Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Stability Line | A Can’t Miss Conversation on Weight Shift vs Sliding"

You’ve probably heard that you need to get your belt buckle in front of the ball at impact for more consistency.

For a lot of golfers, that’s not so easy to do…

…and oftentimes, you’ll wind up sliding your hips forward instead of getting a proper weight shift.

Today, Top Speed Golf certified instructor Michael Derr will join me to take a deep dive into the weight shift…

…we’ll go over how to get that belt buckle in front the proper way…

…so that you can nail the weight shift…

…and start hitting the ball with far more consistency!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Michael Derr    

Video Duration: 18:08

Video Transcription:

Clay: Hey, it's great to have you here today. Michael Durr, Top Speed Golf Certified Instructor. We've been hanging out for a few days now, talking golf swing. Weight shift is a common topic. When do we get it? How much to get? All that kind of stuff. We're going to make a video where we cover all kinds of questions we get on weight shift.

Number one is... Let's go ahead and actually go to address and we'll talk about it here. So, if we draw a line on the outside of the right leg, it should be slightly angled in, and as you go about halfway to three quarters of the way in the backswing, you're going to be on that line. Then as you transition into the downswing, your right leg is going to come forward of that line quite a bit.

And the question is, I don't want to slide. I don't want to be sliding around. What's the difference between sliding and getting the proper weight shift off that line? Uh, number two is when should my right leg come off that line? And then number three is how much? So let's cover all three of those. First, let's go over what is the proper weight shift versus a slide.

Michael: Okay. So to understand this, this can be, this can be understood pretty simply if we understand the setup and the midline. And then again, that, that, um, line right off the back leg. So the difference between a slide and a correct weight shift is what we're going over. So the, and just so you know, the one of the biggest reasons why we're, I even brought this up in the first place is because I get so many questions about this because when we teach the stable fluid spine course mechanics, where we actually get the belt buckle in front, which we'll go over here in a second.

players think, Hey, I'm sliding because that's, that's kind of a taboo word. And, and we don't want to slide and we're going to define exactly what that is. So if we're set up at address, the first thing we want to be aware of is our midline. So our midline is going to bisect our body straight up out of the ground.

So the easiest way to understand the midline is we draw a line that's going to split our feet equal distance. So if I have two feet, of distance between my feet just for round numbers. I want that to be one foot off of each foot. So just basically dead center of the stance, but using the feet as a reference point and that line drawn straight up out of the ground.

And that's our midline. Now at address, we actually want this back leg to be at a little bit of an angle. The way that we do that is we get into the proper setup, which is we're going to bump that belt buckle just in front of the midline. Number one mistake is trying to do too much. I always tell my online students.

put it one inch in front of the midline or just bump your belt buckle over one inch or another easy visual is have the edge of your belt buckle touching the outside of the midline. Cause it's just a small bump and then you can put your lower half in a perfect spot. And then what you want to do is get your nose behind the midline and then you have a soft angle away from the target at address.

And of course that puts that 

Clay: basically gets the whole by doing that. Your weight stays pretty much 50 50, maybe even favoring the right leg slightly, but it's, the upper body is slightly tilted away, so not straight up and down, but tilted away. Go ahead and get back in stance here and I'll still show them.

So slightly tilted away with the upper body. And then, because the belt buckle moved forward, now instead of this being straight up and down, There's a little bit of an angle there also his feet are a little wider than his hips. So there's naturally going to be a little bit of angle there. Go ahead and stay 

Michael: right there.

Okay. So put that straight up now. So one of the ways that, yeah, so kind of put it almost right up against the leg right there. The way that I'll explain this is if you almost imagine a set of brackets around your hips, if you're standing straight up and down and you hinge over into your golf posture, you just want to go just a little bit outside of those brackets and create a little bit of daylight there.

Gotcha. So if we create a little bit of daylight outside those brackets, then we'll have that. 

Clay: Angled. Gotcha. And if we keep a line on there, so we'll have our video guy draw a line on the outside of that leg now. As you rotate to the top of the swing, as long as I stay in this posture, I'm going to get about three quarters of the way back or so, halfway back, or roughly when the hands are left arm parallel to the ground, maybe slightly farther than that, and I'm still going to be on that right, that right line with the outside of my leg.

Now from there, as I complete the backswing. We're going to get a shift to the left. And you're going to see this right leg starts to pull forward. And what do you like to have people do for that? How much and when do they know? 

Michael: Well, I think we should probably go over what the slide is first. And then kind of get into when that leg comes off.

Because that will be a little bit better sequence. So we can just make sure that that's dictated. So if we go back to the midline. Then, when we go up to the top of the swing, what we want to have happen on the downswing is the nose stay behind that midline and the belt buckle get in front. So we want the nose to stay roughly about three or four inches behind the midline.

So I always say nose to head behind the midline just to kind of, because it's roughly about that distance. Put your left ears on it? Your left ear so you can keep the head. And when we look at all the Tour Pros, when we look at this, we're going to see the back pocket clear that initial line, the nose slash head stay behind the midline on the downswing.

A slide would be, in simple terms, we're leaving that line and our nose is crossing the midline. That would be a slide. That's me sliding in front of the ball. And that's where, I mean, there's all kind of slew of problems that can come from that. Uh, slicers are very, very bad at this. Um, or very good at this, as you can say.

They get way ahead of it, but this is a very common thing that players try to do also to get forward shaft lean. Hey, let me get way ahead of it and try to... Get over, which we've discussed some of that before, but the long story short, a slide is we want to shift our weight. A slide is a weight shift, but our nose is chasing past the midline versus the nose staying back and we want our weight to shift in front.

But the nose needs to stay behind the midline. And you see 

Clay: how much more athletic that looks, the second one than the first one. Yeah. That looks like every tour player, whereas this is going to be, you know, chopping down on too steep. 

Michael: And we're exaggerating just a little bit. Um, even if I have a player, one of my online students, and their nose is crossing the midline or even touching the midline, we work on it until we get it behind the midline.

That's how important it is. That's something that we really focus in on. And what happens... Just kind of a side note, sometimes when players do this, they hang a little bit back and they don't get the, which we're going to go over next, they don't get their back pocket forward. So they end up kind of hanging back, which will make you bottom out a little bit.

So when you first start working on this, pay attention to it on your bottom point and really pay attention to kind of our next point of the video, which is getting the back pocket off that line. Show me how to do the back pocket. Okay. So when we're going to, so if we draw that line right off the back pocket.

As I go up to the top of the swing, what we want to see on the downswing is we want to create some space between that. So what I tell my, my players and what I even try to do in my own game is I try to use that midline as another reference point. I actually try to get my back pocket in front of that as I'm going on the downswing.

Now, depending on your flexibility, uh, some players can actually do that, some players can't. Mine, I actually can't get mine past it, but that's the feel that I use, is to get the belt buckle as far in front of that midline as I can while keeping The nose belt buckle behind. So that's what the, that's the visual we want to see that line off the back, clear some space in between that line as the head slash nose stays behind the 

Clay: midline.

Yeah, I like that. And you'll see some pros, like Michael's talking about, where they get that hip all the way to the midline. That really, you know, that's a player, I usually don't see that outside of players that are like, you know, late 30s, early 40s or younger might be able to get that. You lose a little bit of flexibility as you get older, probably not realistic, but the feeling, if I just think I'm trying to get that hip on there toward that midline, that can be a really good feeling, no matter what your age is.

Even if you look at it on camera, it's not quite doing that. Yeah. That's still getting you to get the weight left. Then you keep the upper body back and that gets you in a great position to hit it. 

Michael: You know, I actually do get a lot of, uh, players when they start first working on this. I do word this to them before we start working on this, but they will still do it anyway.

So kind of pay attention to this. They start cranking on it a lot. This is a much more casual feeling move than you would think. It shouldn't be real strenuous. It might feel a little bit that way if you're working on it slow at first, but if we take the club completely out of the equation, this is essentially all we're doing.

It's a very casual move. But then if you draw the line as a reference point, you see that pocket just get off that pretty quickly. One thing 

Clay: I like to kind of hit on while you're doing that. So stay there. If you're, you just do exactly what you're doing. Now the hips, I don't want those to slide forward when I'm doing that.

So I could, I could slide, go ahead and stand up out of your posture and slide forward. Right. Now that move is going to get the body going toward the ball. You lose all kinds of space here. Now, if you grabbed a club, you'd be really jammed 

Michael: up. And that could look okay from the face 

Clay: on view. Yeah, so the hip moved forward.

But you want to make sure when you're doing that, go ahead and do it now in a good posture. Feel like the hip stays back. Yeah. That way, he stayed on. If you drew a line on his butt from address to impact, it'd be the same. And now he's got that. You know, if we're doing a split screen, we're showing the face on view and the down the line view.

We can see that he stayed in this posture here and got the hips to clear out of the way. This is basically what the pros are pros are doing there. That's just, I wanted to mention that cause it's a really common, common one I got. Yeah. Yeah. That's, 

Michael: that's definitely cause when you talk about start moving the belt buckle in front of the midline, it could go towards you versus.

I would say more down the center of the feet, feet line. So if you can imagine if you're on a balance beam, you almost want that belt buckle to stay on the balance beam or even feel like it goes behind it a little bit. Yeah, I like that. But you still want to see, so it's a, it's good to see your depth from the down the line view for as far as your back pockets line, not coming off of those, but you definitely want to see it move forward from the face on 

Clay: view.

And essentially this, this whole thing, you know, what are we really trying to do? Let me grab this board. I'll kind of go over a couple of things. This is my Frankenstein weight shift board here that I made a few years ago. You can do the same thing at home. You don't even have to have one. Take a broomstick and put it under a, uh, this is just a piece of wood, probably two feet wide or two feet long by a foot wide.

Put a broomstick under it. It'll do the same thing. Uh, this one I just kind of made out of some door stoppers. That way the feet stay angled in. And one thing I like about this. So if I put that, that pivot point in the middle. That's kind of like that center line that Michael was talking about. I like having these foot stoppers angled in because I don't ever want to get, we're talking about that right leg line, I don't ever want to get that line being like this.

Michael: Exactly. I was just going to say that this is one of the best things, even if you just put a couple golf balls there just to do some practice. Almost like this? Yeah, just kind of step it. That's an easy way you can do it at the range. Um, right away, uh, that's, that's one of the best things because he, as he was saying this back pocket line, take your setup real quick.

So this back pocket line, we don't want to go on this side of it. I don't want to start doing that. I mean, I see this every single day, especially. 

Clay: Then it's, talk about hard to get back to the left. Oh yeah. If I'm over here and I've already gone four more inches that way. Yeah. Then trying to get back to the left, 

Michael: it's like.

So think, you're doubling the amount of space. This is, I actually explained this a lot too as well. So think, so, I want to make sure they get a really good visual on this. So say, say his back pocket has to travel six inches forward to be ideal weight shift, right? So now go ahead and take a back swing where you do it incorrectly and let's say he goes six inches back this way Now he's got to travel a foot and the amount of time it takes to get down to the ball Which is pretty much no time at all.

That's a long ways to go So if you're swaying, this would be a hip sway Yeah If you're swaying outside that line you're doubling or every inch you go outside that line and you're pretty much making it That much harder to get your weight onto your front side. I'd even 

Clay: argue it's impossible because you've got a quarter second for the downswing.

Yeah, it's so fast. You know, and then, and then you're, you're like, well, I can't get my weight to my left. Well, maybe it's that it's impossible because I've gotten there. So I like these angled in, not that you're going to make one of these, but if you did, this is why I made it like I did. These door stoppers are angled in to keep my weight from doing that.

So as I, I like to do this when I start out, I'll actually start out with my weight on my, on the left side of the teeter totter. So it's the right side. That's the left side. I'll start with it on the left side. I'll shift it to the right before I ever take my backswing. Because you really want that weight shift going to the right, right away.

Then I'll be here about halfway back and my, my, my weight will still be on this right side. Now from there, it needs to shift over to the left before I start my downswing. So basically it'll look like this. Here's the start of the swing. Just a gentle little teeter totter to the right to get started. Then I'm here.

Then I'm getting back to the left and when I get back to the left, notice how my hips go forward. When I do that, then I'm going to go in my downswing. Now, one thing I liked on this too when I made this little board is I angled these open. You see that these are straight, straight ahead. These are angled open because I like that foot to be a little bit, that front foot to be angled open slightly.

And I think that really promotes getting the hips cleared out of the way. So if I was going to hit little shots on this, It would just look like this. Start left, I'll get a little tilt to start it out. And it's going to want to slide a little bit because it's not outside on the grass, it's on a, on a mat.

But you'll notice how my weight starts to get to the left. I'll even slow it down a little bit so you can see better. It'll be here, and then I'm going to go through. So I'm basically getting that weight to shift to the left. A hip to come forward and then I'm going to swing down and 

Michael: why I want to reiterate real quick while you're doing this, go ahead and don't take a backswing and whack me.

But if you shift forward, go ahead and shift forward. Okay. All right. Start over one more time. So if we mark where his back pocket is now, shift forward. Oh, so go, go on the right foot. I just want to show him the distance. You can see how much distance he's creating. If you don't have a marker, it's hard to see this sometimes, but the biggest, one of the biggest weight shift mistakes I see is players hanging back and their pocket being.

Um, not basically not shifting to the board to the front. It's almost like keeping the board tilted on the backside the whole time. 

Clay: So my nose is almost staying in the same spot. I'm just doing 

Michael: that. One more thing I wanted to mention here real quick is there's, there's kind of two ways you can do this.

So I don't want the, uh, the members to get confused here. So when we get set up, um, we talked about drawing this line and if our back pocket breaks that line, so let's go ahead and draw a line, right? So go ahead and set up right here. Let's draw a line right off the back of Clay's pocket. And then you shift back, you're going to see he's breaking the line.

Technically, by our definition, that would be a hip sway, but the first way to do it is we don't break the line at all. The second way to do it is we can shift and then draw the line, and now he's not going to break that line all the way up to the top. Yeah, so 

Clay: what I felt, the only reason I said, uh, the main thing with, I start on my left and I get the teeter totter to go to the right before I swing, is because what I see a lot of players doing is not ever getting their weight to the right early enough.

So what ends up happening is they keep their weight on their left and then all of a sudden they're going back to the right almost at the top of the backswing and they never get off that right foot and fall back. The proper weight shift is my weight goes to my right early. Then, if you want to draw the line on there, that's perfect.

As you go to the, about halfway into your backswing you start shifting left. The hips come off that, the nose stays back, and then you make your downswing. So you really want to make sure, if you're going to get this right, It's actually pretty simple if I boil it down in everything we've talked about. Get your weight shift right as early as possible.

Keep your right hip inside instead of letting it slide to the outside. You can do that by having these little angled door stoppers or putting a golf ball under your right heel of your right foot. From there, after my hands get about halfway back, go ahead and start to shift the weight to the left before you swing down and just make sure you keep your nose behind the ball as you come all the way on through.

So, early shift to the right, have your right foot kind of angled in with that golf ball, early shift to the left with your nose behind it, and then make your downswing. And that's, that's basically a summary of everything that's really 

Michael: going to help. I would say one note, and when you tell them how to shift as early as you can, I would say you either shift before, go ahead and set up here real quick, shift before you take the club away, or about six inches.

It's after you take the club 

Clay: away. So basically I'm going, I'm going here and I'm, I'm just getting that weight to the right, just early. Yeah. Early. So I don't ever want to see, sometimes I'll see players and they're here 

Michael: and then they try to shift. That's too late. 

Clay: Way too late. You're so far behind the eight ball.

You can't play catch up and it's like, ah, I can't get my weight to the left. 

Michael: And a lot of players like that as a nice trigger to start their swing as well. That little shift off to the right, it's a nice, it's a nice way to start the swing. So. If they stay within those parameters, they can play around with that a little bit.

And you can find a really nice, easy way to not only monitor your weight shift, but also feel it and actually start getting the benefits from it. I like that. All right. 

Clay: So this video was fantastic for the weight shift, but if you're unsure of what you're doing with your swing, sometimes you watch a video like this.

You're like, ah, not sure if I'm breaking the line or I'm not sure if I'm drawing the line, right. Or I feel like I'm shifting to the left, but it just feels awkward. Well, if you send your video to somebody like Michael. He can say, Hey, it feels awkward because of this. This is what we really need to be doing.

And he can easily pinpoint the things that are holding you back. That's what he does in his swing review program. And right now, he's got just a handful of spots open. He can become your personal coach. You send him your video. He tells you exactly what you need to do for your next range session, uh, practice session to improve.

And then you just repeat the process and keep getting better and better. The only downside, he's only got a few spots open. And he usually sells out of these pretty quick. Only opens in what, maybe once a month, once every month and a half, something like that. So if you don't get one now, it may be a while before you can jump into that program in the future.

Off season, on season, 24 7, it doesn't matter. This is a program because we're talking about technique. If we want to improve our technique, there's never a bad time to do that. So if you're coming into the off season, uh, this is a great time to work on your game. I highly recommend you sign up with, if you do click the button below this page or below this video to go sign up and it is full, make sure you join that wait list so that you get notified first when he does open spots up, if they're already sold out this time, best of luck.

We'll see you soon.