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- Right Arm - Take your normal set up and take your left hand off the club
- Take a small backswing
- Extend your right arm! (Right elbow stays in contact with body)
I am very careful to call this right arm because many people mistakenly work on releasing the right hand and neglect the role of the shoulder and elbow. In a proper release with the right arm the sequence of motion will go:
- Right shoulder works in front of the body
- Right elbow will extend from the tricep and the elbow pit will stay facing up
- Right wrist will rotate while keeping a slight cup in the back of the wrist until the right arm is extended fully
Left Arm - The left arm is the simpler in concept but the tougher in execution. The left arm stays pretty straight and it stays connected to the rib cage. The motion of the left arm is to rotate. In the backswing the arm rotates to the right and in the downswing it rotates to the left. The hand goes through a series of movements starting from the top of the swing. At the top of the swing the left wrist will be hinged, pronated, and slightly extended position.
Then on the downswing the following happens:
- The first thing to change is that the left wrist goes from extended to flexed
- It will basically continue flexing all the way to just past impact for most players. About halfway down, the wrist will begin to unhinge
- Then, just before impact the left wrist will supinate
Tags: Release, Drill, Advanced, Intermediate
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Okay, so now we're going to train the single arm release drills wall striking golf balls.
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So this is a great one to do at the driving range as part of your mechanical practice for
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working on how the hands are going to transfer energy after the transition phase to impact.
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So it's going to be exactly the same movements that we've trained with the ping pong
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paddle and either the speedball or the impact bag.
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But now we're using the golf club and letting the golf ball get in the way of these movements.
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So we'll start with the right one.
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I'm going to take my normal setup, take my left hand off the club and just kind of stick it on my side.
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And then we're going to go to that delivery position that we trained at the end of the transition.
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And then from here we're going to try to feel like we throw the golf ball.
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And if we use that good right wrist mechanics, you can notice I'm going to have a really
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clean strike and hit the ball really well.
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And then finish pretty close to that follow through position.
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So applying the same principles, we can work on the left wrist as well.
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So we're going to go to that same kind of delivery position.
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You're going to take your right hand off the club this time.
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Now it's going to feel weaker, especially if you're right handed and you're playing
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golf right handed.
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And it's going to feel very weak when I flatten this left wrist.
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If you remember from the impact drill, your hand is going to want to or the door
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jam drill.
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If you remember the impact drill, when you go to push into the golf ball, your hand is
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going to feel very strong in that boat position.
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So it'll feel weak here, but it'll feel strong and transfer more energy when you're
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at impact.
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So we're going to go to this waistside position, bow that left wrist down.
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There's a good sound.
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So you'll see in this finished position of the left wrist, if I were to take my right
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wrist and do the same thing, they would pretty much fit in place.
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And that's the best way to train these wrist movements is after you do say, let's say we
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did a right one.
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And that wasn't very good, but let's see why.
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So if I put my left wrist where it would be, you can see that my left elbow is a little
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bent compared to if I was doing that full follow-through position.
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So that means that the club started working up instead of out too soon, which is why I hit
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the ball a little heavy.
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So you can do the same thing if we use the left wrist.
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If I hit a good shot, which that was, and then I put my right wrist where it would be,
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this will help me train that feeling of those elbows really extending into the follow-through.
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The hand should basically take the club through the same path, regardless of which hand
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is swinging.
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So what I often see in clinics is the right wrist will kind of do a little scoopy thing
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like this and try to hit it high.
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But then I'll ask you to put your left wrist where it would be.
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And you can see that if I finished a real golf swing like this, I would be in a lot of trouble.
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The same thing will happen when you're working on the left wrist, because what will happen
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is you'll hit this left wrist and it'll go flying like this and I'll say, okay, that was
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a good shot, but put your right hand where it would be.
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And they'll have to almost take a step in order to get there.
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So the key for the wrist and the release training is to make sure that each hand is taking
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the club through the same 3D space and through the same path.
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If you're able to do the same with both hands, then you'll have a much more consistent
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and solid strike when you put both hands on and go back to the 9-3 drill to work through
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these movements.
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So this is one of my favorite ways to train the release.
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I've had lots of success with it and I hope you will too if you give it a little bit
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of time.
