The best players in the world make rotation in the downswing just look so effortless and easy and it does help them produce some amazing ball flights. However, most amateur golfers really do struggle with this movement. So in today's video, I'm going to show you how to achieve this rotation during the downswing and I'm going to take you through a journey to help you do this. Now this journey is going to start with us going through the five most common root cause issues that if you have any of those issues you are physically not going to be able to rotate your body is going to prevent you from doing that so as well as highlighting them i'm also going to show you how to fix each of them now after that i'm then going to take you through two simple drills that are going to teach you once you fix those root cause issues how to rotate how to get your body in the correct position and they are amazing exercises so simple but so effective But before we do so, if you could please give the video a like and the channel a subscribe, it massively helps me out and allows me to produce more content just like this. So root cause number one that is preventing you from rotating is having a poor posture.
Now, why does this prevent you from rotating? Balance. A poor posture position puts you off balance. If you are off balance, you are not going to be able to turn.
Your body is going to make adjustments to get you back to balance and then you'll be able to rotate. So rather than spend loads of time going through all of the poor postures and everything, I'm just going to show you how to fix it. So to fix this, I want you to do a very simple drill.
Now, I want you to do the wall drill. I don't have a wall with me because obviously there's nothing behind me, but I'm going to use these alignment sticks just as a rough guide. So place these down on the ground just like so. Now, what you're going to do is with whatever club you have, I have an 8 iron here, I want you to stand with your heels one club head width away from the wall just like so. Now from here, I want you to stand nice and tall, lock your legs out, hold the club out in front of you and lower it down so that your arms feel like they're resting just on the top of your chest and the button of the grip is pointing at your belt buckle, just like so.
Now from here, keep your legs locked and resist the urge to push your hips back. You should be able to do this whole drill without touching the wall behind you. So bend forwards, keeping the legs straight, don't let those hips go back. Now from here, you can see my arms are just hanging straight down. I'm letting them relax.
I'm just going to uncrack my legs. And this is a great posture position. And we can see that my armpits are right in line with the front of the knees and the balls of the feet right there, roughly in that nice position. So from here, I feel very balanced. It's going to be easier for me to turn and turn.
And remember, you can only rotate if you are in balance. If you're off balance, your body is going to do some compensatory motion. This second root cause issue is an open... club face.
Now why does this prevent you from rotating in the downswing? If you have an open club face on the way down your body is going to actually early extend and throw the angles out. Why? You throwing your angles out is a squaring mechanism.
It's how it squares the face up when the club face is very open. Now if you were to rotate with an open club face here you would actually find that you would deliver sharply, yes, but you would leave that face open. way, way open. So the ball is going to go so far to the right for a right-handed golfer. Now, if you have a poor grip, then double check that, make sure it's in a good position.
But if your grip is in a good spot, then the number one reason as to why your club face is going to be open is because you set the club with too much of your left wrist, of your lead wrist. So if I do this motion, wrist set with the left wrist is this. And you can see as I do this, it is cupping that left wrist. So if I do it. You can see that gets the club face very open at the top, very open on the way down.
Now, wrist set is like baking a cake. There is a little bit of this recipe is going to be the left wrist setting up. How much? About one third of the recipe is the left wrist setting up.
The big bit is actually the right wrist setting back on itself. Now, why is this important? Well, as I set the club back with the right wrist, which is about two thirds of our baking recipe, what you'll see is it actually pulls the left wrist into a...
flatter position. Well, if you look at the best players in the world, especially on the way down, as they come to this delivery position, this left wrist is going to be flat to slightly bowed. So it gets the club in that great position. And if the club face is in a good spot here, it is actually going to force you to want to rotate so you can deliver sharply and present a square club face, hit the ball where you want it to go with great compression. So how do we train this motion of not using as much left wrist and using more of your trail wrist?
Well, I love to do a one arm only swing. Now. What you're gonna do is take your lead hand, place it behind your back, and grip the club about halfway up the grip.
Now, if this is too heavy when doing this motion, then just grip down the shaft. It's just to sort of give you that reference guide right there. Now, as you set the club back, you are gonna feel like you can just start to bring your knuckles on your right hand closer to the back of your forearm, just like so. So it's this motion right here. So you're gonna do that a little bit in the takeaway.
And as you can see, that gets the club face leaning slightly down to the ground. and it produces some cup in my trail wrist right there. Then I'm going to turn to the top and you can see again that club face is actually in a slightly closed position pointing up to the sky and the trail wrist has a lot of angle right there. Well guess what this is actually going to promote a great delivery position here and it's also going to promote some shaft lean as we come into the ball.
So the key is really feeling this angle in the back of the trail wrist. It's a little gradual set in the takeaway it's then going to increase to the top as if you're holding a tray. and then you're going to have some of that right wrist angle on the way down, and then you'll release it through the ball, and that's where you get some speed.
Let's hit a shot just so I can show you what this looks like. Now, root cause number three is you have a poor pivot, especially in the backswing. And often when you have a poor backswing pivot, it just leaves too much work for you to do in the downswing. Example number one, you've been told to keep more pressure on your left leg. Why?
Because that's going to help you get your low point past the ball. Well, a lot of golfers overdo this and they sort of collapse into the left leg. So now their body's out of position, it doesn't look good, the spine angle's out of position. So what they end up doing is they actually end up sort of jumping backwards.
And again, this is going to cause a form of early extension, not going to be able to rotate. Second one is that golfer who's been told, get your pressure in your trail leg. So they shift off and at the top of the backswing, they've got more pressure in their trail leg right here.
So now their body is too far away from the target. So they're going to have to spend more time in the downswing shifting laterally to be able to get their low point past the ball. And that's some time that we should be actually using to rotate.
Here's a simple drill to help you fix this. So what I want you to do is grab two alignment sticks. Now, the two key pieces that we're going to be focusing on are number one, the left shoulder and number two, the tailbone, which is right at the bottom of my spine right here. Now what I want you to focus on is I've grabbed these two alignment sticks and I've placed them on the inside part of my feet. Now if I just grab the golf club, place it on my shoulders, I want to feel like as I turn back, yes you'll have a little bit of a shift off to start, that's how you generate momentum, but after that I want you to feel like you turn your tailbone over this lead alignment stick as you turn your left shoulder over this trail alignment stick right there.
So I'm going to set up here, yes I am going to have a little bit of a push off swing trigger to start but as soon as i've done that it's going to be tailbone over the lead alignment stick left shoulder over the trail alignment stick here's what it should look like root cause number four as to why you cannot rotate is that you get your trail arm stuck behind you in the backswing which therefore means on the way down in order to hit the ball successfully You have to throw your angles out and as you do that you have to stand up to be able to control ground contact. So here's how you're going to fix it. You have two simple rules.
Number one, the trail elbow never wants to go behind the seam line on your top. So it never wants to drift behind the seam line. If it does that we're in trouble. And number two, the trail arm never wants to bend past 90 degrees. If it does that we're in trouble.
So those two simple rules. Elbow never behind seam line, trail arm wants to be at 90 degrees or slightly wider at the top of the backswing. Is to get the club with your right hand and again if it's too heavy just grip down on it, take your left hand and hook it just above your elbow. Because now if I just apply a little bit of an inward pressure as I turn back, you can see how it keeps that elbow in a nice wide position.
Now also with it being just trail arm only, I can really get a good visual as to how much that trail arm is folding. And you can see here that it's barely at 90 degrees, it's just a little bit wider than 90 degrees. So do a couple of these swings and make sure you can keep that elbow in front of your seam line.
That's an amazing swing thought right there. Then from there on the way down it's going to want to slot back in front of your body. Once you get to this great delivery position it's going to be so much easier to rotate. Now the fifth and final root cause reason that is preventing you from rotating is that you have a steep shaft in the downswing. Now this could be caused by a whole heap of issues and actually the number one issue that I see that causes this steep shaft in the downswing is you setting things up incorrectly in the backswing.
So just make sure that you're hitting the checkpoints. A lot of the checkpoints that we've actually already spoken about today will contribute to that steep shaft in the downswing. So number one make sure you've got a good grip, good foundation.
you're turning well, you're keeping that trail arm in front of you. If you're doing that stuff, it's then going to be so much easier to get that club shallowing. Now, why does a steep shaft prevent you from rotating? Well, if I get into this position, the shaft is steep. What I then have to do is shallow the club super late.
So I have to drop the club down. In order for me to do that, I have to stand up. And as I do that... I can't rotate from there. A great exercise that I love to prevent you from having to, or prevent you from getting too steep, is set up to the golf ball with just your left arm only.
I'm actually just going to get the golf ball away. Then from there, make a backswing, turn nicely, and then just swing all the way down. Now here's the beautiful thing. When we have just our left arm on the club, the club suddenly feels extremely heavy, so the weight of the club is then going to sort of swing itself in a way.
So what this means is in transition when I get to here the club is wanting to fall this way. So what it does is it sort of teaches me to be patient with my chest as I work my lower body and then I can swing all the way through. Now once you've done that with just your left arm only, take your right hand place it on the side of the grip but keep that palm open.
Do the same thing, barely apply any pressure and from there you'll start to be able to feel how that trail arm should fold as well. So to the top there. and all the way through and you can see at no point am i closing my hand up my hand is staying open and this just helps me again feel great rhythm but it also helps me feel what it feels like to get the club coming down on plane i'm going to set up to the ball right here now let's give it a whack so those are the five most common root causes as to why your body will not let you rotate so fix them first then you can jump onto this bit Now, yes, there are more than just five main root causes, but those are the most common ones that I see.
But anyway, now let's jump into actually how to rotate, give you two simple drills to help you with this. Now, a lot of rotation does start through using your legs correctly. Now, I'm gonna give you just a quick overview of what the feet are doing, just so you can sort of understand this.
So the right foot, as we sort of get to around left arm parallel in the backswing, is going to start to push our body Back towards the target. This is one of the drivers that helps us shift our weight. Stand up on your right leg and just push yourself back towards the target. You can see how I'm not going this way. I'm just pushing myself back towards the target.
That's pretty much what the right leg does the whole time during the downswing, and it starts doing that from left arm parallel in the backswing. It does that motion. So that's sort of the easy one. The harder one is what the left foot is doing. So the left foot, it does two things.
Number one, as we shift our weight, we push. Into sort of the ball of the foot slash the toes the ball of the foot slash the toes now It does this very very early now. Here's the key to getting rotation Number one the harder you push into the ball of the left foot the harder you'll push out number two when we push out We go from the ball of the foot to the heel So we go ball of the foot to the heel and it's this motion from going from the ball of the foot to the left heel That creates the rotation.
Hence why most golfers, when they finish, good golfers, will actually have sort of their toes off the ground in their left foot. Why? Because they've pushed so hard, the pressure is really back into the heel.
Now, a phenomenal drill to help you train this is the yoga wedge drill. Now, here I've got my yoga wedge, but you can use other things, like the half-cut tennis ball, or there is something called, I believe it's called the force pedal. It's, again, something that you can put.
underneath the ball of your foot and you can use it to push off of. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get rid of the golf ball for now. I'm going to place this underneath my lead foot and then from there as I go to the top I'm going to push into it so I feel like I'm really putting pressure into the block and then from there that happens very early and now as I come down I'm going to push into the heel. So it goes ball of the foot, heel of the foot.
Do it again, ball of the foot, heel of the foot. Harder you push into the ball of the foot, the more you're going to push back into the heel. And this is really going to kickstart some rotation for you. So let me show you what this looks like because this is one of my favorite drills, especially to increase my club head speed as well.
It's an awesome, awesome drill. So to the top, I'm pushing into the ball of the foot and then going into the heel. The earlier and the faster you do it, the more rotation you're going to generate.
So let's give this a go right here. Earlier and faster I do it, the more I'm going to rotate. Let's give this a go.
Okay, fantastic. That's what the legs are doing, but that's only half the puzzle because we've got to move the legs correctly, but we also need to control our upper body. So if you've watched my channel before, you know I absolutely love this exercise. And this exercise involves two alignment sticks and it's called the...
Chopsticks drill. I love, love, love, love, love this drill. So take one of these alignment sticks, place it through your belt loops and just have the majority of it pointing away from the target. Now do the same thing with the one on your shoulders, but have this one, so this end here on your left shoulder joint and you can see a lot of it is pointing away. Now if I just imagine I'm doing a goal swing, I'm gonna turn back and as I turn back I'm gonna shift and press into the ball of my left foot.
There's my weight shift done. Now time for the rotation. I'm going to push from the ball of the foot into the heel and as I do that I'm going to hit the back of the alignment stick through my belt loops with the one on my shoulders. So it's here, it's pushing to the foot.
push into the heel, boom, and you can see there. Now as I do that, it helps me from the downline view, it helps me maintain good tilt. Number two, from the face-on view, it helps me keep my head in a good position.
So yes, you might see it drift forward slightly when I do that lateral motion, but then from there, as I start to then push out and tilt, you can see how it slightly pulls the head back into a good spot. And from here, you can really see this is very much a representation of what we see the best players in the world. do.
Now the other phenomenal thing about these two drills is you can do them at the same time. So place that yoga wedge just underneath the lead foot, the alignment stick in the correct position and do some swings. So we go here, push into the yoga wedge, push out into the heel and hit it behind you. Look how much rotation my body's got.
I've got side bend. I'm in a beautiful position. So you can do this really, drop the alignment stick there.
You can do this as much as you want here, ball of the foot into the heel, pushing into the ball of the foot. Then push out into the heel, feel what that shoulder should be doing. This is going to make me rotate a lot more in the downswing, help me get into some much better impact positions. So let's combine these two drills together and then let's give it a whack.
Now, if you need more one-to-one help, maybe you cannot figure out what your root cause issue is, then you can get a lesson with myself, online lesson, anywhere in the world, and I can help you identify that. The link is down below, as well as a free practice guide. Now, if you have enjoyed today's video, please give it a like and subscribe, and I hope to see you back here soon.