An Exercise To Help You Change Your Golf Swing

Are you struggling to change your swing, or fix a fault that you know you have?  You might have had a lesson, and you know what you are doing wrong.  You make good practice swings but when you actually go ahead and hit the ball, nothing changes.  It is very common and can be frustrating.  When I see this, one of the first exercises I ask my students to do is ‘The Eyes Closed Drill’.  Closing your eyes can give you a increased awareness and sense on the aspect you are working on.  I have seen some great results using this drill, so I encourage you to give it a try.   Take a few mins to watch this video.  The great thing is this drill can work with almost any swing fault.

Transcript

So you’ve had a lesson, and you’ve got some things to work on. Perhaps you’ve been told that you’re losing your postural angles in the backswing, your head’s going towards the golf ball, you’ve been told to rotate, maintaining your postural angles. Perhaps you’ve been told to shift a little more weight into your right side, your right heel, during the back swing, or even learn to separate your lower body and your upper body starting the downswing. You understand the mechanics, but you can’t quite seem to get a feel or transfer the good movement in your practice swing into actually hitting shots. This is very common, people struggle to actually make the change, change the pattern of their movement when they’re hitting balls. A good exercise when I see this is simply to hit shots with your eyes closed. It can be very difficult to hit a good shot, but closing your eyes can increase your sense in the part you’ve been working on. For example, I’m working on shifting my weight into my right heel. I close my eyes. And I can now sense, my sense is increased to where my weight is moving throughout the golf swing. I’m just learning to gather a little more separation. Again, my sense can now feel a little more stretching effect, can feel my hips leading the downswing. Just this morning, actually, I was giving a lesson. Somebody was struggling at separation. Got them to hit one shot with their eyes closed, sensing the movement, and then one shot with their eyes open, repeating that cycle. Only within ten minutes, they were starting to make a different movement, hitting shots, one that they really couldn’t get before. They’re very simple. Increase your sense in the aspect you’re working on. Close your eyes for one shot, like this. You might surprise yourself just how well you can hit it. Then after that, replicate the movement with your eyes open. Hopefully from that you become more aware of the new movement and you’re able to make that change last, and most importantly, make the change when you’re actually hitting shots.