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Stop Standing Up In Your Backswing
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The amount of flexibility in external rotation in the trail shoulder will show up in two different key checkpoints. One is at the top of the swing, and two is in delivery position. If the shoulder is tight, then you will have to be tolerant with getting across the line at the top of the swing or having your elbow more on the side of your body than in front of it.
Tags: Backswing, Drill, Beginner
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This drill is called understanding right shoulder flexibility, obviously for a right hand
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golfer. So I'm going to talk about it in two different places. This can fit in the back
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swing or this can fit in transition. And it's important to understand how this flexibility
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applies to your swing so that you don't get frustrated if the swing doesn't look exactly
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like Tiger Woods. Remember we're trying to swing as efficiently as we can and do the right
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movements with what your body is comfortable doing. So the right shoulder flexibility is basically
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looking at how much of this movement that we call external rotation you have. And if you see if
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I had this up against the wall, I can get roughly 20, 30 degrees past zero, which is about the
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tour average. The tour average from here would be about 110, 115 degree angle or so. Now where that
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shows up is if I went to the top of my swing, you can see that this elbow is pretty vertical or
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pointed, you know, close to the ground. It's not pointed way out here. Well, if you were to check your
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right shoulder flexibility and this is as far as you can go, then if you got into your
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good golf posture and turned, you can see how that would create what would appear like a flying
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elbow or slightly across the line. Understand that that is more of your flexibility than a swing fall.
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And the problem is what a lot of players will do to fix that is they will lose their posture and
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stand up. So now I have the arm vertical, but I completely lost my body angles and lost the
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engine of my golf swing. So if your right shoulder is a little tight, don't worry if that arm
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feels like it's kind of drifting away. Same thing with transition, getting into that delivery
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shot put position. If you have a hard time getting that elbow in front of your body, it could simply
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be that you have a limitation in this right shoulder. In which case you can let that right arm
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work more along the side, the way someone like Jim Furik might do. Yes, it's not as powerful,
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but it can get the club to come in from the proper angle, so you can make solid contact
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and improve your distance from hitting closer to the center of percussion. So don't get too caught up
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with having the exact perfect looking positions like you see in the models. We're going to work
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with what your body is capable of doing. And if the right shoulder is a little tight, you may
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you may struggle with what you see in the top of the swing or in transition.
