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Keys To Transition
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Golfers that struggle with an upper-body dominated transition or an excessively steep downswing, will often notice that they have no problem engaging the lower body and shallowing the arms during their practice swings. This "disconnect" can be a puzzling situation for players, but it can usually be fixed if we take a look at which muscles are firing in the swing along with the timing at which they fire. A great way to simplify this analysis is the clap drill, which teaches when to "pulse" or apply the proper amount of muscle tension in the swing. When done properly, it should provide a feel for how to "brace" at impact and how to swing with a consistent body-driven tempo. Improving both of these swing characteristics will ultimately allow for straighter and longer shots due to improved mechanics and timing of energy transfer.
Playlists: Keys To Transition, Fix Your Flip, Get More Distance
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Drill, Beginner
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Strel is the clap drill. So this is designed to work on a body-centered tempo. So many
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golfers who struggle with getting the hips in the cord, lead the swing, with who struggle
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with getting more of shaliness, tend to do so because of how they power the swing, especially
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in transition. So if you find that you can do slow motion drills and you have no problem
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shallow things out and then you go to try to hit the ball and boom you look on video and
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everything gets steep. Then there's a good chance that you're applying too much force to the club
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too soon or I should say too much muscle activity too soon because most of the muscles when the
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upper body really tries to apply force to the club, most of the muscles are going to steepen
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the path of the club. If you activate them it's very hard to have a natural shower. So this is a
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clap drill that I got from Stu McGill in his back pain program. He focuses a lot on throwing
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and striking sports and creating more of a feeling of a pulse of speed down at the bottom.
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I have referred to this as bracing but I like his idea of creating a pulse. So what we're going to
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do is we're going to do this clap drill where you're going to feel hopefully you've done some
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muscle activation you know some core exercises at some point in your career and now you're going to
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try to use that to create speed all at once down at the bottom. So I'm going to try and quite
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tighten my quads, my glutes, my abs and my lats. So there's a little just a pulse of tightening
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just like that. Now I'm going to put my hands about six inches apart like so and I'm going to pulse
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and create a little clap just like so. Now if I'm applying too much muscle effort then I'll push my
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hand like so as opposed to having a rapid contraction and a rapid relaxation. So spine is fairly
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neutral on this. I'm clapped and then I'm going to clap back the other way. Okay so that's the
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warm-up version. The actual drill we're now going to add a fluid motion and then try to apply that
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clap as late as possible. So now I'm going to get in my golf posture I'm going to make a slow slow slow
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quick slow slow slow pop and I'm going to have this slow little pop and this slow rapid acceleration
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through my hips, my core and my lats all at once. Once I have this feeling of kind of this slow, slow,
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pop now I'm going to add a little bit more speed and I do recommend wearing a golf glove when I do
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this demonstrating for students two or three of these and my hands don't like it. So now I'm going to apply
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a little bit more of a swinging but I'm not overly accelerating it until down at the bottom.
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Once you have this feeling of applying this pulse of speed down at the bottom you're then going to do
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a nine to three version trying to feel a little bit of a bracing at the bottom. So now I'm going to
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bring it back to here it's going to be slow slow. You won't see a dramatic acceleration on video
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when you're swinging the club but you'll probably feel one and when you do that pulse in the
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clap drill everything was stopping the relaxation happens so quickly that the club should pull you back
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into or pull you and bring the club helping into the follow-through position. But it's this pulse
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that you can sometimes see in half or in slow motion videos in especially lean golfers. So for
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example when you look at Roy Maccorroy and down near the bottom of the swing you see that right leg
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really start to extend because he's using that right glute and then through the ball his hips actually
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rotate the opposite direction that's a golfer really channeling this pulse to help
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create a little bit of stiffness last minute to get most of the speed into the club.
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So then once I've done a few of these nine to three then I can do either three quarter swings
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tend to twos or I can go straight to full swings trying to feel a really slow transition followed
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by rapid acceleration down to the impact. So if you struggle with getting really quick and active
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transition then work on this clap drill in order to get a feeling of more of a late acceleration
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that'll ultimately help you with the shallowing of your path the arm extension in the follow-through
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and overall your tempo which helps control low point and allows you to do the better risk mechanics
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to help control club face. So now quick demo if I don't pulse if I go really early you'll see
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I tend to get more vertical I even shank that one because that's what happens if I get to vertical
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in my transition. So then on the next one I'm going to let that really shallow out and I feel personally
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like my swing starts right about there. It's very similar to if I was throwing a ball the feeling of
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throwing the ball really happens between there and there all this extra motion feels very slow and
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doesn't feel like I'm accelerating the ball or accelerating my hand rapidly yet. So I'm going to
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try to apply that same principle getting a good clap feeling down at the bottom. That clap involves a
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rapid acceleration followed by a rapid relaxation through that follow-through position.
