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Transition Timing - Lower Body Slowly But Early

Many amateur golfers complain of a "hit impulse". They want to hit it hard from the top. This shows up on 3D differently than golfers who feel more of a gradual build of speed. When learning to sequence the lower body, you'll frequently have to play around with the timing and rate of the body movements. Feeling the lower body move early, but slowly, can be helpful for training your transition.

Playlists: Keys To Transition, Trail Leg Understanding

Tags: Not Enough Distance, Early Extension, Transition, Concept, Intermediate, Beginner

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This video is lower body slowly but early.

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Many golfers when they start trying to work on their transition have a challenge with

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the rate of timing.

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I'll explain that.

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Many golfers, especially if you're more of an upper body dominant, style swing where the

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arms move before the lower body, will tend to have more of the hit impulse.

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A lot of accomplished golfers have described the feeling of transition as more of this gradual

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building and building speed all the way until contact where many amateur golfers describe

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it as a feeling of hit from the top.

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What I've noticed is that what will happen is when you start training sequencing, you'll

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notice this timing impulse and that's a clear indication that you need to work on building

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a little bit more of a gradual sequencing as opposed to explosive timing.

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What I mean by that is frequently when we're doing whether it's the step change direction

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or we're doing more of a lower body pump or a lower body push drill, what'll happen is if

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you're used to more of this hit from the top impulse, you'll get to the top of the swing

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and you'll want to just explode that lower body kind of like that.

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You'll get to the top and you'll want to move it very quickly, very rapidly.

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What I'll do in that case is I will go in and grab onto the club and when they go to

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move make that transition I'll feel a very abrupt change like they're pulling on it very

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quickly.

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Then what I'll do is we'll have them trade places and I'll have them get in there and

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they'll see and they'll kind of feel that there's this gradual shift and change of

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direction where I'm building speed until I then get into more of that release to help

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amplify that building of the speed.

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I think of it more like the timing of the step, whether it's in a throw or a strike,

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but the timing of the step in the throw, I'm stepping and it happens kind of slowly

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gradually.

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It's not like I'm trying to explode into the step before I get there.

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The same parallel works pretty well for this pattern in the Galsway.

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If I'm giving it more of a total body sequence I want to have a gradual but early movement

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of the lower body.

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It's going to start to slow down my hips, it's going to start well into the backswing

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and it's going to continue until I get into that release when then I get into the arm

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movements.

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So if you're the the interesting thing is while I don't have any data on this, the

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totally supported it, it appears that that's the opposite when I'm hitting like pitch shots

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where on a pitch shot I'm going to have more of a kind of a hit impulse where I'm going

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to put the energy in the club head pretty quickly and then just ride that energy all

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the way down with the full swing I'm going to build that energy a little bit more gradually

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or slowly so it's got to start earlier.

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The timing of when it's going to start is roughly what's going to stop my lower body

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from rotating in the backswing.

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So you'll see that as my body is rotating in the backswing, eventually it stops rotating

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before it starts rotating the opposite direction.

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So whatever stops it from rotating is when I'm actually starting my lower body pushing

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in that direction.

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So that's what I mean by starting it early and why the step drills focus on changing the

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momentum of the lower body while the arms are still going back.

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It's not that you actually want to see the hips move while the arms are going back or

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at least not an exaggerated fashion but you're pushing and you're starting that movement

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well before the arms change direction.

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So if you start with a little bit more of a hit impulse, hope with this video helps you

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kind of tie together some of the concepts and then when you're doing these step drills

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try to think or when you're doing some of these punk drills or any of the sequencing drills

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in transition try to feel like the lower body is going early but it's gradually building

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up speed it'll ultimately lead to better launch characteristics so you'll tend to get

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more compression and you'll you'll fall into more of that pattern where it feels easy

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and the ball just jumps as opposed to feeling very forceful and kind of dead at impact.

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