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Monitoring Chest Height - Pool Noodle
Standing up through the shot, which is often known as "early extension", can be a very difficult move to eliminate. While there could be a variety of physical limitations or technical flaws to blame, I have noticed that a considerable amount of students are simply unaware of just how severe this pattern can be. In order to break this often resilient habit, increasing awareness (specifically for torso side-bend and rotation) should be our number one goal before diving into physical and more technical troubleshooting.
Standing up through the shot, which is often known as "early extension", can be a very difficult move to eliminate. While there could be a variety of physical limitations or technical flaws to blame, I have noticed that a considerable amount of students are simply unaware of just how severe this pattern can be. In order to break this often resilient habit, increasing awareness (specifically for torso side-bend and rotation) should be our number one goal before diving into physical and more technical troubleshooting.
The drill is monitoring chest height with a pool noodle.
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So many golfers struggle with standing up through the shot, so they struggle with standing
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up kind of like this.
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And they're really unaware of it.
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When you ask someone who does that, hey, did you stand up, try and stay down, try and
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stay down.
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They're really unaware of it.
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So what I usually do is I will either set up a station like this or I'll hold an object
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like a pool noodle in here, close to their chest height.
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So the main thing here is now I've got something, I'm gonna lower it just slightly.
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So I've got something that's in my field of view a little bit in front of me so that when
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I come through, I can have a reference as to whether I stood up or not.
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So what I want to try to do is first, I'm going to practice turning my body so that my
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chest stays at about the same height compared to this pool noodle.
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So even if I was to come up a little bit, I would say, oh, alright, I'm going to create
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a reference right about here in my mind and then I'm going to turn through keeping my
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chest at that reference.
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I like to have it on the target side, not directly in front of me because if it's directly
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in front of me, when I come through, I've kind of lost sight of it.
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I want it to be far enough ahead so that when I come through, I can still use it as a good
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reference and check it without having to turn or pivot my head.
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So then I'll do normal progressions of 9 to 3, 10 to 2 up to full swings.
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Let's get that a little bit closer to it.
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So now I'm going to feel like I'm going to come to their it impact.
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I might even do a push ball or something like that, but I'm going to focus on finishing
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in this position instead of that position there.
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So 9 to 3 double check, not too bad.
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That's pretty happy with that.
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Now in a 10 to 2 in full swing, it gets a little trickier because I now have to pay attention
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to where I was when I was moving down through here.
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But I'm going to leave this once I get the club past follow through position.
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So once I get to here, I'm the momentum of the club and my body absorbing the force safely
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is naturally going to stand up a little bit more.
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So as I go into a bigger swing, now I really have to rely on that flash of where was this
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thing just between here and here.
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And the more times I do it, the better my body will get at being able to recognize and
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pay attention to it.
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So I might have to start with a lot of 9 to 3s and a lot of slow motion swings, really
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trying to feel like I stay the same space or even like I get closer to it between the
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start of the release and the end of the release.
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Remember, the end of the follow through position right here is when I have the greatest
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amount of side bend of my upper body.
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So I'll be close to the same height with my chest, even though my legs are straightening
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as they're going into a nice bracing move.
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So now we'll go back to, we'll do a little bit more like a 10 to 2.
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So I'm going to feel like I stayed down through and then came up and then because of
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the purpose of this drill, my brain naturally tried to pull me back down, but that's
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okay.
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Now as I go into a full swing, I'm just going to use the feel.
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I'll get that even a little bit more in my way for the full swing.
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So I'm going to try and get extra low on this one using this as my source of feedback.
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So emphasizing, staying down using my abs, but controlling the height of my club.
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You don't want to set something like this up on a tripod, then you can take an alignment
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stick and put it in the ground and put a head cover or something on an angle like that.
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But I like to get it as close to my visual frame for doing this head height awareness.
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I like to get it as close to my visual frame as I can.
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So I highly recommend using a pool noodle on a tripod that works really well for me,
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or maybe you can get creative and create some kind of station that you can train with at
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home.