Sarasota National
Learning Center full swing Videos
A little about these videos before you begin. If you’ve ever chanced to look, there is a plethora of free information and an equal amount of free golf videos on the Internet available to you dedicated to the golf swing. That said, it is easy to get lost in a sea of too much information that is oftentimes conflicting and difficult to understand. What we’ve done here is reduce some of that information down to a few essential videos that focus on the basics.
Though there are a great number of websites that offer valuable information on the golf swing, we’ve found these to be some of the best. Each site provides a number of free You Tube videos with subscriptions, as well as paid for subscription packages available at a reasonable price. Check them out for additional content.
Setup
Getting set up correctly is an essential part of the golf swing. It’s also the easiest to master in that the set up contains no moving parts. Do not underestimate the importance of a proper set up. An improper set up leads to all sorts of issues that are not readily apparent or obvious; issues that require you to compensate in the back and downswing. These videos discuss the set up in detail, covering the grip, posture, and alignment.
Johnathon Kim-Moss is an excellent content provider that keeps things quite simple and is very easy to understand. In this video he describes the grip in detail, the types of grips, and things to watch out for to avoid issues. Check out his website at https://www.jkmgolfacademy.com/ and consider subscribing to his You Tube channel. His beginning series on You Tube is quite good.
TopSpeedGolf.com is another excellent site for golf swing content. Top Swing Golf provides quite a bit of free You Tube content and also offers a $99 yearly subscription package that, as a member myself, is well worth the price. Top Speed Golf features a complete step-by-step package that they call the Top Speed Golf System. It’s quite good and very comprehensive.
Questions often asked by golfers is “how far should I stand from the ball”, “how much should I bend over”, “what does it mean to bend from the waist”, “should my back be ramrod straight”, and “how far apart should my feet be”. In this video Robin Rosado addresses all these things and provides tips on how to get in the proper posture before starting the golf swing.
In this video Clay Ballard from Top Speed Golf discusses alignment and the alignment mistakes that players make at set up that leads to slices and other poor directional results.
The Backswing
The downswing takes only 1/2 second to complete. That leaves very little time to make any adjustments in your golf swing to compensate for improper backswing body movements and club positions. This places significant importance on getting these backswing movements and positions correct. These videos complement the first clinic in our in person clinic series. Taken together they’ll form the foundation for your golf swing and get you set up properly and correctly to start your downswing sequence.
Danny Maude is very easy to understand and keeps things quite simple. He focuses on feeling free and loose in the golf swing. In this video he discusses in detail what he calls the coordinated backswing and how to achieve it.
Consider subscribing to dannymaude.com and check out his other videos there. If you do decide to subscribe, you won’t be inundated with emails and only once and a while you’ll be informed of new content.
Rotate, don’t swing and sway; that is the focus of this video. Most new and even experienced golfers move far too much during the golf swing. This is mainly caused because of poor footwork and poor leg movement. This video goes into depth on how the feet and legs move during the golf swing so that the swing starts from the ground up and not from the top down.
This video by Clay Ballard complements Danny’s videos with an outstanding drill that can be used at home of at the course. The focus of this drill and video is having the club react to your body, not your body reacting to your club; the later being the cause of many swing faults.
The downswing
The downswing sequence starts with something called the transition, that is, the transition from going backwards to going forwards. The transition is oftentimes the most difficult of the golf swing to get right. These videos demonstrate with drills, feels, and how tos the downswing transition sequence necessary to put your body and club in the appropriate position to strike the golf ball properly.
In this video Johnathon Kim-Moss describes the transition in detail, providing things to watch out for to avoid issues.
The last of our favorite websites is from Eric Cogorno at CogornoGolf.com. Eric is quite detailed in all his videos and oftentimes quite technical. Nevertheless, these details are quite good and well explained. He is especially good at providing multiple “feels” when explaining a concept; many times using another instructor to help.
This video compliments the one above from Johnathon Kim-Moss with the key point in both of these videos to transition your weight from your right side to your left side (for right handed golfers; opposite for lefties).
And last in this section, a video by Danny Maude associated with Pete Cowan, the golf coach for Rory McIlroy and various other professional golfers on the PGA tour. This video goes into depth on what the trail arm and shoulder do on the downswing that leads to forward shaft lean and exerting maximum pressure on the ball at the point of impact. Quite an excellent video that complements the previous one in this section by Eric Cogorno!
Impact - The Moment of Truth
If we’ve made the transition properly, your weight should be transferred onto your left side, your hips should be forward, your head back, and your shoulder, knee, and foot in a straight alignment. These videos discuss all that and how to achieve these positions.
We’ll start with Johnathon Kim-Moss describing and discussing the 3 essential things that you need to have to achieve a good impact position.
Next we’ll turn to Eric Cogorno for a description of the shoulder and chest move in the downswing and the secret to rotating these body part correctly again to achieve the proper impact position. This video also complements his downswing video from above.
A description of what Danny Maude calls The Catapult Method is provided in this video. He also demonstrates how to use the impact bag to accelerate the club head during and through impact. Danny also goes further in this video to discuss club release and the follow through. So a rather all encompassing video all-in-all.
Finally, Johnathon Kim-Moss provides a full discussion on “lag”; what it is, why is it important, and how to achieve it.
The Release and the follow through
The release is the continuation of the golf club past impact. It involves the proper movement of the arms, wrists, hands, and body in a coordinated manner resulting in a closing of the club face. After the club is released the arms move well ahead of the body and the body continues to move forward and then back into a well balanced finished. This later part of the golf swing past impact and club head release is commonly called the follow through.
In this video Johnathon Kim-Moss describes wrist and forearm supination and pronation and their importance in squaring the club face to release the golf club properly. He then continues on to explain the follow through and how to complete that part of the golf swing.
Turn the hips for more consistent contact and a better follow through. Oftentimes you see golfers stop their hip turn during their swing. Their lower body stalls out, their arms fly past their body with the end result being the dreaded chicken wing, contact is poor, they inhibit a significant loss of distance, and shot dispersion is prevalent due to the inability to control the club face. In this video Eric Cogorno addresses the hip turn in great detail and provides several drills to enhance your help turn to achieve that well balanced and powerful finish that all good golfers possess.
Johnathon Kim-Moss addresses the proper follow through, along with common follow through faults that he often sees with his students.
Eric Cogorno provides a very detailed and enlightening video on the follow through. He couples this with a series of drills you can do to help you feel the motions necessary to follow through and complete your swing like a pro. A fairly long video, but one well worth watching!
Putting it all together
That completes the golf swing basics. Our last video is that of Rory McIlroy. See if you can follow along and spot all the full swing basics we covered in the previous videos we provided.
Rory McIlroy side and down the line views of his full golf swing. For a step by step analysis of Rory’s golf swing, check out this page.
How to increase distance
Chasing distance is often a major goal of many amateur and professional golfers. Club manufactures continually tout their drivers and clubs as the longest. But what is actually the truth in this regard?
In the early 2000s, the development of harder metal and composite driver heads was starting to obsolete many golf courses; in short, the ball was being hit too far. The USGA and the R&A considered this to be a real issue and set what is called a Coefficient Of Restitution conformance standard for all drivers. The Coefficient of Restitution is the ratio of final velocity to the initial velocity between two objects after their collision. The restitution coefficient is denoted as ‘e’ and is a unit less quantity, and its values range between 0 and 1. The USGA and the R&A set this ratio at .830 and essentially it means that every conforming driver produced after 2008 can only transfer a set amount of energy from the driver head to the ball. So the bottom line here is that no matter what driver you buy today, the energy transferred from the driver head to the ball is going to be exactly the same.
So what does that mean in terms of driving distance. Well essentially that means that if your swing any conforming driver at the same speed and hit the ball in the center of the club face then for every mile of club head speed the ball will “carry” 2.58 yards. A 100 mile per hour club head speed will therefore carry 258 yards.
Given that then what are the driver differentiators? Well, there are lots of them actually, they just aren’t as readily apparent or obvious; and those variables and differentiators are the reasons to get fitted. Some of these variables include shaft weight, shaft flex, how the head is designed to minimize off center hits, club head loft, and club head offset.
So outside of a custom fitting what can I do to hit (carry) the ball further. Well, essentially all you need to do is increase your swing speed (also known as club head speed). And to do that you’ll need to do what long drive champions do to hit their drives over 400 yards. The following video hits on a few of those things.
In this video, Danny Maude discusses and demonstrates a few setup and swing characteristics that will help you improve your carry distance when hitting a driver or any club.
These will certainly help but they are not all encompassing. Not everyone is alike and not everyone is equally as strong and flexible. Start with the advice provided in this video and follow up with professional instruction to determine what else can be done with your individual swing to gain both carry and roll out distance.
What am I doing wrong?
As a golf instructor, when I’m playing with other people, and one of those people hits a poor shot, they sometimes turn to me and ask me this question. Clearly, unless I’m doing a playing lesson, it’s not appropriate for me to stop and provide a detailed explanation. What is certainly better, however, is that when a player hits a poor shot that they themselves should know why. Then, if the problem is a persistent one, in a subsequent lesson or the next time they are on the range, they with an instructor or by themselves can put together a plan to fix whatever issue they are having.
Interestingly, when you hit a poor shot, by just applying a little of your own knowledge that is quite easy to learn and understand, you can know why you hit the shot the way you did, perhaps do something right then and there on the course to fix the issue on your next shot, or start to see what you need to work on in your next lesson or practice session. In this video Danny Maude give you the easy to learn secret to do all this. This is quite a good video and well worth watching if you want to know the secret.
