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Fix Your Chicken Wing (Bent Arm @ Impact)
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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.
