Hitting The Ball With Your Right Elbow Makes The Golf Swing So Much Easier

All right, guys, in today's video, I'm gonna show you a little trick with your trail arm during the downswing that I showed a recent student of mine that really helped him out with his contact. It's a little micro move, but has a massive effect on your ball striking, your solid contact, consistency of contact, and ability to square the club face. Let's dive right in. All right, guys, so if you've seen our videos before, you know during the downswing, one of the huge keys to be able to strike the ball consistently solid is the ability to get your trail arm and trail elbow working forward towards the target. But there's a little caveat and a move that goes along with that that you need to have in your swing if you wanna be able to do that and consistently square the club face along with it. I recently did this in a lesson with a student of mine that really transformed his solid contact. This little micro move that he really loved got rid of those weak right shots. Hopefully this will do that for you as well. Here's the move. We'll kind of do it simple, and then we'll add some layers and drills to it. During the downswing, and we're gonna show some people on the screen so you can see this. From about the time we get to, let's say hip high with the hands or close to shaft parallel to the ground, you're gonna notice that the inside part of your elbow, we'll call it the elbow pit, points away from you, directly away from me towards the ball, towards the camera. And so does my forearm, right? My forearm and my palm. So the elbow pit and the palm both point that away. Now, as you watch these great ball strikers, and this is the move that I showed to my student, you wanna be able to get your elbow working forward, here's the key, while always keeping the pit of your elbow pointed away from you as you do it. You're working the elbow forward and having the pit work away, and I'll explain why that's so important in a moment. But now if I have my elbow working forward and the pit of it works away, like we'll show, notice my right palm. Where is that pointing the whole time? That's pointing away as well. Now, if I just do that and I keep doing that, where does the club face point? That points way to the right, right? You can see the toe is way behind the heel, the club face is way open. So what the best ball strikers do and what the trick is, is while your elbow pit points away from you, you have to have independent forearm rotation, which means the ability to get your palm to face the target by impact, while still having the pit of your elbow point away from you. And that's how you have the squaring of the club face. And you'll see it on the screen from Tommy Fleetwood, you'll see this from some other players that we're gonna put in there, Xander Schauffele, Adam Scott, how the pit of their elbow stays pointed away from them the whole time, but their forearms will rotate the club face back to square. Okay, so having the elbow work forward with the pit of the elbow away, enables us to be able to get good shaft lean. If I did it the bad way where the elbow pit would point, let's say towards the target, notice where my elbow goes. Does it go back or forward? As the pit of the elbow points from, let's say from away from us to the target, as it rotates, the elbow goes which way? It goes back. Now, when my elbow goes back, what happens to my right wrist? It early releases. When I early release, what happens to the shaft? It's leaning too far back. There's my poor contact, inconsistent contact, no shaft lean. If I wanna be able to get my shaft leaning forward, I need to be able to get my elbow forward. And I wanna be able to keep that pit of the elbow away from me, which from this side is a little external rotation. Okay, external is kind of when you're feeling the elbow in front of the wrist. Internal is when you're feeling the wrist in front of the elbow. This internal is bad. That would be like elbow back early release. This external move is good. And you feel the external by feeling the elbow pit stay away as the right elbow is squeezing in towards the left. But again, how the heck do I hit a ball from there? I need to be able to square the club face up. And that's where this little micro move of this right forearm adds in. Okay, this little forearm. So I want you to hold your trail arm in front of you. You can just hold it up like this, thumb up towards the sky. Now get it to where your palm and your elbow pit point straight up towards the sky. And bring that down in front of you. This is the relationship I'm trying to keep. You can even hold your elbow like this so the pit of the elbow points away. Bend my triceps back a little bit. And feel like how do I keep my elbow where it is and get my palm towards the target? See that little micro move? Little palm towards the target. This is the movement that I'm trying to do and I'll show you some drills here in a moment. Palm towards the target. Elbow pit doesn't go with it. Watch when I do the bad version. The elbow pit points towards it, right? My elbow points away, my arm early extended and my right wrist through too early. There's my no shaffling bad look. I need to be able to feel. Palm up, elbow pit away. Bring it down in front. Learn how to get the arm forward with the elbow pit staying away, but add a little bit of that right forearm rotation, okay? So as I'm starting to hit with this before I show you some drills, when I come down, the sensation is I'm squeezing my right elbow towards my left. The elbow points away from me. It'll also be under or inside my left arm from down the line. But as I'm continuing to feel that as my body moves, I need to be able to square the club face up. So I'm feeling that right forearm pronation. Okay, let's go ahead and hit one with that. So the elbow pit points away, but I'm getting the right forearm to point at the target by impact. And there's a solid shot, probably about a five yard draw. Now, in order to get that shaffling, which we need, right? We need shaffling at impact. If we look at a golfer at setup, let's pull up like Adam Scott at setup and then show him at impact. You'll notice the impact's dramatically different. It's more forward. And the reason for that is so that we can get the shaft leaning forward to get the ball in the middle of the club. Okay, we gotta hit it like four or five grooves up. If my shaft's leaning back, I'm always gonna hit on the bottom of the club. No distance, right? Poor contact. So I get the shaffling to hit the ball in the middle of the club. And I also wanna lower the loft, the ball far, straight, et cetera. But in order to get shaffling, where's the club face need to be? Needs to be square or squaring. Anytime you come down, if you're someone who's got a big flip motion, if your club face is too open, toe behind the heel, you're always gonna early release it. So instead of early releasing it to square it, I want you to add a little arm rotation, okay? You can work on closing it sooner as well, but no matter what golfer you are, even the most passive golfer, you'll see Tommy Fleetwood with a stronger grip. What does his right arm look like? Still doing the same thing. The elbow pit points away and the palm rotates towards the target. Xander Schaaf, a little bit of a weaker grip, same motion, okay? The weaker the grip you have, you probably need to do this a little more. Stronger grip, probably a little less, but even the most passive golfers with the most square club face will still have some of this motion. So I was working with my student doing this. I said, okay, let's just get your trail arm and feel this motion here through impact. The elbow pit always points away. Okay, the right bicep feels like it's pressing against my pec or side. And notice my trail hand as I'm working through impact. I'm almost feeling like when I'm coming through, my fingers are behind my wrist and my hand points slightly down and to the left. Down and to the left. I'm not going whole arm with it. Down and to the left. Elbow away. Wrist stays in front of the fingers. Down and to the left. That's the motion. Now also notice as I'm doing this, I'm having a little body motion. Okay, in the beginning when I was showing my student, you're just kind of going like this with the arm and that's okay. But of course as I start actually swinging, I'll feel a little left hip rotation, little body opening it. And my right hand pointing down and left is really trying to mimic what I'm trying to do with the club. I want the club on the way through to point a little bit down and left. You can kind of think of your right palm as it squares as like the face of the club. Okay, so elbow pit points away. Right palm's pointing down and rotating. And this is really like the timing of this from about hands hip high to impact. The elbow pit points away. The forearms rotate to square it. The elbow pit points away. The forearms rotate to square it. Square would just be getting the club face, let's say fully perpendicular to the target, point at the target, while the handle is up over the left leg. Elbow pit away. Forearm rotation at the bottom. Elbow pit away. Forearm rotation at the bottom. And there's another solid one. Now I hit that ball pretty straight. When you're doing this, you want to have the ball flight give you some feedback. As a right-handed golfer, if the ball's going too far to the right, we would assume you didn't do that enough. The club face was pointed right and you need to do more of it. If you hit it to the left and you overdid it, right? If the ball goes left, you closed the club face a little too much. You probably overdid it. You can do a little bit less. If you're someone who's a slicer, who tends to slice it off to the right, you would want to feel this the most, to square the club face the most. And probably sooner. If you're someone who hooks it and you overclose the club face, obviously you can feel it a little bit less. Now my student said, hey Eric, I like this. I really like this elbow motion, but I would prefer to feel my lead hand doing the squaring of the club face. Is that okay? Absolutely that's okay. Okay, so you can feel either hand here. So we kind of ended up with him, and I'll show you the drill in a moment, is he's feeling the elbow pit away, and he's actually feeling like, okay at hip high, like you'll see the pros, the elbow pit and the right palm or the back of the left hand both point away. And then at impact, the elbow pit still points away, but now the back of the hand, the glove logo points at the target. So you can go elbow pit away, glove logo at the target. Elbow pit away, glove logo at the target. Not the whole arm, just this forearm part, just from here to here, right? Just from here to here, here to here, here to here. And if you want to feel the glove logo doing that motion, perfectly okay. So elbow pit stays away the whole time, all the way through, and the glove logo is going to square. Now like you'll see the pros, once you get past impact, of course the arm will extend, the elbow pit will point towards the target, but I can't have that happening back here. A lot of people I see using the whole arm and shoulder to square it, then they get a flip and an early release. You have to, to get the handle forward, you got to get the elbow forward with the pit staying away. So elbow pit away, but now we're going to use the glove logo to square the face. Again, from about hip high into impact. And if you need to feel a little earlier, that's totally okay. Elbow pit away for the contact, left hand rotation for the club face. And there's another solid one. That's probably about a seven yard draw. I overcooked that a little bit, but hit it very solid. It's probably 20 feet left of my target. If you're someone again, who misses weak right, you want to overdo that. The more I overdo this glove logo piece, or this right palm piece, that closes the club face and takes loft off of the club. Both of those, very good. Now let me just quick show you at the end, the two drills I showed him that may help you as well. All right guys, so quick add on two drills I showed my student for him to take home that may help you. One's an easy one with a plate. When you get into this position with the elbow pit away and the palm facing away from you, if you take a plate and just put that in your trail palm, so the back of the plate faces away from you, the goal here is to be able to keep the elbow pit away and rotate and feel the plate getting to square. So my student found that that helped give him a little visual. Now I'm taking the body motion out, okay? In the beginning, just to feel it. Elbow pit away, rotate the right palm, the back of the left hand, or the back of the plate towards the target. Now, of course, when I actually go, I'll have my body motions in like this. Elbow pit away, back of the plate towards the target. Now my student was also a tennis player and I had a plate, okay, with me and we had a little, like we had a ping pong paddle, right? But let's use this one instead. So he was playing tennis. I didn't have a tennis one. I had a little ping pong paddle with me. So this will serve the same purpose with pickleball. So when he came through, he said, hey, am I trying to feel like I'm getting like an overhand forehand? And I said, kind of, but the key difference here, and this is like the third point of this, is I can't have my shoulder go way high. When I'm playing tennis, ping pong, pickleball, I'm hitting a ball level to the ground. I can have my shoulder go high, have the whole arm rotate over, like a top hand kind of overhand spinner like this. But with golf, the ball's on the ground. So I still want to feel like I'm doing this sort of forehand, this top spin shot, but my shoulder has to stay down. My shoulder has to stay down. So it's elbow pit away, rotate this close with just the lower half of the arm. You can feel right arm or left arm, but the shoulder stays down. And we'll show you some of the pros. They keep their inclination to the ground. There's no high shoulder, elbow pit towards the target release. Shoulder down, elbow pit away, and use your forearm rotation. So you can use a little, you know, ping pong paddle, pickleball, or the plate with that. It gives you a good visual. And then I just had him feel the same thing and put the trail hand behind his elbow, feel the elbow forward with the pit away and squaring the club face. We actually got to the point where when he was feeling it, I was even saying, hey, feel like you get the toe of the club, even ahead of the heel. Now he had a pretty big right in this. We were exaggerating, but don't be afraid to close that club face. What if I do that, Eric? And I hit it left, he said. I said, I'll just do it a little less. Do it a little less, okay? Right to here. Isn't this going to add a lot of timing to my swing? No, I said, right? Like you already don't time it well. That's going to the right. You need to add more closure. Okay, one more. You've got the plate option. You've got the paddle option. I'm always feeling the elbow pit away, rotating the forearms to the target. I'm going to feel my right palm and the shoulder stays down. Elbow pit away, forearm rotation, shoulder down. Very, very solid. And that's the whole point, right? Like if you're not hitting the ball solid, feel the elbow working more forward and staying away for longer. That gets the shaft length. Of course, the body's got to go with it. You need more solid contact. Feel the elbow pit more away longer as the body opens. Squeezing the right elbow in towards the left, elbow pit away. There again, very solid. If you struggle with the contact, you need to feel that part more. If you struggle with the right shots, you need to feel the rotation more. Of just the lower arm. The right forearm or the glove logo. Shoulder always stays down. Shoulder down, pit of the elbow away, forearm rotation. All very solid. So hopefully that'll help you. The simple trick here, okay, is you got to be able to square your arms with the elbow pit away from you as the elbow's moving forward. That's the simple. The more complicated or the layers I wanted to add on, just so you understand that, hopefully help. The plate drill, the little ping pong paddle, and the ability to keep your trail shoulder down as you do it are the key. You guys have any questions on this? Leave a comment down below. If you want us to look at your swing like I did my student to be able to identify, hey, these are the key issues. These are the feels. Like he was trying to do something completely different than he needed to. He was holding him back for like years and years and years. And we were able to make huge gains on that within like 15, 20 minutes. So you can get results pretty quickly. Go to CogornoGolf.com, send in your swings. Let's work together there. We'd love to see you there. All right guys, if you're interested in a winter golf school, we just made the dates live down in Boca Raton in South Florida. We're partnering with our good friends at the Don Law Golf Academy. I've personally hand selected some of the best coaches in the world to be there along with me to give you a two day event that I want you to never forget. I want you to have a transformational event for your golf game. I want you to have a blast. I want to hang out and spend some time together. We're going to work on your game in the morning. We're going to go play in the afternoon. Plus you're going to get access to everything we have on the website. You're going to get 90 days of coaching afterwards. We want to give you a plan. So ideally cut your handicap in half, right? To really make a difference in your game. I'd love to have you there. We had a great time at Woodstone in September. We're going to have a great time this winter. We'll put a link in the description down below. It'll be the first link. Click on that, check out the details, send us a message with any questions you have. Look forward to seeing some of you there. If you want to watch more like this, check out this video next.