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Hit The Pool Noodle

This is a version of the "hit-my-arms" drill that I often use with students during lessons. It is great for players who have a strong "hit" impulse and those who tend to stall the body through impact. It is also a good compliment to working on club-face closure, ulnar deviation & "the unhinge", and maintaing good side-tilt through the finish position.

Overall, our main goal is to focus on swinging throug the ball while maintaing good body mechanics and arm extension. Our focus should be on hitting the pool noodle and allowing for the ball to simply get in the way. As always, do not be afraid to start slow, especially if you have a strong tendency to hit at the ball, instead of through it. 

Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Early Extension, Cast, Follow Through, Release, Drill, Beginner

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This drill is hit the pool noodle. So this is a compliment to the hit my arms drill that I

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typically do in person and it's a really good drill for helping get away from the hit

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impulse. So if you have more of a stop my body and really fire my arms down at the golf

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ball, this could be a good drill for you. What you're going to do is you're going to take

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a tripod or a shaft and stick it in the ground so that the pool noodle is roughly vertical.

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If anything from the down the line it would be angled slightly towards the target line

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or towards the target line just like that. And you want it to be roughly in line with

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your feet. So what's going to happen is when you go through your focus is on hitting the

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pool noodle and in this case I'm probably going to knock over the tripod. Your focus

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is on hitting the pool noodle and knocking it over just like that and letting the ball get

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in the way. So the first version is you're just going to work on brushing the ground, hit

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the noodle, hit the noodle but I brush the ground right before I hit the noodle. Then the second

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level is now I'm going to do this with a golf ball. So my main goal is can I compare, did my

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focus change from trying to hit the noodle to try to hit the ball or was I still focused

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on trying to hit the noodle? If I felt kind of a tensing, if I felt more of a bracing,

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then that could tell me that I need to work a little bit more on this rhythm and my focus

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of being more past the ball into this good follow-through position instead of trying to hit

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right at the ball. This is a very good compliment for working on club face closure, the

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older deviation on hinge or working on getting into a good side tilt and follow-through

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position. So if you have a little bit more of a hit impulse down the ball, you've got

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to do some stuff on the other side of the golf ball to try to help your brain lose that

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hit impulse and turn it into more of a holistic movement where the ball just happens to

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get in the way. Okay, so then from in demo you can do a couple different versions. I like

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doing more of a hinge and hold style stop drill where my goal is to gently have kind of the

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same speed going through impact into the pool noodle. Then I like to do one where I'm trying

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to do about the same length swing, but now I'm going to try to add a little bit more

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speed. So I'm actually going to feel like when I get to write down about here, I'm actually

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going to speed up my chest rotation into the pool noodle. So when I did that I lost my spine

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angle a little bit so that caused me to hit it fat and caused me to just miss the pool

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noodle. So we'll try that again, try to pick up the speed, cut the pool noodle. It's a tricky

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one, but for some who have the hit impulse more at the golf ball that can be really helpful.

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And then the last version is going into more of a full swing. So if it's coming back I'll

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move the noodle just a sec. So now I'm going to try and avoid any type of stall and make

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sure that the release ends there not down at the golf ball. So just clipped it might

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have been a little bit too far because I hit that pretty good. But you can see that that

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helps with the rhythm and the timing of swinging through the ball instead of hitting at

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