The Ridiculously Easy Driver Swing Requires Almost No Practice

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Transcript Summary -

Have you ever stood on the first tee and watched your playing partner just stroll up to the ball, take one relaxed swing, and absolutely smash it down the middle—300 yards, no effort at all—while you swing as hard as you can and barely get close? It’s frustrating, right? I see this all the time with my students. The truth is, those players have a swing pattern that naturally produces effortless power, while others have patterns that actually rob them of distance. No swing tip will fix that until you change the overall movement pattern itself.

This week, I was working with one of my students, Monty, who was feeling a bit envious of his mates hitting it much further. He thought it was because he wasn’t as strong or maybe was getting older—but that wasn’t the case at all. His swing pattern was the issue. Everything in his swing was moving up and down together, so there was no real speed or leverage being created. What we needed to do was get his body working in opposition—arms going down while the legs push up—so he could start generating effortless power, much like you would if you were slamming a medicine ball into the ground.

To help him feel that, I gave him a simple drill. I had him drop his trail foot back slightly, then focus on his lead leg pushing up as his arms fired down. The key here wasn’t to stand up but to use that lead leg to create resistance and power. After a few minutes of practice, Monty started feeling the energy transferring down the shaft and into the clubhead. His shots started flying 15 to 20 yards further, and he said it felt easier than before. Timing it took a little practice, of course, but he could immediately feel where the speed was coming from.

Once he started to get that, we added a second drill I picked up from coach Andy Plummer. This one’s brilliant for helping the body move correctly. As the arms go back, the body turns in the opposite direction, and when the arms fire through, the body again works the other way. It looks strange at first, but it’s how you create that dynamic, elastic movement all great players use. Just look at Scottie Scheffler—his lower body moves one way while his upper body moves the other. That opposition is what gives you both control and effortless speed.

When Monty started blending those two drills together, the difference was night and day. He could feel the power building naturally, not from effort but from sequence. The club was accelerating through the ball with ease, and he finally understood why his mates looked so relaxed when they hit it long—they were using their bodies correctly.

So, if you’ve been struggling for distance and feeling like you’re swinging harder than ever without results, don’t chase another swing tip. Focus on changing your pattern. Feel that opposition between the arms and legs, the upper and lower body, and let that motion create the power for you. It’s a skill that takes a bit of time to develop, but once you do, you’ll start hitting it further than ever—without even trying.

Full Transcript- How often do you stand on the first tea and you stood watching your playing partner casually walk to the golf ball like this? They just step up there. You can see they're not thinking about too much stuff and then they do this and kind of like unbelievably effortlessly and really relax. They rip it down the middle almost 300 yards. You then stand up and with all your might and all your effort you can't get anywhere near them. Why is that? I know it's unbelievably frustrating. Certainly from many of my students that come and see me. Well, they have a pattern of swing that just naturally and effort effortlessly leads to longer drives. The chances are you have a pattern that simply just robs you of distance. And no magic swing tip will ever get it back. What you have to do is change your pattern to one that naturally leads to effortless power. And in this video, I'm going to share with you how to actually do that. It's not going to require loads of million swing thoughts and stuff. You just simply need to change the overall pattern. And when you do that, these drives start to come bit by bit. I can't wait to share it with you. Before I do though, look, if you're new to the channel, my first videos 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. So, that story in the intro came from actually my lesson Monty this week who a little envious of his playing partners cuz they just hitting it so much further than he is. And now he thinks it's his strength. He feels like he's he maybe he's getting a bit old now and and that's why he's not as as long as his friends. But the reality is it's not. He just has a pattern that leads to kind of very very short drives. So, what I want to do is I want to share with you what I shared with with uh Monty because it doesn't take long to start to experience where power comes from and and and why the long hitters make it look easy and why maybe you if you're strongly distance, you make it look difficult. So, let's start with the first thing I want you to look at in your golf swing. Take a look at this. So, this is a pattern of movement.

That's one pattern of movement. Here's another pattern.

Can you see a difference? Which one looks smoother, more flowing? Hopefully, what you noticed was a second one. But what am I doing on that second pattern? Well, this is what I explained to Monty. What you need to realize is the body is always working in oppositions. So, what's happening ultimately is this the on the first one, this is what kind of Monty was doing. Everything was moving up and everything is moving down. So, everything now is working in the same direction. That leads to just effort shots. If you want effortless, what we need to have is the club accelerating. And notice what's happening here. As my arms are working down, I and my legs are pushing up. They're actually starting to straighten a little bit. Can you see this? So, I'm actually working in the opposite direction to where my arms are going. Much like as if I was throwing a medicine ball down on the ground. Make sense? I wouldn't go. it wouldn't leave a loud noise doing this versus slam it down. Right? So, the first thing I did with Mon super powerful this is just spend a moment experiencing this pattern. Yeah. Now, I gave him a little drill which you can do too just so you can feel this where I got him to because he's a little slicer as well. I got him to draw his uh uh trail foot back like this. And I said to him, just get that sensation that your lead knee is really bent now. And when you're coming down, just imagine the arms as they fire downwards. You're going to push upwards. You're going to move up in the opposite direction. Notice this. I'm not standing up. I'm using I'm just simply pushing my lead leg as I fire my arms down. Very different to this. Look, should I see most people or this? Yeah, nothing's happening here. Everything's working down versus look at this simple one. Push up. You don't even have to do it hard. Just push push. As the abs go down, the leg pushes up. So, they're working in opposition. I said, look, let's just start with that. Spend a moment, by the way, when you do this, just to feel it. Let the body kind of take some time to kind of experience this motion. Yeah. And then when you're ready, I said just draw that right foot back a little bit here just so you can really sense this lead leg. And what we're going to do is we're going to hit a couple of shots now. And I want you to get a sense of this motion. It's just I really feel like Danny there's some acceleration into the club. The energy is being passed into that club. I can really feel like it's almost like the energy is going down the shaft and into the head. Whereas here, I don't feel that. Yeah. Whereas when I when I push this way, it really feels like something's going straight into the head. Almost like Yes. It's almost like the blood rushing from the down your arms into the club head. That's because your arms are being thrown here while your body is working in the opposite direction. I said, "Yeah, absolutely." So, let's hit a couple of shots just doing that. Yeah. Just let's take that sensation. So, no big shots to start with. Just tap a few down there. just accelerate through. Right? So suddenly what we start do we start tapping a few down there and he's like that feels so easy. And now he didn't get it right every time. And there's a timing to this. There's no magic bullet. You have to kind of now you you get this motion. You've got to learn to time it. You can't just expect it to be absolutely perfect. And to start with, he would stand up. I said, "No, that's not it. Look at this. I'm using my legs to push back while my arms go down. Yeah. So, we keep going is just keep going with this bit by bit. Just throw this out there. Now, what he started to do is his distance instantly added 15 to 20 yards. Now, there was a little bit of a cut on that uh shot to start with. So he didn't have complete control over it, but now he could feel, which is really important, how he was going to start to add some club head speed into his shots because suddenly they were going a lot further with no extra effort. So once we had him kind of sensing the rhythm of of the swing, what we then did is I started to need to get his body working far more effectively because right now he was starting to get the club kind of releasing and adding some speed to that club, but he wasn't coordinating it brilliantly with the body because again he didn't understand that the body also when it moves right to left needs to work in opposition. The problem was he was doing he was simply going Turn right and turn left. And again, if you do that, you have no power. Yeah. Now, I shared with him a brilliant drill I got from a wonderful coach called Andy Plameumber. And it's super super simple, but it does so many amazing things. So, I said to look, we don't want the body working the hips and the arms and the shoulders working in the center direction. There's no power with that. You can't control, you can't generate any force. And I saw Andy doing a brilliant drill, which is this. As you move the arms back, watch what happens. One. Two. Looks weird, doesn't it? But look what I'm doing.

What's happening? As my arms are working one way, my body is spinning the other way. It feels like I'm turning. Now, if you've ever been told, you've seen we got to open up those hips and all that kind of stuff. All that there is such bad advice because we've lost that connection. Everything's turning in the same direction. Face is wide open. massive to the right, no power. But this, what I love about this exercise, just if you do it, if you pause the video and do this, you will feel the body working in opposition very naturally. Now, if you check out, let's say, the world's number one golfer, Scotty Sheffller, you will see him physically almost doing when he comes through this kind of motion where his body's working this way. What's happened to the lower body? It's working, look, in the opposite direction. It's always working in opposition because that gives you you can then accelerate into the back of the golf ball with control versus no control. Yeah. So doing a drill like this just before you play really simply just kind of going one I can really feel I'm winding up into this leg here. What I love about it here as well when I jump this is what happens actually in the real swing. I'm pushing here and I'm there. I love that feeling of the opposition. And that's exactly what Monty said as well. He said it took a bit of time just to kind of understand it initially and sense it. But once he got it, he could really sit down. I never feel that right leg, the power in that right leg. I really feels weak. That's cuz Monty. You just turned and turned. So we take that sensation. Look. One. I move my arms this way. And then I'll fire my arms. look across my body here and I feel like I'm working always look in opposition.

And you'll notice here, look at my heel here. Can you see how this heel is banked in a little bit here? And it's not pivoted out. This is a really good example of me really exaggerating this really firing this club through impact without spinning here which most slicers would do. Now if I wanted now to start to combine those two things together which is what we did with Monty is is we just build it up bit by bit. So, if I wanted to get up to 300 yards now, all I'm going to do for me is really start to accelerate. But notice this. I'm not accelerating like that. I am sensing this opposition. You could almost imagine that bowling down an alleyway, right? It's the opposition that works and that allows me look to fire with control into the back of the golf ball.

And there we go. Look, that's how we start to really ramp up that distance. So, get a sense of those two drills. Get a sense of how the body works in opposition. A lot of times we've been told to open our hips on the way through here, but all that does is in a sense everything's working the same direction. You have no control of this club which is firing. When that club fires with our arms this way, we want to make sure that the lower body is supporting that, not collapsing like this. And and finally, you will see me do exercises like this where I'm getting the player to feel the swing of a golf club. That's not momentum. This is momentum. So, that is where that first exercise comes in. Really sensy. Look, I'm firing the arms down while I'm pushing back with my legs. Just take time to experience these sensations. They're a skill. Your body's been used to doing one thing. You need to develop the sensory acuity to do this other thing. Took Monty 20, 30 minutes to really get into this. And then he started some beautiful shots. Of course, he hit some dodgy ones as well, but the thing is is he went away know now knowing exactly what his mates were doing to hit the ball a lot longer and he knew he could do it because he did it in that session. So, I really hope you give this a go and develop this feel exactly that Monty did. So, hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a thumbs up, maybe share it with one of your friends. And of course, look, remember there's a free practice plan that I'll pin the top comment below this video. If you if you struggle with accuracy with driver setup, it's unbelievably important. I go into a detailed analysis of exactly how to set up in this video right here. Super super important. Probably watch this that one straight after this one. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.