Fix Your Chicken Wing (Bent Arm @ Impact)
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Full Swing Drill - "L-To-L"
I will often advocate for a slight "hold-off" style finish for the majority of golfers as it usually cleans up some of the body and arm orientations at impact. However, there is a subset of golfers for which this concept can do more harm than good. Specifically, golfers who struggle with a bent arm in the follow through, which is commonly known as a "chicken-wing", will need to focus on the exact opposite feels. Thankfully, the classic "L-to-L" drill is a great way to remedy this pattern as it combines a few key sequencing and release based concepts.
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This drill is L to L. Now I'm a big fan of doing some sort of holdoff finish for the majority
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of golfers. It helps work on the quality of the movements down it impact. And for many golfers,
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I prioritize doing the L to I, where I'm basically finishing in this pattern. That really
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works on more of the stall flip. But there's a subset of golfers who really benefit from
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taking it all the way up to vertical and letting the wrist re-hinged. And that's if you
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struggle with a chicken wing. Typically what happens is golfers who struggle with bending
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their arm on the way through doesn't necessarily mean that the arm has to be bent at
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impact. But it means that the arm is bending. That's one of my distinctions for a chicken
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wing. So if the arm is bending on the way through, one way to think about it is the
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wrist are doing very little and the elbows are doing a lot to get into this pattern.
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What I want to do is I want to reverse that. I want the elbows to stay straight and then
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the wrist to re-hinge and it's not until the wrist are done re-hingging that the elbows then
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soften and absorb some of the speed. So it's kind of the reverse sequence or the reverse
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pattern on the way down. On the way down, I'm going to use my shoulders and then my elbows
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and then my wrist and forearm. So on the way through, I'm going to use my wrist first
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and then my elbows and then my shoulders. So one check for this is you can do the classic
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L to L drill. We're basically I'm going to make a three-quarter backswing or about a 10 o'clock
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backswing and on the way through, I'm going to focus on the armstaying straight and then
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making this classic L look because my wrist will have re-hinged.
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So the actual drill, you can do varying speeds and tempos, but I want to
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minimize that lead arm bend while maximizing letting the wrist re-hinged. Now what usually happens is the first
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few times that you're doing this if you're used to doing a chicken wing, you'll overdo the
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wrist trying to re-hing, because you'll actively try to do it at the normal time when your
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elbows would want to straighten. Sorry, it would want to bend. So what I want you to do instead
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is just let the momentum of the club kind of help it re-hing. You don't have to force
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forcefully re-hing it. So we'll do one more. We're going to go into this three-quarter backswing
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and then focusing on those arms staying straight as the club re-hinges. This will help
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for many golfers the first few times that they do it if they have a really
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pronounced chicken wing. First few times that you do this, you'll feel like your
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arms are really stiff and like you're pushing your arms out towards the target
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when normally they would be bending and coming back like this. So normally they
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would go for your chicken wings would have a feeling of their chest getting past
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their elbows and I want you to feel like your hands are pushing out towards the
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target while staying straight. Do a couple more of these. That was a pretty good one.
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Then you've got the classic choice. I'm doing this really well in a drill. Do I
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want to add speed or try to lengthen this wing? In this next one I'll try to add a
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little bit more speed. So just feeling a little bit more kind of a little more
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aggressive body movement. Now I'm going to try to lengthen the swing on both sides.
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So now I'm going to get to this L position and have it as a reference but I'm
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going to feel my arms bend a little bit as it goes past it. So I want to make
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sure yeah that felt like that was pretty good in terms of the L position and then it
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bent weight weight. This will help you start to become more aware of when your arm bends
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which will help you recognize when the pattern starts to show up when you're playing on the course.