Once You Learn This Technique, The Golf Swing Becomes Effortless

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Transcript Summary-

Practice makes permanent, doesn’t it? But if you’re constantly practising the wrong things, you can actually make your golf swing worse. I’ve been looking at the data from my new Swing Coach app, which has analysed 196,000 swings, and one of the biggest patterns I’m seeing is golfers moving too much towards the target through impact. So, in this video, I want to give you three really simple drills that take just six minutes a day to help you practise the right things.

The first thing I want you to understand is that in golf, we don’t really want to think about hitting the ball and then the ground. A better way to think about it is that we’re collecting the ball. When you focus too much on striking down, it can encourage you to lunge towards the target, taking loft off the club and stopping that natural catapult through impact. Instead, imagine you’re standing in a pool and using your trail hand to dig into the water and create a wave, almost as though you’re throwing water over your kids. That sensation gets your body working upwards through impact while the clubhead continues down towards the ball.

The second drill is what I call the longest chip. Golf is played on an angle, and the best players use that angled movement through the shot. Set up with around 80% of your weight on your lead side, swing the club back to about halfway, and then simply turn through so that your lead arm finishes above your trail arm. The key is getting that trail shoulder lower than the lead shoulder. You can imagine pouring water out of your trail ear or even skimming a stone across a pond. It’s a fantastic way to feel how the body and arms work together while allowing the club to catapult through the ball.

The final drill is all about letting the club release naturally. Rather than trying to consciously release the club, I want you to allow it to happen as a result of your body and arms working correctly. A great way to feel this is with a ball inside a sock, or even a towel. If you try to control it with your hands, it won’t move very well. But when you move your body correctly and create that wave-like motion, the ball naturally trails behind you before accelerating through. That gives you a brilliant feeling of the club being slung along the journey rather than you trying to manipulate it.

Finally, blend all three feelings together. Get your weight forward, keep your head more centred, create that wave through impact, allow your trail shoulder to work underneath your lead shoulder, and then let the club release naturally. You’re not trying to control every part of the swing. You’re simply creating the right movement and allowing the club to do what it needs to do. Practise those three drills for just two minutes each, and you’ll start developing a much better sensation of how the body, arms and club work together.

Full Transcript- Practice makes permanent, doesn't it? But if you're permanently practicing the wrong things, no matter how hard you try, you could be making your game worse. And it was really fascinating this week. I was looking at the data in my new Swing Coach app, which analyzed 196,000 swings, and they were all making the same pattern, the wrong thing. And you can know, you know, they're trying really, really hard. So, in this week's video, I want to make sure that you're working on the right things. I'm going to give you three drills. They'll only take you six minutes a day. Two minutes on each. Two minutes on showing you first of all how the body needs to work in a golf swing, how the arms need to work in a golf swing, and how you swing that club under control, but in a free flowing way. That's what I'm going to do in this video. Before I do though, look, if you're new to the channel, some of your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. Plus, you never have to remember a thing. Everything I do here, I'll put into a free download practice guide that I'll pin to the top comment below this video, or you can simply scan the QR code right there. So, what I'm about to share with you works for every single club in the bag. But I want to make sure that you're not falling for this just natural misunderstanding that, you know, comes from us coaches sometimes, you know, when we tell golfers to do this. So, when you play a ball off the ground, just to start off with your with your irons and your fairwoods and your hybrids, we're often told to strike the ball then the ground. So, you want to strike the ball first. What I'm seeing a little bit is that could be affecting the way you're moving. So when you try and strike the ball then the ground, it can encourage you to move like this and start to lunge forward. And it was fascinating because of all these 196,000 swings, they were all moving forward. The problem when you do this, this is a lunge, you take all the loft off the golf club, you also stop all the catapult of the swing because everything becomes a push forward. Okay, so that's a major major fault. What I want to do now is show you how you can feel exactly what you need to do. Now, in golf, we don't hit the ball, we collect it. It's probably a better way to look at this. The best players here when they get down here, the club is at its lowest point. The handle is at its lowest point from here. Okay. The only thing going down at this point is the club head. The body and the hands are all working. Look up through impact. That upward motion keeps my head much much more centered. You see the difference? But more importantly, look, it catapults the club through. Very different to the lunge fruit. So, how can you learn to feel this? I give my students loads of different feelings, images, but this is a really great one. Imagine it's quite topical summertime. Take your trail hand, put it in, imagine you're putting in some you're sat you're stood in a pool. You put it in water and what we're going to do is is we're going to dig our hand into water and we're going to create a wave of water. And I have to imagine my kids. I'm going to basically toss loads of water over my kids. Notice what I'm doing. I am moving this way. I'm using my entire body look to toss water this way. Very different to what we were seeing in the app, which was much more of an action which would be slapping the top of the water. Does that make sense? Now, you might be asking, well, how do you strike the ball first, Danny? If you are moving upwards, it's just about where your the location of your body is in space. Yeah. If my body's more over here, when I'm digging and I'm digging this water out, I'm creating this wave. I am going the club when it falls down will fall down where it needs to fall down as I'm driving upwards. But if I'm back here digging it, then yes, the club will fall down too early. But ultimately, that's the sensation. So, as drill number one, how simple is that? Just paint a picture in your mind of working through the ball upwards. So you still hit the club will still hit down but you are working this way. This is how the body is working through the shot. Start with that as drill number one. Create that mental picture. It's not a slap down of the water here. We're creating a wave. So drill number two is very much linked to drill number one. You've got to remember in golf, look, we play golf on an angle, right? We don't play golf up here. Now, those 196,000 swings when they're slapping like this and they're doing this, they have excessive rotation, but they're swinging too much like this and lunging forward. Very different to what you see every golfer who has a beautifully effortless golf swing where they're swinging on an angle. And if you look at my shoulder here, it's low and my lead shoulder is high. When I finish here, look, my lead arm is high. My right trail arm is low. I am swinging. Look, on an angle. This is unbelievably important. This is how you maintain your strike. It's how you actually then start to catapult the club under control. This is what you see with all the best players. And the way you can learn to feel this is using a drill called the longest chip which a good friend of mine gave me, Andreas Kelly. And it's super simple. You just get you could do this for weeks. It would massively improve your game. So you get yourself set up here and maybe put maybe 80% of your weight just on your left side here, your lead side. Now all I want you to do is just swing back to about halfway. And then the only thing I want you to do now is this. I want you to turn through to the target so that your lead arm is above your trail arm. This shows that your trail shoulders low. Okay. Now, I'm fairly flexible. I can get my hips ahead of my chest, ahead of my head. For some of my senior students, they might just be a more in line. That's also fine. The key though is that your trail shoulder is lower than your lead shoulder. Sometimes you can imagine almost pouring water out of this ear here. Can you see though how these drills are linked together, throwing water out like a wave? My shoulders going in. It's not on top, is it? You could even imagine if this doesn't quite uh trigger for you sometimes skimming a stone along a pond. Another great great way of developing this sensation of how the arm and the body are working together. But I get my students hitting they can almost hit this, you know, 100 yards sometime doing this uh the longest chip. But it's just a brilliant way here. So I swing to here and then what I'm doing, look at this here. As I'm here, I get through and I'm look I'm catapulting here from this position. I'm turning and I'm catapulting the club look through impact. Notice here, none of this body now is going forward. It's actually going backwards to allow the club look to catapult through that shot. Very different to this. Let's have a look at this in action. So, set myself up, weight forward, head in the middle of the stance. Now, my swing will always go longer than I I think, but that doesn't matter. Let's have a look at this.

Long is put and that has gone I've probably gone 120 yards. Yeah, try that out. It's absolutely brilliant. Will really help you feel how the body and arms link together. Now, my favorite drill. Let's get that club swinging. So, the amount of times people ask me, Danny, when do I release the golf club? How do I release the golf club? Do you know what? You should just be allowing it to release. Now, if you get your body working correctly and your arms working correctly, ultimately, it's this. Now, all I've got here is a ball in a sock. Brilliant for feeling, by the way. So, get myself set up here. Have I got any control of that ball? Am I trying to release that ball in any way? No. It releases when my body and my arms work correctly. If I do this and I do what most people are doing, that doesn't look that great, does it? This is where most people are. That's because their body's aren't working correctly. But if you in a sense start to move your body and if I'm here, look, and I'm now going to work into that almost tossing that wave now suddenly look at how the club gets accelerated from behind me. It trails behind me here and accelerates. Look through the ball on this angle as well. on this angle. This provides a brilliant feeling that you can take to the golf club. It's beautiful. It's just absolutely beautiful. Now, that's not what most people are doing. Most people are trying to control the club, put it on there because they they lose their strike. But if you get your body and your arms working correctly, you can just let the club fire when it needs to fire. And then you naturally with practice, you develop the timing of that. So the ball in the sock is just a brilliant way. You can also use a towel, use that sometimes with the students as well. But it's just a really really good feeling. And I love the feeling of like I'm not controlling that. How successful this motion now is depends on how I move my body, toss that wave through. And let's do the longest chip again with the ball in mind. So I get myself set up here, weight forward, middle of my stance, try and blend all these three together now to a certain degree here. And then what I'm going to do is is look here. I'm going to imagine now there there's the ball. Catapult that there into that finish. I'm really imagine catapulting that club.

Oh, it's an absolute be. But you can see I'm really catapulting. That's so so fun to do. So practice those three drills. develop that sensation of how the body moves, how the arm moves, and then how you allow that club to be slung along the journey. And if you want some support with this along the way, just download the Swing Coach app. I'll put a QR code somewhere on here. You can download it for a 14 just for 14 days as a free trial. It will measure exactly what you're doing and it will help you to train these drills as well as it gives you feedback on every single shot. So, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a thumbs up. Maybe share it with one of your friends. Remember, there's a free practice guide in the description box below or I'll pin to the top comment below this video. If you want to know how this works for driver, just click this video right here. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.