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Many golfers have confused the differences between a weight shift and pressure shift. Initially, there was thought to be a considerable weight shift during the backswing & downswing. However, with today's golf science, we have learned that there is a large amount of pressure shift during the swing (and very little weight shift). Therefore, we do not necessarily want everything moving linearly towards the target through impact. In some cases, for the best players in the world, their upper body may even be moving away from the target as they come down.
On the other hand, if you suffer from a "hang-back" in the downswing, you may make things even worse by increasing your pressure shift towards the target. Almost every golfer I have trained with who suffers from this swing flaw also plays with a very open clubface. Thus, a better starting point would be learning how to square the face earlier, which will then allow for a shift towards the target to become feasible.
Overall, it is important to remember that a small weight shift and a large amount of pressure shift is going to be the most efficient pattern for repeatable power, especially when combined with the proper upper body and arm mechanics.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Sway, Follow Through, Transition, Concept
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This concept video is if you hang back, check the club face.
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So many golfers come to the site with the preconceived idea that everything needs to be
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going forward through the shot.
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The upper body, the lower body, everything has to be going forward in this general direction.
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That originally stemmed out of a lot of articles that came from when they started looking
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at pressure, but unfortunately they described it as weight.
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So while we want to have a lot of pressure going into that front leg, sometimes we
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get too much trouble if we get our weight moving too far forward.
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In fact, what 3DL show is, especially with a driver, you will tend to see from the release
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so from right about here, through there, the upper body can move backward as much as
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6-7 inches while the lower body continues to go forward and the pressure goes into that front
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foot.
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So as a result, many golfers think that hanging back is one of the worst things that
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they can do and that they just need to shift their weight forward.
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A lot of golfers talk about, I need to get my weight shift working.
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Well, most of the time, I would say that the shift backward, when it's the lower body,
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shifting backward kind of like this, that's a way for you to swing enough outside in to compensate
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for a really open club face.
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In fact, in person, it's the only scenario where I've ever seen almost 100% correlation,
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where I've never seen someone have a reverse pivot or shift more towards away from the target
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with their lower body during the downswing.
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If they didn't have a really wide open club face, because you can see if I got my body
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forward with that wide open club face, my hands would actually have to be back about here
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in order to hit the ball relatively at the target.
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And that doesn't feel very powerful.
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It's pretty awkward for most golfers.
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So instead, what you'll do is if you have a really open club face, you can spin backward
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and that will get the club face to point roughly at the target.
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So what happens is many of these golfers with the overly open club face start trying to get
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out of this reverse weight shift, start trying to go forward, but they've still got the club
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face wide open.
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And so when they start trying to go forward with the club face wide open, best case scenario
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is you hit at 30, 40 degrees left and maybe even a little thin worst case scenario, you
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shank the ball or top it, it's not a good situation.
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So if you notice that you have a big reverse weight shift or you think you have a reverse
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pivot, I'd say it's almost 100% chance that the club face is way too open coming down
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and you need to work more on either strengthening your grip or in the motorcycle so that
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you can get the path in a position where shifting your pressure forward will help you instead
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of hurt you.
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So if you're one of those golfers who got the idea of too much pressure shift, hopefully
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this helps you understand that you don't need to have everything going forward, it's
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just the pressure which comes from the lower body going forward, even though the upper
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body is going backward, if you have a real reverse pivot where your upper body and your
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lower body are actually going away from the target during the downswing, then it's usually
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a way to swing the path left enough that a really open club face is pointing closer to
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the target.
