Hey everybody, in this video I want to talk to you a little bit about how to use the ground. We
hear this a lot now in youtube instruction. I saw one of the Molinari brothers
working on you know just heavy sitting and jumping off the ground in one of the tournaments last year,
and you know it's become a popular thing you know for power. It's always been around and
we look at players like a Nicklaus, the way they use the ground, Ben Hogan and so on, but we we see
it in many other sports as well. But to talk a little bit about the forces in using the ground,
there are basically three of them. As you could expect, from the top of a golf swing we've always
heard the term weight shift. It's not a great term, but what we'd kind of expect is a linear movement
of weight over to the left side in kind of a simple way. Some of you will be yelling at me,
hey you can't use the term weight shift, but I want to use language people understand. So you know you
see your center in martial arts, we'll call it your one point, it can be center of gravity, you
can talk about it however you want, but we tend to see a player like maybe even a Ben Hogan
looking back in the past as they would move to the top, you would see this re-centering motion.
Literally they'll get their center of mass on the left side of the golf ball and begin to rotate,
come up and then almost move backwards actually as they're striking the shot. But that'd be your ...
Linear force would be that motion. you know we're into the right leg, trail leg for right-handed
swings here, then we're left. Most people have that one and maybe only that one.
I do see people that get it backwards. They'll lean this way and then fall away. We call it a reverse
pivot, but traditionally I would say where a lot of decent players will screw this up is they'll
load hard to the right and a big hard linear move up to the left and they'll see this front hip
climb, post up on the front leg and they're pretty sure they're clearing a lot because they feel the front
knee snap back, but in reality there's been almost no rotation and it's just pure linear with some
upward at the end, which is one of our other forces. There's the vertical force out of the ground, but
torque or rotation is the other one and really the tour players are great at blending the three.
And what you would see coming into the motion is typically the, the sequence will be kind of a
pressure left, or targetward, linear to the right, then torque and rotation coming
in. Ah typically there's a little bit of body lift maybe in that motion, then we're back down, linear,
torque and vertical and you can see that in a Rory McIlroy, you can see it in a Matt Wolff.
You can look around and see it in a whole lot of players, but
how do you begin to, to kind of work on that. I've got a funny kind of little
almost joking way i want you to begin to think about working on this. i want you to picture Miguel
Angel Jimenez. If you don't even know who that is or can't picture him, Google it, it'll come up right
away. If you've ever watched him warm up, he does a couple of things. He'll hands on the knees and he
starts to do these knee circles, and everybody loves you know kind of comically watching him
loosen up and warm up, but what he's doing is great and it's mimicking the action that we need in the
golf swing. If I go back to this ... he does it I think with his feet completely together. I'm going
to do it with kind of a medium narrow-ish width stance here. But if you could picture, I'm in the
top of a backswing now. The knee action, the ground work, the footwork I want here is I want to move my ...
because i personally i feel this kind of in my knees this is where i do the best. i'm going to
feel my knees move down, now i can kind of i'm engaging a sensation of being in the ground.
then the knees are around so i'm going to get some down when the knees work around it actually
moves my center that way a little bit so i get a little bit of linear now i'm getting rotation in
the torque and then i'm back up again so i get it all down around up and you kind of just make these
now he doesn't really finish it with this vertical push but i want to use like a version of him to
kind of mimic what you'd want to feel in the golf swing if i turn to the side kind of i'll
kind of fake being in this golf back swing you'll see kind of some tilt in the hips and the knees
i'm going to move them back down until the right knee is matching the left
down around and then up and a really good one to watch is the footwork and leg work of a matt wolfe
you'll see it around and pop right back up and the whole time i'm doing this i'm trying to stay
in posture which brings me to the other thing you'll see in his warm-up he'll do a lot of it
with his hands on the golf club and what that can be used to do in my way of thinking is to help you
lock you into your posture because what you don't want to do is move your knees down and lean back
if i go down and back and stand up and lose my posture then i've wasted all this this benefit of
this kind of knee work i must keep my spine angle out and kind of keep my forehead out over the golf
ball so by going with the arms out on the club and kind of trying to lock in this position i can be
in that down around look i can hear some of you laughing out there in your living rooms right now
knees down around and then push up and i almost feel like i'm pushing my belt buckle away from
you know i probably should just come back over here over the ball
but even if i just leave the club on the ground and kind of picture that look down around up
you can see the legs are up like you see a lot of these great players now belt buckle's moving
away from the ball, butt's back, i'm in posture and i've got tons of room to work my arm swing down
the line in this postured rotation but i just wanted to give you i mean you know this isn't a
million ideas about how to use the ground but i wanted you to understand there's the three elements
there's the linear there's the torque or rotation and then there's the vertical
and you want to be able to explore them but one of the fastest ways you can begin to feel all of them
is with the miguel angel knee circle deal if i kind of do it one more time
here with golf club in hand facing a ball i'll wind into the top of the swing
we'll see the right knee come down as that knee naturally comes down it tends to push my center
over this way this knee begins to flare out some guys talk about rolling from big toe to pinky toe
Nicklaus was an ankle roller but you can feel that sensation down around and then i'm at p6 here
club off my right side then we'll begin to see the push-up and the movement through the
shot so anyway try uh you know his nickname is the mechanic also known as the most interesting
uh man in golf or "most interesting man in the world" little play on that that joke but Miguel
Angel Jimenez knees down around and up might help you feel your ground forces a little bit
better in your golf swing. Be sure to like the channel or rather like the video, subscribe all
that good stuff helps uh improve our popularity on youtube kind of let the world know we're back
on there. And if you need help with your own golf swing, you can go to hermanwilliamsgolf.com
there's links there to get online videos or come to see me in person for a private lesson