Maintaining connection and coordination between the arms and upper body during the golf swing is critical to producing solid golf shots.
Too often players can get the arms too far behind the body during the downswing, or they get the arms too far ahead of the body. These two faults lead towards a variety of ways you can mis hit the golf ball.
In this video I show you a great drill to help you keep the arms and body working together correctly.
Can your trail arm & elbow be responsible for a myriad of mistakes?
Training the trail arm & elbow in the golf swing. Follow Jonathan as he shares with you how to get the correct trail arm & elbow action in the downswing.
A lot of golfers are being told you have to externally rotate your shoulder to get the club into the slot.
Well, I work with some players that are older, and I actually have a Mini Tour player, who struggle with getting that kind of range of motion in their shoulder.
If you get set up and you place your arm like this, and you try and twist that shoulder back, and you try and get as much rotation this way as you possibly can, what you’ll find is, you may not have a lot of range of motion.
You may only be able to go to here. So, if you can’t slot the golf club because you’re trying to get your elbow in front, up to your belly-button, which is kind of the theme to externally rotating your shoulders, trying to get the elbow up, and if you can’t do that, well, you’re never going to slot it. You’re going to be over the top all day.
What we’ve done, and when I was working with one of my Mini guys is, we got to the top, we wanted to feel that right elbow slot back behind the seam of their shirt and getting that elbow to line up. So, if you have a seam in the side of your shirt, use that as your point of reference. And what you’ll want to feel is, let your right elbow soften up, so feel nice and loose, put that elbow on that seam, go to the top, and return that elbow on that seam, then smash the golf ball to the finish. I’ve learned some of these tips through the BioSwing Dynamics group, and what we’ve talked about is, when you have your palms up, and like you’re doing a bicep curl, you’d put your elbows in front and curl up, but if you flipped your grip and went palm-down, you would retract your elbows and put your elbows back.
If you’re a neutral to weaker grip golfer, preferably more on top, right hand or trail hand, then you want to feel that elbow line up a little bit deeper in your downswing as well. It matches up to that trail-arm action on the golf club. So, if we do it all correctly, you feel that right elbow soften going back up to the top.
Again, feel it get back behind your hip like you’re trying to drop your elbow into your butt pocket. Feel that elbow get back, smash it down to the ball, and have an awesome delivery into the impact area. This is a great tip and a great use of your trail arm to slot the golf club if you struggle doing it, because if you can get your hands a little deeper, your elbow a little deeper, especially if you have a hard time doing this, it’ll help push that club from the inside and you can start hitting some tight little draws.
A timeless classic with nearly one million copies in print, Ben Hogan Five Lessons outlines the building blocks of winning golf from one of the all-time masters of the sport—fully illustrated with drawings and diagrams to improve your game instantly.
The Modern Fundamentals of Golf
Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers in the history of the sport, believed that any golfer with average coordination can learn to break eighty—if one applies oneself patiently and intelligently. With the techniques revealed in this classic book, you can learn how to make your game work from tee to green, step-by-step and stroke by stroke.
In each chapter, a different experience-tested fundamental is explained and demonstrated with clear illustrations—as though Hogan were giving you a personal lesson with the same skill and precision that made him a legend. Whether you’re a novice player or an experienced pro, Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons is a must-have reference for anyone who knows that fundamentals are where champions begin.