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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.

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Lead Arm Connection

The lead arm connection drill is a great way to work on transferring the speed from your ribcage to the club. You'll use an object (like an alignment stick, ruler, or glove) under your lead arm so that your arm is pinned to the chest. Make sure to get the connection as high up in the armpit as you can. This drill can help with the takeaway, the top of the swing, or the release.

Tags: Chicken Wing, Drill

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This drill, we're going to walk through the lead arm connection drills.

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The lead arm connection drills are very similar to the trail arm connection drills, except

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they're going to isolate the left shoulder in my case.

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So just as a reminder, the general connection drills are learning to kind of keep your

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shoulders a little bit more stiff or connected so that you can transfer the movement from

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the ribcage and core and pelvis into the arms easier.

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So the general connection drill is just the towel under the arms.

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This is often given kind of the hoagin towel drill, but basically arm pits connected.

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I'm going to focus on hitting this mostly with my pivot and a little bit of forearm release.

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So owner deviation and supination getting into that really good classic ball through position.

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If I'm just working on the general sequence, then the towel under both arms works pretty

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well.

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But sometimes I want to get more isolated to a specific problem.

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And that's where I do either the leader of the trail.

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So with the lead arm, there's a couple different times where golfers tend to lose it.

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In the take away, they will kind of not use the body and lift the arm up off the chest

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like so.

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So this will tend to move the hands way out and disconnect.

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The second place where golfers tend to lose it is up towards the top of the swing.

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It will tend to really reach with that lead shoulder in order to create width.

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Remember the width is going to happen more from the elbow and the arms saying straight.

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Rather than a big collapse or reach of the shoulder.

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So up at the top of the swing right through there.

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And then the most problematic one or the one that causes the biggest contact issues would

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be on the way through pulling that lead shoulder kind of up and around more like this.

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As opposed to getting the up and around more from the pivot and the spine angle, if I do

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it correctly, then the arm is going to stay a little bit more in front and rotate instead

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of really pulling retract like I was doing a row.

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So with the lead arm, I tend to not use the alignment stick.

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I tend to focus either on the ruler or the glove.

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So again, the ruler is a little bit easier to maintain, but it also produces a little stronger

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feel.

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I think you get a little bit stronger feedback from the ruler than say the glove or the

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alignment stick.

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So now with the ruler, the place where you're going to tend to feel the most restricted

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is there up at the top of the swing.

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So this is a good compliment to golfers who tend to need to work on feeling the top of

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the swing more in the hips and more in the core and less up in the shoulders.

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The second place that I really tend to focus on it is here on the follow-through.

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So if I'm pinning this up against my chest and then turning that body through, the arm

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is going to stay more or less, I did that this way.

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The arm is going to stay more or less in front of my body.

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So if I did a nice, easy one, hopefully this doesn't go too far, you'll see that that

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arm is rotating through to get into this good follow-through position.

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And this is staying in front of my body.

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A bad one, one where that arm tends to get more disconnected would tend to look more like

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that there.

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Now I've been holding it to a kind of stuck in place, but you saw that that would have

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dropped if I had done that with any more speed.

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So the two times that I really focus on this lead side is top of the swing, because that

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ensures that I had a pretty good takeaway and then in the follow-through.

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In order to do the follow-through one, I have to have my arms straight enough and wide enough

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and soft enough so that the movement is happening more at the forearms and less through

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the shoulders.

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So the arm pit connections can be a great diagnostic for helping golfers to tend to get

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stiff with the forearms and overactive with the shoulders.

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That pattern usually causes low point issues as well as over closing the club face from

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in-plane movement.

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So that causes pulls and pull hooks, a couple of frustrating mispeders.

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So if you're struggling with your chicken wing, you can work on this arm pit connection.

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If you're struggling with your transition sequence, this arm pit connection works pretty

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well as well.

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Similar to the trail arm, I can do a more subtle version with the towel and similar

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almost easier for the trail version.

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My goal is to get hitting this close to my full swing distance.

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It won't be exactly my full swing distance, but my goal is to work on doing these movements

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and adding more and more speed.

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As it's oftentimes, this shoulder disconnect is one of the ways that golfers incorrectly

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create a lot of speed.

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So that was a little out of sequence, kind of a little more stalled flippish and I've

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said before that the shoulders are one of the big gateways to controlling the stalled

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flipp.

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So here we go.

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We'll try and hit this one pretty hard.

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So that's probably 70-80% of my normal distance.

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80% of my normal distance.

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That one went pretty good.

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And I was able to do it with that shorter position because I was having the engine more

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from the four arms on the way through rather than the shoulders and overall more from the

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core than from the arms and shoulders.

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So one quick demo with the hard version, trying to keep it connected there.

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I tend to find this is the hardest one to maintain at the top of the swing.

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Let it have a little bit more hip rotation.

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That wasn't bad.

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Left the club face a little bit, but pretty good strike.

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