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Turn Through Your Left Arm

This is a great drill for players who allow the arms to become overactive during transition and early into the release; a classic "tug" of the arms will usually result in pulls, steep contact, and most notably, a stall of the body. This stall occurs as the muscles used for pulling the arms will often rotate the shoulders in the opposite direction of the target, due to the location of their attachment points.

If you fall into this pattern, you will want to focus on building a more shallow, body-driven delivery of the club. To do this, we need to allow for a stretch to be created in the lead shoulder. This will not only provide an additional power source, but it will also help with consistency & low-point control. Overall, the feeling of "turning through the left shoulder" has been one of the most useful cues for helping students accomplish this.

Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Transition, Drill, Intermediate

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This drill is turned through your left arm.

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So if I was signed this drill to you it means that you probably have a little bit more of an

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arm pull and maybe not straight away from the top of this wing but usually earlier in the

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downswing.

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Many golfers will start getting a look where the arm is pulling away from the chest or from the body

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early in the downswing kind of like this.

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And the same muscles that pull your arm down or cross your body in this direction also

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will cause your shoulders to want to rotate in the opposite direction because that brings their

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attachments closer together.

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So if I pull this arm down it usually stops my body and while it can create a big look of

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leg in my wrist I've lost all the leg in my shoulders.

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You see you can build the leg in the lower body by the lower body rotating before the pelvis

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or you can build it in your core if your pelvis rotates a little bit before the ribcage

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or you can build it in the shoulder if your ribcage and chest rotate before your arm pulls.

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Now you don't want it to be so slack or so sloppy that when you turn through it there's no tension

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but if I'm leading it from that lower body you'll see that there's some tension build up through that left side of my body.

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Well one thing that I'll do for golfers you tend to have a lot of tension and kind of pull with those arms

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is I'll have them hold their arm out in front of me and then I will provide a little bit of resistance

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so you could put this up against the golf cart or of corner of a wall at home and then what you'll do is with that

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resistance you'll turn your body towards the target until you feel a stretch in the shoulder.

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Then what we'll do is without a club you're going to bring your arm back to about parallel to the ground

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and then you're going to duplicate that same stretch so I'm going to try and get that stretch

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and I'm going to try to keep that stretch all the way until it's pointing at the golf ball

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and then I'll let it release that stretch out towards the target just like that.

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So here we go, bring it back and then turn through the arm, turn through the arm and when I turn through the arm

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that brings the arm down in place.

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So this concept can be used with the single arm left arm drill or 9 to 3, 10 to 2 is working on some of that left shoulder connection.

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So in the single arm drill I'm going to bring it back and then I'm going to feel like my body pulls through that left arm

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all the way until it gets down towards impact.

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Other option I could do this in more of a 3-quarter swing or 9 to 3 so I could bring it back here

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and then I'm going to feel like my body turns through the arm and I'm going to keep that connection

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all the way until I get to impact and then I'm going to let it go.

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So if you have a tendency to pull more with your arms or your arms get disconnected from your body

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and so therefore from the down line camera your body is facing more the golf ball

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instead of having your chest pointing out in front of the golf ball.

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One idea that can really help is feeling like you turn through the left arm and that left arm just stays pinned across your chest.

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Similar to the leave your arms behind you idea.

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Okay so in demonstration I'm going to bring it back and then I'm just going to leave that left arm until I feel a little bit of a stretch

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and then come down. I can either do this as kind of a pump drill get the stretch.

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Keep the stretch all the way through.

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Or I could do this as more of a kind of a sequence 9 to 3 focus.

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So whichever way helps you build that awareness of that left shoulder will ultimately help improve your low point contact getting further in front of the ball

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from having a better sternum or chest location compared to your arms.