Why You Need This: Today you'll discover "The Wrong Way to Get Lag"

If you're like most people, you struggle to create Lag in your golf swing.

You end up trying to force a sharp angle using your wrists, and not only does this not work, but it can promote some bad things in your swing (including blocking the ball).

Does this sound like you?

Don't worry,  you're not alone.

And today I'm going to help you end the mystery of how to create Lag in your swing so you can start blasting the ball!

In today's video, you'll discover:

• Major detail about your wrist's role in creating Lag in the golf swing,
• the right way to add Lag to your swing,
• the differences between a cupped, straight and bowed wrist (and which ones are good), and
• I'll illustrate how a large portion of the Lag in your swing is just an optical illusion.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:31

Video Transcription:

All right, lag. Everybody wants to get tons of this lag. Really sharp angle here like we see with some of the top players, and then release the heck out of that to get tons of speed.

That’s what all the Tour players are doing, so why is it so dag-gone hard to do it in our own swing?

That’s exactly what I’m going to talk about here today, and I have a really cool piece of technology that’s going to help us to see this in a new and different way.

This is a company called HackMotion, that’s H-A-C-K-M-O-T-I-O-N, and it has two inertial sensors that go on, one on my forearm just above my wrist, and then one on the back of my glove here.

What you do, is you take out your phone, it works right with your phone. You calibrate it, so it knows where flat is. Then from there, when I move my wrist, you’re going to be able to see this move in real time.

When I make a swing and hit a shot, it records that so I can see exactly what my wrist did. So it tracks not only this up and down type motion, or if you’re looking at it from this way, this is called wrist extension, this is called wrist flexion.

So my palm’s towards my body this is wrist flexion, my palm’s away from my body, that’s wrist extension.

Also tracks radial deviation, that’s this up motion. Ulnar deviation, and then also rotation, so when I have my pronation and supination.

Now one of the biggest mistakes that players make when they’re trying to get more lag, is that they try to get this up and down. This would be radial deviation here, create a really sharp angle there.

What happens with this, is I try to bring my wrist up as much as I can, or thumb up this way. My wrist naturally starts to go into extension.

If you try to get as much of this angle as you can, you’re going to notice that if you bend your knuckles back, again this extension, my knuckle’s back toward my elbow. That’s the easiest way to get the sharpest angle here.

You’re also going to notice when you’re doing this, I can’t get much of an angle there. I mean, I’m not really getting a sharp angle between my forearm and the club, so why does this look like so much lag when I’m swinging the club?

So two problems there, problem number one, when I try to get as much of that as I can in the downswing, really get that arm cocked back and that wrist cocked back, a lot of times I’m going to cup my wrist.

I’m going to have my knuckles back to my elbow. What that does, when I cup my wrist, it opens the face. So when I try to get a lot of this lag, the face is wide open, and all of a sudden where’s the ball go? A mile to the right. It’s really frustrating.

Piece number two, the problem there is this angle isn’t very sharp, this doesn’t look like a ton of lag, how do I get this angle where I get lots of lag in the downswing. I’m going to go over both of those.

But first, let me hit a couple shots. In this first one, I’m going to do the wrong way, so I’m going to try to really create this sharp angle of lag.

I’m going to cut my wrist, I’m going to get this club in a steep angle, my face is going to be open, not going to be good. Let’s go ahead and try that out and let’s see what happens here.

Oh, wow, so that ball started over the trees, and then it went another 50-60 yards. That is I would say it’s out of bounds, or in the water, but it probably went another 50 yards past that.

That’s the sensation of me getting this wrist to cock, this big angle of lag, but my wrist is cupped. So it’s wide open, and if you’re looking from this angle the face is wide open there. That’s going to block a mile to the right.

Now let me go ahead and hit a good one with the right way to do this lag, and then we’re going to talk about some of these numbers on my HackMotion sensor.

So here I’m going to get the right way to get lag. I’m going to lag the club, this is going to be nice and flat, I’m going to hit a good shot here, at least attempt at a good shot.

All right, there we go. Right down the left side of the fairway. Ha

So let’s take a look at my numbers and let’s talk about the drill you should do to really get this in your own swing.

If I pull up my HackMotion app, I’m looking at my good swing. At address, I have a little bit of what’s called extension.

So again, when I’m setting up this golf ball, the angle between my forearm and my wrist, my wrist is angled back a little bit like that, what people would call cupped traditionally in golf speak.

There’s a little bit of an angle there. If I look at that on my HackMotion sensor, I have about 19° of extension at address.

As I get to the top, I actually still have a little bit of a cup in my wrist. Now a lot of times what appears to be a flat wrist at the top will still read as a little bit of cup here, because of the way anatomically your wrist is put together.

You’re not typically going to see players that are perfectly flat, and if they are, it’s going to look a little bit even bowed at the top. It’s going to have the appearance of being bowed.

If you look at that, if I line up the back of my forearm and the back of my wrist, that looks bowed, but you’ll see how these sensors are kind of level with each other.

At the top of the swing, 29°, still had a little bit of an angle between my forearm and my wrist there, that’s completely fine.

The big thing here is as I start my downswing, this started to flatten out, it started to get into that bowed type position.

If you look halfway down, now my wrist is starting to flatten out and get bowed, and more importantly, that’s squaring up the face.

The more I bow my wrist, the more that turns the face to close it to square it up. That helps me to hit it a lot straighter.

At impact, I had 16° of what would be called a bowing action, which would be wrist flexion. So we’ll see if I pause at impact, I’m going to have an angle between my forearm and my wrist.

Then after that, my wrist goes ahead and folds up and goes back into extension again. That’s completely fine.

So essentially what’s happening at address, wrist is slightly cupped. At the top it’s slightly cupped. As you make your downswing and go to impact it bows, and then you go ahead and release it as it comes on through.

You’re not trying to hold that through there like that, you can go ahead and let that go, that’s completely fine.

When I’m looking at ulnar and radial deviation, so again, my forearm’s being down, that would be what’s called ulnar deviation, my hand’s down. This would be radial deviation.

As I’m setting up, I have 37° of ulnar deviation. So I’m looking from this down the line view, my hand is angled down like that as I’m gripping the club in ulnar deviation.

As I got to the top of the swing, I have a little bit of that wrist cock, or a little bit of the wrist setting upwards, that’s radial. I go to 17° of radial deviation, which basically means my wrist goes up in that direction as I go to the top of the swing.

Then as I come back down to impact, again, it releases and our wrist is down again, 19° down.

It’s pretty cool that you can make a swing, you can look at this little device, and start to see exactly what your wrist is doing by the numbers.

I may feel like I’m bowed, or may feel like I have my hand angled down like that, but now I can see the real numbers.

If I want to get more bow, then I can play around with the feelings and see how the numbers adjust, see how the numbers change on here.

That’s one of the best ways to learn is really trying to exaggerate these numbers. Even a cooler thing, I won’t get into that, but the cooler thing on here is when you look at the rotational speed, how much my wrist releases.

Sometimes having a little bit more wrist rotation can add some club head speed, that’s completely fine. A lot of times players think I’m going to hold everything straight toward the target, that’s really not what happens.

Even the players that are the most square through contact, that club face is still rotating on through to impact.

Now let’s take a look at my incorrect one, the one where I really got too much of that cup in the downswing. This is where people get in trouble.

Remember that ball went a mile to the right. When I tried to get that lag in the downswing, my wrist went into what’s called cupping or extension, my knuckles went back to my elbow.

I have this big angle there, and now my face is wide open. That’s a perfect situation to hit the ball way to the right.

When I was at address, I had 25° of that wrist extension. When I went to the top, as I felt like I was going to get into this angle of really getting that lag, it went all the way up to 66°, so my wrist was really angled back at the top.

As I went to impact, remember I was getting almost 16°, 18° of bow, I didn’t have as much bow, I only had 8° of bow when I came into impact with this one.

So basically, my face was 8° more open than what I was normally felt it being open there. the same thing if we go into radial and ulnar, some of those numbers switch too.

The main thing there is to show, and I can see it clear as day, no doubt about it, that as I went into my downswing, my wrist was much more extended and the face was much more open than it would have been with my normal swing.

So if I kind of even take it halfway into the downswing, almost coming into impact, my wrist was still in 17° of this cupping or wrist extension. That’s really not in a good a position to be in.

So given that, let’s talk about what we do about it now. It’s nice to know that this wrist should be flat, why does this make a difference?

Here’s the thing that I think a lot of people mistake for this, you try to get this angle as sharp as you can get it, because you think man, that’s still just not very much.

As you try to get more and more, and sharpen this up to sharpen this up, there’s no other way but then to cup this wrist and get into that extension. I can really only make this sharp angle when I crank my wrist that way.

When I go with my wrist flatter, now you’ll see how I don’t get as good of an angle. You think, well, you know if this is my angle there’s no way I can lag the club.

Well in reality, if I go ahead and I have this angle where my wrist is flat, watch what happens when the face on view, when my club now goes shallower.

Look how that looks like a much sharper angle. This doesn’t look like very much lag when the club is straight up and down. This looks like a really good amount of lag.

In reality, my wrist is flat and that’s the angle the entire time. All I’m doing is shallowing that out, flatter than the camera. It’s a bit of an optical illusion with all that lag.

That’s really the secret there. We can’t crank our wrist back like that, we need to feel like our wrist is flat in the downswing.

Here’s a great drill. Probably one of the best drills to get this as quickly as possible. Go down to last parallel in the downswing.

Again, I’m opening my body, I feel like this is a real swing. My right heel’s coming off the ground, my hips are opening. At last parallel, if my face is open like that, I am in trouble, this is going to be death.

Look how cupped my wrist is, look how much extension is in there, that’s not good. That’s like the one I hit the mile to the right.

If I take that face and I point it down to the ground, now I’m in a lot of bowing. This is a great position, this is what you’ll see the Tour players doing, they’re flattening that wrist in the downswing.

So make a couple practice swings here where you pause at last parallel, and then square that face up, see the face come down, and then swing on through.

That’s going to get you in a familiar feeling of bowing that wrist in the downswing, and you’ll be surprised when you do that all of a sudden this lags starts looing a little bit better.

Now because you’re squaring up the face better, you don’t mind having that club lag behind. When this face is wide open like that, your natural reaction is to flip the heck out of it to try to get it to square up.

Once I start squaring up the face, then I have more lag, I release it farther in front, all those good things are happening.

So do a good 20 to 30 reps pausing last parallel, getting the face to the ground and then swinging on through.

Then try to recreate that in your real swing, I guarantee you you’re going to have more lag, it’s going to feel more comfortable in your wrist, and best of all, you’re going to hit a lot more solid and a lot more straight.

All right, so we don’t want to stop here. This is a great video, feeling that wrist position. Now, man, that feels so much more comfortable to get lag, but I haven’t really ingrained it.

One video can only do so much, even if you go out and play a fantastic round today, I don’t want you to turn around in two weeks and now it’s back to what it used to be.

I want you to ingrain that lag for a lifetime. So what I want you to do is go to the Top Speed Golf System, go too The Lag section, start working through those videos. Video number one, two, three in level one.

Once you complete level one, go to level two, and level three. Once you’ve completed those levels, once you’ve completed those lag drills, lag’s going to feel natural.

You’re not even going to have to think about it, you’re just going to swing a club, and all of a sudden you’re going to see these really sharp angles like we see with some of the best Tour players.

So work your way through The Lag system in the Top Speed Golf System, get that ingrained, and man, you’re going to be paying dividends for a long time.

I’ll see you in The Lag section.