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Pivot Drills
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As golfers work to improve their release mechanics and efficiency, they will often encounter a "disconnect" when it comes time to add speed. When reaching for a bit more distance, they may start from the top by pulling too much with the arms or by driving their lower-body excessively towards the target. To get an added sense of where things may be going awry, you will most likely need to slow down before you can speed up. To do this, simply make your normal swing, but make the down-swing (3) times slower. From here, make the exact same swing, but take off 20 more yards. Now, pay attention to what changed for you to accomplish this. Did you pull less with your arms? Or maybe you felt your core rotating with less force? Ultimately, using this drill should help you get a feel for where you are sourcing most of your speed and what you may need to change to make sure you are using the proper movements to create power.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Drill, Intermediate
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The struil is powered down to feel your power source.
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So many golfers ask me on the site, you know, am I pulling too much with my arms?
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Am I using my legs or my core enough?
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I found this little kind of bridge drill that you can do to help you identify and train
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where your power source should be.
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Many golfers just try and get up there and swing hard from different areas of their body.
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And while sometimes that works, I find that it's not very repeatable, golfer to golfer.
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So in this process, we're going to swing a little bit slower but we're going to focus
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on what is controlling the movement and I'll give you a couple of little tips to help
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you figure out exactly how to feel in your body, what is controlling the movement.
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So we're going to start by basalining your swing with the three times slower, downswing method.
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So basically what you're going to do is you're going to get set up and you're going to take
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a regular swing but I want the downswing to take three times longer than normal.
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So you're going to go up to the top of your swing.
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And it forces you to match the rhythm and match the tempo.
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So this is a seven iron and I just hit that about 90 yards.
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Now in order to help identify my power source, I'm going to do the same thing but I have
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to bring it back 20 yards.
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So I'm going to try and hit this 20 yards shorter with the same movement.
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So three times slower, downswing, just going to throttle back 20 yards.
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So fairly successful, brought it back to the front of the green from the back of the green.
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The next question is the key part of this drill and that's to ask yourself how did you do
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it.
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What most of you will find is that you had a little bit less tension in your arms but
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you actually slowed down the rate of where your core was or the rate of core movement.
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So now you've identified what it feels like to take your power source, the ideal power
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source and throttle it down.
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Now we're going to take the power source and throttle it up.
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So we're going to gradually work our way back up to our 80% swing.
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So now I'm going to try and take my core movement that I just did.
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Keep the same arm movement and go a little bit faster with the core.
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So got a little out of source with my arms so I ended up pulling it but overall not that
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bad, not that poor of using my core just arms got a little bit more involved.
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So now I'm going to try and ratchet it up closer to my 80% level but feeling it mostly
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from that core power source.
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So definitely not my 100% all out but felt like I'd controlled that a little bit more
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with the core.
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So now I'm getting what it feels like to swing harder from one part of my body and keeping
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the same intensity at another part of my body.
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Now I'm going to try and add even a little bit more from my core but keep the same level
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of tension or activity in my arms.
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I'm going to ramp this up.
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So why it still relatively quiet with the arms a little bit disconnected.
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So I cross pretty much my threshold.
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The most people find is that the place where they will hit the ball the furthest and the
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best is somewhere around 80% in fact I've done many, many different individual case studies
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on track man where I'll have a golfer swing 80% and dial in their distance and I'll
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ask them to swing 100 and I'd say probably about 70% of the time the speed of the club
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head will actually decrease when they swing at 100% compared to when they swing at 80% but
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I'll probably do a separate video on that.
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So back to this we're trying to get that feel of the core if I lose it I'm going to go
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back to a shorter or a three time slower downswing and then how would I take it off I felt
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I moved this a little bit slower to speed it up I'm basically going to do the opposite.
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This is one way for you to feel some of the subtleties of if you're pulling more with
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your arms pushing with your legs or powering it with your core.
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If you lose sense of it go to the slower one if you're practicing beyond your speed of
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awareness there's a good chance that you're not really kind of training the brain you're
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not really helping it figure out what you need to do differently and slowing them down
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gradually or taking bigger jumps in tempo is one fast way to make yourself temporarily
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more aware and then I find it especially helpful when you're looking at power training.
