Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Simple Takeaway Drill That Could be a GAME CHANGER"

In today's lesson...

Uncover the big mistakes you're making with your chest and your trail elbow in the takeaway that's both sapping your power and destroying your swing's rhythm...

...and get two drills ideal for hammering in the correct movements (including the key trail arm focus for getting your swing off on the right foot).

Once everything is working together (rather than fighting against each other), your swing will look much more effortless.

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:50

Video Transcription:

I've got two of the absolute best takeaway drills for you. First, let's go over the number one mistake that I see players make. And a lot of times if you want to hit it with power, we have to load up properly and it all starts in the first couple of feet. What all see players do a lot of times is not turn their chest away from the ball and they'll pick the club up with their arms.

 

Worse than that, it may even get this right elbow to kind of fly away from their body and just kind of pick it up. All hands and arms. And now I'm disconnected. My body's not working together. And worse than that, I don't get any kind of a turn. So you can see if I hit a shot here, I'm going to pick it up with all arms.

 

I'm going to try to swing hard. I'm going to try this as hard as I can, but I'm not going to rotate my body. So I hit that one solid. I hit about as good as I can carry distance. 157 164. I felt like I had a lot of arms. I felt like I could have chunked it. I could have thinned it.

 

Nothing was working together, but I didn't do my takeaway right. This time I'm going to do my takeaway right, which is really rotating my chest early in the swing. And then I'm going to have a bigger turn, a bigger load up, and I'm going to feel like I'm even smooth on this one. I'll see what kind of distance I can get.

 

There you go. Really solid on that one. Clubhead speed went up a ton. Total distance went up to 18. Carry distance went up to two. We're talking 40 yards farther, 50 yards farther. So that all comes down, this feeling I can get you to recreate the same feeling with these two drills. What I have here is a one by four board, and I like this because this is probably about roughly three feet long, two and a half feet long.

 

Something like that doesn't matter the exact size or shape. I just want it light enough to where I can slide this board and push it away in my back swing. Now, if I go ahead and set up a golf ball, a couple of inches in front of this, what I'm really focusing on here is keeping my right arm straight.

 

This is the big key. I don't want this arm bending and that arm flying behind me right away. And what I'm doing is I'm keeping it straight, rotating my chest in the back swing. I feel like I'm taking the outside of my right shoulder and letting it pull behind my back. My body. I feel like I'm taking my right hip and letting it rotate behind my body.

 

I feel like I'm taking my belt buckle and letting it turn away from Target like that. So all these movements, I have a little bit of pressure to the right side and then everything. My right leg, my hip, my belt buckle, my chest, my shoulder, everything just throws that away from the target. Notice how when I'm here, I've really started to load up a ton.

 

My club hasn't moved very far back, but look at my right arm. It's straight. If I keep that right arm straight and I have those same sensations, it's almost impossible to mess this up. If I do it the wrong way. I'm not going to get as long of a slide with that board, and I'm just going to kind of pick up that right arm like this.

 

It almost felt like I lifted the board up in the air, almost like a. What I mean by that is the difference was I kind of got under that board on that one. It felt like I was lifting the board up like this versus letting my body turn and sliding it that way across the ground. Now, the reason the board is so helpful is because you can feel that you have to get a little weight shift.

 

You have to get a little pressure into that board to let it slide. If I just pick it up with my arms, I feel like I can't slide that board very well. So that's the first piece that's going to get you a really good feel for this. Now, if we want to take it to level two, the pro version of that, we're going to use one of these thera bands, which is a fantastic you have to get one of these.

 

I don't get anything for these. You can get them on Amazon. They're a few bucks a piece. Doesn't matter which kind of use. These are just the really light stretchy ones. I'm going to put it across my club face like this. Have it go tight and I'm going to wrap it around a few times here just so it's nice and tight around the club face.

 

Now from there, I'm going to go ahead and put this under my right arm so I'm go ahead and pull it with my left hand like that. And now it's pretty tight. All right. There's some tension there. But what's going to happen is if I do this one piece, take away, I should be able to take that club all the way back to here.

 

My right arm is straight. This is cinched in really tight. And I've really turned my entire body. Now, look how much of a rotate on my shoulders. 90 degrees. And my hands are barely above waist high here. That's a perfect take away. Look at Tiger. Look at Rory. Look at Adam Scott. Look at Dustin Johnson, whoever you want to use.

 

Look at all those guys are getting that take away just like that. Now, if I don't move my body and I just kind of pick the club up, what happens is, again, my right elbow flies across my body that loosens up that pressure under my armpit. And now I can't hit a very good shot. And I'll tell you what.

 

Once I do a few of those board drills, I do a few of the rubber band drills. The third band, I feel like I can absolutely kill it. So here I'm going to recreate that same feeling. Then all I'm going to do is shift my weight to the left to start the downswing and swing on through to a good full finish.

 

Let's see kind of distance we get. I'm not going to try to swing that hard. I'm just gonna try to make a really good take away and turn. Not even the most solid shot of what's going a little faster. You see carry distance 200 yards with a six iron slightly thin on that one. This one I'm gonna hit down a little bit more.

 

Now I'm really going to focus on my the same thing in the follow through. Really getting long away somehow. I'm really long here. I have lag, and then I'm long coming through it. Long on both sides. And let's give it another world area that was still there for me, back in 208 carry it six iron. Not going to do a ton better than that.

 

Now, there's one question I always get with this. Clay, I'm stiff as a board, I'm tight, I'm not flexible, I'm not able to do these moves. The last thing I want to do is get that big 90 degree turn. Well, it's actually really important to get a good turn in the golf swing, but that's a legitimate concern. Are you even physically able to turn your body like that?

 

So I have a special video that's going to test your range of motion. Now, with top speed golf system, what I recommend is that if we use our body in the right way, every single player that I've worked with, unless you have virtually all your disc in your spine, even then, you can get close all year, just in your spine fuzed you can get it all the way to 90 degree turn in the back swing.

 

In fact, I feel completely relaxed here when at one point in my golf game I would have felt incredibly tight trying to get to that 90 degrees. Now, when I've used my body better, I've learned how to make it more flexible and more fluid. So let's put it to the test. I have a video. It's 1.5 in the Power Turn section.

 

So if you remember Top Speed Golf, click on the instruction tab TSG system, then go to the power turn and video 1.5. Now there I'm going to put you through a full range of motion test. I have a few things that I'm going to do with you to see. Do you have the flexibility to get that 90 degree turn?

 

Or if you don't, here's even more important, if you do nothing else, if you go to that video and you find out Clay, I don't have the range of motion to make that happen, then you should never work on the power turn again. Every instructor that you go to in the future, every time one of your buddies tells you that you need to turn your shoulders more, you'll know for a fact.

 

It's just not physically possible with my body limitations. But you might find out that you're a little more flexible than you think. Once I put you through this test, though, so head on over there right now, I can't wait to test you out, see what your range of motion is. And at the end of this, have you hitting it a whole heck of a lot farther.

 

Let's go and get started right now.