Proper use of the right arm

Hi. Robin here with another recent lesson. This lady was complaining of slice shots, weak ball flight, high weak ball flight, losing distance, didn’t see much compression on the ball, generally not getting a penetrating ball flight. If this shot pattern sounds similar to you, this might be a good lesson for you to watch out.

Like all of us, when you see your swing on camera, very often you see many things you’d like to change, but that’s not the way to go about improving your golf. You’ve got to focus in on what the most important aspect is, what one thing you’ll get most improvement from. Understand that; make the change, and see what you get. Often, other things will change in your swing as a result of changing one thing, and that’s what we saw during this lesson. We focused in on the way her right arm moved during the swing. You’ll see in the back swing, there is no loading of the right arm. No loading of the right wrist. It’s almost like she just lifted her right arm in the back swing. Very similar in the down swing. The elbow would stay where it was as the club head started to move. That would create no load in the club shaft, no load in the wrist, separating the right elbow from the left arm. Obviously putting the right arm behind her body and then a difficult position to get the club on plane. Continue that to impact. Again, the right arm basically was not applying any pressure to give any load in the club. You can see that at impact. The right arm is still very bent. This created a position where she couldn’t really pressurize – put any pressure on the ball. That’s why she got a weak ball flight, and also just the elbow, being on this angle, will always result in the club cutting across the ball on an out-to-in path, creating that cut shot. Two reasons why she would be losing distance and accuracy.

So, as I said to her actually, quite a complicated a movement she had with her right arm and probably quite difficult to explain. But basically, she wasn’t putting any pressure in her right arm during the swing. She wasn’t loading her right arm in the back swing, and she wasn’t using her right arm to create some pressure in the down swing. That’s what we focused on. We started with a short club. I asked her to feel like she loaded her right wrist in the back swing. She felt like the club was pressing against, loading into her right index finger. That was a real key point. Her feed back point, if she was doing it correctly. And then load up more as she came down, putting more pressure on the index finger. Feeling like there was a punch bag here, and she was trying to punch the bag with her right arm. So loading the right arm in the back swing, and then creating more pressure with her right arm, punching the bag, leaving the clubhead behind, feeling pressure on the right index finger. A great exercise for anybody who is struggling, early releasing, scooping, not getting solid contact. She learned the movement first with short swings, one arm only, and then just built it up to her own club with the same movement. Loading the right wrist on the back swing, and then loading the wrist and arm more as she really felt some pressure pushing forward towards the target with her right arm.

Key point: Why she did so well in this lesson was she understood the movement, and she learned to feel the movement before she tried hitting longer shots. We then, I’ll come back to that. You can see when she does right arm only, the arm leads the club head rather than the club head leading the elbow, and that’s why the arm always stayed in front of her body, keeping the club on plane.

So then we started right arm only hitting balls. I told her, this could be 70% of her practice, at the beginning. Again, loading the arm, loading the wrist, using the arm to create the load in the wrist, very different look and impact. Built it up, short swings, same thing; loading the wrist, putting pressure on the arm in the down swing.

This is the end of the lesson. Even though it was a little fast forward, I wanted her to do more short swings, one arm only swings for a longer period of time, but just to see what we got. First of all, I just said to her, I know this is overdone slightly, a slightly forward hand position so she can feel pressure in the arm this way.  Pressure in the arm this way, as the club head moves this way, will really help her to load the right wrist. While I would like to see it happen a little bit earlier, that was still pretty good for inside a one hour lesson. You can see a lot more load of the right wrist in the back swing, more pressure in the arm, which it helps create that. And then this is the key, the same feeling coming down, arm leading club head, right arm pressured towards the target, leaving the club head behind, loading the right wrist. You can see here at the impact, a lot more pressure on the ball. She got a lower, more penetrating ball flight with a more solid contact. She put less effort in on the swing, but actually got more distance because it’s a more efficient impact.

As I said to you, when you change one thing, often other things change. You’re going to see here a couple of key things changed as a result of her working on this one thing. Number one, her weight shift started to improve. Just putting pressure on her right arm toward the target encouraged her to shift her weight to the left foot, a huge bonus. And number two, very importantly for accuracy, when we see the path of her club, obviously you’ll see a huge difference in the way her right arm works here, finishing the back swing and starting down. The arm doesn’t get left behind, but because the arm is in a better position, now she does not have this club moving to the left, cutting across the ball with a very low finish. The club travels more down the target line. That’s going to stop her slice, into a slightly higher finish. So again, things were changing just working on one aspect.

So I hope you enjoyed that lesson. I think I’d say it’s a good lesson for anybody who is struggling with impact, not getting a solid contact. Perhaps you’re getting a cut shot as well. Maybe you don’t get much divot, just always feel like you put a lot of energy into your swing but you don’t get much out. This might be something that will help you. The key of the lesson was, doing the drills first, understanding it, getting a feeling before you hit golf balls. Don’t try to get your feeling hitting golf balls.