Forearm Rotation in the Golf Swing (Unlock More Power & Consistency)

Everything you need to know about forearm rotation in the golf swing: its importance, how much you should do it, how it helps with clubface control, and how it helps increase clubhead speed. Deep dive into forearm rotation with golf coach Rob Cheney!

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in this video I’m going to discuss the topic of forearm rotation throughout the golf swing the importance of it how much you should do and how it helps to control both the club face control and help you increase more Club head speed if you’re unsure about this topic don’t worry lots of people find this quite confusing but today I’ll explain the basic concepts of the forearm rotation in the golf swing the movements that you need to do and I’ll include some drills that will be specific to your your own issue because everybody has a slightly different way of doing this I’ll begin with a brief explanation of the movement of the forarms and how you can see it and how we can describe how these arms are rotating when the palm of your hand is turned down towards the ground that’s referred to as superation of the forearm and when the Palms are turned to the sky that’s described as pronation as because we place our hands together facing each other in Gulf the movements are independent opposite of each other so when one forearm is superna nating the other is pronating this rolling of the forearms this rotation of the forearms exists in every single golf swing to some degree you don’t necessarily know that you’re doing it but how much you do will greatly affect your ability to control the club face and will also influence how fast you can swing the club and the most obvious question you probably have straight away is well how much should I be doing well unfortunately the answer to that question is it depends it depends on the number of factors based on your body motion throughout the swing because the forearm rotation just like a lot of other pieces of the golf swing is a blend that you’re trying to fit into the entire puzzle it’s a piece that you need but it’s a piece that you need to add the appropriate amount let me first of all show you what that rotation looks like throughout the back swing and the down swing and the follow through and and a nice easy way to see that is to stand to the golf ball and then stand erect so you stand out of your forward bend end and you’d simply stand upright like this with the golf club out in front of you and you’ll notice the golf club here is horizontal to the ground it’s level to the ground and the reason I like to demonstrate forearm rotation in this way is it’s very easy to see when I’m stood upright how swinging this club around me if I was to do this correctly I’d be keeping this golf club and the shaft level to the ground throughout the swing and in doing so my four arms are moving and rotating around my body my lead arm is suating so the palms turning down and during the back swing my trail arm is pronating the hand working upwards so that exercise there in the back swing would help you to understand the movement and get a decent grasp of whether you’re doing too much or too little and once I reach this point here if I was to add the side Bend or the Tilt back into the swing you’d see that this looks like a pretty decent back swing with my lead wrist also flat to my lead forearm so that’s a nice way of at least starting to get a concept of how the forearm rotation would work in the back swing if you were to do it very differently there’s certainly players that do someone like Matt wolf for example who has a back swing where he takes the club away in a very extreme fashion Jim furick would also do something similar so that movement there would involve if it looked like this you’d be end up moving the shaft and the club off of this horizontal motion the fact that PJ tour players some PJ tour players demonstrate a pattern as Extreme as that I don’t think needs to confuse you in the sense that there’s lots of different ways to do this ideally we’d want to be sticking with something that’s reasonably close to neutral on the way back and the same can be said on the way down the amount of rotation that you need in the forearms to square this club face is happening progressively throughout the downswing if all of the forearm rotation happened at once you’d start to stand the shaft up and move it away from this horizontal condition so as we’re moving back towards impact this shaft again is staying horizontal level to the ground and then into the follow through and keeping it level to the ground and you can see there it exits my body once again if I add in the side bend that we would normally have at this point in the follow through that replicates a follow through that would look quite familiar to many of you in terms of a good look follow through so functional think about keeping the shaft level to the ground in the back swing the downswing and the follow through and you’ll begin to get a good sense of how these forearms should work ultimately how much 4arm rotation you need whether it’s more or less will depend primarily on what the ball’s doing if the ball’s flying too much to the right of the target for a right-handed golfer it stands reason that you would like to increase the amount of forearm rotation happening at the bottom of the golf swing and equally if you’re someone who hits the ball too far to the left you might want to reduce it with the hack motion wrist sensor we’re able to measure the amount of rotation that’s happening in the forearms from this downswing position where the shaft’s parallel to the ground this is called P6 and it measures P6 to p7 p7 is impact and then from p7 through to p eight which is where the shaft is parallel to the ground in the follow through so this bottom part of the Swing This Moment of Truth if you like where the club’s going to make contact with the ball we’re able to measure what’s happening with the hack motion wrist sensor and that’s a game changer because this is happening so fast there’s absolutely no way you can know for sure what’s happening without measuring what’s going on at the bottom now there’s different ways to use this forearm rotation at both ends of the spectrum I would explain it like this people will say that you’re supposed to reduce the amount of forearm rotation minimize it if you will and have more of a body release that would mean that the rotation of the body was more responsible for squaring this club face and as you swing through this club face would remain more stable and there’d be less rolling or twisting and the logic there is that that’s a more easy to time motion although I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that timing exists in all swings so you have to time whatever it is you do doesn’t matter whether it’s a body release that I just described or something that’s more of a arm or hand release where the body would be slower and the arms and hands would be more responsible for again the squaring of the club face now you need to know which category you fall into and hopefully your ballf flight will start to tell you that so I’ll go ahead and hit a couple of shots here we can see just how much this club’s moving or rotating through the bottom of the Swing that’s my typical shot little draw slight overdraw we can see on the hack motion data there that there was 50° 53° of rotation from P6 to p7 and then another 53° from p7 to p8 so that’s quite a uniform amount of rotation I’m getting some of that from the forearms I’m also getting some of that from the body and it’s a blend you have to understand that it’s a blend and in these circumstances it’s it’s prudent now to really discuss the types of drills that you could do if you needed to add more arm rotation or if you needed to take some away so if you were looking to increase the amount of forarm rotation that you were using to square the club face at impact I would recommend a drill that reduces the body motion and that would be to Simply hit balls with your feet together now start by making some practice swings where you have your feet together and you’ll begin to notice very quickly that the weight of the club the weight of the club head is being encouraged to swing past you more and that’s because you you have to support the weight of this club somehow and with the body not involved as much not supporting the weight of the club you’re going to see much more of this natural release of the for forearms that would be somewhat Sim similar to if you stood up here and did this exercise again and thought about hitting something that was up in front of you similar if you like to a baseball type swing if you were making a motion where you were trying to hit something that was up in front of you there’d be a blend of body but there’d certainly be a decent amount of arm rotation and that’s what we’re getting from this foot together feet together drill so put your feet together make some practice swings where you get a feeling of what you’re trying to do there and also just to stabilize yourself and make sure you have sufficient balance because when your feet are together that can be a little bit harder to do set up to the ball feet together get ready to go and you see in that example I certainly closed the face a little bit more and happen to hit more to the left there’s a sense there as well that for some of you that will help to increase some speed because you definitely get a lot of speed of your swing from the release of the forearm so feet together take it back and release for me that’s not a great drill I end up getting too much twist or too much turn there through impact and I would typically hit to the left as I’m demonstrating but for you that could be a great drill to finally help you feel the sufficient appropriate amount of forearm release through impact and if you’re on the other side of the spectrum and we want to reduce how much we’re rolling this club face through impact then you’re going to utilize more of the body motion you’re going to try to feel like you hit this ball with zero rolling of the club face and a great checkpoint to work to is as you go through impact you reach a point in the follow through where the shoulders are turned around 90° the club and the arm are still aligned from down the line that would look like like this that’s the shoulders turning towards the target that’s me turning towards the camera but there’s no conscious roll of the club face and you see how the shaft of the club here is still very slightly trailing my lead arm it hasn’t moved past like so this is the opposite end of the spectrum this is a drill to reduce forarm rotation so if you’re someone who suffers with closing the face too much and hooking the ball this would be a really good place for you to practice so you’re trying to turn your shoulders through 90° and stop where the club hasn’t rolled or released past that [Music] point that feel for me is more appropriate for my swing so it feels more comfortable for me to demonstrate that um I like that concept typically the faster swing speed that you tend to have and generally speaking the lower handicap golfer they would tend to have more of a pass of closing the face too much and missing to the left so this drill would more often than not be the appropriate one if you’re a slicer someone who struggles with distance hits the ball to the right too much then the first one where the feet are together is probably going to be the best drill for you whatever it is you need to experiment with this part of the Swing the forearm rotation is happening there’s nothing you can do about that but you can change the amount you do through better intention or better understanding of what the forearm rotation is doing and what point in the swing it takes place if you enjoyed this video make sure you get in the description and check out the link to some other drills that will help you master your wrist action