Before Striking Your Irons, Do This for 5 Seconds

Learn my favorite ball striking drills to improve your contact and accuracy with your irons on the golf course!

In this VLS Golf Swing Lesson, Todd Kolb talks about how to improve ball striking with irons with 3 simple tips that take only 5 seconds to implement!

I got three things that are going to improve the contact with your irons and the best part is they’re not going to require you to change your swing and they take less than 15 seconds we’re going to talk about the position of the ball we’re going to talk about something to do with the handle and oddly enough we’re going to talk about something that has to do with the weight on your feet now here’s what we know is that when we hit a good iron shot the club comes in contact with the ball and then the ground we call that a downward angle of attack right we want to hit the ball and then we want to hit the ground so how do do that now if you followed any of our stuff you know that the center of the position the center of the Swing the bottom of the Swing we’ll call it is pretty much equals to where the buttons are on your golf shirt so I got a seven iron right here so the first tip I want to give you before you even start your swing is to put your feet together and go ahead and aim the club face now when you’re hitting an iron I want you to take a step towards the Target and a step away from the target about equal distance so let me go through that again I’m set in here my feet are together I aim the club face let’s say for sake of discussion I step towards a Target 4 in I’m going to step away from the Target also 4 in this positions the ball more in the center of my stance basically kind of where the buttons are typically on a golf shirt now I don’t have my golf shirt my golf shirts underneath right now but you get the idea so the first thing is it’s proper ball position now the next thing is believe it or not this is a key concept of the vertical line swing it’s what we call the 60/40 now when we talk about weight weight or pressure on the feet we like to see in the vertical line swing little bit more weight on the lead foot so let’s go through that so one we’re set in here okay tip number two is weight on the feet so I want you to feel like your weight mes moves a little bit towards your lead foot now why is that important why do I want to start with a little bit of weight on my lead foot when I hit my irons well because a couple things number one is the shifting of weight from front to Trail back to the front is a great way for us to increase Club head speed and create power but here’s the other thing you need to understand is where the weight is at on the feet also has a huge impact on where the club hits the ground so remember we’ve learned that we want to hit the ball and then we want to hit the ground so we want to move the bottom of the Swing forward so when that weight starts moving forward that moves the bottom of the Swing forward so let me just go ahead and demonstrate that I’m going to give you a drill here at the end to kind of tie all this together so here we go I’ve already got my my feet together I step towards and I step away equal distance I start with a little bit more weight on my lead foot 60 here 40 here so I can move it to the trail and then move it back to the lead let me go ahead and hit one here and I’m going to give you a drill and we’re going to talk about that handle in a second so here we go le start lead Trail and then into the lead that was solid maybe a tad thing you could tell because I only took just a little bit of a divot there not a lot those are the first two things ball position and weight shift the number one thing I want to talk about here is the handle position before we get into the drill when you’re sitting there with an iron you want to feel like the butt end of the club which is right here is ever so slightly in front of the golf ball right so this would be good this would be bad now why is that well when I get that handle a little bit forward number one is it helps me hit a little bit more down on the golf ball but also it takes a little bit of the Loft and deloft it just a little bit so we get more of a penetrating ball flight so let’s tie these three together and I’m going to give you a drill to help you work on all this feet together all right step toward step away equal distance 60% of the weight on my lead foot hand a little forward here we go okay now that one you could tell Nick how was that give me the thumbs up there’s my main man Nick is behind the counter hey he gave us a thumbs up please give us a thumbs up on this video as well but you could see I took a little bit of a divot a little bit more on top of it hit the ball and then I hit the ground all right so those are the three things that you can do before you even start your swing that don’t require you to change your swing that can improve your contact but I also promised you a drill here’s one of my favorite drills when it comes to irons okay because the biggest reason that I see amateur golfers struggle with contact and not hitting the ball first is their weight stays on their back foot they start their downswing weight stays on their back foot so what you’re going to do here this is just a eventually you can do this hitting a golf ball but for today we’re going to do it just a practice swing so here we go I want you to take your regular setup take your lead foot and bring it back to your Trail see that so regular setup Lead Foot back to Trail kind of reset the club swing it up and then swing forward as you swing forward you step forward see that so here we go regular setup Lead Foot back swing step now after you get the hang of that you can actually do it with the ball let’s go ahead and try it out so here we go feet together let me clear that off I got my Square shoes on here these things are fantastic there’s the new version I just got them out this morning comfortable and also great for balance so here we go little step step got my 60/40 all right let me bring it back swing it up and step towards the target these are three things that you can do before you even start your swing that don’t require you to change your swing and it improve your contact with your irons so now that you have three ways to improve your contact before you start your swing let me show you how I improved Gary’s contact by changing his back swing