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There are three major things that we have to do with the club when we make a golf swing.
- We have to create speed with the club
- We have to control the path of the clubhead
- We have to organize the face in relationship to that path
For the most part, amateur golfers have the clubface more open than tour professionals by the time the club gets to shaft parallel in the downswing. There are only a few ways to change the clubface position by that point in time. You could do the exact same movements but set up with a stronger grip. Or, you could do the motorcycle movement (with either the left or the right wrist). Most commonly, this movement is done with the lead wrist. You can either do this movement to end the backswing, or to start the downswing, but if you haven't done it enough by shaft parallel, then you have made it almost impossible to get your body open at impact.
There are a number of videos on this site that relate to the motorcycle movement because it is such a key movement to solid ball striking. If I had to pick one movement to teach a random golfer, this would be the movement that I would teach. To see how it fits with the body, be sure to check out all the motorcycle videos and the other key drills for transition.
Tags: Not Straight Enough, Cast, Draw vs Fade, Drill
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The drill is the motorcycle drill. Now the motorcycle drill is basically the term that we
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use for shaft rotation. So TPI was the first place that I heard talking about it but
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I know that it's been in golf instruction for a long time. Basically what it's looking
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at is if we have the club in space kind of like this, how is the club face oriented?
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It's called the motorcycle move because basically if I was holding the club like this
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and we imagine that I was on a motorcycle then if I took my left wrist and I twisted
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the club like this, well that's you know you don't actually do that on a motorcycle
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motorcycle you would rev it the other way but that movement there is similar to the
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pattern that we'll see on 3D when we're looking at what's happening with the lead wrist.
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The basic thing is compared to where most pros are it set up the shaft where the wrist
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will be twisted about 20 to 25 degrees more at impact than they were at set up. So basically
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here I am at set up and I've got some extension in my lead wrist and then I'm going
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to flex that lead wrist so I'm basically going to straighten it and that would close
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the club face like so. That's twisting the club like that motorcycle. That would close
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the club face. My body is in a very different position at impact so that twist is necessary
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in order to hit the ball straight if I'm going to have shaft lean and if I'm going to have
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body rotation. So basically any golf swing that's getting a lot of body movement where
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the body is more open at impact and I've got some shaft lean is going to need this shaft
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rotation in order to balance that out. So what I find is that many amateurs when you first
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teach them how to do this motorcycle movement they naturally start getting their body more
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open so that they don't hit it way left. So this is a key movement to train and there's
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a couple ways to think about it or train it. We've got a variety of videos on this site
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addressing the different components of the motorcycle movement but I wanted to do this kind
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of overview to help tie them all together. So the main timing that you'll see or the most
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common timing that you'll see this motorcycle movement happen is at the top of the swing
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as we're starting down. So basically between the top of the swing and almost by the time
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the left arm's parallel you'll see a fair amount of this motorcycle movement starting and
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then it will continue that movement and that twisting will continue all the way down until
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the club is just before impact kind of like so. So they're twisting the club for the majority
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of the downswing but it starts well up here. What many amateurs golfers do and what works really
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well with wedge shots is to not really twist it so to not do the motorcycle move and just bring it
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down kind of in the same position that you had it at the top of the swing and then try to do
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it all down at the bottom. But with longer clubs where the the moment of the inertia of the club
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is greater it's harder to change it very rapidly down at the bottom. So there's an
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advantage to starting it earlier and working it more gradually. So to practice this movement
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you're just going to take your left wrist and you're going to imagine that you're flexing it
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almost like you're twisting a screwdriver or screwing in a light bulb or just flexing that lead wrist.
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So then you can do that in either transition pump style drills or you can do that just as a
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concept feeling but you're going to go to the top of the swing. Either to end the backswing you'll
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start flexing it or as you start down you'll start flexing it but you'll keep flexing it all the way
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until you get into your bracing pattern during the release. Now doing it early gets you into the
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position where we preset a lot of this movement when we're doing the release drills or what I mean
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is during the release drills you do a lot of patterns where you pre-set and got that left
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risk into more of a flex position than where it was it set up. So we know that you want it to be
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there in that position during the release. This trains the timing of when it gets there which is
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more up at the top of the swing or during that early stage in transition. So I can go up to the top
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of the swing and I can feel like I'm just twisting that he was my brain that I've closed the club face.
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I've closed it early. Now I don't have to do it quite as much down at the bottom. I can just
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keep turning my body and extend those arms out and the club face will already be square because
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of this motorcycle movement. Then I can do it more dynamically in a full swing kind of like that.
