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Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.
Fix Your Cast

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Seated Release Training

Working on your release can happen away from the golf course. Engaging the brain in the movement helps speed up the learning process. A good way to see what you think your arms should do is to remove as many other variables as you can. Doing the release in a seated environment can help reveal exactly what you think your arms should do.

Tags: Poor Contact, Early Extension, Chicken Wing, Cast, Draw vs Fade, Iron, Impact, Release, Drill, Intermediate

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This drill is seated release training.

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So I like to get creative and hopefully help you understand each of the pieces and how they fit together.

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And I get a lot of weird looks when I'm giving some lessons.

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And one of the common ones where I'll get a kind of crazy look is if we're talking about release,

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I'm just not quite sure what they're doing because they're using their body a whole lot.

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I'll have them sit down and I'll say, okay, show me what your release would look like.

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And usually after I get that squarely look, they'll finally give it a go.

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But the example is if I had you seated and I said show me what the release looks like throwing a wall,

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most people can demonstrate what their arms do.

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If I ask them show me what your release looks like for your arms with a golf club,

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usually they can't do it without moving their body.

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So this will help you see, especially if you're facing a mirror, video taping yourself,

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you'll be able to see what your brain really wants to do during the release.

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So before I show the answers, we want kind of an unbiased perspective on you.

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Go ahead and demonstrate. So look in the mirror and just put your hands together, take kind of

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your normal grip, put your hands together, and then try a couple of times showing what your release

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would look like. Give it a try now. We're mostly going to look at it from face on view.

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Okay, so hopefully you gave it a try and what I'll usually see is one of a couple different options.

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The most common one that I'll see is the release will look something like this.

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We're basically the hands are straight up and down compared to the body, and then they just

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wipe across your body like that. That's the most common one. That's pretty close to what we want

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for a wedge shot, minus a little bit of the kind of unhinging. That's pretty close to what we're

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trying to do for a wedge shot. When if you've ever seen me in the airport or you know travel

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in the classes, sometimes I practice my release just thinking about it, and it'll look something

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a little bit more like this. Usually putting the hands on the trail thigh, even a little bit

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towards the outside so that the palm is facing dead away. That's pretty close to delivery position.

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And then from here I'm going to extend my arms slightly out in a little bit almost up.

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So if I turn it, I know we said face on is the most important, but here's the difference

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between those two. This is straight up and down, just kind of working across my body, more like this.

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Verses the release that we're hopefully trying to train, has a little bit more of an extension

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kind of like that. And you'll see that they're going just slightly up and out. If that feels

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really weird for you to go from basically on that right thigh or on your trail thigh to

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extending up in front of the chest, even with the left thigh, then there's a very good chance that

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you're going to have a appearance of a scoop or a flip or a chicken wing, which is good for a

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wedge shot because you want the bottom swing pretty much in line with the golf ball. If you want the

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bottom swing ahead of the golf ball, you want to get used to this movement more across your body.

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And how much it goes up? You know that varies club the club, body to body, but getting used to it

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feeling like it's already squared towards the right half of your body and then extending away from

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you. Now what you'll see is if I then were to stand up and make that movement from right about here

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to extending, actually with no body, you'll see it goes well out to the right, but now if I was to

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add a little bit of body movement, you can see that that matches those hands going a little bit more

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to the left. So I'd love to challenge things when I can. If you're not quite sure what your

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release looks like, take the body out, see what your arms are doing. It may reveal that there's some

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room for you to improve, especially if you're in the kind of 10 handy cap range trying to get

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down towards scratch or in that scratch golf or trying to get to the plus three plus four plus five.

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So hopefully this helps you understand your release and see that you can train it even

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when you're on the road or watch in TV by building these movement patterns. It'll be that much

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easier for your brain to recall them when you're either on the range or on the course.

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