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Connecting Trail Arm to Pivot

The movements of the trail arm and pivot are interconnected and in high level golfers, will be compatible. Unfortunately, I will often see players train their pivot or trail arm without accounting for this relationship. As the length of the club is going to remain relatively fixed, we must account for the changes between the body and club as we rotate and side-bend through impact at various degrees.

To put it simply, players that want to be more rotated or open at impact, will require more of a bend in their trail arm. On the other hand, players that are less rotated or more square at impact, will want more extension in the trail arm. Regardless of the swing style you choose, be sure to remember this relationship when training either your pivot or trail arm mechanics.

Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance

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This concept video is connecting the trail arm straightness to the pivot.

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So many golfers want to get more open and impact and many golfers know that they want

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to keep that right arm bent a little bit longer in the downswing.

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In this video we're going to explore the relationship between those two, the movement

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of the right arm and how it relates to the pivot.

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So as a general concept, the club is a pretty fixed length.

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You know it'll have a little bit of bending and you know drooping kick and that's

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tough but it's a fixed length.

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So if I imagine that the club is going to be right here and I could put in in a

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vice then I have kind of a almost infinite number of body positions and connections that

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could relate to that position of the club.

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And what we'll find is the more that I get my body open, that brings my right shoulder

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closer to the grip.

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If the grip doesn't move then I would have to in order to have that arm straight you'll

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see that I have to get that shoulder joint further away.

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So if I rotate and side bend then my right arm will fit on there as long as the elbow

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stays in front kind of like this.

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But if I was to straighten the arm you can see I would either have to elevate my shoulder

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or the easiest way is I could decrease the amount of rotation.

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So those two connection pieces are go hand in hand.

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If you are going to try and delay the straightening of the arm from having a little bit

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better wipe and having the arm working in the direction more across your body instead of

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out well that's going to require your body to be a little bit more rotated and side bent.

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If on the other hand let's say you're hitting a wedge shot where you're going to try and

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get that right arm to be a little bit straighter down at the bottom.

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Then you're going to have to keep that right shoulder tall because if you rotated inside

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bent you would bottom out behind the golf wall.

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So there's a good connection between the right arm or right arm shoulder action and the pivot

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movement.

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And the part of how they work together is the more that this elbow is working kind of across

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my body going like this.

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That engages some of the shoulder muscles and those muscles on the inside of the shoulder

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blade have a pretty strong connection to the oblique.

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So leading and hitting almost more with the elbow allows me to get into that shoulder

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position.

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We're hitting a little bit more with the top of the arm or the back of the arm or the

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tricep and the shoulder.

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Typically disconnects what's going on at the rib cage and I'll typically go into more

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of a crunch pattern.

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So I'm either going to have that rotation side bend pattern with the good arm extension

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late or I'm going to have more of a arm extension early body going into more of a crunch

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pattern.

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Neither is necessarily better or worse but for the longer clubs that rotation side

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bend arm extension tends to give you a little bit flatter bottom of the swing and a little

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bit more consistency.

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So when you're experimenting with some of these drills that work on either the pivot

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or work on that right arm action, understand the relationship between the two because if

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you're only training one you may struggle with contact because you haven't tied it

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together to the other pieces.

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It's a whole purpose of the connection series and this one is designed to help you see

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how you can improve your pivot with your right arm or improve your right arm by working

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on your pivot.