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In this video, we're going to discuss grip to sternum location.

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So I had a question about how, guys like John Rahm will have a more of a boat rest or

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Jordan Speed.

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They'll have a really boat rest with a weak grip and then how someone like a dust and

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Johnson will have a boat rest with strong grip.

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And so how grip orientation relates to the top of the swing position.

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Unfortunately, there's not a really clear correlation between starting grip and top of

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the swing position.

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But there's a really, really strong, almost intimate relationship between where the sternum

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is at impact and where the hands are at impact.

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And part of that is because there's a very small margin of where the club is going to be

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at impact in order to have a solid, you know, torque-wally shot.

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And therefore there are only so many different body and wrist orientations I could use to get

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in that position.

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For example, let's say the club is going to be just slightly leaning forward kind of

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roughly like this.

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If I was to get my body in a good, touring pack position and then put my hands on the

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club, there are only so many different ways.

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You'll see in order to get some of these orientations, I end up having to move my sternum.

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So in order to keep it there, there's a smaller window than you would expect.

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So if I take a normal kind of neutral grip, about 25 degrees of extension of the lead

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wrist and then fairly neutral with that trail wrist.

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And I get into that touring pack position, you'll see that the hands and the lead wrist

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is naturally going to lose some of its bow.

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It's going to move slightly forward.

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Trail wrist is going to increase the amount of extension and the handle raised just slightly

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as it matches where my sternum is.

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Now if I kept my hips in that same good impact position, but then I closed off my sternum,

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it would be very hard for me to get my hands into that same orientation.

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Because if I did, I can feel that it would be very hard for that not to be coming steep

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into the ground.

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So what'll tend to happen is you'll see a predictable pattern of where the upper body

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is in space and what the hands are doing depending on what they were at setup.

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So if you tend to drift your upper body in front, you will tend to have a little bit more

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of extension in that lead wrist, a little bit more neutral trail wrist.

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So you're not going to come in with that touring pack position if your upper body is

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lunged because the club would just slam into the ground.

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So in order to shallow it out, what you'll tend to see is that that lead wrist is going

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to extend and that trail wrist is going to flex to give me a little bit more kind of

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flat spot at the bottom of the swing.

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Messes up my work with though.

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So it affects consistency.

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Conversely if I'm a little bit more, let's say upper body way behind kind of like this,

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if I was to extend, if I was on a good path and I was to extend that lead wrist, I would

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bottom out unless I stood up.

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So oftentimes you'll see this back and up can accompany that extension of the lead wrist.

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But if I was to just be back and not stand up, you'll tend to see a fair amount of exaggeration

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of flexing that lead wrist and extending that trail wrist in order to avoid hitting it

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fat kind of a little bit more of the white movement.

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So what we'll do for the rest of this video is we're going to go through and look at some

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examples of different sternum locations and grip combinations.

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Because what you'll see is at the tour level, the golfers who have a weaker lead hand

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tend to have a lot of Boeing it impact.

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So if a weak wrist is going to be pretty close to neutral, so kind of like this, you will

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tend to see somewhere in that 45-40 degrees of Boeing of that lead wrist.

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So really motorcycleing like crazy, like a John ROM, that's harder to do.

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Like a John ROM, like a Jordan speed, really like a Wil McKenzie.

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So weaker grip and then really Boeing, really Boeing, that was better.

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Really Boeing in order to help control that strike and match up a little bit better body position.

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What you'll tend to see with the stronger lead hand is there's a couple of different options.

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So it allows you to not have quite as much of that bow, you can kind of keep it a little bit more in a

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or closer to keeping it in that starting position as you rotate through.

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They'll tend to still bow it even the ones who are slightly extended.

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But just not as much. But the other option is there are some guys who start strong and then bow it

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like crazy, but that allows them to really power it with the body, really kind of side bend, rotate,

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and get underneath it and have a really late flat spot tend to work really well.

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Become very good drivers of the golf ball. So we'll take a look at some different examples.

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Hopefully that'll help clarify where your grip is at impact and what your body's doing

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because it may help you understand if you're trying to get your body in a slightly different position

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by powering the swing slightly differently, what your wrists and what your arms are going to have to do

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in order to accommodate. So I thought it'd be helpful to look at some examples.

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We're going to use two major references. We're going to look at where is the upper body in space

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for that we're going to use the reference of the sternum, but we'll see more of that from the downline.

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And from the face on view we'll be able to see the strength of the grip at setup. So where is

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how much extension do we have in that lead wrist or in the weak grips, how much flexion and how much

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is that changed to impact or looking at where the V's are pointing at setup that can be helpful as well.

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So both of these golfers have stronger left hand grips. Duss and definitely has a stronger right hand

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grip. The matculture has more of a neutral right hand grip to accompany that strong left hand.

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So what we'll do is we'll take them from setup to impact. And we can see that Dustin had a lot of

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extension in his lead wrist at setup and then at impact it's pretty much flat. So he's flexed his lead

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wrist, a good amount and he's accompanied that with a fair amount of body rotation. We can see that his

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chest or sternum is pointing well out in front of the golf ball. That'll be easier to see when we look at it from

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down the line. So now if we see matculture we can just take a snapshot of how much extension he has

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at setup and then when we get him to impact we can see that he's got less extension. So you can

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see that he has flexed his lead wrist a little bit but you can see that there's still some angle there.

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So he's closer to where he was at setup than say Dustin Johnson who has boated a lot more. We'll

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be able to see and understand why a lot easier when we take a look at it from down the line.

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So now if we take a look from down the line the amount of rotation of where the sternum is is going

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to be a lot easier to see. So from the face on view we'll have a better view of how strong or

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how weak the grip actually is but from looking at impact position. If we kind of imagine almost

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perpendicular to the spine you can see that matcutor's sternum would be pointing kind of just out

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in front of the golf ball where Dustin Johnson went hitting this drive has his sternum pointing way

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out in front of the golf ball and now makes sense seeing how open he got his sternum

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that he could have such a strong grip but have it boat at the top of the swing and still fairly

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flat or much more boat than it was at setup because the bowing of the lead wrist closes the

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club face having a stronger lead hand closes the club face but then that is balanced out by the amount

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of rotation. So matcutor doesn't bow as much but had it closed because of the strong grip it

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set up and so given the amount of body rotation that he has he's able to match up the club face

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without having to bow that lead or hand quite as much as someone like Dustin Johnson.

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So we'll take a look at someone who gets into a body position closer to Dustin Johnson

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but does so with a weekend weaker grip so that you can see what kind of wrist and our movements

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they'll have to do to compensate. So here we on the right we can see a John Ram setup position

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you can see that that left wrist is in a fairly neutral position or the V on that film is pointing

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while I hear and you won't see too many guys with a really weak trail hand but you'll see

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that his trail hand is in a weaker position than someone like Dustin Johnson that we saw earlier

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and so what we'll see is as he gets towards impact what we'll see from the down the line is that

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he has a fair amount of rotation inside bend and so to accommodate that he's going to have a

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significant amount of bend of that lead wrist and extension of his trail wrist even as he gets really

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close to impact so if you're going to have a weak grip what you'll see is that you pretty much

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have to have a significant amount of bow in order to get anywhere near a toward impact position

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but if you have a strong grip you can either bow like Dustin Johnson or keep the wrist in a

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little bit closer to the same position as setup similar to what we saw with that future.

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So now if we take John Ram and get him close to impact we're actually we can probably get him right

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at impact you'll see that we've got a similar looking sternum position you'll see that Dustin's a

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little bit more open but you'll see that for all intent purposes you can see about the same amount

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of the ribcage you can see it's kind of on about the same tilt their legs and pelvis have

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done a little different but we can see that the ribcage or the sternum which is our reference point

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is in a closest position so they've used their grips to get the club back to kind of a similar

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position and the way they did it is Dustin Johnson had a stronger grip and then bow to fair amount

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John Ram had a weak grip and bowed a ton. So looking at the top of the swing we can see how

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two different grip attachments were able to get to about the same top of the backswing position

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for the wrist as far as that amount of flex of that lead wrist. Now Dustin has a much

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bigger shoulder turn much more vertical arm movement than John Ram but you'll see that they both

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get into this flex position with that lead wrist. That flex position of the lead wrist is going to be

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in somewhat of an indicator that they're going to use their body for rotation because you're not

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going to be able that's going to with the wrist in a flex position like that it's going to feel

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very weak to pull down with the arms but it's going to feel very strong if I'm rotating my arms

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around my body so if I'm using my body as more of the power source you'll tend to gravitate towards

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that boat position regardless of whether it's in a weak or a strong setup position where if I'm

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more of an arm polar I will tend to gravitate more towards a little bit of that extension.

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There's obvious exceptions to that rule but that's a general tendency that I tend to see when

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looking at my students or analyzing swings on YouTube but again with the strong grip, Dustin has to bow

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his wrist fair amount but with a weak grip in order to get the club face to continue closing you'll see

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John Ram has to bow it even more and keep it bowing or bow it much later so using that sternum position

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we can get a good idea as far as where the club is going to be and knowing what they

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what kind of setup position grip orientation they had will give you a good idea as far as

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what kind of wrist movements or what orientations you're going to have to have an impact.

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Where this is really helpful for you is if you're trying to get your body to rotate more open

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you might want to look at how your grip is affecting your impact position or if you're trying

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to get more side bend or if you're trying to stay behind the golf ball understanding how the grip

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relates to that body position may help you eliminate a barrier from what you're trying to train.

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So now over on the left we have rod pampling and we can see a very weak left hand grip but

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he's not going to get in nearly as open a position as John Ram. What we'll see instead is he's going

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to have a slight amount of flex compared to someone like John Ram which we saw it impact had a

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pretty significant amount of lead arm or lead wrist flexion. So again you can use this to help you

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figure out what combination is going to work best for you. If you don't feel very powerful with a

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lot of lead wrist flex then you might want to have a stronger grip or you're not going to get as

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open as someone like a John Ram or Dustin Johnson. We'll see that when we take a look at rod when we

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look at his down the line. So here he is now and we'll see as he gets towards the top of the swing

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he goes into that flexion pattern so he's not really doing it to set the top of the swing but he's

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going to start that flexion pattern pretty early in the down swing because he's a little bit more of a

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body polar. So you'll see he gets fair amount of bow not a ton not nearly as much as John Ram or

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Dustin Johnson but more than say a matcouture and so we'll see that we saw from the face on view he had

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a little bit of lead wrist flexion compared to his setup grip. We can see that at impact he doesn't

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have his body nearly as open rotated or side bend as someone like John Ram. So you'll start to see

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this pattern of the more you can see of their ribcage the more that sternum is behind the golf ball

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and pointing out in front of it. So rotated and side bend the more that you're going to have to

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have either a stronger grip where a flex lead wrist or often both. So now we have another example

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looking at Zack Johnson. So you can look at his setup grip here from the face on video and then we can

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look at his impact position from down the line and I'll start to make sense. So we can see that his

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upper body isn't dramatically open. It's relatively shut compared to a lot of strong grip players.

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So we're going to expect based on that fact alone that he's not going to be one of those

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golfers that have a whole lot of bow in his wrist. We can also see that when we get up towards the top of

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this wing you'll see that if I scrub back and forth you'll see his shoulders and his arms kind of

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creating more of the speed through the early part of the downswing. So it would make sense that we

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wouldn't see a massive bowing at the top of the swing the way we would see with a more body driven

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swing or someone who gets more open at impact. So let's confirm we take a look at the face on

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camera here. We saw he has a stronger grip and as he gets back towards impact you'll see that the wrist

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has a slightly more flexed through it but not a drastic amount compared to some of the other

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guys that we've seen in this video. So now we can take a look at a few amateur submissions to kind

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of see how this fits in non-classic tour models. So here we have a golfer at impact. We can see that his

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chest is higher than we were seeing with some of the other golfers and basing the golf ball. So we know

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that that should either be accompanied by a weak grip with a little bit of bow or a strong grip

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with pretty much no noticeable change. So here we have more of a neutral grip possibly getting

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into that stronger category. So we'll expect to see not a lot of bow as he gets towards impact

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and you'll see that that wrist is fairly flat or slightly extended as he gets towards impact. We'll

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also see that his upper body has a little bit of lunge so that lunge of the upper body moving forward

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will also decrease the need to have flexion in the lead wrist. So we'll see that this golfer right

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here is swing pattern is kind of matching up. So what that means is if we were to get his upper body

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to work on a better impact position maybe staying a little bit more behind it get a little bit

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more rotation he would have to add a little bit of flexion to that lead wrist in order to balance

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out and a comedy. Alright so one more example we've got that can take a snapshot of the amount of

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extension so on the weaker side of neutral as we go to impact we can see not a lot of the sternum

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is pointing closer to the golf ball so not a lot of rotation we can't see much of the rib cage

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so we would expect that it's going to come back pretty close to wherever that was at setup.

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Now as he goes into a swing we can see some lateral movement he does get his upper body a little bit

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more behind it so that should make it bow just slightly. If this is a good shot and we can see that

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there's a slight amount of bow but if he was going to add any more body rotation side bend

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given that grip strength we would want to get more flexion kind of into that rod-pampling zone of

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amount of flexion. And one trend you'll see from looking at a lot of the torque rows is that if you

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have a weak grip there's no way around it you pretty much have to bow that lead wrist in order to get

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good torque impact conditions but if you have a strong grip you can either bow and use a lot of

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body rotation or not bow that lead wrist keep that wrist relatively neutral and not have as

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much body rotation. But hopefully this video helped you to see the kind of the relationship between

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where the body is an impact and how it relates to the grip. If you stay behind the golf ball

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and you rotate you'll need to close the club face to accommodate either with a stronger grip

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or bowing the wrist or both and if you lunge and if you don't rotate then you're not going to

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have a really flat left wrist or you're going to want to gravitate towards a weaker grip.