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This concept video is understanding steeps and shallows.

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Now, what we're talking about here is the angle of attack or the angle that the club is coming

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into the golf ball or into the ground with.

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Now, the best analogy that I've ever heard for this is an airplane landing on a runway.

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If the airplane is coming into steep, it won't be able to pull up enough and all kind of crash land.

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And if it was coming into shallow, it would be going parallel to the runway and it would overshoot the runway and never land.

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So, we want the angle of attack.

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We want the golf club coming into the golf ball on a somewhat gentle angle of attack, somewhere

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4,5, 6 degrees with irons, flat to even a few degrees up with driver.

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Where many amateurs get going either very, very steep or very, very shallow.

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Now, the only way to really measure this is with a device like Trackman or FlightScope.

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But we're going to give a general idea from looking at swing plane.

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For a long time, swing plane was thought of the end all and be all, but we've realized that you can have the exact same swing plane

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and dependent on where you're making contact along this plane.

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It can change the angle of attack pretty dramatically.

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So, we're still going to use this swing plane for a good visual representation.

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But how much you're hitting down, which will be revealed by how much of a divot you're taking,

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can adjust where the swing plane is pointed.

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So, in general, this is not absolute, but in general,

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the more that I get above this swing plane.

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So, I've got my horse, my swing plane trainer here,

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and if a swing was on plane, then it would basically be from waist height to waist height,

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roughly the same angle that the club was at impact.

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So, if we pretend that this is about the same angle from waist height to waist height,

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that would be roughly on plane.

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Now, when on plane swing will work pretty well with both an iron and a driver.

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The tricky thing is it's very hard to be exactly on plane.

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So, what we want to figure out is where is our margin of air.

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Well, with an iron, we tend to do better if we're getting a little bit steep,

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and with a driver we tend to get better if we do a little shallow.

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And here's what I mean about it.

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So, if we have this swing plane trainer,

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all the space up here, or here's the line,

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all the space going this way above the swing plane trainer, is going to be steep.

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All the space down here is going to be more shallow.

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And the way that works is let's say I get the club out over here,

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which is above the swing plane.

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This would be a steeper angle of attack because compared to the horizontal distance,

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like that club is only a few feet from the golf ball,

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but it's also a few feet from the ground.

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So, in order to get down to the golf ball in time,

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it's going to be traveling very much vertically.

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I'll demonstrate on this one real quick, so you can see what I did.

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So, you can see that's only a few feet from the golf ball,

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and it's a few feet off the ground, so it's going to be traveling very much down steeply into the golf ball.

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Well, if I did the opposite, if I got the club way underneath, like so,

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now it's only about a foot off the ground,

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but it's still four or five feet away from the golf ball.

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So, it's going to come in very, very gently.

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If I did that here, so it's a foot off the ground,

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but it's still four or five feet, it'll come in very, very gently.

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Okay? Good drivers of the golf ball will tend to get a little bit more underneath this plane.

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Good iron players will tend to get a little bit more above that plane.

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So, it helps you understand your swing pattern is,

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if you are pretty solid with your iron,

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but have a lot of trouble with your driver, and you take your video,

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and you see that you tend to be a little bit more above plane,

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well then we need to practice these movements to get us under plane.

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And obviously, if I say if you're good with your driver,

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struggle with your iron, we have to do practice some of these movements

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to get us a little bit more over-plane or steep.

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So, I hope that clears up steep and shallow.

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Now, let's talk about the common combinations that players use,

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and why I describe the transition the way that I do.

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So, the transition is basically from the top of the backswing on the way down.

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What a lot of amateurs do is they will use their arms steeply.

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So, your arms working steeply would be working more straight up and down like so.

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All right? So, they get to the top of the swing and the arms start working very steeply.

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That would cause the club to get almost vertical,

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unless I stood up with my body.

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So, if I go shallow with my body steep with my arms,

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now the club is coming down close to plane but a little bit over.

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The opposite of that would be a golfer who goes very horizontal with the arms

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or very shallow with the arms, but they go steep with the body.

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This is what Torpros tend to do where the body will actually get a little bit closer

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to the golf ball during transition as the arms work more shallowly around their body.

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I think that tends to give them a little bit better energy transfer as well as a bigger margin of air.

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But just understand that for a short term fix,

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the closer you can get to either slightly steep for irons or slightly shallow for a driver,

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the better that it's going to be.

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So, keep this little visual in mind as you're practicing on the range.

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I think it can help you understand steep and shallow for angle of attack.