ME AND MY GOLF // 3 Keys To A Better Golf Swing With Ian and Mike

Today Ian and Mike are in San Diego at The Grand Golf Club with Piers Ward and Andy Proudman of Me and My Golf fame to get some tips on fixing your swing. Pay close attention to the lesson and try it out next time you’re at the range!

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Filmed at: Club Champion Toronto
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one of our old favorites we’ seen this done many a Time Club across the shoulders like so and literally get that club coming down over that trail L if you can get that club over the trail leg like so we know that you’ve got a good rotation from the upper body and what we’ll see from this front on view as well this front pocket it will disappear into where the back pocket was all right guys welcome back to the channel so video one with the boys we focused on Michael here you’re fixed fre now Mikey is that where you are yeah that’s it sky’s the limit so now we’re on to you guys we’re on to uh really focus on some things that the guys see consistently with your lessons whether it be here in person or online as well your online coaching uh platform and some things that you really see golfers consistently do purly yeah and I think look we’ve done a lot of lessons here at the Grand and over the last 20 years the same things just keep showing up and often we always joke we’re like we’re back swing coaches because the amount of golfers that we see we that we going we need to work at the back swing some people are rare like Mikey who was down swing a little bit but he’s a really really good player but for the majority of golfers the downswing is just a reaction to what goes on in the way back so if you’re seeing they’re over the top or you’re you’ve got an early release or hanging back there’s something happening in the back swing that’s causing that so what we’re going to cover today we’re going to go through three key things that if you check these three things and if you get these three three things right it’s going to make a massive difference to your game it just sets you up perfectly to make an efficient down swing it doesn’t guarantee you’re going to great shots but it just makes the golf swing so much more simple if if if you’re not doing these then you’re definitely missing out and I think probably the third one is the most important one because it’s the real driver of the golf swing from what we see sure yeah look you need to watch all these three I’m excited about sharing these especially the second one cuz we’ve got a really simple drill to use as well oh you like the second one and I like the third one yes exactly’s okay so um first one let’s just go into this then and and I think that this is maybe overlooked just the back swing pivot motion with this all we were going to say with this is look we need to have a good back swing pivot motion which means no sway on the way back um we want to make sure that we are allowing ourselves to have enough rotation the rotation is really going to allow us to deliver the club from a decent path so Pier will just take you through here what we want to see really and then we’ll go through what we want to don’t what we don’t want to see as well so yeah absolutely so from here look when we if we would consider something like this to be a good rotation so we like to draw a line line called the back swing line from the outside of the right leg up to the right hip and we ideally now I sometimes struggle with this i’ got to go carefully we ideally like to stay on that line as we’re getting good rotation so if you said to us would we rather have 30° hit rotation would we rather 50 degrees of hit rotation we’d rather have 50 because there’s a lot of golfers that get stuck and don’t turn enough I’d rather see a little bit more because at least from here it allows those hands and arms to get behind our body it allows them to go deep when we short on the turn turn we can have problems which we’ll talk about in the moment but do you want me to go to the drill Andy what we’re going to talk about yeah yeah let’s go into the drill maybe just show people what how they get it wrong as well okay yeah perfect so if we have someone who sways that’s when we move laterally through that back swing line you can see I’m not turning a lot but from here now when you’re laterally moving a lot like this you’ve probably then got to laterally move a lot like this or you’ll swing over the top so once you don’t really rotate enough you you’re prone to doing that over the top which is a big problem so what we really want see is we want to see as I say that bigger deeper hip turn so a drill that we like to do is one of our old favorites we’ve seen this done many of time Club across the shoulders like so and literally get that club coming down over that trail leg so if you can get that club over the trail leg like so we know that you’ve got a good rotation from the upper body and what we’ll see from this front on view as well this front pocket it will disappear into where the back pocket was so it will rotate back into that back Pockets so swapping those Pockets just going to point a couple of things out from here just do that again for his Pierce here look you’ll see Pierce is rotating a lot it looks very free couple of things to notice is that he’s moving come back to Center for his Pier he’s moving from the midp point of his chest to the belt buckle so it’s not just the shoulders he’s really going from Center Point here to the chest and as as he does this look sorry the belt as he does this there’s a lot of things moving the knee works in the right leg straightens up a little bit his head rotates as well a lot of these things we don’t don’t see in the average golfer a lot of people are so focused on keeping this still not moving too much we want to see more movement generally but more movement in a good way which is in in this sort of free way I think that the word that we keep using with our students here at the Grand is that we want to free them up on the in the on the back swing because there’s a lot of stiffness in there and we can’t move and we need to stay in the same place soon as we create that freedom it not only helps with creating this centered pivot which helps with ball striking but it also helps with the delivery as Pierce does this again watch as he rotates and allows things to move now he’s got the space on the way down to get the golf club swinging somewhat close to the swing plane when he does this as well and I think some where this can come a little bit of a problem for some people is we see like Rory maroy he get about 30° of hit rotation when he’s swinging back but his spine is that mobile that he can rotate around that 30 degrees no problem so he’s got very little hip turn but then from there he still managed to deliver that club on a shallow plane now the maor if we see an average golfer turnup who sits at a desk all day and has to go to a proper job in the day we’ll find that if they start doing this here the first move is very much going to be over the top Sinker so great drill there just a couple of things on the feet so just to help you with this don’t be afraid to just flare these the feet out it opens up the hip joint and just allows for a little bit of freedom and as we’ve said with the legs look when Pierce does this let this knee working let this right leg straighten somewhat we doesn’t have to lock out but this just helps the freedom in those hips to create that rotation it’s a weird one but we’d rather see a leg work like a Jack Nicholas and a Tom Watson than maybe a Nick FDO I think there were a few things there when F was doing that again great athlete he was able to keep that Flex in the leg if you’re trying to keep that Flex in the leg it can often limit things so just let it straighten out a little bit that’s what gol myths that that sort of when you guys are talking through that you’re dispelling like you said head still I think think keeping knee Flex is another one there was a period of the time when when really trying to keep the belt buckle facing forward or sit your sit your backside in a seat and see how much you can turn your your upper your upper body against those hips I mean Jason D poor guys got a got a rough back you know from doing that for years and we’ve Co look we’ve coached that we’ve made the mistake of going no we need to keep the knees still we need to rotate keep this flexed we’ve coached that in years because we thought that was the way to do it but as science and understanding about the body which is really you know which is key to this we’ve now realized that actually probably wasn’t the best idea and you know ultimately the results you know speak for the self when we get people to do it just hit them Pier let’s just take a look at what’s going on with the motion here boys have moved out the way they’ve seen you sensibly so sensibly so I trust them if anything for me I tend to be a little bit inside that back swing line as I get to the top I tend to move almost like a bit of an anti sway almost again there’s two things that happen with that pierce the freedom in his rotation there and the centered pivot no sway allowed him to get ball followed by the turf and then just the rotation helped him deliver the club more from from the inside now let’s go to this next tip this one for me is like it is I can’t tell you how important this is and not even thought about by many golfers so this could be a game changer for you so and there’s definitely a misconception in this that you absolutely should not be doing if you’re doing it you need to stop so this is really how we’re going to be syncing up the body the the arms and the club now what we want to see here’s what we want to see by the time the lead arms parallel to the ground parallel to the ground a little bit shorter than that that’s perfect there we go we want to see that we’ve had a good move of the tors so you can see how much shoulder rotation Pier already got probably got 70° here already and we can see roughly a 90° angle between the shaft and the arm this is a great back swing sequence this is going to help Pierce then start the down swing in a good way here’s what we’re seeing a lot of a lot of golfers do out of sequence not much shoulder turn lead arm across the chest but also we see a lot of angle in the shaft with this right elbow super tucked in because a lot of golfers are thinking well I’ve got to get this elbow tucked in because I’ve got a swing from the inside it’s ruining a lot of golfer swings there’s a drill we’re going to show you with this now this is actually a litrao drill he used it for short game but actually I think it’s great for long game and back swing sequence talk through the drill Pierce you’ve got long arms so it actually doesn’t work as much for you I can cheat it with these long things but yeah it’s a great thing for you guys to check at home I think so let’s go to that checkpoint so let’s actually swing back so the lead arm is parallel to the ground and from there good turn we’re going to get the right arm off and we’re going to see how far up the club here we can actually reach if I can get anywhere near this area here then that’s about as much as I want to be doing if you are somebody who is narrow like this and getting at the top and we see these gol how many times have you seen these guys when got a fitting if I can grab up here and grab the head from here we’re far too narrow too narrow and often it’s because we said we’re trying to keep that in we don’t want to be doing that yeah if you can swing back here and not grab the club head it’s a great indication that you’ve got great width as long as you are created a good pivot motion if you can grab that club head you’re probably a little too narrow in that back swing and this is then just going to set you up for a poor sequence on the way down so good rehearsal good checkpoint to swing back see if you can grab it if if it’s here and narrow and there’s a lot of set it’s easy to grab that club head and it’s just going to set you up for a paw swing Mikey with old swing maybe a few years ago from what you described would have probably been able to grab the club head at that stage there let me just actually hit one and I’m actually going to give you a little bit of a drill on how you can do this you can actually hit some shots where you just actually focus on this length back swing and we do a slightly shorter through swing as well so watch this we go back to here and through to here we call it set to point so you’re literally setting the club on the way back and I’m pointing The Club at the Target you can see when I’m pointing The Club at the Target my arms are extended which they probably wouldn’t be if you were here yeah and then here so the arms are extended but my hips and my chest are facing the target so they’re really rotated well through we’re going to do this one one more time as well cuz I want to stress something for you guys at home doing this is that whenever we focus on the arms and the club it’s very easy to forget about the the Torso and whenever we go to a checkpoint in the back swing it’s easy to just put it there really important what Pierce does you’ll see here and we talk about this a lot the best players in the world are turning early the best players in the world are moving a lot in the move away and you see like I say he’s got almost a 90° shoulder turn by halfway back we’re seeing a common trait here all the better players are doing this the people who are struggling aren’t moving the Torso enough and getting the arms across the body and very narrow so that is a key key yeah definitely another thing to add this week we can talk about this all day how long have we got another three hours as much as you guys have got we’re good it’s it’s so e it’s so easy to sort of say well look yeah but it’s okay for us guys because that’s the ideal and my body you your bodies are fine but mine a little bit stiff and a little bit tight if you get to a point where you’ve got your full turn and your arms are only swinging to there that is absolutely fine we’ rather you have width than runoff yeah width is much better than runoff because once we have runoff we then have to Reign things and resync things on the way it’s a great Point everyone’s different and we just want to work with what we’ve got if you’ve only got a a 70° shoulder turn then you may have to just have a shorter arm swing it’s a great point we’ll often have a goal for here be close dance like this so we can allow for more hit rotation flare the foot out you know short back swing like this with a good turn and then from there just hit it and they’d be just as good doing that as they would be trying to go too long okay so pivot motion arm club and body sequence now we’re going into the most important thing that influences the start direction of the ball the club face and again often it’s overlooked because we see the the big movement in the swing and the big movements are often a result of a compensation trying to square the club face so what we’re going to just do is really educate you on just a couple of simple check points that you should be aware of if you video your golf swing or you practice with a mirror just check these because if the face is good it’s so much easier again to move in a good way and deliver that club from a um in a good you know in a good place at impact so so what we’re after is we’re after some parallel lines here effectively so if you were to analyze yourself and use um analysis software I think me and my golf do one of those they could always download the app and try that one out but what we’ve got is um we if by the time the club shaft is parallel to the ground if we look at the Leading Edge there we want it pretty much parallel to the spine angle so if that Leading Edge there is matching the spine angle we know that we’re pretty neutral here we’re we’re in a good place if we start getting that face too open or too closed it can cause compensations we’ll show those in a moment because we got one more checkpoint so our second checkpoint will be when we get to the top of the back swing and what we’re looking for we’re looking for a Leading Edge being parallel to that forearm that lead forearm I tend to get a little bit closed but that’s where we’d like to have it so that Leading Edge is pointing parallels that forearm now what would happen imagine this if we see a golfer who opens the face opens the face at the top we can see there that club face is very open because the toe line is pointing down to the ground you cannot sequence the down swing as we want well you would do it you only do it once cuz the golf ball would probably Andy or be 70 yards right so what you tend to do is from an open face is you build in these compensations and it could be over the top it could be early release scooping just to square the face up or even hanging back on this back foot probably all three actually you’re probably you’re probably going to do all three if that happens when you’re doing all three you’re probably losing about 60 yards with your IRS it just robs you of power and obviously you got to pull these compensations so a drill that we like to do just to give you um feedback and again it’s just keeping this club head as close to hands as possible is a good idea in this so just have some swings where you hold on to the feral with your thumb and your forefinger we’ve obviously got the the club face Square here by the time we swing back to this waist high position we can have a real good idea where the club is so it’s it’s good for this part but this is where it’s really good because you get to see what it’s like at the top now if you’re a trending open face or a trending Clos face you can really see that without having to get on camera we’re really lining up the Pier’s forearm with the with the club face there and that’s just a great checkpoint I like to do a lot of practice with a mirror because it’s that initial feedback straight away you know realtime feedback where is it okay great that’s what it feels feel like that’s the visual and then if we can get those things right put all those three things together it’s actually really hard to to M it’s really hard to mess it up and this is why we pulled these three things because these are probably the most common things that we see good pivot motion yeah good syn a good synchronization of arms body and club and then Club face you tie them all together gol’s easy when you tie those things EAS do all those but I think what one thing maybe my maybe our last message I don’t know but one thing I’d really encourage you to do as a golfer is understand what drives your goal swing understand what works in your go swing understand what doesn’t work so whether it’s through a coach or watching following someone’s content what I would recommend with that just follow one person and just just learn about golf the way that they do it but I think if you do all those three there if you can understand those three you got a chance love it love it I mean I think by linking all those things together we’re looking at it selfishly like we want the best golfers or golfers swinging their best when they’re with us fitting them for golf clubs when they’re swinging their absolute best so I love that you’re giving people the structure and some guid lines that that will help them give them the best opportunity for the best back swing which will lead to the right chain reaction on the down swing and and give the best chance of a a successful result and those three things it’s it’s really really simple and the more we the longer that we’ve coached the more simple we make it you know you can go into details and technolog is incredible now but if you go too much into the details of things it’s just going to be harder so the more simple you can make it these three things we know make a huge difference you put these into practice I guarantee they’re going to help as coaches and Fitters we need to know the minutia but as a player keep that out your head yeah without that doubt you see that all the time that’s the way you feel about the game you don’t want to know the you don’t want to go into the weeds too much but you know what you know what’s effective and what works and that’s he’s the player out of us he is the player in that times a week is definitely well guys I mean I hope you enjoy that that’s a huge treat uh for all of us for us as well just I’m sure um you know Mikey’s hearing things that he can go yep you know some some you know width in the back swing yeah I get a little bit clapsy right elbow gets a little bit too narrow I i’ I’ve eternally struggled with back swing so maybe video one was for Mikey I felt like video two might be for me boys but um I’m sure the viewers are are feeling like there’s there’s some really good nuggets in there for them too good thanks all right guys um amazing having the guys with us please go and follow them on their own channel if you don’t already I’m sure you do but if you if you don’t please do you’ll get loads more content amazing tools to help your golf game help your golf swing and bring us your great golf swing so we can fit you for some great clubs and if you leave some comments down below we’ll get in and answer a few of those comments as well love that love that okay guys stay tuned for more we’ll see you again soon [Music]