The Secret To EFFORTLESS Distance

Lots of golfers are looking for more distance for free, and a lot of coaches talk about ground force reaction, but if I'm honest with you, you can't create ground force reaction without something that happened prior to it. So let's sort that out. So I'd much rather talk about ground force reaction as a reaction to what's going on. So ideally what we want to look at is what our hands are doing. So where our hands go the body tends to follow, and that tends to pull the force in that direction. So for example, if I was going to move my hands up in the air, my force is being pulled vertically upwards, but if I move my hands down, it takes the force vertically down. Now in order to push off the ground, we need to get that force going down before contact, and the best way to do that is to use our arms and hands to do that. So in the ideal world, when we're setting up to a golf ball, we're setting up here, and we're trying to get our pressure kind of 50-50 in both feet. As we take the club back, we turn and move our arms and hands, and our hands will go up in the air like this, and this drags the force and pressure sideways and upwards. So ideally we want to create a swing with our hands almost as far away and wide as we possibly can, and almost as high as we possibly can, in order then to get that force coming up. This helps create power and distance. So the wider the swing arc, and the longer the swing arc, the more speed we get. The more we move the swing arc behind us, the more it has to rotate, and therefore adds more torque, and therefore adds more free speed. The backswing thought should very much be, we want to swing it on the correct arc or plane, but we want to try and make this golf swing as wide and as tall as we possibly can. So taking our trailhand and putting it behind our lead arm, making some swings with a big turn, and feel we really stretch this lead arm out to the side, and up above our head if we can. This is difficult for me, I am tight, and some of you will find this tighter, but I think the key message here is to make the swing wider and higher than we currently do, as opposed to being as wide and as high as some of these youngsters we see on the PGA Tour. Obviously we'd love to be them, we'd love to have their flexibility, we'd love to have their golf swings, and certainly I wouldn't mind having their bank balances, but it's not really about that, it's about becoming a better version of you. So the backswing thought should be very much, can we make this backswing more stretched? Bigger, higher, wider, with a turn, while still remaining a decent swing direction or plane. So I've got that feel, now from that swing now I'm going to try and make my golf swing repeat that, and I certainly felt quite a big stretch for me, and a little bit uncomfortable, but it might be a case that I do that just for the practice area, and then the edge is my swing a few centimetres, a few inches wider and longer than it would normally be. Certainly this exercise here we did, that one there, I really feel that stretch, I can feel that in my shoulders, in my lat, in particular when I'm making practice swings, and again part of my warm-up should be, can I get those areas mobilised if I can? Not a huge warm-up, three to five minutes, but can I mobilise the right areas? Now the big one for me is the downswing, the downswing arguably is the most important. Now what we're looking for here is basically, can I get these hands as low as I possibly can? Now ideal world what happens is the ribcage and hands go down, before we feel there's a lot of rotation. Now there will be a recentering, there will be a tiny bit of rotation, but the more I can feel I work down, and then forward, and then I can push off the ground more naturally. So one of my good friends Mark Ball, top 3D guy for me in the world, talks about hand reaction force, and he talks about trying to get the hands lower in this position, and we see Justin Rose making these practice swings, keeping his back to target, and getting his hands, and when he does it, he gets his hands midway down between his knee and ankle, so halfway down his shin. Now that for me feels ridiculously low, and it will do for you too, but that's definitely the feel we want to try and to achieve. So I want my practice swings to look like big stretch, big low, very squatted, no early extension, no thought about going forward at this stage towards the target. When I'm in this position here, then everything's about forward and extending up, and that creates the best use of my force, and creates the most maximum ground reaction forces. We see people that go on these force plates and say, well you're not pushing left and left, you're not moving left and up early enough, but we've got to look at why, not just the outcome. Yes it's all very well tamed to play, you need to move to the left earlier, and you've got to move up more, but how do you do that? If I just stand and try and go left up, I'm probably going to top the golf ball. We need to be able to go down first, and then it naturally creates the right movement through the golf ball, which is what we're looking for. So this should be all about practice swings, trying to get very low, and we might even do a pump drill. So the pump drill would be top of the swing high, low, back up high, low, back up high, low, then, and then hit. Now you can hit some scruffy shots doing that, because it's difficult when you're pumping up and down, but all we're trying to do here is feel the sensation of moving up and down in this area of the golf swing. We don't want the head moving up and down a lot, by the way, it's just a case of ideally in the downswing the head will go down a touch, and the ribcage goes down, but the backswing is more about the arm stretch up, okay, not this kind of tight, short, flat backswing. Very much the arms going up in the correct angle, and feeling wider than normal. So once we've done those two exercises, and again ideally probably 10 minutes on each exercise, the practice swing again would look like big high, big low, extend and turn through. When we go to the golf ball, we try and just feel we can combine a little bit of that in the real swing. That one felt absolutely great, and not massively different to normal. Again, all I'm trying to do is influence my swing a little bit. That is it. So the big message from this video is really not to worry about too much grafts and ground force reaction. Get your hands high in the backswing, but on plane. Make them go as low as you can, and they can't go too low, and you'll naturally move through the golf ball, as long as you have the intent of trying to hit the ball at target. If you're new to the channel, please click like, comment and subscribe. It really helps the channel grow, and it really helps me provide you with more content. Thanks very much. See you back here soon.