Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "They Won't Tell You This, But I Will | 3 Swing Myths You Need to Know"

And you've likely heard to "keep your head down" before...

...but is it really that important?

I'll go over a few swing "myths" today, and point out exactly why (or if) they're actually things we should be obeying.

Some of these may surprise you...

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:59

Video Transcription:

There's three things that you won't hear most golf instructors say, but I'm going to actually take the opposite opinion in this video and talk about how there's some real merit to these. Number one, for years, if you've ever played one round of golf, someone has told you that you have to keep your head down. Then we see players like David Duval and Annika Sorenstam, different players that actually have their head go in front of the golf ball.

They're looking more toward the target when they hit it. So is it important to keep your head down? Should we not be worried about the head? Well, I think it's actually a lot of merit in keeping the head down. It's not really to do with the head, but has more to do with your posture. You see a lot of players.

What they'll do is get a little bit steep in the downswing and then they'll start to raise up. They raise their head, they back out of the shot, they lose their posture. And so the kind of staying down in posture and staying through the shot. We end up letting our hips go toward the golf ball in our head.

Raises up, gives you tons of inconsistency. And that's not what you want to do. So here's what I recommend. Keep your head down. Feel like your nose stays fairly still. Throughout the swing. When I'm hitting a driver, I want my head to be behind the golf ball. So I'm kind of looking at an angle toward the back of the golf ball.

Definitely don't want to be in front of the golf ball like this where my my nose would be in front. My eyes be looking back at the golf ball. I want to be behind it. So I feel like my right shoulder a little lower than my left. My head is angled behind the golf ball. Now, from there, I'm going to make a backswing and hit my head fairly still.

I'm going to shift my weight to the left, but my head is still going to stay behind the golf ball and I'm going to stay down through that shot. Now, if I can do that, that keeps me in my posture. So basically, I'm staying behind the golf ball with my my head in my upper body. And I'm clearing my lower body left and open.

That allows me to stay in my posture throughout the swing. So notice here how my head doesn't really move around a lot. If there's a little bit of movement, if your head twists a little bit, that's fine. I just don't want it to do this and be standing up because I'm losing my posture when that's happening. So my husband, the golf ball, I'm going to keep it there the entire time.

Is that clear? My hips. Out of the way. Wow. There we go. Hit that one. Fantastic. Right down the middle. There Not bad for one of the first swings of the day. And you'll notice how I didn't do any of this. Now, a second key for that, it really helps you to keep the head. Still would be when I'm shifting my weight to the left, I want to imagine there's something behind me and I'm going to put my left butt cheek right into that thing that's behind me.

I could take a golf bag. You probably seen this drill before. Said it like this. Have about an inch between your hips in this golf bag. And when I make my downswing I'm going to bump that golf bag and try to knock it over. Another good feeling for that is like your shirt buttons get closer to the ground in the downswing So again, as my hips clear out of the way, my head stays pretty still.

And instead of backing out of it and having my head raise up, I'm actually going to feel like my shirt buttons on my chest are actually getting closer to the golf ball. Now, the only way that you won't chunk if you do that is to go ahead and release through the shot and release that club out in front.

So all those things tie in with keeping the head down. I think keeping the head down as a fan, that fantastic thing to do. But it's more about your posture than it really is your head itself. Now, another thing that you've probably heard is don't swing hard and to keep your feet still. And I think those tie hand-in-hand together.

Well, let me tell you Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, the swinging hard. There's no way that you can hit it really to your potential without making an aggressive swing. Now, as long as I'm swinging hard through the golf ball and not at the golf ball, then I can do really, really well. So what I mean by that is I don't want to swing hard up here.

I start swinging hard and all of a sudden I'm casting it and throwing the club. I lose a lot of distance. I lose I lose tons of consistency. I'm hitting all over the place. When I do that, I want to wait until I'm about halfway in the downswing and I want to swing hard through the golf ball. I want to feel like my acceleration is happening after the golf ball into the finish, which is gonna allow me to get great speed and still maintain that consistency.

Here's a great tip to make that happen. I want to be loose when I'm doing this. If I get tight and fast, that's not the feeling that you want to have. I like to visualize my left hip. I'm going to be loose with my feet and I'll let my feet move around on the ground. I'm going to pull my left hip behind this golf ball.

And as I start down, I'm will wait until my hip shifts in front of the golf ball. And as soon as my hip gets opened up, then I'm going to accelerate all the way through into the finish. What I don't want to do is not move my hip very much. Try to hit hard with my hands and arms and throw it from up here.

So here's the tip. Keep your feet loose. Go ahead and let your hip turn behind the golf ball. Now, when I do that, you notice how this knee kicks in a little bit. My heel even lifts up a little bit. That's completely fine. I love that. So get the hip behind the golf ball. And then when you start your downswing, as soon as that hip gets back to square and that heel hits the ground, then you turn on the boosters, you turn on the speed.

You got to hit it hard from that point. So let's try one out here again. Let my feet move. I'm swinging hard. Two things you never hear anybody say that you should be doing. And let's see how I do All right. Not too bad there. Another long draw. Three, ten. Total distance. I'll take it Now, the last thing and probably the most controversial of these things that you won't hear other people tell you to do.

Shredded my teeth. They only work is to keep your elbow tucked. You always hear about keeping your elbow tucked. You don't want that flying elbow. Heaven forbid you do the move. The Jack Nicklaus did win 18 majors. That would be pretty bad, right? So most people will tell you to keep this elbow down in the backswing. And I found that most people just don't have enough range of motion to make that move correctly.

You got a great test for you. Go ahead and stand straight up. Put your arm at a 90 degree angle in front of your body. So my elbow is parallel with the ground and pointing straight ahead. Now, I want you to rotate your arm outward as much as you can. And you see that I have very limited external rotation.

That's all coming from your upper arm here and then your shoulder socket. Now, some people can get to here if you want that great tucked elbow look, you need to easily be able to get over to here doing that drill, to have a full backswing and have that elbow tucked in at the top. I'm really kind of wrenching it in here.

Well, what I found most players do when they try to tuck that elbow, they get so focused on that they never make a turn. So I just kind of do this. Keep the elbow tucked in. It's not very powerful position. Yeah, my angle looks pretty good there, but I'm going to lose 20 or 30 yards when I do that.

I don't mind having that elbow fly. I don't mind feeling like you have a lawnmower and you're going to pull that string behind you. You're really going to feel like your arms and your right elbow flies out away from you. Gets deep behind your body. If this is a big if the first move down has then to start tucking that in to shallow out this club and get it in the slot.

I love that So let that elbow fly. I don't mind at all. Just the first move down. Let that elbow come in and you'll see that that really shallows you out. Actually helps a lot of players to get the club on a shallower plane when they make their downswing. So again, here, I'm going to let that elbow fly and let's see how I do Hey, not too bad.

Just a little power fade there. And I'll find that sometimes, too, when I get that elbow higher and still, come a little bit more over the top. But 299 good distance. Not my best shot in the world. I don't necessarily do a ton of that in my own swing, but that's definitely not a game changer. It's not something that you have to do the right way.

Now, all these things that we've talked about really boil down to the same five fundamentals. Keeping your head down and staying behind the golf ball. Well, that's a stable, fluid spine, and that's really the number one fundamental. So I need to get in this posture, stay in it throughout the entire swing. That gives me consistency when we go into keeping your feet still not swinging hard, all those kind of things.

That's the power turn. So turning those shoulders as you get a good backswing, letting that hip come in, letting that leg come in. That's one of the five real fundamentals in the top speed golf system. Having that flying elbow and being able to shallow this club up out in the downswing, all these things go back into the move.

Different things that we talk about on the website. So there's really not a lot to learn here, but I think you would serve yourself very well if you start with what I say is the number one fundamental. This is the piece you want to get this down first before you go into anything else. And that is that stable, fluid spine. Once I get my spine angle correct, now I can get lag and release the club out in front.

I can stay in my posture. I can keep my head down. I can do all these things. If you're standing up out of your posture, losing your stable, fluid spine, leaning to the left, there's no way that any of those things are going to work. So I want to challenge you right now. Today after this video head on over to level one of the stable fluid spine and just complete the first video in that section right down the drills.

And next time you go out to the driving range, complete, just that one lesson. And what's going to happen is you're going to start to build some real fundamentals that will last your lifetime. And as you do more and more of those, you work in level two and level three then it feels automatic. You don't even have to think about it.

You just step up to the golf ball and your swing looks fantastic. And you don't have to worry about any of this stuff that we're talking about because you're going to have it down pat. So head over to the stable fluid spine. That's fine. Now click on the first video. It is going to instructions tab at the top of the screen.

Go to just a system, stable fluid spine. Just do one video right now and I'll see you there. Let's go and get started.