Click here and enter your email address to watch the full video
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. Meet your new instructor.

Subscribe now to watch the full video.

Connecting arm shallowing to chicken wing

I often talk about the golf swing as a balance of steeps and shallows. One common place to see this relationship is looking at the downswing arm steepness compared to the follow-through arm bend. There are other factors in play, but a really common pattern is steeper arms in the downswing being complemented by arm bending, or a chicken wing, during the release. If your lead arm is bending at impact then it usually causes consistency issues for both contact and direction.

If you've worked on your swing long enough, then after you've trained each of these two movements (arm shallowing in transition and arm straightening in the release) then you'll be able to train the two of them blending together into one feel. This blend of these two movements can be a really powerful experience for owning your flat spot.

Tags: Chicken Wing, Transition, Release, Concept, Intermediate

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,000
This concept video, we're going to connect arm shallowing to the chicken wing.

00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:15,000
So there's one of the more common patterns that emitters hate seeing on the way through

00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,000
is the chicken wing.

00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:21,000
When the arms are bending and coming in kind of more like this, there are a number of

00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:25,000
different causes that can be from lack of body rotation.

00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000
It can be one of the ways that you're squaring the club face.

00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:34,000
Like common pattern or one common pattern is that it's a way to shallow out the club

00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:39,000
late or pull the low point away from the ground if you're coming in from a steep arm position.

00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,000
So in general, a steeper arm position would be the club working in more of a vertical

00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:46,000
fashion like this.

00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,000
Now it could be coming from the inside.

00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:52,000
It doesn't have to be coming from the outside.

00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:55,000
That depends more on my body orientation.

00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,000
So I don't want you to just think steep is outside shallow is inside.

00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:02,000
It has to do more with this verticality and narrowness.

00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:08,000
So here I'll be steep but from the inside and from this position, you'll see that

00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:13,000
in order to not slam the club into the ground really hard, I'm going to have to pull away.

00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:18,000
Whether that's from early extension of my body or from bending the arms, I'm going to have

00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:21,000
to pull to prevent the club from slamming into the ground.

00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:27,000
Where if I had this in more of a horizontal pattern, so if it was working more around

00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:33,000
my body like this and I slowly bent down, you'll see that this gets to a point where

00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,000
it's just giving the ground for a long period of time.

00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:41,000
That's part of how we're able to create this consistency or flat spot.

00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:50,000
So if the club is working more around my body kind of like so, then just it will make it

00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:53,000
easier for me to get chaffling, which is a steepener, hard to create steep when you're

00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:55,000
already too steep.

00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:00,000
And it will allow me to continue rotating my body because that's also a steepener.

00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:07,000
So what I've seen kind of clinically with my students is that getting the arms into more

00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:14,000
of a shallow position tends to free up a number of things and it tends to contribute to

00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:16,000
getting more arm extension in the follow-through.

00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,000
So we're taking away the chicken wing.

00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:26,000
So if you're looking at your swing and you're struggling with the arms bending and really

00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:32,000
pulling in here in the follow-through, then double check that down the line arm shallow

00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:37,000
check point to make sure that you have a steepen things too much in transition.

00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:44,000
If you have, then it's unlikely you're going to really change that chicken wing pattern

00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:47,000
unless you address the arm shallowness at least a little bit.

00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:53,000
If there are some people who are a little bit more vertical and they don't check

00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:59,000
in wing and what they'll do is they'll have more of a well-timed kind of reverse.

00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:05,000
Thrust away from the golf ball with the body and kind of a feel of that throw of the arms.

00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:11,000
That is one way to solve the puzzle, but in my experience it tends to break down a little

00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:13,000
bit more and be more timing dependent.

00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:19,000
So if you're capable, I would look at some of the arm shallowing drills in order to get

00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:24,000
more comfortable in getting into a delivery position kind of more like this.

00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:29,000
Then you won't really have to time so much the release.

00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000
You just have to stay in your position as you let the arms extend in order to get the club

00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,000
down toward the ground.

00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:43,000
So again, if you're struggling with your follow-through, always look at the transition or the

00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:44,000
downswing.

00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,000
If you're struggling with the downswing, you might want to look at the follow-through.

00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:53,000
Those two match each other and one common pattern is the steep arms in transition will

00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,000
often cause a chicken wing in the follow-through.

Subscribe now for full access to our video library.