Holy Cow Lopez...You Gave Me Too Many Drills!

I hear this comment often and it concerns me as well so I wanted to clarify my reasoning for the drills. When doing weight lifting you don't just do curls. You might work the same muscle group from several different angles. I could assign a student four to six different drills which all relate to the same problem. Here's an example.

Let's assign a given golfer these drills:

• Stick Drill - Feel the proper path slightly exaggerated
• Short Impact Zone Punch Shots - Good for clean ball contact and getting the forearms over.
• Lift Over Head - Great drill for golfers who "swing over the top"
• 2 O'clock Drill - Great drill to get your arms started first
• Turn & Tilt Drill - You'll look and swing like a pro once you dominate this drill

There you go Lopez. Too many drills and now I'm confused!

Here's the problem at hand. The student turns his shoulders "first" on the down swing. The shoulder need to "TILT" so the golf club comes down in the slot with the impression that it is traveling on an outside swing path, Adding to that t,he golfer also takes the golf club back low and inside the swing plane.

The stick drill will help the golfer start to feel the "lifting" needed to get the golf club "up" and on plane. That will help the low and inside back swing path. In fact this drill will exaggerate the lifting because in most cases you need to over do a movement to change it because you will fall back a bit once you try and hit a ball. Old habits die hard!

Now once the golfer begins to attempt to swing outside the stick on the back swing and then inside the stick on the down swing they will most likely NOT rotate their forearms to square up the golf club face. You MUST work on the path AND the golf club face at the same time.

The lift the golf club over your head drill will help in "slowing down" the shoulder turn which is the key to repairing the swing path. The outside the stick drill does somewhat the same function with the feedback of the stick which provides feedback telling you you're not completing the drill properly.

The 2 O'clock drill will also help slow down the shoulders or chest turn and the "turn and tilt" drill will help one feel the tilt of the body on the downswing which allows you to get outside the stick.

All these drills attack the same issue. The key is to perform the drills "SLOWLY" and "Deliberately" as well as often. I always say, "do the drills for five minutes every time nobody's looking!" It is the repitition that will help you "reprogram" your faulty swing movement.

Hope this helps and if you have a problem with "swinging outside in" or "over the top" your drills are above. Get to work!