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It's a strange question for most, but I often ask students, "Why did you stop your backswing. Why didn't you keep turning forever?" There are only a handful of answers that I usually get. The most common is a stretch in the back of the golfer's left shoulder. Occasionally, it's the back of the right shoulder. Either one is indicating that they are stretching the shoulder too much, too soon. In the backswing, if we want to load our hips and core, then we should feel the stretch at the top of the swing (or just into transition) in our hips and core. Use this image to help you control what muscles are moving your body in your backswing.
Tags: Backswing, Drill, Intermediate
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The story is what ends your backswing.
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So often when I'm getting a golfer to start working on this backswing position and how
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they're going to transition into their downswing, one of the questions that I'll frequently
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ask is how do you notice stop?
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Why don't you keep going?
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Why don't you turn a million degrees?
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Obviously, that's not possible.
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But what I'm looking for is there's usually a sensation and there's usually a place in your
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body that signifies that you are at the end of your swing.
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And what I frequently see is that it's going to be the left shoulder for a lot of golfers,
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especially if you're more of an arm's kind of dominant swing.
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So the way that that works is basically, I'm in my setup position, I go towards the back
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of the swing and I go up to the top of the swing and I kind of feel like there's a stretch
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as this arm is working across my body.
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So one of the things that I will challenge golfers is as you're working on getting a little
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bit better pivot is to change the location of where the end of your swing is.
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So instead of you feeling like it's either that left shoulder reaching across or that
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right shoulder externally rotating, although that one's not as bad to feel it kind of in
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the backside of that right shoulder.
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The place where I want you to try to feel it is almost as if you were taking a baseball
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swing and I'll use that for a lot of golfers, especially if they've played baseball
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in the past.
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So if I was making a baseball swing, I kind of feel this coil and stretch during that
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transition more in my obliques and in my core.
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So if these arms basically stay in front of me and then I was to turn my body until it
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reaches this coil, that's essentially going to tell me and trigger that I've reached
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the end of my swing.
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Now hopefully I can time kind of what my arms do so that now it's connected to this body
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coil instead of completely stretching the capsule of that shoulder because the problem
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is if I overstretch that shoulder at the top of the swing then I'm not going to have anything
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to really stretch on the downswing and so my body is going to want to get out of that
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position and my arms are typically going to trigger too soon.
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So what that may look like is if I was making kind of this more armsy swing where the
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club kind of goes around me there I feel stretching my shoulder.
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If I was to make what I think is a little bit better pivot, there I feel the stretch
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more kind of a long this band in both sides but figuring out what you use as kind of that
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trigger for the top of the swing ultimately can make transition a little bit easier, especially
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if you can shift it from feeling it up in your shoulders to feeling it more in your core
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in your hips.