Most amateur golfers completely misunderstand how to use their arms in the golf swing, especially in the backswing.  As you’ll see in the next few drills, once you learn how to turn, as you’ve been working on in Drill 303 – Backswing: Full Shoulder Turn with Weight Shift, moving your arms correctly to make a perfect backswing is remarkably simple. This misunderstanding is natural.  When you watch Tour players on TV, you see them...

In this drill you will learn one of the most important parts of a great golf swing; how to correctly make a full turn in the backswing while shifting your weight. You’ll learn how to initiate a sequence of movements that gets your body into the perfect position, every time, to make a powerful, efficient, accurate, consistent and safe downswing. With a little practice, this drill will help you to generate much more power in your golf swing, and...

Making a full, powerful turn in the backswing is easy once you know how.  We’ve never met a golfer, of any age, who couldn’t learn very quickly how to make a full shoulder turn using this drill.   Once again, apologies to the lefties out there, but for simplicity these instructions are given for a right-handed golfer.   First of all, let’s make it clear what we mean by a full shoulder turn.  Most amateurs don’t understand...

The takeaway is, after impact, the most important part of the golf swing.  As your first movement away from the golf ball, it initiates a sequence that will determine the quality of your entire golf swing — its power, accuracy and consistency. A great takeaway doesn’t guarantee a great golf swing, but even the slightest errors here will lead to manipulations and compensations which will make the rest of the swing very difficult...

In order to fully understand the perfect golf swing takeaway, it is important discuss some of the common faults made by amateur golfers, and their consequences. Understanding these faults will help you to better understand the correct golf swing mechanics.  You will be able to identify problems with your own golf swing, to analyse them using pictures and video taken during your practice and drill sessions, and to more quickly correct them...

In Golf Lag and the Compound Pendulum, we saw how power in the golf swing, in the form of club head speed, comes primarily from the correctly timed sequence of movements taking advantage of a simple mechanical phenomenon, the compound pendulum effect. In this article, we take that discussion further by looking more closely at the role of the right arm in the golf downswing. Once again, apologies to the lefties out there, but for simplicity...

So far in this section we’ve concentrated on how your body should move in the golf swing takeaway, how to use your muscles and how to sense what the perfect takeaway feels like.  Now we’ll describe how the golf club should move in the perfect takeaway. Most amateur golfers become too fixated on the movement of the golf club, manipulating their hands and body in an effort to keep the club “on plane” as it swings around their...

Once you are adept at turning your chest independently of your hips, from your perfect address position, while at the same time shifting your weight, which you have been working on in Drill 204 – Takeaway: Turn with Weight Shift, this drill builds upon that movement by lifting your arms and rotating them slightly as you turn. You’ll note that we’re not yet introducing a golf club into the takeaway drills — you’re...

Once you are adept at turning your chest independently of your hips, which you have been working on in Drill 203 – Core Disassociation, this drill extends that movement by introducing one of the most important aspects of the takeaway; a weight shift away from the target. If you are not yet able to turn your chest about 45 degrees without moving your hips, then go back and continue working on drills 202 and 203.  Rushing ahead with...

There are a number of exercises in the mobility exercise section of the exercise library that will help to promote spinal mobility and proper posture at setup. Many amateur golfers have a lack of mobility in the spine and pelvis, resulting in them appearing to be slumped and rounded forwards in the shoulders and lower back, and making it difficult to adopt the correct “flat-back” posture at setup — see Full Swing 101 – Setup: Basic...