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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.

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Three Times Slower Downswing

Research supports slow motion training for learning. Many golfers only practice shots at one speed, but this practice style misses a great opportunity to learn faster. When you are trying to do slow motion training, don't just think about hitting it shorter, try and think of the downswing taking more time than normal. At the same time, try and keep the relationships between the arms and the body the same as when you take a full swing at regular speed.

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Tags: Practice Strategies, Drill, Intermediate, Beginner

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The drill is three times slower down swing. So there's a lot of

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science behind doing slow motion training to help with

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repattoning your swing. The great news is you can do a lot of

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that at home. You don't actually have to be doing it while hitting

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golf balls, but it is helpful to hit golf balls while doing the

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slow motion training as well. Not a lot of golfers enjoy doing

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really slow motion training kind of like that Ben Hogan Tai Chi movement.

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So instead what I do is I ask them to take a swing where the

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downswing is going to take about three times longer than it normally

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does. I prefer that to try to hit it shorter because if I say,

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hey, just swing easy, usually golfers swing shorter, but then swing at

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the same intensity. So it doesn't really change the downswing

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firing pattern. Doesn't become more of a slow motion or Tai Chi

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swing. So you can do whatever backswing tempo you want, but then you're

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going to try and do a downswing motion that takes significantly

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longer than normal. And what you'll find is when you slow it down,

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you have to be really good with matching the pieces together, but you have

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more time and availability to do so. So in slow motion, I'm basically

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doing my good little Jackson five and delivery drill and then I'm doing my

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bracing and arm extension. You can see very little tension and very little

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stalling or very little jerkyness to any one particular part. What you may

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find or what I typically see is that when you try to really slow it down,

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you'll move kind of one part. There won't be a whole lot of rhythm or

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fluidity to the movement. So the goal is to get the same fluidity and

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they still get very solid contact. Now I'm doing these where I'm stopping

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at about waist height, but ideally you will do it.

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Where it takes three times as long to go all the way through the movement.

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I promise if you can do it at that level of speed, you'll have a much better chance

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of doing a lot of these movements at full speed so you can go from three times slower to

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twice as slow and then back up to full speed. It can be really helpful when you're working

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on pattern changes especially during the release or transition where things happen

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really quickly and sometimes it's hard to pay attention to exactly what's happening.

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So we'll go extra slow for the demonstration purpose.

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Again, trying to make solid contact with a slower downswing movement but taking the same amount of space.

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