Get 20 Yards 3: Athletic Balance for More Speed
Get 20 Yards 3:
Athletic Balance Will Give You More Speed
Let’s put the finishing touches on getting you more distance.
Our goal is to increase your club head speed by at least 8 miles per hour to get you at least 20 more yards. We’ve been talking about Lag and how it acts like an accelerator if you can release your lag … through the impact zone. The idea isn’t to Hold Lag or get more lag in the swing. You’re in a pretty good lag position at the top of the swing. The trick is to find out why you are losing Lag too early.
Remember, as soon as you stop rotating, your hands release.
In the last video we did the lean exercise where we leaned in, felt our toes engage, and then tried to rotate to the target. Any time we try to rotate on an axis that is at an angle rather than straight up and down, our bodies work against us to stop rotation. We noticed that it didn’t take much of a lean before our toes engaged – only an inch or two. And that’s all the adjustment you’ll need to make in your set-up.
You might not feel out of balance in your current set-up, but if you’re not hitting the ball as far or as consistently as you think you should, odds are you are not in Athletic Balance. And if you’re not in Athletic Balance, you won’t turn as fast or as easily or as consistently as you can, and you’ll be releasing you lag too early.
I’m going to show you how to get into Athletic Balance by adding a simple check in your routine. It works like this:
In your set-up position you should be able to tap your toes one at a time.
If you find – like so many golfers – that you can’t lift your toes one at a time, your center of mass is too far out over your toes.
Your axis of rotation is at an angle. Your body will stop your rotation to keep you from falling, and you’ll release your lag too early.
Here’s how to get in Athletic Balance. When you are in your address position with the club behind the ball, lift the club up slightly so it’s just touching the top of the grass and you can’t put any weight on it. Then start tapping your toes back and forth. Pay special attention to any adjustments you have to make with your hips and your upper body in order to get your toes moving.
You may find that you move your upper body up a little, like this …
Or that you move your hips back a little, like this …
Or that you do a little of both.
It’s not going to be much of an adjustment, but it doesn’t have to be. Once you are able to get a rhythm going with your toes, hold that posture. Drop your club back down to the ground, take a last look at your target, and then let ‘er rip!
I’m going to make one special instruction here: keep your club as close to the ball and your address position as possible when you do this Happy Toes adjustment. Almost everybody does this at first. They stand up, get in Athletic Balance and get their toes moving, and then lean right back over. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting your center of mass over the middle of your feet.
So keep you club close to the ball and do the Happy Toes adjustment. You’ll find it won’t be a big adjustment, and you’ll be able to incorporate it right away after just a little practice. But it will make a world of difference in your ability to make an athletic swing.
OK. Let’s step back a moment and look at what we’ve done through these videos.
- We started with a goal: Adding at least 20 yards to your drives.
- We identified the most important thing you need to focus on – increasing your club head speed – and we boiled it down to a specific number: 8 miles per hour.
- Then we narrowed it down to one aspect of the swing – Lag.
- We identified what we’d like to accomplish – that’s to carry lag through the impact zone with core rotation.
- Then we identified one of the reasons we might be releasing lag too early – stopping core rotation at the ball rather than turning toward the target.
- We traced the cause of stopping to a physiological issue – not being in Athletic Balance. We call being out of Athletic Balance a root cause. In other words, we don’t try to address carrying lag directly. We get at the real reason we’re not carrying lag efficiently. The root cause. Losing lag too early is a symptom. And treating symptoms is like applying band aids. They don’t last. When we address the root cause we make permanent, positive change.
- Then, to help you with your permanent change, we gave you a specific drill you can incorporate into your pre-shot routine that will help your distance and your consistency.
Now the reason I’m going back through all these steps is to show you how much control you can exercise over the improvement of your golf game when exactly what to focus on, why you are doing it, and the specific steps you can implement to accomplish your goal. In the next video I will show you how my training program The 5 Keys To Distance will do this for you.