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Axis Tilt Station

The location of your upper body has a big influence on your low point control. This simple visual station helps you calibrate if your body is too tilted or not tilted enough for certain clubs. With the irons, you want to have a limited amount of axis tilt (1-2 inches) but with the driver you will want to have more (4-6 inches).

Tags: Iron, Driver, Set Up, Drill

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This is the tilt station.

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So the tilt station is great for working on access tilt.

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Your driver versus iron, where you want your body in space.

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So there are two big masses in your body.

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Your lower body, your pelvis, and then you got your upper body, or your rib cage, or

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your chest.

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So the tilt station helps you differentiate between a driver, where you want your upper

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body tilted behind to an iron, where you want your upper body more covering.

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So it's pretty simple to set up.

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I've got some teas on the ground here.

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So I've got the brown tea here represents where my ball position will be.

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And then I have another tea that's about 46 inches or about your driver head width behind.

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And then I've added a 3D spatial awareness element.

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So I've got this second alignment stick.

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And normally I would put some soft object on it just to make it stand out.

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But it's a little windy today.

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So we'll see if it will cooperate.

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So now I have another tea in line with the ball position, and you can see this isn't going

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to work.

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You will be able to visualize, or you'll see the orange stick.

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But normally I have it extending all the way so that it's actually physically more

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in my field of view.

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So with the driver, I'm going to set up so that my ear is basically in line with this

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alignment stick, even though the ball position is going to be in line with my left foot.

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So yes, I want your ball position forward, but I want to have a little bit of this tilt

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of your upper body behind the ball.

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This helps create more of this flat spot so that I can sweep the ball off the tea rather

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than hit down onto it.

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Now with the iron, I'm going to keep the same ball position, but now I'm going to make

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sure that my head is ahead of the stick instead of behind it.

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This will be easier because my stance will be a little bit narrower with the iron rather

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than with the driver.

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So I keep the extra teas there just so when I hit the ball off the tea, it's easy to

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recreate or reset up the station.

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And you can either, if you're struggling with one versus the other, you can either hit

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a bunch of the one that you're struggling with, or if you're getting more proficient,

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you want to work on your skills while you're putting in reps.

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You can go back and forth, hitting driver, then iron, working on tilt.

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The most common problems I see with the driver are either a, you lose sight of this

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and everything gets on top of it from a tilt perspective.

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Or b, you keep your upper body behind it, but your lower body stays behind it as well.

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And when everything stays behind it, you can see as I swing, I tend to cut more across

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it and I tend to swing down into the ball.

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So the goal is the lower body at impact is going to be over that front foot while the upper

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body is far enough back, just like so.

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With the iron, you're going to want both on top of the lower body or ahead of the alignment

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stick.

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Now we'll demo a couple where we're going back and forth.

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Here I've got my head positioned behind this alignment stick and then I can see it out of

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my peripheral.

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I'm going to make sure that my upper body stays behind.

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Now first I'm going to do more of a nine to three version.

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So I'm just going to get used to the lower body being forward, the upper body being back

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as my arms extend.

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I actually want the furthest point where my upper body is the most back to be in that

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follow through position or at the end of my release.

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So we'll build on it and go into bigger swings.

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But we'll start with nine to three, jump to ten to two and then up to full swing.

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Okay, so now we're going to do the ten to two version.

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So I'll set up, stay in behind, lower body gets forward.

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That was a little bit bigger in the follow through than ten to two, but that was pretty

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good to my ten to two back swing or three quarter back swing.

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I felt like I did a good job of staying back as a release.

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It was a really good sweeping, nice ball flight.

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So now that I've done it in the two kind of warm up versions or the two build up versions

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of the swing, next we're going to do the full swing.

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So now I'm going to, I'm not necessarily going to full swing full.

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I'm still going to stay in kind of more of a training like 80% tempo, but I am going to

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take more of a full length back swing and focus on even though I'm going to shift or

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do a little bit of that Jackson 5 bump.

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I'm going to make sure that my upper body doesn't go past this alignment section.

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So even with it.

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And so that felt like I stayed behind it.

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I could confirm on video to check and see when I did or to make sure that I did.

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So what will happen is once I get past this point, the momentum of the club will pull

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me forward.

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And so it can be, for golfers who have a tendency to get more of this lunge ahead of the golf

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ball and struggle with angle to tackle with the driver, I find doing the 10 to 2 is where

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you're going to make sure you stay behind the whole time.

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It's almost more beneficial than when you're doing the full swing.

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Okay, so now we're going to go back and forth.

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So we're going to put it driver down.

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We're going to keep the same ball position so that the stick works with the iron just

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like the driver.

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But now I'm going to try and stay ahead of the stick.

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As I make my 9 to 3 or 10 to 2 swing.

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So now we'll do a little bit bigger.

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So I had a feeling of staying on top of it.

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Now we're going to go to the driver to eat up in the same ball position that way this stick

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will work as the same reference.

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Right about there.

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And now I'm going to try and stay behind it.

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So I just did one where I felt like I was on top.

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Now I'm going to do one where I feel like I'm behind.

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But my lower body is still going to get forward.

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So I'm pre-setting that mentally, that mental checklist of what I'm trying to do during

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this driver swing.

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Tiny bit of toe contact, but pretty good ball flight.

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I felt like I stayed behind.

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Maybe didn't quite get the lower body dynamics that I was going for.

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But overall good position that definitely would have hit the fairway.

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So if you're struggling with either the driver or the iron, this tilt station can help

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you get aware if the major issue is from your axis tilt.

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If it's not, then it could be related more to a pivot issue or more of a sequencing issue.

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And we explore those in some other video.

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