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Float Loading

Matt Wolfe’s unorthodox swing has taken the golf world by storm. His swing has a lot of “float loading” in it. This video talks about what that is, how to do it and what some of its benefits are.

Tags: Iron, Driver, Fairway Wood

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This drill is the float load. So this is very similar to the idea of the throwers catch.

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This has become more popular with the recent popularity of Matt Wolfe.

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So basically what's going to happen is instead of doing all these movements in the backswing

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and then releasing them on the way down, we're going to avoid doing any movement of the wrist whatsoever during the backswing

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and then we're going to do all the movement during transition.

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This creates the timing of when we want our maximum stretch to occur, which is on the downswing, not at the top of the swing.

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The movement is largely going to be in the flexion extension direction, so I'm going to get to the top

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and then I'm going to extend my wrist as I'm starting down.

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This creates more of that load such as what I call the throwers catch, which is when you're throwing that right wrist tends to

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extend before it then flexes.

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When we do this or when I look at 3D data, what you'll see is that the elite ball strikers tend to reach their maximum wrist extension

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somewhere around just below delivery position kind of right around here, where many amateurs reach their maximum extended position of the top

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and then they start casting or throwing that angle right away.

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Well one way to ensure that you're not going to throw the angle is to prevent the angle from getting in in the first place.

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So we're going to do kind of a restricted or almost an exaggerated takeaway and then float load it during the downswing.

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Now, I usually am more lenient on contact misses because it's exaggerated, it's a little hard or harder to control where the low point's going to be.

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But part goal is to feel this exaggerated loading or what's called float loading during transition.

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So we're going to bring it back with no wrist movement and then we're going to rapidly load,

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like I said, caught that a little thin, so low point wasn't that great, but we're going to rapidly load and unload

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during the downswing. So almost the three quarter swing this time, no load.

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Another one little thin, I tend to get a little out of sequence when I tried to do these.

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We'll see if we can get one a little bit better. So float load, float load into there.

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That was a little bit better, a little bit more in rhythm. So this can be really good for two different scenarios.

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One is if I tend to create more of a cast sequence where I'm releasing that wrist angle early on.

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And two, this can be really helpful for golfers to tend to get more of a rotation or more of a steepening move.

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Oftentimes what happens in that case is I get too much wrist extension at the top.

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And then instead of removing the wrist extension, I take some of the slack off the wrist by

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rotating the shoulder. So if I go up to the top and then extend that wrist, it's much easier for me to

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extend that wrist and keep that elbow in rather than extend that wrist and get that elbow out.

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So oftentimes this feeling of getting narrow is helpful for getting that trail arm to shallow

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for golfers to tend to get a little steep in transition. So we'll do it again, except this time we'll go

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even bigger so kind of all the way up towards the top where I'm having very little change in the

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flexion of the right wrist, all on Matt Wolf, and then creating that extension during transition.

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So I recommend doing at least half three quarter swings. This is really hard to do on a nine to three

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because you just don't have enough time to put it in place. It is possible, we'll give it a try.

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So no movement there. But the change has to happen so quickly that I find that it's almost

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not worth it. I like doing this one closer to three quarter swings or even up to full swings.

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We'll do one more full. So float load where you feel no extension of the wrist until the

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change direction that helps you get the better timing of the maximum extension during the downswing.

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