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Body Backswing Tempo

Frequently golfers strive for perfect positions. Understanding movement relationships could make you question that philosophy. There is no "position" that guarantees a loaded hip. Part of the hip load comes from the glutes slowing down the rotation of the body away from the target. If you try to slowly move the body in the backswing (as opposed to the arms), you'll struggle with loading the hips and initiating the downswing with the lower body.

Tags: Backswing, Concept, Drill, Intermediate

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This drill is back swing body tempo. So in the back swing session section we talk a lot about the different movements of the arms.

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But the general theme here is trying to have more of a body-centric one piece take away, creating a good body movement where we have our hips loaded,

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our core loaded, so that we're ready for transition. The reason is in transition we want to make the large muscles of the body initiate the downswing

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and then transfer that speed during the release using more of the arms with a little bit of body.

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But what'll happen is, golfers who make more of an arm dominant backswing will have a hard time then switching over to using the body in the downswing.

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I think of it similar to if I want to get a muscle to fire, I'm going to want to load it before I fire it.

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A comparable kind of analogy I use is trying to make your muscle sore, right? Because if your muscles are sore that means that they're working.

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Well there's two ways that you could load a muscle to make it sore, assuming that we're not doing like an endurance training program.

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I could either add a lot of speed. So if you're doing like really explosive really fast jumps, you could get sore quads or glutes or I could add a lot of weight.

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So without really warming up, throw you under a bar and put down, put on pretty close to your maximum, you're going to get sore from either of those two patterns.

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With golf because we don't have a whole lot of weight in terms of resistance, I tend to have to speed in order to load the muscles and create soreness.

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The way that this works in the backswing is if I am moving really slowly, there's no magic position where my glutes are going to be loaded and ready to fire.

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So what you'll tend to see on tour is you will tend to see a little bit more body centric and you'll tend to see actually quicker tempos compared to amateurs.

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Part of the reason is that if I'm rotating my body quickly in the backswing, then my glutes and some of my core muscles are going to have to slow down a greater force.

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Because they're going to slow down a greater force, now they're ready to fire in the downswing.

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So if you make a backswing where you're just trying to hit positions and it's more that the arms are kind of guiding the club.

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It's going to be very hard for you to have a transition that is body centric or powered from the lower body.

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So frequently what I'll do is I will try to get golfers to swing the club with the body.

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So basically using body speed and all kind of exaggerate it, but using body speed as part of the takeaway.

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And then just letting the momentum of the club carry the arms up to the top of the swing.

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That gives me a little bit more of a sensation that now I want to fire my body in transition compared to the alternative.

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So I'm going to have a little bit more body speed and I'm just going to let my arms ride that momentum to finish the backswing.

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And then that will give me ultimately the platform to then start with my body in the downswing.

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So if you're struggling with getting your body to lead longer in the downswing, go back to the backswing.

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Make sure that the arms aren't getting too far behind you as I've indicated in other videos.

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But from a tempo point of view, make sure that the body movements are a little bit quicker during the backswing in order to load the muscles of the hips that you would want to use during transition.

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So you can do this in nine to three's, but this is one that I actually like to do more with full swings, then with nine to three's because it's more of a transition pattern.

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So you're going to feel like the backswing is going to lead the arms and the arms are just going to get thrown up to the top of the swing by the momentum of the body turning instead of me lifting with my arms and shoulders.

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So I'm going to use my body a little bit more aggressively during take away and then let the body lead that transition by working on that body.

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I'm actually acting a little bit quicker during the backswing. It will help you power the swing a little bit easier with the body during transition.

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