my body, now there’s room for my left arm to stay straight. The difference is in this left shoulder.

If I close my hips, my shoulders can’t open up, my shoulder stays in the same spot, and this is the only way to move that club forward is to get it doing this.

If I let that shoulder clear out of the way now, all of a sudden I have all this room to extend my hands and arms, and really get that club releasing in front of the golf ball.

So if you’re struggling chicken winging, most of the time what people will do is they’ll struggle and struggle to keep their arms what they feel like is straighter.

But if we don’t clear the body out of the way, I can try to keep this left arm straight as long as I want to, but because of all the momentum in the swing, it’s going to fold up.

It’s also what we call conservation of angular momentum. Big fancy term, not really that complicated. Just imagine if we had a fan propeller blade, like your ceiling fan.

Imagine my arm is that propeller, that fan blade. As long as that’s swinging through, this club is going to keep an angle to that. Imagine I tied this club to the ceiling fan, if I keep on rotating through, that’s going to be able to keep on accelerating.

What happens when I slow down, the club starts to whip forward. So when you do that in your swing, when I slow down my body too early, that club starts to whip forward.

It’s going to start slowing down unless I keep my arms moving and it’s an effort to keep everything going toward the target., which really causes the chicken wing.

So now we’ve kind of broken down what’s going on there, let’s go ahead and fix it.

There’s two pieces to fixing this, there’s one that’s called hip extension, and then the other one is rotation, as we mentioned before.

I’m going to give you a drill to fix both of these very easily.

If I have to put an alignment stick through my belt loops, it looks pretty goofy. I probably wouldn’t do this at the driving range, people are going to think you’re nuts.

But we can do this in the comfort of our living room, really get the hang of what’s going on here.

What I’d like to have happen, again, if I do this incorrectly, as I start my downswing my hips are going to stall out, they’re not very open at this point and to keep the club moving forward, that arm chicken wings as I try to push the club toward the target.

If I do this correctly, as I’m coming through contact, my hips are going to be about 45° open. You’ll notice how my right arm is actually resting on the stick as I make this downswing.

So my right arm is against this stick, my hips are open here, and now what’s happened, I’ve made all this room to clear out my left shoulder out of the way.

If I grab this stick again, as I start my downswing, the hips are leading the way, they open up, as I come through contact, look how this left shoulder is way back here opening out of the way, creating tons of space to keep my left arm straight as I’m coming through.

Again, if I just try to keep my left arm straight, it’s not going to matter. It’s not going to happen. There’s too much momentum there.

But if I let my hips rotate open, now because my shoulder’s out of the way, there’s all this area in here for my left arm to extend on through the shot.

So here’s what I want you to do for about 20 reps or so. Set up with this stick going through your belt loops. If you don’t have a stick, use an old golf club, use anything you have sitting around.

I’m going to pause once as you go to contact, and I want my hips to be about 45° open. If I’m doing this correctly, when I come in to contact, my right forearm is kind of resting on this stick. That means that it’s opened enough.

If I find myself like this, with all this space between the club and my forearm, or the stick and my forearm, I know I’ve done this incorrectly. So I’ve got to get those hips opening up until I’m there at contact.

Number two, I don’t want to have this start coming over the top. With this stick in the way, one of the natural reactions I see is people start to come over the top a little bit, feel like you’re coming from the inside and then resting that stick on the forearm.

So that’s the first piece there, that’s the rotation piece. I have to clear the body out of the way, doing a good 20 reps is going to get a lot better feel with this. You’re going to feel like there’s tons more room to keep that left arm straight.

Number two is extension. If I line this club up here again, the stick up here again, if I stay bent forward, so if I turn sideways here.

If I bend forward like this and now there’s angle between my legs and my pelvis, so my upper and my lower body have an angle, and I put a club across my shoulders, the upper club would be in front of the lower stick.

That would be what’s called flexion. If I go into extension, that would be this way, so I’m really extended here. You can see how my club that’s on my chest is behind the club on my hips. So this is flexion, this is extension.

Well if I’m using the chicken wing, a lot of what’s happening is I’m staying in flexion. I’m staying bent forward, and again, using all hands and arms to try to push the club through.

That looks something like this when I’m swinging, and now my left arm’s folding up to try to keep everything moving through.

What I need to do is go from flexion, as I come through, now I need to get in extension, or feel like my body’s going this way.

Now what that allows you to do again, as I extend up that clears that left shoulder. Look how that left shoulder is completely behind my body now.

Look how that’s going to turn my hand up and in, and that club is naturally just going to whip out really long away from body.

If you watch videos of Ben Hogan, you’ll see he always does a fantastic job of this. Gets in that beautiful extension, and comes to a nice, full finish, really feeling like he’s in balance.

Again, for players that struggle, they stay in flexion and it looks something more like that.

Do a good 20 reps putting a club across your shoulders, going again, down to impact. There’s our impact position. As I come through, I’m in full extension.

Now here you’ll notice my belt buckle is in front of my shoulder club. I’m not here, but I’m finishing there with my chest nice and high, my chin up, and I’m facing the target.

20 reps with that. When you put those two together, what you’re going to start to notice, is that you’re really creating tons and tons of space cleared out of the way to get those arms to extend away and it will feel really effortless if you’re doing this correct.

So 20 reps of the first drill opening the hips, 20 reps coming up to a nice full finish. Then when you hit the range, we’re going to put both these pieces together.

We’re opening the body, we’re coming into that full extension, and again remember, still let that club from the inside. Still feel like you release that to hit a draw and you’re going to have a great looking golf swing with no chicken wing.

All right, I don’t want you to stop here. It’s great to have this video where we talk about opening up, and then we talking about coming to that good, full finish, how that’s going to get rid of the chicken wing.

But this is just the starting point. This is really no different than the five fundamentals we have in the Top Speed Golf System.

If you follow the Power Turn, the first piece of that is making a good backswing, the second piece of that is making a good follow through where we do exactly what we talked about today.

Hips toward the target, chest nice and high, chin up, full follow through all the way around. We go over that in great detail in the Power Turn.

What I don’t want you to do is watch this video, and then go to another video, another video, and start bouncing around.

Go straight to the Power Turn section. Start from level 1, do all those videos, that way you completely ingrain this.

That way you just make a swing, you make your finish, you’re hitting all these checkpoints you don’t even realize you’re doing it. It’s all just completely automatic.

That’s the kind of thing we can build in the System when we go through all those reps and those drills. Same thing with the Straight-Line Release.

We talked about how we want to have that club kind of lagging behind the body, as the body opens up, and then releases in front. That’s exactly what the Straight-Line Release is about.

It’s great to get started on it in this video, but let’s keep on going. Let’s build that automated golf swing. Go to the Straight-Line Release section, go to video number 1, number 2, number 3.

Start knocking out those drills. That way, again like I said before with the Power Turn, you just swing, it all happens, you don’t even have to think about it. That’s where we want to be in the future.

So best of luck to you. I’ll you in the Power Turn and the Straight-Line Release.