Ignore This Terrible Advice – It’s Ruining Your Iron Shots

Many golfers are told to “keep your head behind the ball”… but in this lesson, that one piece of advice was causing disaster: scooping, slicing, and even shanks.

In this live session, we threw out the old advice and showed a much better way to strike your irons — with power, precision, and consistency.

Watch to learn:
✅ Why “head behind the ball” is often misunderstood
✅ What to do instead for better strikes
✅ How this simple change transformed his contact and flight

📲 The Chris Ryan Golf Academy App
The all-in-one coaching platform designed to help you train smarter, practice better, and play your best golf! 🎯

✅ Structured training plans
✅ Fun & effective practice games
✅ Exclusive content not on YouTube

Start your 7-day free trial today! ⬇️
🔗 https://www.chrisryangolf.com/chris-ryan-golf-academy-app/

⛳ Want to Play Better Golf?
Join me on the journey to lower scores and more enjoyment on the course! Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE for weekly golf coaching videos.

💬 Got a question? Drop a comment below – I read them all!
📩 Want to work with me? Email: chris@chrisryangolf.com
🌍 Visit My Website: www.chrisryangolf.com

🎥 Want Personal Online Coaching?
If you’re serious about improving, I offer personalised online coaching to help you reach your goals faster.

🔗 https://www.chrisryangolf.com/online-coaching/

🤝 My Trusted Partners
🔥 TaylorMade Golf – https://www.taylormadegolf.eu
🏌️‍♂️ Clubhouse Golf – https://www.clubhousegolf.co.uk
🎯 Hack Motion – https://www.hackmotion.com/chrisryan
📡 FullSwing – https://www.fullswinggolf.com
🎯 PuttOut Golf – https://www.puttout.golf
👟 Adidas Golf
🔧 Mapei – https://www.mapei.com/GB-EN/

00:00 Introduction
00:29 Key Impact Concept
01:41 Ignore This Bad Advice
03:23 One Leg Impact Drill
05:15 Incredible Golf Swing
06:51 Impact Drill

Yesterday I got chance to work with a student and saw probably one of the biggest changes I’ve ever seen in a lesson. His strike instantly improved and he went from a big left right fade to pretty straight if not little draw shots and he was struggling because he was not understanding his one key concept. Once we understood that we completely changed his game. A little bit later in this video also I’m going to share with you one of the most incredible golf swings you’ve ever seen from potentially the next big star in the world of golf. So what is this key concept that the student yesterday was not quite grasping? Well, you can see I’ve got some golf balls set out here. This is the golf ball that I’m hitting. Now, the path of the club, which is the direction the club is traveling in, is never a constant. It’s never moving in straight lines. So, let’s say when I make contact with this golf ball, my club path was pretty straight at my target. Well, watch as I move the club around as it would do in a golf swing. The path of the club is always changing. So when I was if I was going to hit the golf balls over here, my path is more to the left. And if I hit the golf balls here, which is earlier, you can see how the path of my club is more to the right. So as I hit the golf ball from different positions, my path will be changing even though my swing would look the same. And that’s really, really important to understand because when we looked at his golf swing, it revealed one huge flaw that he was making. He had been told in the past that he had to keep his head behind the golf ball. Now, we’re going to come later to the golf I mentioned and that’s going to kind of highlight some things. But why was this causing him an issue? Well, when he took his setup, I’ve got an eight iron. We actually had him hitting seven iron. His setup was great. His ball position was exactly where it needed to be, just for the center. His body looked in great position. He had a little bit of weight forward. His hands were slightly forward. I looked at his setup and it was perfect. But what he did in the back swing is he drifted a little bit away from the target, not a huge amount, but then he was leaving all of his weight on his back foot. So when he got back to impact, his hips and his head were back behind where they were at setup because he’d been told he had to keep his head behind the golf ball. Now, what that does is it changes ball position. Not statically, the ball was still in the same place, but think about it relative to you, the golfer. You take a setup around the golf ball and this golf ball is let’s say for argument sake right in the middle of me. Now what we’ve just said is that’s going to create a certain path in my golf club. But if at contact I’m over here relative to me that golf ball is far further forward in my stance. And what we’ve just said is when we hit the ball further forward the golf club is traveling more to the left. So he was cutting across the golf ball from out to in because he was so far behind the golf ball. And because he was so far behind the golf ball, he was always hitting it heavy and he was actually catching a couple right at the huzzle of the golf club, kind of shanking it over to the right. So he was hitting big left to right fat shots and shanks all because he was trying to keep his head behind the golf ball. Soon as we changed that, soon as we changed his concept, he suddenly started to completely change his strike. So, I’m going to show you the the two drills that we did with him that can really help any golfer because these are just working on, you know, good fundamentals at impact. Not so much fixing any particular fault, but just good fundamentals. The first thing I wanted to do with the students is get him to hit some shots with his weight on his lead leg. Because all the shots he’d hit so far, the weight was on his trail leg. I wanted to change that. So, here’s the first little exercise we did. I got him to take his setup and then all his weight on this lead leg. Now, when I did that with him, look at where the ball is relative to me now. It’s behind me. So, in that swing, I’m going to be hitting the golf ball much earlier. And because I’m hitting it earlier, I know that’s going to change my path. So, the first little exercise we had him do was in this position. You notice on my back foot here is there for a tiny bit of balance, but nothing really else. And I very simply asked him to make a little half back swing, keep the weight on the front leg, and then let the arms swing past the body. I’ll explain in a moment why I wanted to have this feeling, but it was a case of keeping the weight on the lead side and letting the arms swing past the body. And as soon as we did this, soon as we got him to make some swings like that, what we saw straight away is his club path changed. That one there, you can see just over two degrees out to the right. He started off five or six degrees outwind. That drill on its own completely changed his path. And all we really did was we hit that ball earlier in the arc. The ball was now be back behind his body as opposed to being out in front of his body. Now, the reason I want him to have the sensation of letting the arms swing past the body is because in his previous golf swing from the top, he had used a lot of his body and he used his arms far too late and that made the problem even worse. So, I wanted him to have the weight forward, be in front of the golf ball and then have the idea that the arms were swinging. So, now let’s have a look at before we run through this second drill that go I mentioned at the start. This is Michael Lasasso. He recently won the NCAA championships, which is the college golf championships in the US. He won it. Now, that doesn’t guarantee he’s going to be the next future star, but there’s a very, very good chance he’s going to go on to some great things. He has got an incredible golf swing. Generates huge amounts of speed and power. But I want to pull out the face on view. What do you see him do from the top of his back swing? Is he focusing on keeping his head back behind the golf ball? He’s not. His head actually moves forwards and down. Now, this is specific to irons, but think about what we’ve said. If I set up, and I’ll explain why I’ve got this stick here in a moment. If I set up here, if at impact I was over here, now I’m not suggesting you would want to be, but if I was, what would that likely do to my delivery? It would likely make my club path more out to the right because I’m hitting the ball earlier relative to me. That would help with draw shots. and it would probably help me have a slightly more descending blow hitting down on the golf ball, which would probably help me with strike and compression and distance. So, if I was to be in this position, it’s probably going to give me two things that are for most golfers quite useful. If at impact I was in this position like my student was yesterday, it’s going to give me the opposite. It’s going to give me the opportunity to swing more left. It’s going to give me the opportunity to hit the ground early, and it’s going to give me the opportunity to add more loft and scoop the golf ball, lack distance, and have poor strikes. So, which of those would we prefer to work towards? Well, surely the first one, which is what you see in Michael Assasso, this head moving forwards and down. So, when I was with a student yesterday, I set this up for him. I asked him to take his setup to where the ball was directly underneath the alignment stick. And I very simply said to him, “Make me a back swing, move to impact, and I want the ball to him to visibly be in front of the alignment stick.” And the only way he could do that was in transition, shifting a little bit forward towards the target. What I was doing is I was creating the feels for him to explore. I needed him to be shifting more to his lead side and have his head moving a little bit in that same direction. Now, the reality was, did I need him to move his head forward by 6, eight inches? Not really. I just needed to stop him moving back. But this little exercise gave him the opportunity to explore what this felt like. And as soon as he made some of these movements, he said to me, said, “Chris, it feels like I can really compress the golf there. and it feels like I can really send the ball up the right and draw it back onto target. And you know what? That’s exactly what he started doing because we actually got him to hit golf balls from his position. Now, where was the ball relative to the alignment stick when he hit it? He actually couldn’t tell me because it happened in such a flash, but he had these ideas that he was trying to move forward. And we completely changed his club path. We completely changed his ball flight. And you know what? At not one point in the lesson did I mention the golf club. We completely changed how the club was delivered to the ball all by focusing on what the body was doing and that’s really important. So as I hit a shot now trying to do what he was doing, it was set up, it was back, it was can we get an impact where the ball is in front of the alignment stick and then go ahead and hit it.