Nathalie Sheehan Shares Drills to Improve Your Golf-Swing

A rising star in the Golf Instruction industry, Nathalie Sheehan has an easy way of explaining and teaching golf-swing and game improvement concepts. Based at The Pelican Club in Tampa, Florida, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, and hosts a Game Improvement show on The Golf Channel.

@nattiegolf joins #OntheMark to discuss the importance of effective drills in learning and improving golf swings. She demonstrates and explains the following drills and how they work:

The Waist to Waist Drill – to control clubhead speed
The Wrist Hinge and Re-hinge Drill – to release the golf club and hit square shots
The Slo-Mo Wedge Play Drill – to improve Wedge play and distance control
The Better Backswing Drill – to improve the alignment and pivot of the backswing, and
The Ball Between the Feet Drill – to stabilize and power up the golf swing.
Nathalie helps you to become your own coach and straighten your shots with the help of these simple drills.

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[Music] Right. This is a major coup tribe around the world. We have Natalie Sheen joining us. And Natalie, I mean, you are everyone. You’re like the content queen right now everywhere. You’re the content queen right now. And I’m thrilled that you would join us. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to chatting. Well, look, I always look forward to chatting uh with people that make golf look as easy as you do. And when I whether I see you on Golf Pass or YouTube or Instagram or wherever it is, when you swing a golf club, it looks like you fell out of heaven doing it. Tell me, we want to know. Is the golf swing as easy as you make it look? No, of course not. And when people say that to me, I just laugh. Oh, you have such a naturally beautiful golf swing. And I think to myself, yeah, natural my you know what, because I spent thousands of hours my entire life from the time I was three years old working on hitting a golf ball and it’s still hard sometimes. Um, and you know, I think that’s one of the things that I love so much about golf is that it’s just this thing we are forever chasing after. It doesn’t matter how great you get at the game, you can always be better. You can always be improving at some aspect of your game. And um I think for newer players sometimes that’s a little bit challenging to accept mentally that especially if they’ve been successful in other areas of their life that you’re going to fail over and over and over again and you’re going to have days where you play great and then the next day you can’t find the club face and you don’t know what’s happening and everything feels terrible. And that’s just golf. we’re just kind of forever chasing after uh that great shot or getting just that little bit better wherever we’re at. Two things spring to mind. The first off, Karen Stupppel, she’s a dear friend, Open Champion, has been on the show and she described golf when I asked her about it because she had said this almost on the air one time and she caught herself. She was like, “Golf is a bitch.” So, I had to get that out because it was in my head as you were describing the reality of it. But then I want to ask you this too because you’re becoming like a role model I would call for many you know aspirant golfers no matter their their age or their skill station. But to the age thing you played college golf you’ve now one of the leading teachers in the game rising star. Um is it it’s it’s never too late to embark on this game and game improvement. Yes absolutely not. I I encourage people to even if you’ve been playing for a long time and you’ve just never really taken a lesson, I think it’s very enjoyable to have something to work on. And I a lot of people who are adults that come to me who are not huge lesson takers um either they’re members of the club that I’m at or you know they’ve discovered me online somehow they come for a lesson and it’s very eye opening I think to a lot of them because people who again whether you’ve been playing the game or not people have preconceived notions about what they should be trying to do and they’re not always correct and so I think it can be very helpful if you just know some simple things that you should be trying to do and can kind of have a deeper understanding of your own game and your own swing and your own tendencies. It doesn’t take, you know, you don’t have to take a lesson every single week. Just a little bit here and there can be very helpful. Uh regardless of your age or skill level. Yeah. Amen, sister. Uh I’ll tell you what I know for certain is that information is cool if you understand it. Yeah. Um you got to know how to apply it, which is the point that you’re making. And then there’s that sort of delicate balance where you take in the information you get, which is sexy at times, and then you’re trying to make it your own. And I know that feels are kind of how you good golfers do it. So, I’m excited to dive into the whole, you know, drill thing because I love good drills and you’ve got a selection of them online if people want to go and look. Have you always been this way inclined as a teacher to go to drills? You know, I think it’s something I’ve developed over time and I was very lucky to work with some great teachers growing up. I took lessons from Martin Hall once I was a little bit older. Um, and just got to spend time with some some cool teachers, especially as they got into the teaching world. But when I was younger and I was really working on my own game, I would feel sometimes like I would leave a lesson and oh, I was hitting it great when I was with the instructor and I would not really know how to work on it on my own. Um, and so I started to vocalize that as I got older and sort of say, okay, like what is my homework? What should I be doing when I leave because I really wanted to get better. Um, but that’s something that I internalized and sort of reflected on as I became a coach was I wanted people that I was helping with their games to leave feeling like they really knew what they should be doing when they were on their own, not that I was placing them in positions and then when they left me, they sort of felt like, okay, I don’t really know how to practice this or repeat this on my own. Yeah, that’s what I love about your drills, too. It’s like me in golf training aids. Um, because it’s one thing to have some training aid you can’t hit a ball, and it’s one thing to do a drill, but you know, when it’s static and there’s no real movement and there’s got no golf ball being struck, you know, it’s it’s all good. You’re going to learn something, but there’s always that anticip anticipation of the ball strike that’s involved. And you do a great job of of sort of killing two birds with one stone, if you will. Well, thank you. Yeah, and that’s something I was just uh I Charles Howell is a member at our club here at Pelican and he’s he spent some time here with his son and uh he is such a golf nerd if I’m sure you know him some. Uh so one of the things he talks about a lot is the importance of actually hitting a golf ball when you’re working on your swing. Even if you know you’re working on something in your full swing, even if you’re just chipping the ball 10 yards and you’re really going incredibly slow, when you are working on something in your swing, you better be hitting a golf ball. Okay, now I’m going to take a step away from that very smart observation you made and something that I made and I’m going to go away from not hitting a ball because you’ve given me some cool ideas here for drills. Yes. But what I want is you did something that I’m like that is so cool for a feel and it was a where you just dangled the driver basically from your chest and you moved back and forth like the driver was acting like a pendulum and I’m like you know timing and tempo is one of those things in the golf swing which everyone talks about but no one can really teach and you it was a beautiful illustration of how to do it. So before we get into your drills, please show that, please describe it because I feel like any golfer at any stage of the game is going to benefit from it. Absolutely. So um that was something I saw. You know, I discover I watch a lot of other coaches. I spend a lot of time with other coaches and to me I’m not necessarily learning other information. I’m learning how to communicate things better. Um, and this was something I saw a long drive guy do and I thought it was a really cool illustration and he was using it to really talk about gaining club head speed, but I think like to your point, this is very helpful for tempo uh, more so for most golfers. So, you take the club and you just kind of set it on your chest like this. And if you turn back and you change direction too quickly, you’ll see you can’t really transfer much of that speed into the club head and you will have a challenging time probably making consistent ground contact. So the key was kind of turning back and feeling like you kind of give it some time so that you can swing back and through and make the club swing like a pendulum. You can even kind of pick your feet up and tap your feet up and down or your heels up and down a little bit to make that happen. But it’s a really nice way for you to just figure out how to be maybe a little bit more athletic and have some really nice tempo in that swing. Okay, for the folks who are listening on audio, go to YouTube so you can see Natalie demonstrating this. And there a couple things that spring to mind because it’s multi-purpose this. First off, I I feel like we’re in trouble in golf instruction because if I hear certain catchphrases, it’s like uh rotate, rotate, rotate, rotate. And I’m imagining club golfers hitting the ball off to their weak side like every single time. But when you do that drill, I can see you moving back and forth, side to side, and rotating at the same time. So the two amounts are sort of commensurate, and it’s not like there’s too much lateral or there’s too much rotation. It’s sort of just working the whole thing as it should be. Yeah. It’s just more of using your natural athleticism, which I love to help players do. It’s so easy with the amount of information that’s out there now to be very mechanical and be trying to play in different positions and things. It’s just so hard to play golf like that. So, um I like that drill for that reason. Yeah, certainly. And then one more thing, um I’m an old-timer. I’m 54 and fabulous and hanging on. Um and I’ve been teaching golf since like 1995. Um, but I’m a voracious reader and one of my favorite books is a book called Swing the Club Head by Ernest Jones and that talks a lot about how the hands and the club interact and how the hands respond to the body and vice versa where you are basically swinging the club head or understanding how the body would work as the axis or the axle to this whole movement. Because if your body’s going in the wrong direction to your swing, I don’t care how good your hands are, you’re going to be pretty inconsistent. Yeah. I And I would say as a caveat to that drill I was just showing you, I tend to be more of a hands, arms, club, face person when I’m teaching, right? Uh, and not so much of a body. I mean, unless somebody is a really elite player and they’re working on something very specific or, you know, they’re just trying to gain a little more speed, it’s pretty rare that I’m actually making somebody do something differently with their body. I’m usually trying to get them to do something hands, arms, club differently and that gets the body working better. But yeah, you’re preaching to the choir here. So, I’m very excited. Okay, let’s get into your drills. Um, yes. And this is very hands what you’re talking about here. And for the folks who are listening to this going, I’m going to switch off. No, I got to rotate my body. Trust me, your body is a genius. It’s going to react how to how your hands and arms move. Yes, agreed. If you don’t want proof, don’t try and pick up something. Your brain directs you to pick it up and your body will follow your hands. Okay. To that, you have a very cool exercise or drill called the waist to waste and this is to control speed, but I feel like it’s to try and it’s also to set the club head in proper motion around one. So, please uh Illustrate, demonstrate, describe. Yeah, I just want to make sure. Can you see me? Okay, if I’m standing up here. Yeah, I got you very well. Perfect. Okay, perfect. So, this is a fun drill. Jim Mlan talks about this and, you know, he describes swinging underneath two tree branches that are just about, you know, waist high. And you can use this drill to really change some different things in your swing. So, if you are struggling with a slice or a hook, you can manipulate the club face a little bit in this drill as well. But if you are a newer golfer or you just generally struggle with hitting the ground consistently in the same spot, this is what we’re going to do. So, you’re going to get set up and you’re going to pretend like there’s tree branches just above your waist here. And we’re going to swing from waist to waist or underneath those tree branches. And the cue that I like to use is that we have long arms when we do this. So, a common misconception I think a lot of golfers have or a thought that they have that I don’t think works well is we want to keep our arms so straight, right? And that’s not necessarily what we should be trying to do. And I sometimes say that does more harm than good. But keeping those arms long and keeping your chest rotating with your hands back and through here keeps that arc nice and wide and it makes it very easy to hit the ground in the same spot pretty consistently. You can hit some shots like that as well. If you are struggling with, let’s say you slice it when you come through the golf ball, you’re probably swinging across it a little bit, but the club face is going to be looking at the sky to some extent probably if you slice the ball. So, in doing this drill, we’re making it a little bit smaller. I would want you to focus on getting the toe of the club a little bit more up in the air after you hit. And you should be hitting these shots a little bit more slowly to start with. Really exaggerate. It’s so hard to slow down. Uh Mark, I’m sure you’ve experienced that on the lesson T. I tell someone to go slow and they’re really not going slowly even though they feel like they are. So, you know, there’s there’s some great things about this drill, but I think generally this just can be very helpful for all golfers to make consistent ground contact, but you can certainly work on the club face as well here. Okay, you were for the folks listening um what Nat was doing was she was swinging with long arms, big wide arc. Essentially, if the club head was a broomstick, it’s like a sweep in the ground going from side to side. Um and very importantly, there’s some squaring of the face because again, we in the era golf where I hear this and it makes me nauseious where they’re like, “Oh, we’ve got to reduce the rate of closure through contact of the face.” So, I see golfers around the world just pointing this face off to the weak side every single time and then they’re hitting the ball weaker and more to the to to their weak side where you are actually allowing the toe to rotate over. Yeah. Which I mean almost every great ball striker does this. Yeah. Yeah. You preach it. We’ll demonstrate one or two for the folks to see because I feel like the length of this and the speed of this is very important because it’ll be so easy to get frisky and speed up too much. Yeah. And so what I see a lot it will look like this. So this is incorrect where someone I say okay go slow and they go like this and it’s so fast right? It’s like okay I have an eight iron in my hand here. I am trying to maybe hit this 20 or 30 yards. It’s going to go really short if I’m doing this properly. And you can just make really nice contact there where we’re hitting the ground in the right place. You can again adjust that club face. So if you are slicing it, make sure that toe of the club is up in the air after the ball. So if try turning this way a little bit, you can see the toe of the club’s up in the air. If you hook the ball, try and feel like that club face is a lot a little more to the sky or your right palm’s a little more to the sky on your follow through. So we don’t have as much uh of a closed club face, but most golfers struggle with slicing it. Yeah. So helpful. Um, the slow motion is critical because you can feel the timing, but also you can sort of start to see where the ball’s tending to want to go and then you got the time to, you know, manipulate on the face to get the right result. And I think that’s something Sorry. Go ahead. Yes. No, I wanted to ask you this cuz I’m putting myself in my shoes as I watch you do that. And I’m like, that’s cool. If I was doing this, I would probably be feeling this. And one of the things was the club head would feel quite heavy. Is that what you’re feeling when you’re swinging like this? Absolutely. So, it’s, you know, not I, like we were saying, I’m not having stiff arms because sometimes that can make the club head feel a little bit lighter, but you want to feel the weight of the club head swinging. So, my arms are a little bit looser even though they’re staying long. And you can really feel the club head moving around you. This is almost perfect because the pendulum thing you showed, this is like the pendulum thing with your arms attached to the club and you’re responding to it because it’s not like like the real jerky one you showed at the start where the body was changing direction well before the club was finished going back where now it’s like I’m watching the body respond to the swing but the body actually leading the swing in a strange way. So, it’s very cool. Yes. And I think the important thing you started to mention there is for players to I’m a big proponent of players being their own coach to some extent. Right? So as I’m hitting these shots, if I’m an you know an amateur or somebody that’s a higher handicapper working on our game, right? If I’m noticing that I’m slicing these shots, I need to make an adjustment. So if I’m hitting these shots and they’re curving to the right too much, okay, I’m going to fix my club face. And you don’t have to have a deep understanding of all of the biomechanics of the golf swing by any means, but having some idea of what makes the ball do what it does is going to make golf far less stressful for you. Um, and then you can do something like this drill, something small, very easy to do that’s going to help you self-correct. Sensational. All right, we’re off to a great start. Now, I’m I am the teacher in me is torn because I’m watching this and then I’m thinking of your ball between the feet drill. Um, but I’m not going to go there because we’re going to go, you know, club head, hands, arms, and such. So, you also have you also have an exercise where it’s just learning to use the wrist correctly. Again, if you switch on the internet, it’s like you would swear all people do is like turn and use ground reaction forces. Am I wrong? But but but the wrists are like the GP. They’re like the tip of your spear. They’re the GPS of the golf swing. So, so teach us, please. That’s so true. um you’re making me laugh with all of these things that we see online, but um so you know, I teach as a female instructor. I teach men and women, but I do teach a lot of new female golfers. And one of the things I see a lot, for some reason, I’ve not figured out the answer to this, so please share with me if you do know, but for some reason, a lot of new female golfers, and I know how to fix this, but they take the club back, and it looks like this. So, they shut the face a lot. they’ll bow their left wrist a ton and it might be a strength thing. But to me, what I figured out in fixing that is just hinging those wrists properly can have a huge uh effect on getting that club in a better position at the top. But you can see if I show you from the front there, it’s like this very narrow sort of lifting the club with no turn and no wrist hinge and the face gets really shut and then we’re, you know, super narrow up here. Very hard to hit a good shot from there. So, um, I’ve seen I’ve seen men look like that too, just for the record. Yeah. Yes, for sure. I would say not as many. For some reason, it is a I would say predominantly female thing, but you know, that’s neither here nor there. But I would say the one thing that I show a lot of women is first of all, when you get set up, we don’t want to look like this. As you can see, my arms are very, very straight and I almost have my wrists turned downward or my thumbs turned toward the ground. If I set up this way, it will be almost impossible for me to hinge my wrist. So, my arms are almost hyperextended. Um, I actually had someone who was doing this set up earlier today and we’re working on this. So, you want to really feel like you relax your arms and wrists down a little bit at setup first of all, so that you can utilize that wrist hinge. So, that’s a very important starting point. Um, and then making sure that as you start swinging, you sort of feel like this is what happens as you turn back. So, I’m just hinging the club up to sort of parallel to the ground here. And there’s a couple of great drills that you can use to do this in hip balls. But you’re just feeling like this happens as you turn. And if you do that, you can get the club into a really nice spot and get a more square club face at the top. Okay, for the audio listener, what Natalie was doing was she was addressing the golf ball, arms relaxed, um, not straight arms, not raising the handle, handle sort of hanging down, arms hanging down. Then she was essentially just tapping the ground like she was hammering a nail into the ground, you know, to train the wrist, the movement. And here’s my response to your observation about why people get to that position. I think first off, and I’m going to blame our industry that or just the belief of what golf’s got to do is like, well, you got to make a fullsize back swing to hit the ball far where if they just do your first drill, they can hit the ball farther than they expect where the club’s swinging wide as opposed to up and down. And then secondly, you know, someone’s going to say, “Well, you got to turn.” So the people turn and then the club’s all heavy and they can’t get it to into the air. So they just start lifting their arms as opposed to hinging the wrists. But what you’re showing us over here is like here I’m hinging and as I turn a little bit and swing there’s that hinging motion that sets the club head up above the handle and we know that what goes up must come down. What goes kind of behind us is not going to naturally come down in the right place. That’s right. That’s right. So yeah, absolutely. And a couple little things you can do. You can hit balls. It just depends on the player uh in my opinion which way we would do this. You can set up and you can hinge the club this way, turn back and hit from there. You can hinge the club kind of along your toe line here and swing back and hit. But just to get used to that feeling of utilizing those wrists and you will have more club head speed if you use your wrists properly. Amen. Um I got to share this as Natalie was doing a hinge drill. She’d either hinge the club in front of her vertically sort of toward her nose without lifting her hands or then she did it where to the side where the club shaft was parallel with the target line. That is a Nick Feloism. And to this day that guy still does it. I know this for a fact. I would say that’s another thing to point out to most amateur golfers. You’ve witnessed this. Great players work on stuff for a really long time. It takes a long time to change things in your swing. and and or they go back to the things that work. So, they have a couple of fields or drills that generally work well for them. Uh I love to talk about Alex Noran as an example of that and uh I’m sure we can if if you’re a golf nerd like we are, you can picture that drill that he’s been working on for 10 years on the driving range, right? Uh but I think sometimes as people who are taking lessons don’t have a whole lot of patience and you know you should see some improvement certainly quickly in terms of when we’re working on a lesson te and see some change but for stuff to stick it takes a long time. That’s a really good point. I’d love you to elaborate just for a minute or two where practice for folks is go to the range, bang a few balls, and then okay, Natalie or Mark gave me a lesson and I’ll maybe just do that practice swing once and then I just go ahead and swing like a banshee. Where the Alex Narin for argument sakes does two or three of those rehearsals before he hits one ball. That’s the difference between the elite and the not so elite. That’s so true. Um, you know, I one of the one of the little tricks that I like to use, and this is kind of for junior golfers is where I started with this, but now that adults, I think, have the same issue. What I’ll do is I’ll count out three or five balls, and I’ll make little piles for people, and I’ll tell them how to practice this way. So, you’re going to do three or five balls with your drill, and either that’s doing the intentional drill. Maybe it’s your hinging your wrist and we’re hitting those balls at not full speed or we’re just being very intentional. And then the next three to five balls we’re going to hit at a target and hit them more normally. Maybe doing our rehearsal swing or our dress rehearsal swing behind the golf ball and then stepping in and hitting those and going back and forth between doing those things. It just gives you a little bit more focus when you’re practicing. What are you saying? Quality over quantity, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve I’ve heard people I’m sure you have, oh yes, now I just going to need to hit a thousand balls to get this. I know. No, just do right, please. I think that came from that whole, you know, what was it? 10,000 hours of practice. And um what was that book? Uh no. Well, while you think about it, I’m going to share this. Your one of your mentors, Martin Hall. I can hear him right now. If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Oh my goodness. Yes, he has he has a lot of Martinisms. Uh but it’s so but it’s true. You know, so many people I was I posted something about this recently. It really cracks me up when people people pay me for a golf lesson and they’ll come and I tell them, “Hey, this is what the this is the road map. This is where we’re going to go.” And they will hit one shot or two shots doing a drill. And they say, “Let me just do it how I normally do it.” And I’m like, “What about what about with a But Natalie, what about with a drivers at the same time?” Yes. Oh, it just cracks me up. And I think to myself, okay, it’s going to take more than two golf balls for you to hit a good shot. And sometimes when you’re doing a drill, you you have to be okay with hitting bad shots uh as you’re working on your game. And I think that’s something a lot of people really struggle with is, you know, they they’re seeking out hitting a good shot, of course. And we’re trying to help them do that. But bad shots are on the road to good shots. I want to I want to share this quickly before we go on in a recent podcast here with a guy called Carl Morris who I respect highly. Um he he describes himself as a former tour professional who was spectacularly average and he went about improving his game the wrong way by swinging theory and not playing proper golf. And he talks about people being attention detectives. So when you’re practicing, be like hypervigilant as to what you’re feeling, what you’re doing, and and so you’re present as opposed to saying, “Well, yeah, I got this lesson from Natalie, and it was something about this, but you know, I’m just going to hit some balls anyway.” And so you’re not necessarily attentive or focus driven. You’re just killing time. You’re not getting better, which is, you know, that’s okay if that’s what you want to do. Some people are just using it to blow off steam at the end of the day after work. That’s totally fine. But if you actually want to get better, you need to pay attention when you’re practicing. Everyone wants to get better. Yeah. Okay. With that, let’s go on. I’m going to stop preaching. Um, you talked about wedge play. Now, for me, wedge play is kind of like lowhanging fruits. Everyone wants to hit the driver farther, but if you’re good at shot number three, you’re going to make a lot of lower scores. So, so show us your wedge play drill, please. Yeah. So, this was um you know, I was I was thinking about this because I was teaching a lesson on the on the range outside earlier and there were some other players around and there’s a really good young player uh who just turned pro who practices here, Omar Morales. He just graduated from UCLA. Um and he was talking to another person about wedges. And this is a drill that I love. Um because I think a lot of amateur golfers have a very hard time controlling their speed. And this goes back to what we were talking about with slowing down when we’re doing a drill even. It’s a hard thing to do when we want to hit the ball far generally to be able to then control your speed when you get closer to the green or when you’re doing a drill. So, I’m just going to use my eight iron here. You could use a longer iron if you wanted to. But to just learn what it feels like to go slower and have excellent tempo, I would have you hit some full swings, but the whole swing needs to feel like it’s in slow motion. So, can you take your eight iron and hit it 20 yards? So, if I go really slow, right? Like I’m trying to feel what it feels like to go slow. and don’t have to hit a perfect shot doing that. But I think that’s one of the skills that higher handicappers have a very hard time with around the green is good tempo. And good tempo doesn’t mean, you know, going like I just did in slow motion the whole time, but it’s having some awareness of slow versus fast. Yeah, I can see that with that drill you just showed where you make the entire pass at like a quarter speed and you strike a ball. I can imagine most golfers are landing that golf club in the wrong place probably before the ball because they’ve been compensating for so much. But if they start using the wrists appropriately and getting that club up and down like it should, you can do that and still hit quality shots. Do you agree? Absolutely. I think that is sensational. I I I can’t tell you like way back in the day when Tiger was winning everything, he used to stand on the tea with Hank Haney. This was before Foley and before everyone else. Como Haney used to have him at threewoods full size swing and they’d go about 120 yards. And he just brushed the ball off the tea, never disturbed the tea. It was like back and through just like you were doing and he would do it every single day. So if it’s good for Tiger, it’s got to be good for everyone. Yeah. I would say we could recommend pretty much anything Tiger was doing in his heyday. I mean, even from one of my favorites is he would stand there during interviews and do this with his club, right? Yeah. I just swing back and forth with my swinging it back and forth. Very similar to what we were talking about with the club face. I mean, all these little things that great players do or did can be very helpful. And it’s some of the stuff that’s just overlooked. It doesn’t have to be so complicated all the time. You know, the more I listen to you, Natalie, the more I’m just smiling inside and my soul is happy because everything about you is not positional, but it’s sort of movement. It’s setting this club moving around us and we supporting the thing. Yeah, absolutely. Um, okay. With that, let’s go on. Um, the ball between the feet. Is this is this when your feet are like right next to each other? Like that age-old one because I love it. I use it all the time. Oh, no. You got a big ball between your feet. Okay, cool. Sure. Yes. But similar to, you know, I I try different things from time to time. I find myself messing around and I think that comes from sometimes my time with spent with Martin Hall because he was a, you know, is a training aid fanatic. He’s got like a jungle gym of training aids if you go uh spend time with him. But um I was messing around one day and I was thinking about Yes, I use that drill a lot with newer golfers or just people who are having a hard time with moving around a lot. Put your feet close together so your feet are completely touching. But it’s a little bit hard to simulate that when you go back to your feet apart sometimes. You can flex your leg muscles. I use that cue. But this works really well. So this is a 4B uh medicine ball. You can use any it doesn’t really matter what the weight is, but a bigger medicine ball. And I like it because you can still rotate around it with your feet versus it making, you know, there’s that Aussie board uh that you can squeeze between your feet, but that really keeps your right foot a little bit flatter on the ground the whole time. Um, so this is a really nice way if you have a hard time with the awareness of staying centered or relatively centered when you’re swinging, you can squeeze this ball between your feet and you can make a pretty full motion, but it keeps your head very, very nice and steady. Um, and so I’ve had a lot of success with this with students. It’s been a crowd favorite, uh, at some of my clinics. So, um, I thought this would be a fun one to share since I don’t see this a lot. The, uh, audio listeners, again, go to YouTube so you can see. Um, it’s a big medicine ball. Uh, Natalie has got it between her ankles, basically squeezing on it and creating some pressure down there and then swinging back and forth. And like you talked about your head remaining stable. You know, to me, it’s like the skyscraper that if it doesn’t have a good foundation, it’s going to topple over at the top. So, if you do this correctly down below, you’re using the ground properly and you’re stabilizing your rotation. Absolutely. Yeah. This is one of my one of my favorites and it helps most people hit more solid shots. Okay, show us. Hit one for us. I’d like to see, please. Absolutely. A little awkward to get set up, but flushed. As easy as that. And you’re right. I see where you’re going here with a bowl between the feet. You do you are able to release that right foot because um Bradley Hughes is a buddy. I use down under board a lot. That does let the trail foot come up so you can get all the way through it. Yes. Okay, cool. I got to ask one. Well, there’s there’s one more. The drill for the better back swing. Now, this is not as much hitting and swinging, but to get the club situated at the top as, you know, a large part of setting up success for contact, and you break it down into a few simple moves, and it’s almost like the wrist control and stuff you’ve talked about. This is all just putting it together so you can double check that you’re sort of in the right spot. Is that what you’re aiming for here? Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people are just unsure as to where we should be in space up here, right? And so there’s not one answer of course and I think everybody has different issues in their swing and we’re trying to work one way or the other. So some people might need to be trying to get the club more upright or more laid off. Uh but I think this is a good good thing for most people to practice to just get you in kind of closer to a neutral position at the top with a square club face and a good chest and body turn. So what we are going to do is set up. You’re going to pick the club up and place it on your back shoulder. So, as a right-handed player, that’s my right shoulder. I’m not lifting my chest or extending my spine as I do this. I’m just picking the club up and placing it on my shoulder. So, I sort of bent my arms to do that. I’m going to turn my chest away from the target. And that’s going to be a different amount of turn for everybody because everybody has different amounts of flexibility. But just go ahead and turn. And then you’re going to push your hands out and away from you. And that gets you into that sort of nice L-shaped position here. You can see my wrists have hinged some. That club face is in a really nice spot there. And I’ve made a nice body turn. And we can actually you can hit shots from there as well. You can kind of set yourself and then just gently swing through from there. But I think it’s a nice way for players to figure out on their own where we should be in space at the top of that back swing. It’s amazing doing that how the human form just anatomically arranges itself because when you get that club just resting on sort of the seam of your shirt on your trail shoulder and you turn then you stretch your arms up, you’ve got that club right out in front of you over the top of your shoulder and your your lead arm in the perfect spot every single time. That’s right. And it’s a nice way to just feel so many of the things a lot of us are chasing after in our swing without overthinking it. Right. And so that’s always my goal is just how do we how do we kind of simplify things down into some drills or feels versus, you know, like an airline pilot pressing all the switches before we take off in our golf swing and okay, I’m going to go here and then here and do this with my elbow and my head. It’s just I don’t know how anyone could possibly enjoy playing golf like that. Yeah. Preach, sister. I I want to ask something further along those lines. When you did it, you’re obviously talking to us because you’re talking to your your camera, but when you’re doing it on the range, you’re keeping the eyes trained on the golf ball. You It’s not like you want to follow and look at where your hands are. Yes, correct. I would say that I would do it if I was if I was hitting the ball in front of me. We can hit one here. Set up here. Turn out and go through. You do make it look easy. Well, thank you. So, what what Natalie did there, audio folks, was she did the drill where she just basically lifted her arms up, rested the club on her right shoulder, right-hander, rotated her upper body, stretched the arms away, and then little pump and go. Um, I I I think it’s a cool way, too, because from there, you can’t necessarily go and run away with your body in transition. You got to make sure everything’s sort of timed on the way down as well. Yeah, that’s great. And I that’s another I would say that’s probably the number one misconception which you mentioned earlier. You know there’s so much about our body turn and all these things online and it’s not that the body shouldn’t turn. Of course it’s going to turn and move in our golf swing. But I see so many people or students who come for a lesson and I I always ask people, you know, what are you thinking about or what are you trying to do? Because it’s very important as coaches to understand what that person is is trying to do in their swing because a lot of times it’s not right or they don’t know what they’re trying to do. And I hear so much, well, I’m just trying to clear my hips. I’m trying to open up my body and all these things and they they can’t hit the golf ball. You know, they’re slicing it. you know, they’re they’re swinging 15 degrees left across the ball and and and they’re trying to clear their hips and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s not the way.” Uh, so I I agree with you on that that it it just that drill is a good one for keeping your body maybe a little bit more closed in transition as well without thinking so much about it. I I want to I want to make a comment, let you respond, and I’ll let you get back to your lesson T. You know, if you put a hammer in anyone’s hand and you ask them to hammer a nail into a wall, they’re not going to go through these girrations. They’re going to minimize, not that we want to minimize movement, but they’re going to do what they have to to strike the nail flush each time so they don’t damage the ball. I don’t think people realize the precision of applying the club properly to the ball and if they’re all over the show that you’re just minimizing the chances of striking it squarely. You would agree? Totally. Yes. You going to elaborate? You just was totally is totally the statement. You on board. No, I like that analogy and you know it’s also I would say one that I I actually like the hammer and the nail. I use that some same thing for those slicers and we’re getting up here and we’re trying to clear our hips. Where is the golf club going when we do that? If our first move is here, the golf club has already moved out toward the golf ball too much. And so, you know, just figuring out how to whether it’s naturally with kind of our hands and arms or sometimes we have to really practice that motion of dropping the hands, arms, and club down behind us, hammering the nail behind us a little bit just to make it easier. But if you can get your hands and arms and the club face in the right spot, your body is going to do the right thing. So, um, I I I think that that’s very important to understand. Bravo. You’ve made my day a whole lot better, you know, with the truth that you’ve brought in the re the real is it reality? Truth is one thing, the reality, too, because gosh, there’s a lot of information. Well, like this podcast, but my goal is always to bring understanding, and you’ve done a great job. So, thank you. Thank you so much. I want you to share for the folks uh where they can find more because I’m sure they’re going to be very interested in finding you a little bit more. Yeah. So, um, I post a most of my content on Instagram under the username Natty Golf, N- A T I E Golf. And, uh, I have some stuff on YouTube. You can find me also on Golf Pass and on Golf Channel. I have a show called The Next Shot, uh, which is on Golf Channel pretty regularly now. Shining star, thanks for everything that you do and uh, thanks more importantly for joining us on the show. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me. [Music] [Music]