Not sure where to start? Ask Mulligan
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.

How to Shallow Your Arms for Better Ball Striking

After this video, you'll be able to:

  • Identify the common mistakes in arm shallowing during your swing
  • Practice effective drills to improve your arm positioning
  • Understand the impact of arm shallowing on club path and ball flight

Learn how to improve your arm shallowing technique in this drill-based video using a case study approach. By understanding and practicing these movements, you’ll enhance your swing dynamics for more consistent contact and distance.

Video Transcript
WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200
In this discussion video we're going to take a look at a case study on arm

2
00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:09.680
shallowing. So over on the left we have the B4, this gentleman, submitted this

3
00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:14.760
swing over a year ago and you can see not too bad but you will see that the

4
00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:20.120
arms in general work in a steepish fashion and that the body is extending

5
00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:27.040
installing in order to shallow at the club. This was taken just last week after

6
00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:33.560
about 48 hours of working on that arm shallowing piece and so what you'll see

7
00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:40.220
is there's a very different arm shallowing pattern in this new driver's

8
00:00:40.220 --> 00:00:43.920
swing. What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the step-by-step little

9
00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:48.760
method that we use to get it and then discuss a little bit at the end why this

10
00:00:48.760 --> 00:00:55.870
movement is challenging and important for golfers to work on. So this member

11
00:00:55.870 --> 00:00:56.520
was

12
00:00:56.520 --> 00:01:00.440
asking for help as far as what he should be working on this winter we discussed

13
00:01:00.440 --> 00:01:03.440
that he's working on his arm shallowing piece and he's been using the

14
00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:08.920
orange whip. So over on the left you will see his swing that he has been

15
00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:13.960
rehearsing in the you know in and around the house and basically what you'll

16
00:01:13.960 --> 00:01:14.160
see

17
00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:20.960
is it's steep with the arm movement and then gets shallow late kind of shallows

18
00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:25.920
starting right about in here. So even though the orange whip is designed to be

19
00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:30.120
kind of a path trainer he was using his normal organization of his shallow

20
00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:30.360
moves.

21
00:01:30.360 --> 00:01:37.850
So then what I did was I asked him to make a backswing while standing vertical.

22
00:01:37.850 --> 00:01:37.920
So

23
00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:41.280
instead of in golf posture just so we could see how much arm shallowing he was

24
00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:45.920
really doing and this is what we'll frequently see which is you can see that

25
00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:50.680
there's a minimal amount of arm shallowing. Yes the club is shallowing but

26
00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:57.400
you'll see that the club is only dropping an inch or so. It's not dropping any

27
00:01:57.400 --> 00:02:02.320
exaggerated amount. So what I did was I looked at some of the 3D numbers just

28
00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:02.400
to

29
00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:09.640
see how much forearm supination amount we have and then based on how much that

30
00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:14.760
forearm is supinating what would the arc length change for this club. And so

31
00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:18.840
basically what I told him was instead of just trying to do it perfectly instead

32
00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:24.160
of just trying to drop it an inch I want you to try to drop it two feet. Okay

33
00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:24.360
so

34
00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:29.880
then after asking him to drop it two feet this was the first iteration and you

35
00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:34.200
can see that the club head didn't really well the club had dropped but it

36
00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:38.360
dropped only because the arms and the hands were dropping. So the whole system

37
00:02:38.360 --> 00:02:43.360
is kind of pulling down not just the club head. So then with a little bit of

38
00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:48.640
practice here's his next attempt and now we can start to see a little bit more

39
00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:55.080
of this two foot drop and so that's a very good looking arm shallow piece if

40
00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:58.480
you're just training the arm shallow then what he does is he gets down into his

41
00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:03.080
golf posture and it looks like it's very exaggerated coming from the inside.

42
00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:07.880
That's a good sign when you're working on this arm shallow piece because when

43
00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:11.200
you start adding body speed and rotation it's naturally going to bring the club

44
00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:18.120
more out towards the target line. So now over on the left is his first attempt

45
00:03:18.120 --> 00:03:22.400
at making a swing while working on that arm shallow piece and you can see that

46
00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:27.640
the club is shallowing out much better than it was in his kind of before video

47
00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:33.720
but you will see that the club face is pointed way up towards the sky. So we

48
00:03:33.720 --> 00:03:36.480
knew that when he went out and played the next day he was probably gonna hit a

49
00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:40.480
bunch of right shots which he did and now he's working around how can I get the

50
00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:46.280
club face to square without bailing on this arm shallow piece. So here was one

51
00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:52.640
of the drives from that next day a mere 24 hours after really kind of diving

52
00:03:52.640 --> 00:03:57.360
into this arm shallow piece and you'll see that the transition is looking like

53
00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:00.400
he's getting the path in a much better position and he actually did a fairly

54
00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:04.120
good job on this particular one of getting the club face relatively square.

55
00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:09.080
You'll see that there is less of that body stall. His body is able to continue

56
00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:13.040
rotating. All these things are good signs for what we want to continue to

57
00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:18.680
work on during the off-season and I want to thank Jason for letting me use this

58
00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:23.680
video to show you kind of the natural progression of working on the arm

59
00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:27.560
shallow piece. So first you want to chunk it and isolate that key movement of

60
00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:31.000
just that arm shallow piece and then you can start reintroducing it into the

61
00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:36.000
swing and adjusting as needed based on ball flight and contact.

62
00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:40.840
So now that you've visually seen the effects of training that shallow moved

63
00:04:40.840 --> 00:04:45.480
just from the forums let's take a look at where that came from. So this graph

64
00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:45.720
is

65
00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:50.480
looking at lead arm pronation and I've got two different golfers over here

66
00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:54.640
on the right we have the demo Steve Alkington so kind of a classic looking

67
00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:59.360
golf swing and then over here on the left we have a higher handicap golfer. So

68
00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:04.080
what you'll frequently see let's start with the Tour Pro is as he approaches

69
00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:09.240
the top of the swing or from the top of the swing into early downswing so I've

70
00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:15.200
it if frozen when he starts to then supinate so when that lead arm starts to

71
00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:19.200
kind of tumble and turn towards the golf ball. What you'll see is from the top

72
00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:24.320
of the swing until here he's going through about 20 degrees of forearm

73
00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:29.520
pronation so that forearm pronation is what is going to help shallow out the

74
00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:35.200
club largely during this transition move. Over on the left we can see a golfer

75
00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:39.320
doing the opposite movement so from the top of the swing there's almost no

76
00:05:39.320 --> 00:05:39.680
shallow

77
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:44.560
move and then he is going to start supinating or tumbling that club towards

78
00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:49.320
the golf ball pretty much the entire downswing. This is a steep movement and so

79
00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:53.200
he's going to have to stall his body and stand up to shallow it back out where

80
00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:53.280
the

81
00:05:53.280 --> 00:05:57.760
Tour Pro is going to be able to reach that good-looking impact position where

82
00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:04.800
his upper body has continued rotating side bending and not stood up. By running

83
00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:09.960
some numbers what we can see is this 20 degrees of forearm pronation would

84
00:06:09.960 --> 00:06:15.800
cause the golf club if you're swinging a driver to drop about two feet so if

85
00:06:15.800 --> 00:06:18.560
you're swinging a seven iron it'll be a little bit less than that but whenever

86
00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:22.000
you're training it especially if you're coming from this pattern here I like to

87
00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.760
exaggerate it and try to air more on the just getting the club to drop about

88
00:06:25.760 --> 00:06:26.320
two

89
00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:30.380
feet while you're working on the shallow move then when you get into golf

90
00:06:30.380 --> 00:06:30.680
foster

91
00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:35.520
it will it will barely look like it's dropping but you'll still be making this

92
00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:39.920
forearm pronation move which is going to shallow out the club during transition

93
00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:39.920
.

Have questions?

Ask Mulligan for help

Unlock everything. Start improving today.

Subscribe to get full access to all videos, courses, and progress tracking.

Related topics
This video hasn't been assigned to any topics yet. Browse all topics in the sidebar.
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.

How to Shallow Your Arms for Better Ball Striking

After this video, you'll be able to:

  • Identify the common mistakes in arm shallowing during your swing
  • Practice effective drills to improve your arm positioning
  • Understand the impact of arm shallowing on club path and ball flight

Learn how to improve your arm shallowing technique in this drill-based video using a case study approach. By understanding and practicing these movements, you’ll enhance your swing dynamics for more consistent contact and distance.

Video Transcript
WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200
In this discussion video we're going to take a look at a case study on arm

2
00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:09.680
shallowing. So over on the left we have the B4, this gentleman, submitted this

3
00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:14.760
swing over a year ago and you can see not too bad but you will see that the

4
00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:20.120
arms in general work in a steepish fashion and that the body is extending

5
00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:27.040
installing in order to shallow at the club. This was taken just last week after

6
00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:33.560
about 48 hours of working on that arm shallowing piece and so what you'll see

7
00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:40.220
is there's a very different arm shallowing pattern in this new driver's

8
00:00:40.220 --> 00:00:43.920
swing. What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the step-by-step little

9
00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:48.760
method that we use to get it and then discuss a little bit at the end why this

10
00:00:48.760 --> 00:00:55.870
movement is challenging and important for golfers to work on. So this member

11
00:00:55.870 --> 00:00:56.520
was

12
00:00:56.520 --> 00:01:00.440
asking for help as far as what he should be working on this winter we discussed

13
00:01:00.440 --> 00:01:03.440
that he's working on his arm shallowing piece and he's been using the

14
00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:08.920
orange whip. So over on the left you will see his swing that he has been

15
00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:13.960
rehearsing in the you know in and around the house and basically what you'll

16
00:01:13.960 --> 00:01:14.160
see

17
00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:20.960
is it's steep with the arm movement and then gets shallow late kind of shallows

18
00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:25.920
starting right about in here. So even though the orange whip is designed to be

19
00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:30.120
kind of a path trainer he was using his normal organization of his shallow

20
00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:30.360
moves.

21
00:01:30.360 --> 00:01:37.850
So then what I did was I asked him to make a backswing while standing vertical.

22
00:01:37.850 --> 00:01:37.920
So

23
00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:41.280
instead of in golf posture just so we could see how much arm shallowing he was

24
00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:45.920
really doing and this is what we'll frequently see which is you can see that

25
00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:50.680
there's a minimal amount of arm shallowing. Yes the club is shallowing but

26
00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:57.400
you'll see that the club is only dropping an inch or so. It's not dropping any

27
00:01:57.400 --> 00:02:02.320
exaggerated amount. So what I did was I looked at some of the 3D numbers just

28
00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:02.400
to

29
00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:09.640
see how much forearm supination amount we have and then based on how much that

30
00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:14.760
forearm is supinating what would the arc length change for this club. And so

31
00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:18.840
basically what I told him was instead of just trying to do it perfectly instead

32
00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:24.160
of just trying to drop it an inch I want you to try to drop it two feet. Okay

33
00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:24.360
so

34
00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:29.880
then after asking him to drop it two feet this was the first iteration and you

35
00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:34.200
can see that the club head didn't really well the club had dropped but it

36
00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:38.360
dropped only because the arms and the hands were dropping. So the whole system

37
00:02:38.360 --> 00:02:43.360
is kind of pulling down not just the club head. So then with a little bit of

38
00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:48.640
practice here's his next attempt and now we can start to see a little bit more

39
00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:55.080
of this two foot drop and so that's a very good looking arm shallow piece if

40
00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:58.480
you're just training the arm shallow then what he does is he gets down into his

41
00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:03.080
golf posture and it looks like it's very exaggerated coming from the inside.

42
00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:07.880
That's a good sign when you're working on this arm shallow piece because when

43
00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:11.200
you start adding body speed and rotation it's naturally going to bring the club

44
00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:18.120
more out towards the target line. So now over on the left is his first attempt

45
00:03:18.120 --> 00:03:22.400
at making a swing while working on that arm shallow piece and you can see that

46
00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:27.640
the club is shallowing out much better than it was in his kind of before video

47
00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:33.720
but you will see that the club face is pointed way up towards the sky. So we

48
00:03:33.720 --> 00:03:36.480
knew that when he went out and played the next day he was probably gonna hit a

49
00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:40.480
bunch of right shots which he did and now he's working around how can I get the

50
00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:46.280
club face to square without bailing on this arm shallow piece. So here was one

51
00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:52.640
of the drives from that next day a mere 24 hours after really kind of diving

52
00:03:52.640 --> 00:03:57.360
into this arm shallow piece and you'll see that the transition is looking like

53
00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:00.400
he's getting the path in a much better position and he actually did a fairly

54
00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:04.120
good job on this particular one of getting the club face relatively square.

55
00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:09.080
You'll see that there is less of that body stall. His body is able to continue

56
00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:13.040
rotating. All these things are good signs for what we want to continue to

57
00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:18.680
work on during the off-season and I want to thank Jason for letting me use this

58
00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:23.680
video to show you kind of the natural progression of working on the arm

59
00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:27.560
shallow piece. So first you want to chunk it and isolate that key movement of

60
00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:31.000
just that arm shallow piece and then you can start reintroducing it into the

61
00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:36.000
swing and adjusting as needed based on ball flight and contact.

62
00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:40.840
So now that you've visually seen the effects of training that shallow moved

63
00:04:40.840 --> 00:04:45.480
just from the forums let's take a look at where that came from. So this graph

64
00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:45.720
is

65
00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:50.480
looking at lead arm pronation and I've got two different golfers over here

66
00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:54.640
on the right we have the demo Steve Alkington so kind of a classic looking

67
00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:59.360
golf swing and then over here on the left we have a higher handicap golfer. So

68
00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:04.080
what you'll frequently see let's start with the Tour Pro is as he approaches

69
00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:09.240
the top of the swing or from the top of the swing into early downswing so I've

70
00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:15.200
it if frozen when he starts to then supinate so when that lead arm starts to

71
00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:19.200
kind of tumble and turn towards the golf ball. What you'll see is from the top

72
00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:24.320
of the swing until here he's going through about 20 degrees of forearm

73
00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:29.520
pronation so that forearm pronation is what is going to help shallow out the

74
00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:35.200
club largely during this transition move. Over on the left we can see a golfer

75
00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:39.320
doing the opposite movement so from the top of the swing there's almost no

76
00:05:39.320 --> 00:05:39.680
shallow

77
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:44.560
move and then he is going to start supinating or tumbling that club towards

78
00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:49.320
the golf ball pretty much the entire downswing. This is a steep movement and so

79
00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:53.200
he's going to have to stall his body and stand up to shallow it back out where

80
00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:53.280
the

81
00:05:53.280 --> 00:05:57.760
Tour Pro is going to be able to reach that good-looking impact position where

82
00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:04.800
his upper body has continued rotating side bending and not stood up. By running

83
00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:09.960
some numbers what we can see is this 20 degrees of forearm pronation would

84
00:06:09.960 --> 00:06:15.800
cause the golf club if you're swinging a driver to drop about two feet so if

85
00:06:15.800 --> 00:06:18.560
you're swinging a seven iron it'll be a little bit less than that but whenever

86
00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:22.000
you're training it especially if you're coming from this pattern here I like to

87
00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.760
exaggerate it and try to air more on the just getting the club to drop about

88
00:06:25.760 --> 00:06:26.320
two

89
00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:30.380
feet while you're working on the shallow move then when you get into golf

90
00:06:30.380 --> 00:06:30.680
foster

91
00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:35.520
it will it will barely look like it's dropping but you'll still be making this

92
00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:39.920
forearm pronation move which is going to shallow out the club during transition

93
00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:39.920
.

Have questions about this video?

Ask Mulligan for personalized guidance on technique, drills, or how to apply what you've learned.

Ask Mulligan
Related topics
This video hasn't been assigned to any topics yet. Browse all topics in the sidebar.
Subscribe now for full access to our video library. Subscribe now