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This video is discussing lengthening your backswing.

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So sometimes golfers come into the site and their main priority is distance.

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Well there are two main ways that you can increase distance.

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One is to take whatever club has speed you've already got and transfer more of that speed

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into the golf ball, get more ball speed out of it and get more distance that way.

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That's especially important when you're looking at the driver and in order to do so

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you typically have to work on making really solid contact with a club face that's not

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changing loft quite as much down at the bottom because you've got the club face a little

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more close to the path and a little bit more lag or shaffling.

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Those help create compression which drives the ball further.

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But if you're already doing a decent job with that and you want to increase the amount

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of club heads speed then there's really only two ways that you can improve your club

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head as speed.

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One is to take your current pattern and just lengthen it so that you have more distance

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to apply force onto the golf club.

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Or two, the second one is to improve the sequencing and the total contribution of how

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your body is creating force.

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Now oftentimes that second one is a little bit of a rocky road at first.

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Some golfers really struggle with changing the way that they power their swing because

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power is such a reflexive activity.

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So for some golfers especially if you have a tendency to get really short kind of like this,

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one of the easiest ways to increase your club head speed is to lengthen your backswing.

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There are a few different ways that you can lengthen your backswing.

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One is if you try to increase the amount of rotation happening from your lower body down.

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So basically using letting your knees straightened or bend, letting your feet rotate a little

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bit and letting your hips rotate.

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So that your pelvis is facing more away from the target.

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This works really well for golfers who try to kind of lock their lower body in place.

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You see that that limits the amount of shoulder rotation I could get because I'm limiting

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my hip rotation.

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When it comes to the longer hitters the average is somewhere around 45-50 degrees of

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lower body or pelvis rotation and a lot of that is happening from the knees and the ankles.

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The second option is more from your spine.

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From your spine the main two things that are going to lengthen the backswing are extending the spine,

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which is actually happening more from the hips but we see it kind of at the spine.

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And the second one will be getting more of this chest rotation.

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So the spine extension or the hip extension changes my look from here to more there.

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So if I have a tendency to look like my chest is still pointing way down towards the ground.

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Even though my shoulders have reached almost 90 degrees because my chest is pointed

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down towards the ground I'm going to be limited in how much of a backswing I can really

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create.

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The difference between that and that is more what I'm doing in my spine and it can

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have a significant impact in my ability to create speed by lengthening the top of the

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point.

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In fact that's one of my go-to's when I have especially older golfers looking to get a

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quick 10-yard improvement or so.

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Now when you change your pivot like that it can throw off your timing in the short term

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but often times it's worth it in the long term to pick up the extra speed.

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The last one so we got your lower body we got your core and then the last one will be

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the arms.

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The two different ways you could increase basically lengthening your backswing are typically

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going to come from the shoulders or the wrists.

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So if I lock my wrists in place kind of like this you'll see that my swing has more

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of a 3-quarter look to it and because my wrists are really rigid I'm going to have a hard

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time creating some of this downward load or some of this trail wrist extension and get

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into a really good delivery position.

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I'll typically get into more of a delivery position like this and I was limited in

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how long of a backswing I created so it kind of impacts my speed creation two different

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ways.

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The shoulders are the other option which is some golfers tend to get more of their arms

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working too much around their body and not enough up so if your arms stay more in front

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of your body but you tend to kind of bring them around kind of like this as opposed to lifting

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them slightly up in the backswing then that can limit your speed creation capabilities.

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So one fun just kind of exercise that you can do is playing around with the different

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three ways of increasing the length of your backswing and see if one of them has an impact

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on your club at speed without messing up your contact.

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I do recommend doing this with a launch monitor if you have access to one just because

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it's going to be hard for you to balance out all the possible changes so you may not see

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that you're actually increasing your club that's made if you just look at distance.

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So this is one of the games that I typically do on track man or on any of the even

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a swing radar would be an okay one for checking this.

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But you can play around with letting your hips go, letting your spine go, letting your wrists

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set a little bit more at the top and see if one of those has a bigger impact in your

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ability to lengthen your backswing.

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Worst case scenario if you don't have access to a radar you can always look at it from

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a face-on camera angle and you can see where how high are my hands getting as long

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as I'm not compromising my position so either too much sway off the ball, too much early

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extension of the spine, too much breaking down in the elbows.

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As long as I'm lengthening in a good way it should help to create more club that speed.

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So if you're in that second camp of trying to create more clubhead speed, lengthening

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your backswing is one of the easiest ways to do it and this discusses the major components

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of how you can actually accomplish that.

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So now we'll look at two different ones.

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So this first one will be my stock, just kind of my normal length swing.

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And that's just my comfortable kind of iron distance there.

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But then what we'll do next is you'll see I get more of my length from my spine and from

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a little extra wrist set.

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Now you'll be able to see I hit that reasonably solid and I got enough an extra

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of say seven to ten yards of carry with my eight iron here.

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So now this is something that I will practice so that on part five is in things where I want

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to get a little extra clubhead speed out of my driver I can add a little bit extra length

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for the backswing and give it a go if the hole is wide enough or open enough.

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So it's a good skill to have even if you decide that it's not worth the risk and you want

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to play safe most of the time or a little bit more controlled most of the time.

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At least now by knowing what the options are you'll have a little bit you'll have more

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strategy options that you could choose when you're deciding what to do on the course.

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And we'll let my legs go just for fun.