Fix Your Hook
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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.
Tags: Scoop/Flip, Body, Scoop/Flip
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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.