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Grip throws is a way to feel the overall timing and direction of the arm movements. It helps build the feeling of the wipe into a dynamic movement. One needs to be careful not to move the path leftward when doing the grip throws and also recognize that there is no club face control needed in this drill. Having poor club face control could be a reason that your real swing is different from this drill.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Enough Distance, Iron, Impact, Release, Drill, Intermediate
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This release drill is grip-throw. So I'm going to use a grip and you can use an old
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grip. Those work really well. Or you can use any type of household object whether
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it's a ruler or kitchen utensil, big sharpie, just something you can kind of
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hold on. So what we're going to do is this is building off of the
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throes but getting me to feel more of the kind of club position. So if I had
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the ball I'd be doing more of this bounce pass wipe or I'd be doing the
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single arm throes but getting the goal of kind of throwing this thing out in this
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30 degree angle. So if I was facing the golf ball I'm kind of throwing this
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thing out there. Now I'm not going to do it just by turning and throwing because
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this would be a terrible shoulder position. So I'm going to feel like I'm kind of
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in good body positions working in a good shoulder plane almost feeling like I'm a
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little bit more under but then I'm going to use my arms to throw it out in that
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direction in front of the golf ball. So to really simple drill you're just
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going to get set up and then take a little backswing and just feel like you're
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going to throw it out kind of out in front of the golf ball. The reason I want an
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object ball there is because a lot of golfers will change where their arms would
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throw based on if a ball's in front or not. So using a ball it'll be helpful.
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I'm going to keep my focus on the golf ball kind of feeling like I'm making a
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swing and then feeling as if my arms are extending out there. If you're used to
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feeling like your arms extend at the golf ball then this is going to feel
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very weird to you. And if you feel like your arms extend at the golf ball that would
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end up looking more like this where I'm actually throwing it kind of right out of
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the golf ball instead of in that 30, 40 degrees out in front. Once you have this
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feel you can then recreate that timing and arm extension with an actual
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club. If when you do that you start hitting the ball off to the right or you're
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starting to hit it really thin then it could be more of a club-based closure
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method that you need to work on and that's why you're struggling with the arm
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extending too much at the golf ball. So this is a useful drill and once you
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understand the drill and kind of get that feeling that feeling can be a very good
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diagnostic because that diagnostic can help you see why your arms are extending
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too soon and your body's not rotating instead of just trying to train something
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that you think you need to do. So then now I've got this feeling of those arms
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kind of extending more out there and then I can try and kind of recreate that
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feeling of those arms extending out in front of the golf ball. That one wasn't too
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bad but I'm even better so that was more those arms really kind of extending out
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in that zone instead of extending straight at the golf ball. So let's think a
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quick look at how the drill works in action. So here I have two low single
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digit handicap golfers. Very good golfers but have a little bit of flipping
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their release and so they have the typical kind of contact and mispedern
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associated with it. In this all I did was give them the directions I want you
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to extend your arms and I kind of put my foot out somewhere around here. So I
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said I want you to extend your arms in that general direction. And so what I want
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you to see is that both of these golfers when I asked them what direction they
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were extending their arms they said that they were extending it around or in
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that general direction. Now here the golfer on the left you'll see especially
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that right arm kind of extending more in line with just behind the golf ball
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over here on the right. You'll see this golfer again is trying to extend the
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arm especially that right arm along this line. So now here I am over on the
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left and I had a student film me trying to do the same thing of basically
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extending the arms out along that line. And so you can see the timing and the
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direction of that right arm looks as if my arms are extending over there.
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Again this golfer over here on the right swore that he was extending his arms
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out in that direction. So he may feel like he's extending that in front of the
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golf ball but you can see that that right arm is clearly extending behind the
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golf ball. This is why it's important to kind of calibrate your movements and
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make sure that when you feel like you're doing something it's actually matching
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what's happening in reality. So this is pre-imposed for the second gentleman. So
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pre-over here on the left and again this is a very good golfer he can control
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his low point but you can see that there's a little bit more of the club face
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passing the hands kind of through the release. Granted this is in a drill but this
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is after he had kind of the light bulb of his arms extending more out in front
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of the target. And so you'll see that the arm movement through the ball has a
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lot more of that continued body rotation a lot more of that white movement and
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the arm arms extending on the way through. So the timing and the direction that
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the arms extend have a big influence on the low point control the path control
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how solidly you're going to hit the golf ball and it's important to calibrate
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those movements and this drill of throwing the grip can really help you
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understand the general direction of the arm movement during the downswing.