Golf Drill to Maximize Swing Speed

🏌️‍♂️ Maintaining a straight lead arm is crucial for maximizing club head speed in golf.

📉 Bending the lead arm during a swing can significantly reduce driving distance.

🏋️‍♀️ Proper hip movement and bending backwards are essential for extending the lead arm and improving swing efficiency.

🎯 Using tools like Optimotion can help golfers analyze and improve their swing mechanics.

🛠️ Simple drills, like using a golf bag to practice lead arm extension, can effectively improve swing technique.

👀 Visual comparisons with professional golfers, like Rory McIlroy, can help identify areas for improvement in one's swing.

⛳ Consistent practice and gradual adjustments are key to successfully changing and improving a golf swing.

00:00:00 - [Music]

00:00:13 - go just a little pull left but not bad not too bad 225. we're going to try to fix that today say it out loud say it now so i'm here today with kitty o'connell she's visiting us and she is struggling with her distance we're going to take a look at her swing with optimotion today and try to see just why she's losing some yards with her driver and see if we can't get those yards back into her game one of the biggest frustrations you know when we worked together a few weeks ago

00:00:43 - is you're like i hate seeing that left arm bend and that's a critical factor for club head speed through the bottom so today we're going to dive into just that lead arm flex what could be causing that and some other key positions throughout our swing that's affecting that so let's head over to optimotion take a really good look at her swing and the numbers just to see what is going on all right so here we are looking at our optimotion we got rory mcilroy over on the left

00:01:06 - kenzie over on the right and you know kenzie when you look at this swing and you know your lead arm doesn't look too bad here on this particular swing your lead elbow flex is at six degrees that's not bad you know we're trying to get down to five to zero and that's you know how i flex or extend so right now you have just six degrees of flex in there we'd like to be closer to zero but it's more how do i maintain that moving from impact into about chest high which we

00:01:30 - call position eight but kind of when you get that you know trail arm kind of parallel to the ground so we're gonna see all right how much does this change and that's really where you're going to see a big difference between rory who's a great driver of the ball um and your lead arm so let's take a look as we go through your swing here you're going to see that left arm start to bend that lead arm really start to pull back behind you and when we go over here to rory let's

00:01:57 - click him a few frames ahead look how he maintains that extended lead arm that's crucial for maintaining the speed through the bottom of your swing and getting you know the most efficient club head speed we can out of your swing so that's going to be a big factor but one of the big things in there that we need to talk about with these numbers isn't just so much the lead arm it's it's the other you know positions your body is basically needing to improve at to help with this and that's

00:02:24 - why i have your hip bend number pulled up you know in our last lesson a few weeks ago we worked on trying to get your hips you know to not sway on the backswing or trying to get them to stay in place just so we could get them more into your left side and that was to help us with what we're working on today to bend backwards more with your hips that's going to make it easier to extend those arms when our hips stay back and we can't bend backwards then we have to pull

00:02:49 - that lead arm around us or else we're going to hit behind the ball which you know some of your warm-up drivers are hitting that ground a little bit today and that is why so we got to get those hips moving towards the target bending backwards a little bit more and getting that lead arm to extend you can see that difference here with rory and how he gets that hip off that line how he's really bending backwards with his upper spine and his hips here and he's able to maintain that lead arm

00:03:13 - staying straight you know your lead elbow flex here went from 6 to 15 we like it to be going you know from zero to staying at 10 or a little bit less at that point so today we're going to work with a drill to really help you really bend backwards onto your left side and get that lead arm extending and see if we can't pick up some of that that distance we lost sound good all right so today we're going to show a very simple drill to help you start working on bending backwards getting

00:03:39 - that lead arm to extend and what we want to do is just simply get your golf bag place it kind of right outside your ankle start with no ball because far too often i see students just try to whale away at this and end up smoking their golf bag we don't want you to break any clubs today it's not the goal so go ahead and set up here and for you what's happening is we're pulling a lot of shots or bending that lead arm so we want to start with just little half swings where you're going to

00:04:06 - come back and you're going to come through and you're trying to miss that bag and really extend out both arms as straight as you can and stop at pretty much this position here and what you want to think is that you're bending backwards you're trying to have a straight line through your arms like you're pointing up to the ceiling here so do a little half swing when you stop right there [Laughter] so we're looking for that to be straight right there so see how that's a straight

00:04:34 - line through the shaft and through your arms and you're trying to bend back and point that right up there and think straight as you can like you're reaching for that screen let's try another one nice and easy

00:04:48 - and yep think out out out now a lot of times students will bend back and they'll kind of keep their weight on their back foot like that we don't want to do that so a simple thought to help with that at home if you're struggling with this is to try to get the knees to touch that's going to force you over there and to bend backwards otherwise it's real easy to hang back and think you're doing it right but then you're really going to hit ground before the ball so driving that

00:05:13 - trail need to touch that lead knee and think bend back point up yep long arms reach reach reach there you go much better trying to reach out to that screen same thing good again

00:05:34 - good good thinking straight lines reaching out there i mean to you it's going to feel like you're kind of reaching out here to first base so to speak good feel pretty different yeah definitely different a little scary yeah i'm trying not to kill that bag either so

00:05:59 - there we go good good all right so let's try without the bag there

00:06:11 - and make kind of same thing but make it your full back swing by trying to hold that finish so full full back thing but try to finish there reaching long arms think oh sh okay it's hard to do a full half slow slow it down but think long arms like you're trying to stop right there

00:06:41 - there you go good

00:06:48 - good

00:06:53 - reach in there you go much better same thing so we'll do a few of these good and then we'll start with just trying to hit a few little punch shots like this down range stopping with driver right there

00:07:17 - you can see how much you want to pull that way well half drivers are very hard half irons are a little different than half drivers oh that's yeah 100 correct that's what makes it so hard to change with the drivers often a lot of our students are not willing to slow down enough so let's go live all right so try a little half swing like that really think long arms reach out and up

00:07:47 - hit the ground a little bit let's do a few more we'll try three or four here

00:08:02 - okay left the face open another one

00:08:23 - that wasn't very good i don't think i didn't reach out you tried to square the face and you bent that lead arm pretty quickly so slow it down full back swing really reach i think sternum up reach out and up

00:08:45 - nice so that was a good one so let's head over to optimotion look at the numbers and see how this is starting to change your swing and increase your club head speed this is gonna be a great drill for you so we have your first swing pulled up on the left you know and some key numbers here where they're all working together is that lead elbow flex was 15 degrees you could feel that pulling around you know the dreaded chicken wing or you know starting the lawnmower whatever term you know is out

00:09:09 - there on social media you know we were bending that thing pretty good and now with this drill we got a couple swings out there where that lead elbow flex is zero yeah and what that does and starts to change as you can see you know we talked about getting the hips over onto the left side swaying them bending backwards more well now our shoulder bend went from one to nine back our hip bend stayed relatively the same three back two back then you're gonna see your

00:09:31 - hips are actually driving even more over to the target three and a half inches of hip sway up to 4.9 so we're moving more into the left side bending back the bending back is allowing us to you know really extend and create that wide arc and generate that speed through the bottom and maintain it so this is a wonderful drill but like you saw we had to start slow we didn't want to break any golf clubs today so after you do a few reps then do a few of these short

00:09:55 - little punch shots then eventually we got to start you know swinging full speed and start seeing the distance come up i mean that last shot you hit you know about 210 so 15 yards short on a little punch shot like that's that's some pretty good progress so you can just see where that speed is going to come from when we start to get you moving into that position so wonderful questions on that know how to practice i felt good good

00:10:24 - so we you know we're able to hit it almost just as far as when you were going full speed doing this little you know half swing punch type of drill with the driver really working on that lead arm extension and bending backwards what was your biggest takeaway well i liked the comparison of the two because i'm a very visual learner and so having it up on the screen really helped me and i then putting it into motion was very helpful it's definitely different when you put

00:10:48 - it into a full swing definitely is a little bit harder to do because when you're trying to change your swing it's it's difficult but i'm really excited to take it to the range and see what i can do out there awesome so if you think you know this might be your problem fighting what you would call the chicken wing give this drill a try but the best thing you can do is go find your local golf tech coach

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