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Hit My Arms - Improve Your Stall Flip Pattern
A common release pattern is a stall of the body (with or without early extension) and then a flipping of the club with the arms. This combination can work for hitting it straight, but can struggle with contact consistency - especially when swinging hard or when swing longer clubs (particularly the driver). A great visual, and feel, that I use with my students is the concept of hitting my arm with their lead arm. This encourages body rotation through the release, and a minimal amount of standing up. This combination can lead to rightward shots if you are now squaring the face with proper forearm rotation.
A common release pattern is a stall of the body (with or without early extension) and then a flipping of the club with the arms. This combination can work for hitting it straight, but can struggle with contact consistency - especially when swinging hard or when swing longer clubs (particularly the driver). A great visual, and feel, that I use with my students is the concept of hitting my arm with their lead arm. This encourages body rotation through the release, and a minimal amount of standing up. This combination can lead to rightward shots if you are now squaring the face with proper forearm rotation.
The drill is hit my arms. So hit my arms is a release drill to help with kind of
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where the energy is as you go through impact. So a lot of golfers that I teach in lessons
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and through the site will come in with more of a kind of scoop and flip-ish release.
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This typically involves standing up so my hands are very high and then I have to fully
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release the arms to get the club down to the golf ball. Compared to the tour release,
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there's a couple differences and this drill hit my arms and just incorporates a few
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of them into one kind of movement, one feeling. Hit my arms is basically a simple drill
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where I go from impact to follow through with the intention of using my body rotation
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as opposed to flipping my hands. So to execute, you're going to get in set up and then
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you're going to go to impact. Now this is going to be a little challenging for me to demonstrate
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because I actually have them hit my arms. So I can't be in two places at once but I'll have
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you kind of visualize what we're trying to accomplish here. So from impact, I'll have them
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then go to follow through. And what I'll do is I will stand right here so that I'll have
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one hand on the back of the wrist and one hand on their elbow. So imagine the golfers
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right there and I would have my hands here and what we'll do is we'll practice going from
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impact to keeping it rotating and keeping the chest moving as my hands go through. As opposed
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to getting very ball focused and kind of stopping and flipping, hit my arms basically
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forces the golfer to continue rotating through like so and I have to use face rotation
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in order to get that to the ball to launch straight. So it's a great drill for that
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overall release pattern and working on the follow-through position especially if you're coming
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from more of a stall and a flip pattern. So one quick point when looking at the driver.
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With the driver, we want to use more of our legs and more of our hips to get us to hit my
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arms. So I would be in this good impact position and I would use some of my legs to
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power the movement of the body. Compare that to with an iron. I can use more of my upper
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body continuing to rotate or I could use my legs. Using the legs is going to tend to shallow
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things out. So a lot of golfers will have good success with this with the iron and then
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they go to the driver and if it's not quite as good, it usually means that you're getting
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into the position more from your upper body and not so much from your legs and hips. From
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the down the line, if you hit my arms, what you'll see is that the hands will kind of follow
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a smooth path from impact to follow through kind of up along this pattern in order to hit
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my hands. The two ways that you would miss my hands would be if you were doing more
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of that stall flip. You wouldn't hit my arm. You would probably hit me with the club and
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the hands would go more out towards the target line. The opposite would be if I hit you
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more with the elbow, I'm not going to be able to hit with the whole forearm. So if I came
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way outside in, I would tend to hit you with the elbow more so than the whole arm. From
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the face on the way that looks is that would be missing my arms by doing more of kind
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of that stall hand flip. A good one would have more of that body rotation so that arm would
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hit my hands kind of at the same time and with some good pace or the opposite if I came outside
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in, I would hit just with the elbow, I wouldn't hit with the forearm. So if you have a little
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bit more of that stall block pattern or if you tend to hit more hooks when you start working
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on the motorcycle, there's a very good chance that your upper body is not continuing to rotate
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through the shot and it's closing down the face too much.