Hi, Robin here. I want to talk about connection and some of the mistakes I see players make
when they are the driving range. The drill I see a lot is where players take a towel and they
trap the towel underneath their arms and top of their chest. They think by doing this,
they're creating connection, arms to the body. But actually, you're having a reverse effect
which i will explain in a moment They're using their arms to push the towel under the
chest and keeping it there throughout the swing.
But when you place your arms at the top of your chest, perhaps you can see that it's
actually pulling my shoulders forward and creating more disconnection here between my
triceps and my lats, not using the muscles in the back of my shoulders. When I took the
towel away, it's a little hard to see with my t-shirt on, but perhaps you can visualize
that my shoulders are forward. That's creating more disconnection here, more chance for disconnection
throughout the swing where my arm will roll off of my body, creating swing plain issues
etc. If you want to - just pick the towel up again
- if you want to still use the towel, a better exercise would be to place the towel behind
your body. Why? Connection should be created more on the side of your chest, not the top
of your chest. Your arms should be placed on the side of your chest. With that connection
you can see my shoulders are back, good connection between triceps and my lats. I'm using the
muscles in the back of my shoulder blades to pull my shoulders back to keep that connection
throughout the swing. So, if I use the same towel, I'm actually
trying to trap that more between my lats and my biceps. And behind, I'm getting a lot better
sense of that connection in the correct place, where it was on the side of the chest, maintaining
that connection throughout the swing. Another good drill would be perhaps take an
object about shoulder width, rotate your palms so that they're facing forward. That opens
your chest up and pulls your shoulders back, placing your arms on the side of your chest
and again, simply make rotations, feeling the muscles in the back of your shoulders,
keeping your arms on the side of your chest throughout the swing.
When you've got that connection, triceps to lats using the muscles in the back of your
shoulders, it will create a lot more stable club face throughout the swing. It will encourage
a good swing plane on the backswing. It will encourage the club face to remain passive
when you get arms forward, shoulders forward, it creates a lot of rotation. Backswing affecting
the swing plane, follow through, difficult to be consistent with the club face.
I hope that's helped your understanding of connection, and also given you a couple of
good drills, drills that you can work on on the driving range to really make a difference
to it rather than having a misunderstanding, spending many hours working on the wrong thing.