we've got a lot to cover in this video so we're going to dive right into it get started the best place to start a shallowing discussion is to look at how the clubs move in really good golf swings the Pro Data we're going to look at in this video comes from players who've won over 35 Majors over 400 wins on tour including 28 wins this year alone the clubs you're seeing here on the screen are from as many of those winners as we could allegedly fit in we included all the outliers meaning the steepest and the most shallow clubs then we filled in the Middle with as many clubs as I think shallow for most people just refers to the angle of the shaft relative to the ground here at left arm parallel in the downswing this is the most common Landmark used for determining if a shaft is shallow or steep it's shallow if it's pointing at or just beyond the golf ball it's steep if it's pointing inside the golf ball but there are two potential downsides with using this as the basis for being Shell One it doesn't account for what the hands are doing which we'll go into in a minute and two it often gives a misleading perspective of what needs to happen to the club in three dimensions meaning from this perspective players are used to seeing the clubs at the top of their swings looking steep so they feel they have to do something to shallow it to lay it down or flatten it at the beginning of their downswings the problem is that's not really the case at all because when we bring in the face on view of these clubs you can see that what looks steep from down the line is actually quite shallow in fact when we roll the left side down to what would be left arm parallel you can see for these pros and most likely for you too the club is its shallowest its flattest or it's most laid off however you like to describe it at the top of the swing I know this seems obvious looking at it here but a lot of golfers have told us their entire perception of what they need to do with the shaft comes solely from how the club looks at the top from this down the line view that's awesome that we can find videos of great players really anywhere online but it also can make it easy to forget that everything in the golf swing happens in 3D a simple little reminder like the club is most shallow at the top has been a game changer for a lot of guys just so we're all on the same page and we're talking about the same things we figured now is a good time to Define some terms that we're going to use throughout the rest of the video internal and external rotation these are the big ones you hear a lot about in golf instruction we'll talk more about these as the video goes along especially about the potential misuse of external rotation next is horizontal shoulder adduction and abduction moving the elbow in towards the body is adduction and then moving it out and away from the body is abduction too much abduction creates a lot of shallowing problems for a lot of golfers then we've got elbow bin a pretty straightforward movement but it can create some anxiety if you're a player that's linked holding that elbow bin with holding lag next is the arm lifting and lowering this is just the raising and lowering of the upper arm pretty straightforward but believe it or not the simple move is often misinterpreted these two movements are not examples of arm lifting and lowering these are squatting and bending now they move the entire torso and the arm does lower and lift relative to the ground but the arm itself is not lifting and lowering relative to the body that's a key point to make arm lifting and lowering is relative to the body not the ground and then lastly we have forearm pronation and supination and these are actually four arm movements not wrist movements but as long as you know which one happens when that's what matters and we know there's a lot of different golf terms out there and you may have a different name for all these movements that's not the important part the important part is that you understand what we're talking about what we're referencing when we talk about when they happen in the swing so what we've learned over the years both recording offers on video and in 3D is that there are primarily two Club movements that cause golfers a lot of grief in regards to shallow the first one we call steep out of the top if you don't do this yourself you most certainly know someone who does you can see how the club steepens right out of the top and at left arm parallel the club is pointing well inside the golf ball and the bad shots you can hit from here will cover the gamut you may have also heard this call the arm wrestling move or the pull down so this is when the arm stays up the elbow stays bent and all you have left to get the club down is this internal rotation to start your downswing a big contributor to that is when golfers overtly have ducked their arm which is just pulling it back here behind them rather than keeping it somewhere out here in front of them the second problem move is the arms up Club out move we're going to use one of our Pros here to help show why this move creates trouble for so many golfers at first glance these players are fairly similar at the top and to show the full scope of this move we're defining the top here as when each player reaches their maximum hip turn in the backswing from here forward the hips will be in their downswing opening rotation notice how the amateurs hips are quite a bit more turned here this is often what we see with golfers trying to get maximum hip turn in the backswing so let's stack these guys on top of one another and fade the bodies out again to highlight the club movements again these guys have very similar clubs here at this point in the swing as we get them moving pay attention to the opposite movements these players make to get the club started down the amateurs left his arms up which causes his turn to carry his hands out towards the ball line while the pro does the opposite then here at left arm parallel the result is the AMS grip has moved twice as close to the ball line compared to the pros taking the hands too far out too soon loads of shank in the chamber unless you make several compensations late in the downswing this player told us he had been working hard to do three things number one get more shallow and lay the club down number two get more rotation in the downswing now despite being 31 years older than the pro you're seeing here our Am rotates his hips a hundred degrees in the downswing compared to the pros 85 Degrees who by the way is one of the most rotated players on tour and number three lower his chest to get rid of early extension both guys are in the normal range here at the tops of their swing but an impact notice the differences here the am moved in the opposite direction as what we see professionals do this player is doing everything he believes happens in good swings and hitting it worse for his efforts and it is a lot of effort because he's doing loads more work than what we're seeing from the pro this is what we mean when we say amateur swings are often physically more difficult to do than what we see with tour swings this is all caused when the player's idea is to leave the arms up externally rotate the shoulder that typically overly abducts the shoulder in as well those move movements jackknife the club down then when you add in the body turn you get everything working out too far towards the ball line to be fair we've never met anyone who sets out to make bad movements in their swings yet we see bad movements all the time and one of the biggest hurdles in trying to learn the swing is we're all forced to see things through a third person perspective and without real 3D which you probably don't have access to the look of a swing is entirely dependent on the camera angle which makes trying to interpret what you're seeing highly subjective as well as impossible to accurately see and differentiate individual movements from one another so it makes deciphering what you're seeing literally a moving Target but even if we all had cameras in our eyes to give us that first person perspective it really wouldn't help much because we'd see even less so what we have found helpful and most importantly what our players have found helpful is what our AMG 3D software calls for the player perspective which just means frame of reference of the player for example this is one of the tour winners from the group of players we've referenced at the beginning of the video we're looking at him because he's right in the middle range of all that tour data he makes a very solid highly repeatable highly consistent normal looking golf swing that's very representative of the database as a whole instead of trying to decipher what he does from this view this normal third person perspective let's freeze what we want to look at then reposition him into a familiar perspective we can more easily relate to in this case we'll freeze his Club his hands his arms and his shoulders then we'll just move the rest of him to a neutral standing position and while we're at it let's go ahead and pull his left arm out of the way so we can really see what's happening with his right arm now we've got something that I don't think anyone's ever seen before a PGA Tour winner standing in front of you with his right shoulder his arm his hand and his Club oriented exactly as it is at the top of his golf swing now when we look at him making his shallowing move it's much easier to see what's happening and how simple this movement actually is this perspective is going to help us highlight the differences between how you might be trying to shallow the club and how these great players do it so with that in mind let's look at another amateur example this is Blake who came to see us this past summer they told us he'd been working since the lockdown on trying to be more shallow and more open he's also another example of the arms up Club out move and it came in to see us because he developed Wicked cases of both the blocks and Shanks but all the credit to him because he was actually doing what he told us he had been trying to do and what he'd been working so hard to do which was rotate go external and lay the club down he called it pro-shallowing and he listed five Pros he likes who also did the same things in their swings we actually had those same five players in our database but the problem is none of those five players or any of the other tour winners we have data on externally rotate their Trail shoulders in the downswing we've yet to find a single one who does they're all externally rotating their Trail shoulders in the backswing but not in the downswing Now understand we haven't measured every golfer who's ever played so we can't say no one has ever done it but several players in our database are often used as examples of players who go external in the downswing when they actually don't do it at all so we can say that going external definitely is not required to shallow the club and because it's the opposite of what we see good players do it's not something we recommend and you can see the DraStic differences here when we compare Blake side by side with our Pro as Blake mentioned earlier his goal was to create more shallowing early in his downswing and to get the club the jackknife behind them like you're seeing here it actually created more work for himself to do in a very small amount of time work that he's going to eventually have to try to undo later in the downswing when there's even less time by stark contrast the pro is doing way less work and way less manipulation of the club as Blake put it he's just lowering the shell he's not making any movements to lay the club down at all now let's take a look at Jerry he's another good example of the arm wrestling pull down move a very instinctual move for a lot of golfers to make especially golfers who played other sports where they're used to taking their hands towards the ball Jerry told us a big swing key for him was making sure he got a lot of depth at the top of his swing for him depth meant overly abducting his Trail shoulder in the backswing this pulled the arm behind him making it very difficult to do anything but arm wrestle to start his downswing when that arm gets pulled out and behind you there's just not much time to get it back in place to move the shaft correctly the arm can't lower properly so the elbow stays up while internal rotation kicks into high gear to try to generate some speed coming down or in other words the pull down move no surprise here that he's really steepening his Club compared to our Pro also notice how far away from his body his Trail arm stays this is a big reason why golfers also struggle to get their hands in front of their Trail leg later in the downswing now let's take a look at what the body's role is helping you hurting you from shallowing the club we work with a lot of golfers who've told us they're trying to be passive with the arms the goal being they want a body-dominated swing so fair enough so let's take a look at what a tour-winning body move looks like with passive Arms This is a world-class pivot with passive arms now I can see how this may take the timing out of the golf swing but it's a swing you probably wouldn't be happy with so clearly the arms cannot be passive they have to do something and this is how much the arms do in the backswing independent of the pivot and every good player that we've ever seen who lifts their arms in the backswing also do the opposite in the downswing they lower and as we mentioned earlier squatting or bending isn't what that means they actually lower their arms here are three of the most common Body Concepts players tell us they try to use as shallowers in their swings we're going to show you all these with passive Trail arms so you can see the direct influence the body has on the shallowing of the club so looking from left to right we've got the keep your back to the Target while shifting concept next is the exact opposite this is the rotate without any lateral shifting concept then there's the early side tilt with shift concept and lastly we'll include the pros pivot for comparison after seeing all these body pivots from both face on and Down the Line This is why you may have heard us in the past say the body is a steepener without good arm movements none of these body movements shallow the shaft or even move the club properly and that's what that body dominant mindset misses if you don't move the club properly you will not make good body movements because you'll hit it worse so it's not an either or proposition it's both the body is extremely important in the golf swing but so are the arms so in the past whenever we've talked about Pro moves or movements that pros make we always get comments or hear comments uh golfers telling us that you know they just don't have the flexibility or agility to make these Pro level moves the idea being that the elements that we're talking about in these tour swings are just physically Out Of Reach for most normal golfers so on that note we put together a quick little Mobility test to see if you have the physical ability to make a pro level shallowing move in your swing you can test yourself in golf posture or in standing posture do whichever one is easiest for you put your Trail arm and Club at the top of the swing like you see here the first thing we're going to test is your ability to abduct your arm at a tour level now fair warning this will be the most difficult test to pass see if you can move your arm inward 10 degrees like you're seeing here for reference that's less than two minutes on a clock fix Ed up is the internal rotation test see if you can internally rotate your arm five degrees like this now if you want to see what it's like at impact take it all the way to 38 degrees but for shallowing 5 is all you need for screening number three we're going to test you for tour level elbow Bend start with your elbow bent 90 degrees now take a big deep breath slowly exhale and unbend your arm 10 degrees like you're seeing here so that's three down two more to go next is the forearm supination test we only need 20 degrees here and 20 degrees looks like this and finally we've saved the biggest move for last start with your arm raise like you're seeing here without bending forward or squatting down lower your arm 20 to 25 degrees like this that's it if you passed all these tests you possess the physical ability mobility and dexterity to shallow the club like a major champion this answers the can you do it question now let's dive into how to do it if you have trouble shallowing the shaft or you're trying to make shallowing the shaft much easier we recommend starting here put your Trail arm in the same position you see Jerry hear it this will give you a really nice and neutral top of the backswing position to start from make sure your elbow doesn't stray too far away from your side let your Club is close to horizontal and that your elbow Bend is right around 90 degrees the key move from here is to lower your arm as you straighten it this should look like what Jerry is doing the biggest difference we see in Pros versus Ams for shallowing and we're only talking about the window from the top of the Swing to left arm parallel as Pros lower their Trail arms twice as much as Amps do and that tiny window of time Pros are anything but passive with their arms so get that arm moving down your arms should fall pretty much right back in front of you like you see here look to have your Club nearly level with the ground or basically just copy what you see Jerry here doing own this movement there's nothing complex or complicated about it so you shouldn't have any excuses for not being able to move your arm at an expert level from this position and stick with it until you can own it and you can Master it because if you can't do it here it's not suddenly going to appear in the golf swing once you can't mess it up in the standing posture put yourself in golf posture at the top of your backswing like you see Blake here do now you're first going to do this without any body movements to get the same feel you had when standing what Blake did in his first few attempts is what you want to try to avoid he lowered his arm but he did it while taking his hands out towards the ball he was doing this without realizing it I mean after all that's what he had been practicing the past couple of years trying to do but that's the body's job to bring the hands around we just want to focus on the arm right now and if we put him back in his standing posture this is what the hands out move would look like if you see yourself doing this just stand up start over once you get the hang of it it should start to look like this now because your body's tilted forward lowering the club like you were when you were standing is going to feel quite a bit different at first but that's a good sign what you got to understand is you're going to be penalized for turning your body when your arms are working poorly but training your arms to move correctly you're actually creating a necessity to turn your body better and that's the next step start blending the body with the arm motion once you get the hang of it and once you add back in your left arm you should start to see it look a lot like this and this is the origin of our blender drill which we did in our off season practice video follow these steps with the goal being to make the right movements before trying to make them fast you'll have the right amount of all those separate arm movements without having to think about each one we've never had to tell a player to internally rotate their shoulder in the downswing that's something that happens naturally as you lower your arm but we have had to show a lot of golfers while trying to go external isn't the magic move they're searching for it's like everything else in the downswing you're just reversing what you did in the backswing I know we've thrown a lot at you in this video but shallowing gives a lot of golfers trouble we want to be as thorough as possible remember the club is the shallowest at the top of the Swing so all you have to do is get used to lowering that shallow as you start down there's just really no reason or benefit of trying to add more shallow on top of that it's not something we see the best players in the world do probably not a good idea for you to do either when you practice make sure to record yourself doing it it's a great way to to confirm that you're doing what it is you actually think you're doing a good local Pro can help you with this as well if you'd like to work with Sean and myself directly the easiest way to do that is online through our AMG plus membership and form we'll put a link in the description below if you're interested in hearing more about that and like always if you need any clarification from something you've heard in the video or just have a general golf question you'd like answered make sure to use the comments section below let us know what that is and while you're at it make sure to hit those like And subscribe buttons to help the channel out a bunch I hope this video helps and we really appreciate you taking the time to watch