Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover how to get the perfect golf impact.

In particular, we'll focus on how your left arm moves throughout the swing.

This will be a really cool video if you love getting into the details!

Now, I get a bunch of questions about the left arm...

What is the left arm supposed to do through impact?

How do I really compress the ball?

Should my left arm be close to my body at impact...

...or should it move away from my body?

You'll get the answers to those questions in this video.

But before we jump into the details of the left arm in the golf swing...

Note that some training aids out there are only adding to the confusion.

Some aids keep your arms tight and jammed up.

Well, keep in mind that most training aids are designed to fix one particular issue...

So don't let fixing one issue cause a different, and sometimes, worse problem in another part of your swing.

Back to the left arm in the swing...

In this video, you'll discover how the left arm lifts up and rotates in the back swing...

And all the spicy details of what your left arm should be doing in the downswing,...

...through impact, and in the follow through.

Watch this video now to find out exactly what your left arm should be doing in your swing...

And hit solid, powerful shots!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:34

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, welcome back. I get a lot of questions, almost on a regular basis, what is the left arm supposed to do through impact?

How am I really going to compress that golf ball? Should my arm be close and kind of trapped in with my body and riding with my body through contact? Should my arm move away from my body?

We see these different training aids, some of them kind of latch your arms in close to your body so they feel like you’re working with a unit, are those correct?

What’s really going on in your golf swing?

To start out I’ll say I see a lot of training aids out there, and a lot of them will train a specific piece of the swing. So let’s imagine I’m trying to get in the proper position where I’d be at contact.

They may train about where my left arm should be here, or keeping the arms together, but your arm is moving and I haven’t seen any training aids that effectively put your arms in the proper position throughout the entire golf swing.

Let me talk about from start to finish what the left arm should be doing, and specifically the upper arm.

If you imagine your shoulder socket here, you can imagine kind of a ball joint up there, and then I have my humerus, this is the bone that runs down from my upper arm and attaches to my elbow.

I’m going to really focus in on what this is doing, and I’ll talk a little bit about what the wrist is doing as we’re coming through contact.

So as we’re at address, I’m going to set up to this golf ball, I’ve got a little bit of tilt away with my spine, a little bit of forward shaft lean. Basically at address, I’m just letting my arm hang down pretty comfortably and naturally.

I may just have a little tiny bit of forward shaft lean, because my shoulders are slightly tilted away from the target. But from there my left upper arm is just hanging pretty naturally.

Now as I go to the top of the swing, I’m going to be rotating and lifting my arm and club up on the plane. So if we’re looking at it from this direction, my left upper arm goes here and gets the club up onto plane.

There’s two things that are happening there. If I get rid of all the rotation, that looks something like this. Here’s my address, I’m going to kind of set like I would be standing straight up and down.

Here’s me coming to the top of the golf swing. So two things are happening. One, my arm is moving up vertically, and it’s moving across my chest slightly. You’ll start to see how it’s going up and out.

The second thing is, I have to get rotation of the upper arm. So my humerus is actually turning, kind of like turning a screw, my upper arm is rotating a bit out. Look how my hand starts to rotate that direction as this happens.

That’s going to get my elbow pointing more out away from my body, rather than where it was at address, which is more kind of to the side. So I’m getting that rotation.

If you watch that again, you can start to see that my arm is moving up and across my body, and rotating at the same time. That rotation takes the club and sets it on the plane so I have a nice on-plane golf swing as I go to the top.

That’s what’s happening in the backswing. If we don’t get the elevation, a lot of times what we’ll see is a player that kind of has low arms like this, you’ll feel like you’re very bound up, your arms are working across your chest, and you don’t feel like you have a lot of power from there.

Or a lot of times, I’ll see players that are across the line, that’s because they didn’t get any rotation to set the club on plane as they’re going to the top.

Now in the downswing what’s going to happen is at first your left arm is just going to kind of fall back in front of your body. So here it falls down the first part of the swing, that’s me going like this and just kind of letting it work back down to where it was originally.

Then through contact, it’s going to turn on over very quickly. As your humerus goes this way – I’m exaggerated here – externally rotating. So this would be internally rotating, this is externally rotating.

What happens is, as I start to swing down, I’m actually letting my club…let me rephrase that a little bit. As I first start down, my arm is actually going to fall even more. I’m going to flatten that club out a little bit more as I first star down.

So I’m here at the top on plane, I’m going to flatten that out, and this arm is actually going to rotate out even a little bit more. Then as I’m starting there, it’s just falling, then I’m letting it rotate on around as I come through contact.

So my hand is kind of doing this, I’ve flattened the club plane out, and then as I’m coming through, as I’m at contact my left upper arm is going to be kind of against my left pec here, it’s against my chest, pretty tight to my chest.

My left elbow is going to be basically facing out toward the target. So my hips are open, my shoulders are square. This is another question I get.

So this is a kind of a crazy detailed video as the title says, this isn’t an overall just kind of a general what you should feel. I’m going to break this down into a lot of detail here.

As I come into contact, my shoulders are basically square. If you look from shoulder socket to shoulder socket, that’s pretty square, but that’s because my left shoulder is protracted.

If you look at me from face on here, there’s that impact position. You can see my shoulder is kind of protracted out in front. Watch what happens if I take my left arm off the club and pull it back.

Look at my chest. My chest is actually already open quite a bit, so that’s why your left arm kind of feels tight against your chest at contact, is because it’s protracting to stay down and through that shot, and to cover that golf ball.

This is when your wrist as you start down, that starts to rotate, gets a bowing action, and then bam, it’s compressing. It’s covering that golf ball, as a lot of people call this.

Then from here, this is a great question, a lot of people try to hold that and move everything on through as one unit. That’s not how it happens.

My body’s actually decelerating then my arms fly away from my body to release that golf club. As I come all the way on around, look how my left elbow is all the way back.

If I’m going from this position, here’s me covering the golf ball, and then bam, my left elbow comes from tight against my chest, goes all the way up – let’s get rid of the club – goes from tight against my chest, low against the side of my body, comes all the way up and separates completely from my body at this point.

So I’m letting the force and the momentum of the club fly out away from my body as I come on through to a good, full finish. As I mentioned too, that upper arm is externally rotating as you’re coming through.

To kind of recap on this, as we go to address hanging nice, easy to our side. As we go to the top of the swing, we’re getting elevation, the upper arms are moving across our chest. It’s rotating internally a little bit.

As I start down, it’s going to feel like it falls, and I’m actually rotating the club even flatter at this point. As I come into contact my arm’s going to be kind of across my chest like this, pretty tight.

Then as I come all the way up to the finish, my arm flies on out, so I’ve gotten rid of all my body movement, and I’m just kind of showing you what the arm does. Rotates tight into my chest and then flies on out to come through to the finish.

So this isn’t necessarily a video saying here’s exactly how I’d work through that, but this is explaining if you are looking on video, this is exactly what should be happening.

The main thing that I would really work on, and the two feelings that I see people, or let’s go ahead and say three feelings I see people mess up most commonly.

Number one, as we’re going into the backswing, and this is something I highly recommend a lot of people work on.

As we’re going into the backswing, I’ve got to get this internal rotation of my left arm, and as I start that downswing I want to keep that happening so I can shallow this club out as I’m starting down.

I don’t want this club kicking back out over this way like an over the top move. I’ve got to continue to shallow that club as I start down.

Number two, as I’m coming through contact, I want to make sure that my hips and shoulders are open, and that this is fairly tight into my body, and I’m compressing that golf ball. This has a little bit of a bow in my left wrist. That’s the second thing.

A lot of times I see people flipping like this, the elbow starts to come out away from the body. I’ve got to keep that in a little bit closer.

Then number three, instead of keeping everything moving in close, that’s when we’re going to let he hand and arm fly out away from the body and get that good free flowing.

You look at a Ben Hogan, and his club is perpendicular with the ground, it would be knocking through a 10-foot ceiling, or a 9-foot ceiling at least, because he’s letting that arm come out away from his body. Same things with Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, a lot of the most beautiful swings in the world.

So focus in on those three key pieces, most people I see really struggling with all three of those. Get in some reps to get familiar with it, and good luck to you guys. Good luck working that left arm.