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Training Trail Arm Connection

Golfers who are prone to hitting pull draws or the occasional snap hook typically struggle with maintaining their body to trail arm "connection". Or in other words, instead of allowing for the rotation of the body to help square the club face, they end up overusing the action of the trail arm and shoulder. This can lead to face/path issues and create an excess of sidespin. If this sounds familiar, you can simply place a glove underneath your trail shoulder as you hit shots on the range, while making sure to maintain the connection between your upper arm and torso, specifically from the 9-to-3 position. At first, this may feel a bit constricted and even weak, but with practice you should start to feel how an athletic turn of the body can create a more passive arm action. This will ultimately mitigate any large curvatures of the golf ball and lead to greater consistency. 

Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Release, Drill, Beginner

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This is training trailarm connection.

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So this is a drill that works specifically on golfers who tend to hit more of the overdraw

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or big pull hook.

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There's a couple common patterns that result in the big overdraw pattern and one of them

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is a little more relating to this right shoulder.

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So in the tour pattern, what we like to see is the elbow stays in more or the shoulder

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stays in more external rotation as it's straightened through.

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Instead of going into more internal rotation, which is typically accompanied by more

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of a flip of the wrist kind of like that.

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The way that you can look at it is, well from the face on view, you'd be able to see the

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elbow pit kind of the elbow looking at the camera instead of the elbow looking down.

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So we have a drill called the supported wipe where you can kind of feel that staying down

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longer into the follow through.

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That forces you to get a little bit more rotation of the wrist while maintaining that

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extension.

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Those are great things for helping prevent the big hook pattern.

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But what this drill does is the arm pit connection is we're looking more from the down

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the line camera, from the down the line camera, what we'll tend to see for golfers who hook

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the ball is we'll tend to see a big gap between the right arm and the rib cage kind

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of like so.

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Instead of having more of the instead of having more of a look of connection kind of

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like this, where the space stays pretty much the same.

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So I've had success using barriers to work on that, but another good one you can do is either

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use a T or in this case I'm going to take a glove and I'm going to fold it up and place

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it in that right arm.

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Now if you're more of a kind of chicken wings slicer where you get the path going way

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to the left, this really isn't for you.

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This is for golfers who get too active with that right shoulder and need to work on having

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a bit more body rotation to bring the club through.

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So this will feel a little restricted because you're kind of actively holding on to something,

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but you can start with a towel or a glove, then you can use just pinching the shirt

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as a way to just kind of give yourself a little reminder.

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What most golfers feel when they do this for the first few times is it feels very restricted

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until they get a feeling of the body turning more on the way through.

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So notice that this has a tendency to get my hand path going more around into the left

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where if I really throw that arm out, you will tend to see that gets the hand path going

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more out to the right.

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And as that hand path going to out to the right, the required is more clubface rotation.

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Now you have a right path with a fast closing face where usually an overly closed face

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and that creates the big hook pattern.

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So work on this arm pit connection if you are in that small minority that has more

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of an overhook pattern and you need to get more of the release coming from the body rotation

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as opposed to too much of the release happening more in the shoulder.

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