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Golfers who play with a flip style release often have a "buckled" or bent knee at impact; these two moves are typically lumped together because a bent knee or lower body slide helps to mitigate the excessively leftward, shut, and steep characteristics of a "flip". This is not suprising as most swing faults are usually met with some sort of additional compensation, but this is a poor swing strategy in the long run as it can cause serious issues with low point control and power production.
To re-train this pattern, golfers should start with some 9-to-3 style swings with an added focus on the lead leg. Specifically, you will want to make sure that the loading and unloading of the lead leg is driving the release of the club. Or in other words, you will want to start with a relatively bent lead leg and focus on the straigthening of the leg to power the release. You can then work through some half-swings and gradually add more speed and power as you get comfortable.
Overall, the timing of how the lead leg loads and unloads is a very important move that has been given a lot of attention recently, especially by the golf science community and those familiar with ground reaction forces. If you have struggled with a flip release for some time, make sure to focus on the lower body as well as these two moves are closely related and can increase distance and consistency when done properly.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Release, Drill, Intermediate
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In this video, we're going to connect leg extension to arm extension.
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And primarily, we're going to be talking about the lead leg buckle.
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So if you have more of a left leg that kind of bends on the way through, more like
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that pattern there, instead of a leg that tends to straighten on the way through, then
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this video is for you.
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It's going to discuss the main cause of that left leg buckle.
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And we're going to talk about a drill or a way that you can do 9-3-style practice
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in order to work on the arm extension and the leg extension the other.
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So typically what happens is golfers who have this buckle move are doing so because the arms
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are tending to flip on the way through, specifically the wrist.
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So you tend to have more of a really pronounced arm and hand release.
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And the buckle move actually helps because when you have more of a hand release like this,
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it tends to move the path to the left and it tends to close the face.
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So that buckle keeps the path moving to the right and it tends to move the low point
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forward.
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So I should have said that this does three things.
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It moves the path to the left.
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It closes the face and it moves the low point backward because the low point is basically
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going to happen when the widest point of this of my circle happens.
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And when that right wrist is straight, that's the widest part of my circle for the most
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part.
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So if that right wrist is getting straight because it's scooping back here, then when I slide
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in buckle, that helps move that swing forward.
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But you can see that that obviously causes some low point control and some face control
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issues.
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And direction to balance it or to rework that pattern, we're going to get more of the push
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through the ball from the leg and less from the arms.
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What the arms are going to do instead, if you review the single arm releases or the seated
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release video, the arms are going to extend out and the wrists are going to rotate down
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just like so.
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But they're not going to let the club pass.
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Now the timing of this as it relates to the 9 to 3 is I'm going to get into that left
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leg or that left knee is going to get bent right over the center of my left foot.
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And then I'm going to straighten that leg and as I straighten the leg, that's going to
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create this body rotation because the shoulder is going to come up and that is going to
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extend those arms down.
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So the drill itself of connecting the lead leg to the arm extension or connecting the
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leg extension to the arm extension is I just go back into a little 9 to 3 type move and
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then I'm going to straighten the leg and straighten the arms and you'll notice that I didn't
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let any flip.
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This is similar to more of a hinge and hold style drill and it's really just to feel
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the legs or especially that left leg extending my arms through the body rotation.
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The example I usually give is if I had like a punching bag down here and I was going to
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punch it I would extend my arm but I would extend my leg first and that drive of the leg
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would create some of this rotation but it wouldn't create a whole lot of lift.
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I would just straighten those legs and get a lot of power transfer through my core but I would
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extend that energy down into the punching bag or in this case into golf ball.
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So walking you through one more time you're just going to preset a little bit of the weight
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into the front leg and this is one of the few times where if you really if you want to
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I like having that trail leg back so you take your normal stance put that foot back
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or don't either way is fine you're going to bend that left leg and then when you straighten
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the leg you're going to straighten the arms and I want you to be able to stop before
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you get to the normal three position.
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I want you to be able to stop when this club is almost parallel to the target line or
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sorry to the target as opposed to pointing at it.
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So here we go one more time I'm going to not put the foot back I'm just going to preset
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that leg and then extend extend.
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So that leg straightens in one movement and as that leg straightens it helps me straighten
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those arms.
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Once I have a feeling of doing this in the small swing now I'm going to do more of a three-quarter
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movement and I'm going to have a tiny bit of extra bend as I start and then I'm going
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to duplicate that same feeling getting to the same place from a bigger swing.
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As I get more comfortable I can add speed and I can add length of swing until it's matching
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pretty close to my full swing.
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So what you'll see with most good ball strikers is that they will start that leg straightening
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right about here so right about belly button height or when that arm is parallel that's
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when that left arm will start straightening to help trigger the release and extend those
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arms on the way through.
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Take a look at that when you're paying attention to analyzing torporous swings.
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Especially if you're trying to get out of this buckle pattern from not enough leg extension
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during the bracing part of the release.
