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You can break down any part of the swing into two sections: what is the body doing and what are the arms doing? This video simplifies the backswing into two key movements. Most backswing tips revolve around a body driven movement and arm path control. This video helps you see how to practice each of those in a simple way.
Tags: Standing Up, Backswing, Drill, Intermediate
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The drill is isolating the arms or the body in the backswing.
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So I like to unify a lot of the thoughts and take some of the things that are a little
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bit more complicated and try to simple it into one or two things.
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Now those one or two things are going to be different for each individual person.
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With the backswing, you've heard lots and lots of different descriptions, whether it's
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one piece, take away, slow and inside, load into the right side, hold the tray at the top
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of the swing, there's lots of different little keys that people have had to unify their backswing.
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There are really only two major things that you need to do with the backswing.
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One is to load up with your pivot, or to get your body in position for the downswing, whether
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you feel it as a load or a coil or a stretch.
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That doesn't really matter.
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It's more of, you're going to use this pivot to get your body in position and then you're
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going to use your arms to get them in position for what you want to do during transition.
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So the body is very simple.
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I tend to use the idea of the backswing shoulder plane, so club across the shoulders, trying
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to stay a little bit more centered, but basically creating a relationship where I've stretched
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and created some tension in my hips and my core and my shoulders.
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I'm on a good pivot or good position so that I could then push through that lead foot.
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So if I got to level, now I can't really push with that lead foot, I'd basically be
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only able to pull down with my arms.
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If I shift too much off the ball, if I push with this foot, I tend to push more up.
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So it kind of lends itself to, alright, you've got to stay a little bit more pivot or
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centered, and you have to have a little bit of this shoulder tilt in order to really
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load into those hips and core muscles.
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That one, you know, using your body to move the club in the backswing or working on your
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pivot, that one's pretty easy.
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The second piece would be working on the backswing.
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So what should the arms do in relationship just to the sternum?
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If I don't move my body, if I don't move my, everything but my shoulder blades and my arms,
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then what would the backswing look like?
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It's pretty simple if we break it down that way.
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All end up happening is this right arm is going to fold.
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This left arm is going to rotate slightly.
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That right wrist is going to extend and hinge.
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So I'm just going to look like this.
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All the backswing problems where everything gets looking like is way out of position is usually
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a relationship between these two different pieces, either just the arms, not doing something
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like this.
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They're doing more of a movement across my body, kind of like that, not a whole lot of
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rotation.
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Maybe they're doing a movement where I tend to really hinge and cup kind of like this,
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and they might even be rotating the opposite direction.
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Or as I already talked about, there's some body problems you could have.
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But compared to the sternum, the arm movements are going to be pretty simple like this.
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So once you've isolated the two, it can be very helpful to practice making one or the
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other fixed.
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So I'm going to preset one or the other and then I'm going to work on matching up so
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that the two have kind of meet in the middle.
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I'll show you what I mean by that.
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So if I do the arm movement actually, I can face you.
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That's fine.
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So if I do the arm movement, it looks pretty much like this.
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So now if I lock my arms in place and then I get down into my golf posture and I make my
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backswing pivot, there I am at the top of my swing.
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So now, there we go.
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If I lock my arms in place, that right there's a little bit of rotation, a little bit
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of reset.
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Now if I get down into my golf posture and then I make my backswing pivot, that pretty
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much should match up.
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Next I'm going to do the harder one, which I'm going to preset the backswing pivot.
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So I'm going to preset kind of this movement and now I'm going to try, okay, there's
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my arms straight in front of my chest and now I'm going to make that arm movement.
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There we go.
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And now those two should pretty much match up to what I tried to do, both with what my
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arms do as well as what my body does.
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If you struggle with one piece or the other, don't worry, we've got drills that can help
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you feel whether it's loading into the foot, loading into the hip, creating the spine
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rotation, anything for the pivot or if you've got your arm path getting out of position,
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either breaking down the elbows, over setting the wrists, getting more around your body
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or stuck behind.
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You can really simplify it to one of two things.
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Either the arms are not working correctly compared to the chest, that's your reference,
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or the body is not pivoting correctly compared to the golf ball or your feet.
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Once you figure out which one of those two, you can try a number of different options
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if you're out what's most comfortable for you to be unifying your individual thought
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into those general concepts.