Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "This ONE THING Will Shallow Your Club and Keep You In Posture"

And there’s a move we make in the golf swing…

…that we learned when we were toddlers, first learning how to walk.

It has to do with how we sort of stick our butt out to stop ourselves from toppling over as we’re learning to walk.

And today, I’ll show you how this move relates to staying in your posture in the downswing…

…and how your posture and shallowing are actually closely connected in the golf swing.

This move is in your DNA… and it’s the solution to your posture struggles.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:21

Video Transcription:

Clay: Hey, you may have never heard this before, but getting your weight back is the same thing as staying in your posture. So you have a natural reflex built in that if your weight starts to go too far back, you're naturally going to hinge forward. You stick your butt out and it's just like a golf swing. Now, I first learned about this when my son began to walk and he's wobbly.

You're sure. I mean, I was absolutely positive that I'm watching him wobble around. He's going to fall back, land on his head and we're going to have to go to the hospital. I mean, he's wobbling around like he's at a 12 pack, right? There's no way this guy's staying up. He's gonna be falling down. But sure enough, he never fell back and cracked his head.

Every single time he started to fall back, and all babies have this, from what I've seen, I've probably seen a dozen kids do it once I've noticed this pattern, is that when you start to fall back, at some point, your weight gets too far back, and you're gonna fall over this way, and you're gonna fall back and crack your head.

Well, built into your DNA, Is when you have that sensation, you immediately stick your butt out to get your chest forward. So your butt goes back, your chest goes forward, and that keeps me from falling back. So as I start to feel like I'm about to top over, you can do the same thing at home right now.

Immediately stick your butt out, hinge forward. All of a sudden, we're in a golf posture. And sure enough, every time he did fall down, he did exactly that. Kind of folded like a, you know, folded like a lawn chair to catch himself and he popped right back. Up to wobble around somewhere else and do the same thing about a hundred times a day.

So, it's, the good news is here, if you're struggling to stay in your posture, by doing this the right way, like I'm going to show you, it's built into your DNA. Nobody showed him how to do that. You, you already did that. It's built in there from day one. You'll have this same sensation. So, in the golf swing, if we want to stay in our posture, I'm going to set this club up in the middle of my feet.

I'm going to put it in my arches here, so my heels are behind the stick, or on this side. My balls, my feet are in front of the stick. Now, from here, again, start to feel like you lift your toes up to where they're not touching the ground on this side of the stick. The toes are up, and as you start to go farther back, you're going to have the sensation to do this to keep from falling backwards.

That's exactly what staying in the posture in the golf swing does. So, as we make a golf swing, here's exactly what I want you to do. Do about 20 reps for me doing this. Now, as I start my swing, I want to get a little shift of weight to the middle of my right foot. Now, this is a mistake that I see a lot of people make.

They'll immediately try to stay in their posture in their downswing. So, it looks something like this. They'll be here in their downswing, trying to get as much in their posture as they can. And then as soon, er, backswing, excuse me, not downswing. As soon as they start their downswing, they're popping up out of their posture.

You look at it on video and you get really frustrated. Here's a solution to that. As you do your backswing, stay fairly tall. I don't have to bend down that much. And if you look at... When I study PGA Tour players throughout history, you'll see their heads stay about level or just barely down. You don't really see them going down a huge amount in the backswing.

So in the backswing, we're just going to simply take a backswing. I'm going to feel my weight equally balanced between my toe and my heel. I'm going to feel like my weight is on the inside of my right foot so I don't sway or slide over this way. And then I'm going to turn into that right foot. Now keep a little bit of flex in your knee.

Keep this knee facing somewhat forward. Again, if I straighten it completely out, that is okay if you do it the right way and I keep it angled in, but to keep things simpler, I just don't want to do this. I don't want to have a big sway there. So I've turned into my right side. If I was to drop a club from my nose, I would have rotated a little bit and that nose would be kind of behind the golf ball here.

This leg would be angled in and You can have a little tiny bit of flex in this knee and the knee would be facing forward. If I'm doing this the wrong way, I'd be here, reverse pivot, my knee is now facing out this way. When I'm looking from face on, this is not angled in, it's angled out. And when we're doing this, a lot of times we'll reverse pivot my nose, instead of being on the right side of my belt buckle and behind the golf ball, as if I've done this correctly, we'll be on the left side of my belt buckle and kind of feel like it's going this way.

So hit that nice checkpoint, stay fairly level with your head as you're doing that. And then from there, I'm going to shift my weight to the left first, and then I'm going to feel, after it gets to the left, it goes back into the heel. So a good little drill to do this is actually lift up your toe off the ground, and feel like you're going to fall.

So I want to feel like I'm actually going to fall over this way. So I was going to fall back. Now naturally, as soon as you feel that, you're going to have a natural urge. to lean forward and stay in your posture. And that's exactly what staying in your posture is. So long story short, I'll really simplify this for you.

Get your weight as far back into your lead heel as you can, and you'll naturally hinge forward to keep from falling over. It's as simple as that for staying in your posture. Now, there's two pieces of this. Staying in your posture and shallowing out your club in the downswing go together. It's like hot dogs and Fourth of July.

You can't have one without the other. Let me explain what I mean by this. If I'm in my posture nicely, and my club is perfectly on plane or shallowed out, which you're going to see with all great players, if I get this club steeper, I'm going to be chopping down in the ground, I'm going to be over the top, I'm going to create all kinds of compensations that I really don't like the look of, losing lag, falling back behind the golf ball and drop kicking it.

A lot of those problems that you're having in the golf swing come from Weight shift, posture, staying shallow. You do those things, a lot of this other stuff is going to iron itself out. So, if I'm in a good posture, good shallow plane, what happens if I stand up? If I stand up, it'll shallow out the club more.

If I go down more into my posture, it'll steepen the club up. So a lot of times what players are doing, is they're not getting their weight back, they're standing up out of their posture a little bit. It's an effort to get this club farther back here. So they're used to kind of swinging the club steeper.

So long story short, if I stand up out of my posture, I'm typically going to have a steeper club shaft here to try to compensate for me standing up out of my posture. If I stay in my posture now, I may not be used to shallowing this club out. So if you've been struggling with shallowing, staying in your posture is going to help.

If you've been struggling with your posture. Shallowing out the club is going to help. So these two, again, they're tied together, they link together. The more I stay in my posture, the more I need to shallow the club out. And vice versa. Now, here's a cool thing. This is my new favorite training aid here.

It's called the Swing Plate. It's got a little alignment rod in here. I'll put a link down below in the description. If you buy from that link, um, I'll make a few bucks from this, helps support the channel. You can probably make one of these, go into Home Depot, figure it out yourself. But this one's got some cool features that you're going to like.

It's got an alignment stick you put in there. You can buy a package with it in there. Also, if you throw a pool noodle on top of it, that keeps it a little safer in case you do happen to hit this stick. Now on this is an angle finder, so I can change this to any angle that I want. And it sets here with a little bolt and I know for PJ tour players with a middle iron, so a six iron 60 degrees is their vertical swing plane.

That means that's the angle the club is coming down on. It's going to be very consistent with all tour players. And the cool thing is, this has an angle finder. I'm just going to set it to 60 degrees, right where the tour players are doing. Now, if I put this on the ground here, all I have to do is put my golf ball kind of in line with this white logo on the plate roughly there.

And if I do that, I'm going to scoot this forward. Actually, I'll find my stance to set up here. So if I was to get steeper, I would hit this stick. Um, if I get shallow here, I'm under this stick. Now, I'm going to go ahead and set up to this golf ball. This is going to be in the middle of my feet. You can take another alignment stick or a club.

It has little holders here. Actually, I'll grab one more alignment stick while we're talking about this, and it'll make it easier to demonstrate. But I could put that in that little hole there, and it's already set up to where it shows me where my golf ball is going to be lined up. So, for example, if I get that there, I like to set my golf ball about six inches inside of that because it gives me enough room to swing under here and not whack into the stick.

You can technically go a little closer to, uh, the golf ball closer to this alignment stick, but now you really got to shallow it out or you're going to whack into that thing. I recommend going a little farther away at first. Again, putting this stick in the middle of my feet. Now from here, the cool thing is.

There's no way to get steep here without hitting this noodle. So I can feel getting my weight back, getting in my posture. And now all I gotta feel like is I'm very close with my chest. My left arm is more across my body. I may also feel like my palm of my hand is more up to the sky this way. So that the club shaft is steeping up.

This would be elbow, flapping elbow, steeper club. This would be tucked right elbow, shallow club. And from there, I just feel like I'm falling to my left. That keeps me in my posture, and then I just miss this pull noodle, and I pretty much got everything lined out. Now, if you do this and exaggerate a little bit, you may overdraw it slightly to try to miss this pull noodle.

That's completely fine at first. Here I'm hitting a 7 iron. Again, first swing of the day, pretty daggone solid. I just overdid it to the right, and got 170 yards to carry, 178 total. Pretty daggone good for the first swing of the day. I didn't even have any warm up swings. Now, as you get better and better at this, and you start to get those shots out to the right that are drawing, and you will typically see a draw when you're doing this, all I need to do is still get my weight to the left, still stay in my posture, and then just go as left as much as I can.

So basically, here's the thing. If you struggle to open up your hips, if you struggle to, you know, you hear everybody talking about turning the corner and turning back into the left in the golf swing, and that's always been tough for you to do. It's because we're not shallowed out in our posture. Once I get shallowed out and in my posture, I can open up my hips as much as I want, and that club's gonna be delivered square.

I can turn back into the left because it's coming from the inside. If I'm steep and I open my hips, all of a sudden I'm way over the top. If I'm steep and I turn back into the left, it's a big slice. So shallowed out, stay in your posture, like we're doing with this drill, this two step drill here, and then you can turn left as hard as you want to, and still hit a pretty daggone good straight golf ball.

We'll see with that one, I felt like I just turned that way. All of a sudden a nice little draw, 191 yards. I'm going to stop on that one, I'm not going to be able to do much better than that. Now there is one more piece here that's very important. Learning to square the club face up the right way, and most importantly with the right grip.

I found most people are just using the wrong grip, makes this so much easier. You see, I don't want to shallow this club out, come from the inside, and then, you know, hit shots out to the right. I want to have that nice tight draw. Like I talked about here, finding the right grip for you makes this a lot, lot, lot easier.

I can't stress that enough. If you're using the wrong grip, it's feeling like you're fighting it the entire time. Also getting your body in position, so we got the weight forward, how do I get my upper body and my arms, like tucking this right elbow and getting the forearms right to be able to get this club from the inside.

I have a great trick to make that happen for you. So once you pair that up with what we did here today, you're like, man, I got the full picture. I know what my feet are supposed to be doing. I know what my posture is supposed to be doing. I know what a swing plane is supposed to be doing. I mean, you just follow these steps and you're going to now learn what your, your natural, uh, the right grip for you is and how to position your body.

All that's covered in the 20 minute showering fix. So if you remember, it talks to me, golf, go to the instruction tab, 20 minute showering fix. And I'm going to walk you through how to find your natural grip to be able to shallow it out and square up the club face. I'm also going to find, show you what I call the natural elbow position to be able to get your body and arms aligned in a way to where it feels really powerful and easy to do this.

So head on over there right now. Just watch the very first video, find your natural grip as we work through this progression and man, everything's going to get a lot easier. Best of luck. Let's go ahead and get started. I'll see you over in the 20 minute shallowing fix.