What Nobody Tells You About Arm Position in Golf Swing
Can you spot the significant difference
between these two golf swings? One of them is gonna give you
effortless power and consistency. The other is gonna leave you
frustrated, hitting all sorts of shots. But it is a very simple setup.
Adjustment. Can you see it? I'm gonna show you how to implement it. The difference of those two swings
was minuscule, but it is so profound. The difference is going to make on
your shots. What were we talking about? It was the setup. If you don't place your
arms in a neutral position, you are always going to be chasing your
tail, as it were in the golf swing. And what I mean, and one of the biggest things I see
mistake that golfers make is basically taking the setup.
There is
no structure in the arms. The arms tend to bow out a
little bit here a little bit. And why that happens is because we're
trying to sort of keep some rigid formality to it. We're trying to keep our posture
nice and tall and things like this, and we're letting the arms hang if we let
the arms hang on the side of the chest here. So we're on the side of the chest. We're trying to reach our hands
together, obviously to make our grit. But if we're on the side of the chest, they're going to form this sort
of quite big space in the middle.
And what that can do is, I mean, there's so many issues that it can
create on the backswing and the downswing on the backswing. What tends
to happen from this setup, no matter how hard you try, you
can get very sort of disconnected. This elbow starts kind
of flying up that way. And I haven't manipulated
my swing in any manner. It is just the fact that I am
repeating my setup position where my arms are on the side of my chest,
I'm trying to make a backswing.
But because I started in such a way, my elbow now is going to tend to kind
of wanna fly away a little bit this way. And I start getting a bit disjointed.
The sequence comes unstuck. So much happens on the backswing,
yes, but also on the downswing. We often see the arms coming a
little bit too steep this way. The arms out racing the body. So we can see some sort of swings
looking a bit like that. Okay, little bit too much effort,
especially for the weak results. But why does it make such a difference?
Why does it have that kind of factor? Well, it's all about the sequence.
The golf swing is we want it to be
as natural and smooth as possible. We want to create some structure
without being too rigid. And one of the best tips
I can give you to find immediate connection with
allowing flow structure with movement is this. If you find that
yourself when you're taking your setup, and it's with driver, it's with S. If you find that you are sort of on the
side of your chest here a little bit, okay, I want you to, with or
without a club, get up and try it. Now you're gonna take your grip and
you're gonna sort of pinch your arms together. And you may have
heard or seen this, you know, Ben Hogan's wrapping some rope
around trying to keep it connected. But that can feel very awkward for people
if you start sort of on the side of the chest here, trying
to bring those arms in. And then it creates this real sort of
tension trying to squeeze those arms together, which is going to
ruin a ton of other things.
So a better way to keep
those arms together so we
can deliver the club a little bit easier with a little bit
more authority rather than here. And also to give us some more
neutral backswing, take your grip, put your arms in front of you here. And what we're gonna do is just
slowly lower them on top of the chest, just on top a few inches
until you can feel your upper chest just sort of touching the
back of your triceps up here. So it's a very careful placement of
these arms. I'm not, I'm not tense, I'm not forcing them down. And I'm certainly not keeping like my
elbows tucked in.
This isn't about that. It's about the connection from
the upper chest to the upper arms, which will help the arm and
body sequence happen a lot more naturally, a lot more consistently. So take the club and place it on top
of your chest. And now from there, we take our setup and we come down. And the reason why this works so well
is because we want to try and maintain this contact up here all the way
through the swing, the backswing, all the way to the top. I'm still sort
of feeling my upper chest connected, but here's the thing, I'm not forcing
it. I'm not really going like, okay, gotta keep it there. It's tight
in. It's more of an awareness, just being aware. Are you still
maintaining that connection? Because it will help you swing around
a central point and allow those arms to follow what your body wants to do.
They're not fighting against each other, but we're also not trying to
sort of lock everything in.
Keeping those elbows tight and super
connected. That stuffs you as well. This works great to show
you your vulnerabilities. When it comes to chipping
and pitching, chipping, we often see a disconnect here,
trying to keep it overly connected. And we end up sort of doing a big
putting action. Same with pitching. It's like you kind of see it moves a
little bit like that. I'm exaggerating. I'm not trying to be mean to
everyone, but that's the way it is. I like to exaggerate.
And when you try things, you gotta make sure that you
exaggerate the feels. So it's like, ah, that's what you're talking about. If I place my arms on top of the chest
and let them hang and now allow my body to move with structure and flow, there is so much more
reliability in my delivery. Things are working in harmony. From
a chip to a pitch iron to a drive, we can try and utilize a couple of
drills to emphasize it. One of them, I know you've seen it, whether it's a head cover or putting
a glove underneath your arms.
So you could put one here and under here. But the problem with that drill is
it forces you way too many of you to kind of keep those elbows tucked in. You're so conscious about keeping
this glove intact. But look, I can keep it there, but it's not on
top of my chest, it's on the side. So if my only objective is to try
and keep this on, its, you know, keep it connected, I can do that, but
I can really sort of cheat doing it.
So I end up swinging all the way around
here. Oh look, the gloves intact. And then I can swing through,
oh look, the gloves intact. That is not gonna give you the sequence. It's going to give you something
that can easily look more like this. Very body orientated. Another one is placing tea pegs
right in your armpit on both sides. Okay? Again, this isn't about keeping
the elbows sort of pinned together. It is just the upper chest. And if
you find this a little bit hard, it's probably because you
are too much on the side. This becomes a little bit easier
the more we have the arms on top of our chest. It's much easier to create
a longer swing with a better plane.
The more on top of our
chest, the shoulders are. If my task is to keep
these tea pegs in place, but I have the setup that is bringing
the arms on the side of the chest, I can do that. But my swing ends
up much more like this. But now, if I have exactly the same intention, but I start with my arms
a little bit more on top, I have a a more athletic setup just by it. And it's much easier for
my club to stay on plane. I haven't made a different goal swing.
It's exactly the same goal swing. But because of those arm, that sort
of arm club unit pinning to my chest, the top of the chest, it keeps the arms in front of me
rather than sort of down here. And that's it. So you can start practicing to create
some awareness with some tears, but I love this because you
don't need to do the drills, just have the placement on top of
your chest. It'll feel like, you know, shrug out the shoulders, put it
on top, then take your setup.
And it's as simple as that. And the great thing is it works on the
through swinging as well to demonstrate the through swing with the setup
that's on the side side of the chest, it's much harder to keep
that connection through. It always feels like I'm forcing it, trying to either stay connected
or to get a nice smooth release. But we put those arms on top. It's much easier to have connected
release where the arms just flow with the body pivot.
Everything's working in harmony. And it is as simple as putting
the arms on top of the chest for every shot you hit. So go
through your little routine, arms on top of the chest, and
then swing connection, accuracy, effortless power. Give that a try. Have
a monitor where you see your setup at. Put this into some practice,
some practice swings. And let me know how you get on. Now, if you want to take the rest of your
swing with a little bit more power with a zip release, check out this
video.
I think you enjoy it..
