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Lead Arm Shallow

Lead arm shallowing from the shoulder comes in two main forms. Rotating the arm internally and lifting the arm. Both of these can help aid the appearance of the arm being more shallow. Golfers benefit from working on them at different times, so it's best to compare your swing on video and see when you should work on it. Some need to add it in the backswing, while others do better focusing it on the downswing. In this video, I focus mostly on the transition version of getting the lead arm to help shallow the club.

Tags: Transition, Drill

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This drill is lead arm shallow.

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So lead arm shallow has become one of my more go-to drills for helping golfers feel

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what it's like to shallow the club in transition.

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Most of the steepening movements, at least from the arms perspective, comes from the trail

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arm.

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So lead arm shallow is pretty simple on paper.

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Basically, you're going to go to the top of your swing and then I'm going to have you

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take your trail hand off the club and then you're going to come down about a foot or so

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and put your trail hand back on the club.

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For most of you, you're going to feel like either that trail arm, the forearm is pointing

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more up or the elbow is more in.

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If you're feeling more of the club, you will feel more of the button to the club is pointing

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out there or the club head is far behind you.

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And you may feel like the club is kind of more parallel or horizontal instead of vertical.

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All those things are a feeling of the arm shallowing.

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And so what happens for most golfers is when we get up to the top of the swing, you will

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tend to steepen with that trail arm rotating this way.

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Well, if you use just your lead arm, we can experiment on what happens down at the bottom

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if we do that.

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So if we go up to the top of the swing and we're just going to give it a little push and

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swing through and we'll feel kind of this like the tendency of the club head to want

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to hold off and come through or if it does close down it feels like it would go way

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left.

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Even if that steep movement is not online, it feels kind of jarring.

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It feels like you're running, you're fighting yourself down at the bottom.

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And if we go up to the top of the swing and we let that drop and then come through,

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we'll feel that it wants to kind of swing through and extend the arm as opposed to hold

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off rotation and cause the arm to want to bend.

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So there's a couple places where I see golfers do this drill wrong.

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And I just want to make sure that you're paying attention to when you're doing your

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drills at home.

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So what I want you to do, you're going to go up to the top of the swing.

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You're going to take your trailhand off the club and then you're going to bring the club

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down about a foot.

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Two things happen when I did this.

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One, I rotated my body.

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I didn't just bring the arms down kind of like this.

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And then two, the hand stayed at about the same height compared to my chest and the pitch

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of the shaft or the angle of the shaft changed.

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What I see a lot of golfers try to do is try to pull those arms down.

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And when you pull those arms down, oftentimes, if you're not careful, that trail arm

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causes the club to internally rotate.

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Or sorry, causes the trail arm goes into internal rotation and it causes the club to

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steep it.

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So when we're doing this trail arm, or sorry, lead arm shallowing, we're going to go up

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to the top and we're going to feel that lead arm get into this position.

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And then from here, we're just going to try and do a release movement with a little bit

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of lower body extension, trying to make context with the golf ball.

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So we're going to go up to the top, bring it down.

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I didn't take my hand off the club.

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Hopefully you caught that.

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Go up to the top, relax.

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There I felt it shallow.

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This feels like it's a good bit behind me, but my lower body is rotated.

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And then I'm going to release from there.

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Then the next goal is I'm going to do more of a broken transition style move.

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So I'm going to go up to the top of this wing.

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I'm going to get down into that same position and then try and release from there.

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And so now I'm getting a sense.

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I'm feeling that orientation of the club being a little bit more in the shallow position.

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So I find that this is a really powerful drill for a lot of golfers who shallow the

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club.

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One last point I forgot to mention in the do's and don'ts or the troubleshooting.

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What I want you to watch out for.

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Some golfers will go to shallow the club more by doing this with the body.

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So you might want to practice just feeling the arm rotating.

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So going up to the top and feeling that movement there instead of that movement there.

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It is much harder to do with just the arm holding on to the club.

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It's much easier to shallow the body with either the trailhand or both hands on the club.

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So once you have a feeling of this shallow movement, then you can work on not so much

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nine to three but ten to two is enough to into full swings.

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I would think of this one less about working the nine to three ten to two range.

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But more ramping up intensity as you get more comfortable with the movement.

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So I would start slow up to the top, feel it, drop, feel it get into that shallow position.

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And then start adding a little bit more speed.

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More and more speed until you're feeling like it has close to your full speed.

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So try this one if you're struggling with steep arms in transition up to the top there.

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And now we're going to feel that in one movement.

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Well, almost lost the microphone.

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So hopefully this gives you a few ideas of how you can use your lead arm to help you feel

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that trail arm shallowing.

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