Swing Help - Early Extension

[bosox2b]

Hi All,

 

Lately I've been trying to change how my hips work in the backswing.  Trying to push my right hip back more instead of my left hip coming forward.  Not sure how well I'm succeeding with this since it really just feels like I'm straightening my trail leg.  I feel pretty flippy through impact and I'm dealing with a lot of toe hits or thin shots and some hooks. I also feel like my hips are outracing my upper body leading to me standing up in the downswing.  Any and all feedback is welcome.

 

 

 

[golfarb1]

SETUPYou need more knee bend

 

9:00 going down-1st still

notice where your right elbow is pointing . It should be pointing more down at this point 

This places your right elbow too far behind your right hip later 2nd still

By impact you lose posture because your right hip is blocking your right elbow resulting in straightening of your right arm 

 

Suggestion 

get your right elbow moving more towards  your right front pocket during transition 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by golfarb1

[bosox2b]

11 minutes ago, golfarb1 said:

SETUPYou need more knee bend

 

9:00 going down-1st still

notice where your right elbow is pointing . It should be pointing more down at this point 

This places your right elbow too far behind your right hip later 2nd still

By impact you lose posture because your right hip is blocking your right elbow 

 

Suggestion 

get your right moving more towards  your right front pocket during transition 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback.  To summarize, basically I need more external rotation of the right shoulder correct? Should this be my first move at the top of the backswing, thinking right elbow to pocket?

[golfarb1]

Yes right after you have started the downswing via rotation of the left hip/ knee 

Edited June 11, 2022 by golfarb1

[bosox2b]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:39 PM, golfarb1 said:

Yes right after you have started the downswing via rotation of the left hip/ knee 

So I went to the range today.  I'm having a hard time getting this down. My elbow still seems to be stuck behind. Do you have any other feels that maybe would help?

[Valtiel]

On 6/10/2022 at 5:44 PM, bosox2b said:

I feel pretty flippy through impact and I'm dealing with a lot of toe hits or thin shots and some hooks. I also feel like my hips are outracing my upper body leading to me standing up in the downswing.

 

I wanted to address this point because what we see you doing in the video supports why you're feeling this, but not for the reasons you think IMO. Your hips outracing the upper body doesn't lead to you standing up, hips moving incorrectly do. Lets break that down:



The resolution from what I can only imagine is a 2001 Nokia 7650 isn't doing us any favors, but I think we can still get the point across here. 😄

General movements going back are pretty good. I agree with golfarb though in that you need a little more knee flex and forward shin tilt to get into a better position to be able to execute the "right hip back" movement that it sounds like isn't quite clicking yet. When your rear leg is already quite straight you won't have much room to straighten it any further to help with that push back feeling, so the extra flex and shin tilt will help you with that. Right now your turn is a little shallow as a result but you're doing a good job of resisting swinging your left hip out which is what a lot of folks would do here. That little bump backwards and up with the right hip in the last frame at the top of the swing is great, you'll just want the aforementioned flex and tilt to keep this from locking out your right leg which you might be close to doing here. Moving on though...



This is a pretty good first move down as we see you sinking straight down (not towards the ball) and your hips are maintaining depth (distance from the ball). In a vacuum this is good, but the very next move is where a big part of the problem is that golfarb's advice about external shoulder rotation and your point about "elbow to pocket" will be somewhat blocked by:



Your good initial first move down before has stalled here. Your primary hip based movement at this stage should to be left hip working back and right hip turning in and driving as much towards the target as possible to keep space for your hands/arms to come down on plane. Instead we see minimal left hip movement going back and much more right hip movement swinging out towards the ball. THIS is what gets you out of your posture and flippy into impact as the common sympathetic reaction is to lift your head and straighten up.

The correct feel is hard to describe and often something you need to find yourself. The goal is to do the same thing in the downswing that you did in the backswing but in reverse. Pushing your left hip back while resisting throwing your right hip forwards. This is hard when one of our sides is more dominant than the other and driving with the right side *feels* more powerful and easier to do, but we have to resist that. One of the things that helps is really making sure as you reach the top of your backswing and in transition that you are unweighting and getting off your right side, for two reasons. One, your front side needs that pressure to push that hip back, just as your trail side needs it in the backswing, and two, you can't fling your hip towards the ball if you don't have much weight on it.
 

Hopefully that helps a bit. 👍

Edited June 16, 2022 by Valtiel

[bosox2b]

16 hours ago, Valtiel said:

 

The correct feel is hard to describe and often something you need to find yourself. The goal is to do the same thing in the downswing that you did in the backswing but in reverse. Pushing your left hip back while resisting throwing your right hip forwards. This is hard when one of our sides is more dominant than the other and driving with the right side *feels* more powerful and easier to do, but we have to resist that. One of the things that helps is really making sure as you reach the top of your backswing and in transition that you are unweighting and getting off your right side, for two reasons. One, your front side needs that pressure to push that hip back, just as your trail side needs it in the backswing, and two, you can't fling your hip towards the ball if you don't have much weight on it.
 

Hopefully that helps a bit. 👍

 

I really appreciate the feedback! Thanks for all the detail its very helpful.  I went to the range today trying to feel this left hip move and more knee flex. Does this look better in any way?

 

 

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, bosox2b said:

 

I really appreciate the feedback! Thanks for all the detail its very helpful.  I went to the range today trying to feel this left hip move and more knee flex. Does this look better in any way?

 

 

You're welcome, and yes that is definitely better in terms of your left hip action and address posture. The last bit to work on is getting fully off your trail side as you're still hanging back which is keeping you flippy through impact:



Even though you're aggressively turning your left hip back, your right leg is seemingly stuck in place here. Your right knee should be turned in towards the target here as you should have gotten your weight off of it way earlier. The Step Drill might be worth trying to get the feel, Brandt talks about it here in this great clinic video (I recommend the whole thing, just turn your volume up!)
 

 

[bosox2b]

On 6/16/2022 at 11:52 PM, Valtiel said:

Even though you're aggressively turning your left hip back, your right leg is seemingly stuck in place here. Your right knee should be turned in towards the target here as you should have gotten your weight off of it way earlier. The Step Drill might be worth trying to get the feel, Brandt talks about it here in this great clinic video (I recommend the whole thing, just turn your volume up!)
 

 

Thanks again for the feedback and tips. I went out to range again today trying to get the feeling of left hip back and having my weight off my back foot.  Tough to really focus on two things at once but I maybe started to get the feel towards the end of the session. I know that swing changes don't happen overnight but this was a swing towards the end that definitely felt a little different compared to the others.

 

 

 

[Valtiel]

3 hours ago, bosox2b said:

 

Thanks again for the feedback and tips. I went out to range again today trying to get the feeling of left hip back and having my weight off my back foot.  Tough to really focus on two things at once but I maybe started to get the feel towards the end of the session. I know that swing changes don't happen overnight but this was a swing towards the end that definitely felt a little different compared to the others.

 

 

 

Lower body looks great now, big improvement over before with a more appropriate weight transfer. The main thing to address now is an interesting handle raising issue:



We can see your lower body is working perfectly away with the right hip driving towards the left and not out towards the ball, no issues there at all. You are however really reaching out at impact and ending up with a pretty severely raised handle and extended arms. A couple thoughts related to this:

1) Address posture and position. Your hands are quite low and you're perhaps stood a bit far away from the ball. If your hands are naturally wanting to return to a higher position then raising them up at address to start closer to that position can help. Folks that get their hands way lower then they can realistically return to often end up with this as a reaction/compensation. Same idea if you're too far from the ball. With all your hip depth properly maintained throughout the swing and at impact now you have plenty of room to allow your hands to return close to where they started, so there is no need to raise them up like this as it just creates another variable to time up. This is where that "right elbow towards your right pocket" feel in the downswing can help. Try that feel first and see what happens. If you really start slapping the ball off the toe then consider scooting towards the ball at address slightly and getting your hands a little higher while doing everything else the same. 

2) Shot shape intention? It looks to me like you're maybe trying to manufacture a draw with your hands here as they exit almost away from your body instead of naturally around it to the left, like you're trying to manufacture an inside out path. 



If you're intentionally trying to keep your arms working straight out in front of you, don't. You want to feel them naturally be pulled around your body like that left hip you're clearing is attached to them. Also check on your ball position as well to make sure it hasn't worked too far back in your stance. If you can get a face on view that would be really helpful as well so we can check on your lower body sequencing to make sure you aren't sliding too much causing you to have to throw your arms like this. Great work so far though, keep it up!

[bosox2b]

19 hours ago, Valtiel said:

If you're intentionally trying to keep your arms working straight out in front of you, don't. You want to feel them naturally be pulled around your body like that left hip you're clearing is attached to them. Also check on your ball position as well to make sure it hasn't worked too far back in your stance. If you can get a face on view that would be really helpful as well so we can check on your lower body sequencing to make sure you aren't sliding too much causing you to have to throw your arms like this. Great work so far though, keep it up!

 

So I went to the range again today to see if I could do anything about the handle raising.  Wanted to see if I could change anything since I'm playing a round tomorrow and don't want to mess with anything then.  I tried having the handle raised a little more at address maybe to some success.  Arms still seem to be extending a little.  In terms trying to manufacture a draw, it make be because I used to have more of an over the top swing that I tried to fix by "swinging out to right field".  At this point it may be more of a subconscious thing since I was always tried to fix that over the top move. Definitely not something I'm trying to do on purpose but could be an issue.

 

I also tried to get a face on view this time but somewhat difficult to do unless I have another person there to hold the camera so sorry for the bad view but that's the best I can do at the moment.

 

 

 

 

[golfarb1]

No , your right elbow is still too far behind your right hip resulting in an out of synch impact .

The previous video actually was worse . 

 

Look closely at the first frames in the below video.Notice that his trail elbow is moving faster than the hands , thus covering more distance than the hands early in transition 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by golfarb1

[Red4282]

Good work on the hip and lower body rotation. The main reason you are standing up is do to you throwing your right arm and dumping angles too soon. Likely it stemmed from learning a roll release. You really want it to look something like this:

 

This allows much more shaft lean, less dynamic loft and higher smash factors. But its very hard to do with a roll release as the clubhead comes in very open right before impact. A good drill is to take half swings, even chip shots with intent to almost hit a stinger. Lean that handle, stay bent over and keep that right arm flexed as long as possible.

A couple of good vids on this.

 

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by Red4282

[straightshot7]

Along with the video Red4282 posted above, This video might help you...it talks about staying in your front bend and "shortening" the arms instead of straightening/lengthening the way you are at impact:

 

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by straightshot7