The Modern Golf Swing Explained: Shallow Arms, Steep Body (Finally Makes Sense)

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Want a modern golf swing that gives you more speed and more control? In this lesson, coach Justin Kraft – @kraftygolf_ breaks down the modern pattern he teaches: shallow arm mechanics + steep body mechanics. You’ll learn how to control the clubface, shallow the club in transition, and stay in posture while you rotate through the ball.

Whether you’re a competitive player chasing speed or a mid-handicap trying to stop early extension and over-the-top moves, this video gives you a full blueprint plus on-range drills you can start using today.

In this video you’ll learn:
-What the modern golf swing actually is (and what changed in teaching)
-Why clubface control is the #1 priority in your swing
-How to build a setup that “earns the right” to rotate and stay in posture
-The perfect backswing to avoid getting too shallow too early
-How to shallow the club with your arms (trail arm external rotation + bowed lead wrist)
-How to keep your chest down and pelvis back instead of early extending
-Simple, repeatable drills you can use indoors or on the range

Chapters
00:00 – What is the “modern golf swing”?
01:06 – Lesson roadmap (6 parts of the video)
01:26 – Shallow arms, steep body: core idea
03:10 – Pro model: Michael Lassaso on Sportsbox
06:28 – Setup fundamentals: “earn the right” to rotate
10:28 – Backswing basics: don’t get shallow too early
13:18 – Backswing drills with alignment stick & feels
16:28 – Transition & downswing: arm shallowing (GG-style)
23:33 – Steep body mechanics: chest down & pelvis back drill
28:23 – Rotation & preset impact position drill
31:34 – Drill library: setup, backswing, downswing, over–under plane
42:18 – Who the modern swing is for & realistic expectations
43:59 – Final swing, recap & wrap-up

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Golf has changed and how it’s taught has changed. Some would say the swing of old is gone and there’s a new modern swing. But what is the modern golf swing and why has teaching changed? More importantly, what can you learn from it? That’s a question we’re tackling with Justin Craft as he explains the way that he teaches the modern golf swing. The modern swing, I think put simply, is a swing that helps a player control the club face as best as possible. And for me, it involves shallow arm mechanics and steep body mechanics. Those sound contrary to each other. They they kind of are. All right. So, today we are in Minnesota. We’re staying local for a great golf instructor. His name is Justin Craft. You probably know him as Crafty Golf, which is how I know him via Instagram. He’s got this great Instagram. Um, always breaking down swings or has some good drills. Uh, recently was voted number one instructor in Minnesota. So, we drove up to Minneapolis here and we’re going to hang out with him and learn about the modern golf swing, right? What is it? What can we learn from it? And who’s it for? Uh, this is going to be this is going to be a good time. All right, here we go. I I should put the card. I should stop it first. Here we go. Here’s what to expect in today’s video. One, Justin explains the modern swing. Two, how to set up. Three, the perfect back swing. Four, the down swing. Five, we put it all together. And then six, the essential drills that you should try out for yourself. All right, Justin. So tell us about the modern swing you’ve been teaching. Yeah. So the modern swing, I think put simply, is a swing that helps a player control the club face as best as possible. And for me, it involves shallow arm mechanics and steep body mechanics. Those sound contrary to each other. They they kind of are. So we’ve learned a lot about uh ball flight in the last 10 years since Trackman came out. What we’re learning is the club face position at impact is the most important piece. So, how can we get the club face to return to impact the same way every single time? And a nice way to do that, not the only way, but a nice way to do that is to make sure your body stays in posture and to make sure your body turns pretty well through the ball. That can lend yourself to better club face control versus standing up and stalling your rotation. Okay. So, the problem with that in itself though is those two things that I talked about, the body staying in posture and the rotation tend to steepen the club. Now, all of a sudden, we’re over the top, we’re making these big divots, and we’re no good at golf. So, we have to counter it with something, and that’s where the shallow arm mechanics come in. So, if we have these steep body mechanics where we’re getting in posture and we’re rotating, we have to do something with our arms to keep the club head behind us. So that’s where I think we can get this nice blend of shallow arm mechanics and steep body mechanics to get the club to come in pretty square, but we get that nice added benefit of all that club face control. Okay. So our goal with our golf swing is control the club face. Control the club face. Yes, 100%. And the best way you’ve seen to do that is simple is to shallow and rotate. Absolutely. Those would be like the two basics. Shallow and and staying in posture while you rotate 100%. Okay, so we got something pulled up here on Sportsbox. Let’s let’s look at this and and tell us like so this is like the king of shallowing the club, staying in posture and rotating. All right, so we’ve got the NCAA Division One National Champion Michael Assasso up here and I want to show a couple things. Okay, first I’m going to put a little line on his on his head, little line on his tailbone here, and we are going to roll him up to the top. Now camera moves maybe a little bit, but this is pretty good. So, if we put a little line on top of his head, if we put a little line on his tailbone here, I want you to first notice how there’s not a lot of space here between the heel line, okay? And the butt line, okay? Now, as we take the club up, one thing we’re going to talk about when we talk about the back swing is just making sure the club doesn’t get too shallow too early. It’s hard to shallow a club that’s already shallow. So, here’s where the fun stuff happens in transition. I want you to watch how his head lowers, his body starts to rotate, and he actually like pushes his pelvis back through that line. So look at how much he’s getting his chest down closer to the ground. That’s him getting back into posture. Now, if the average golfer did this, they would come so far over the top. So that’s where the shallow arm mechanics actually come in. So if we look at his arm mechanics, I want you to look at two main features. Number one is the angle of his lead wrist. It’s very flat. It’s probably actually slightly bowed at this point. That’s what we were doing with the training aids. The second feature is he’s got a ton of what’s called external trail shoulder rotation. So you can see that his elbow is way in front of his shirt seam and you can see that it’s way below his left elbow. If golfers can copy those two moves, then they can shallow the club with their arms and stay in posture with their body like Michael does. Now, I will say he’s a freak. You don’t have to do it to this extent. Okay, this is like the extreme example. This is the most extreme example. You could hurt yourself if you try to do this. Uh but if we take little its bits piece, little bitty pieces of it, uh I think we can learn some things. This video is sponsored by the MileC Gan Pro G1. This is a cool rangefinder. If you’re like me, you found that just a rangefinder is not enough and just the GPS is not enough. So, you end up with a rangefinder and GPS, and it’s annoying. This is combined both of them. So, not only can you quickly laser the flag, get the exact yardage to the flag, but then you can see back, center, and front of the green right here. Also, if you’re trying to figure out where to hit it off the T- box, you can go in and kind of plot your way around. You can even see hazards, like how far you’d have from a hazard where you’re trying to hit it. So, this thing is really useful because, as we’ve learned, good course strategy is important. And to do course strategy, you have to know where you’re hitting it. So the things that you care about are all the courses are preloaded. It says 43,000 courses. All the ones that I needed popped right up when I searched for them. It has a 2.13 in touchscreen display and it’s super responsive. It’s actually not too small. Didn’t really have any issues kind of navigating around. So really good, really bright uh feature here. So yeah, very useful. You are going to want to pick one of these up. the Milescy Gene Pro G1. Like, honestly, has to be some of the coolest tech in golf right now. It’s so useful and practical. We have links down in the description so you can pick one up. All right, so coach us through this. Somebody that wants to learn this or like, you know, I it’s ready for a swing intervention. What would we do? Yeah, absolutely. I I would go ahead and say this isn’t the only way to play golf. Um, but it is a nice way to learn how to control the club face. So, what I would tell people to do is first of all, we’ve got to kind of set up and create a back swing that gives us a chance in the down swing. So, I’ll tell golfers all the time, you have to earn the right to stay in posture. You have to earn the right to to rotate. And if you don’t have the club face in position, you don’t have the club moving back in a good fashion. You don’t you haven’t earned that right yet. Okay. So, at setup, a couple key features. We talked about this a little bit with you, but number one is I’m going to want your tailbone or your hips more over your feet. A lot of players start with their pelvis way too far back. They get told, “Stick your butt out.” And so they sit back like this. And now the pelvis is so far behind them. The only place it’s going to go is in towards the ball. Okay. So I like to see people kind of tuck their pelvis in underneath them. We’re going to have a soft amount of knee bend. And we should feel pretty tall. There’s absolutely some forward bend, but I would want you to feel like your kneecaps are kind of over your shoelaces. I would want you to feel like your tailbone is as far up close to your heels as possible. Now, of course, you could overdo this, but as long as you get your uh tailbone just a few inches be behind your heels here, we’re going to be in a pretty good spot to now bend forward. And this is a nice position to feel like I’ve got some room to go down in transition. Okay. I’m going to make you do some coaching. I’m going to set up and you’re going to tell me tell me tell me what to do. 100%. All right. So, let’s go ahead and set up. We’re going to check on a few things. Number one. Okay. So, this is just kind of bad. Let’s show the golfers why it’s bad. So, if we put a little line under your armpit here, where’s that line hitting them? First of all, it’s way out past your kneecaps and then it’s hitting you kind of where your shoe is tied. Y that needs to be a little bit further out like end of the shoelaces. To do that though, I don’t want you to bend forward more. I want you to shove your pelvis more this way. Yep. A little bit. So, let’s do this. Let’s do an exercise so that everybody can get this right. Let’s stand straight up and down. Okay. Now, I want you to copy me. You’re going to move your tailbone back two inches. That’s not much. Okay. Two inches. Did you do it? I think so. Okay. Soften your knees so that your knees are over your uh shoelaces a little bit. Y I want you to round out and bend forward just a touch without your pelvis moving back. So bend forward just a little bit. Come on. I’ve never felt more uncoordinated. There you go. Put your hands on the golf club. We’re going to play golf today. There you go. Okay. Now I think that’s closer to where we would want to be. So this line should touch the kneecap. Fall right in there into the end of the shoe. I don’t want the pressure on my toes, right? Uh you want the pressure in the balls of your feet. Where is it? It’s on the balls of the feet. Okay, good. And then I want you to push this as far. I’m going to violate you a little bit. There. There you go. Perfect. Okay. Now, do you feel like if I asked you to go to the top, you would have space to push your pelvis down and back? Yes. Do you know why this might be a good idea? Why? It’s cuz I suddenly felt all my muscles in my quads and glutes like a little bit activated. Yeah. Activate like absolutely. You’re not That might be a good idea. Yes, this might be a good idea. Okay. So, I really like that setup. Yeah. Let’s see it one more time. So, stand straight up and down for me. Now, let’s just push tailbone hips back like 2, three inches. Now, soft knees, tall, rounded spine with a little hip bend. There you go. Relax your neck a little bit. You don’t have to look straight out. There you go. Good. I would go even a touch more with the pelvis that way. Bend forward there. Balls of the feet. There we go, man. All right. Do you not feel like you have some room? Yes. Again, to push the pelvis back, lower the chest. My legs are are there at this point. Okay. Good. All right. Let’s see one. Okay. Try to feel like your pelvis kind of stays back in transition and your chest maybe lowers a little bit. cap. Rip it. Do you I mean most people feel this setup for the first time and they’re like, “Wow, I’ve never felt like I could actually go that way.” Well, it’s usually because they set up with it way back there. All right, so that would be the setup. Justin, where have you been? We should talk about the back swing. What do you want to see? Okay, so like I said, you kind of got to earn this right to to rotate. Let me take the club from you. So, what would be really hard for most golfers, maybe besides John Rom, would be to take a club that’s really shallow in the back swing and shallow it more or just like keep it shallow. That sounds really hard to me. This club has momentum. It’s got a center of mass. When we start making a back swing where the club really gets too flat, as soon as you fire your hands towards the ball, this thing’s going to start to get steeper. we’ve now lost our our right to stay in posture and rotate. So, what I like to see in the back swing is I like to see a club that stays kind of in front of the player and it never really gets too flat. Okay. So, ideally, I’m going to take an alignment stick again. Y ideally, this would be a nice exercise for anybody. You can take an alignment stick, put it on the lead side of the club. Now, if we were to take our setup, I love to see golfers run this alignment stick down the lead leg and then off the knee. Why? Well, as soon as this club comes off the knee, if it comes off too early, it’s going to be pointed way out at at Cordy. And so now my I know my back swing is way too flat. If I can get this club to run down my leg without ever coming off and then right down the knee, all of a sudden, you’re going to see that that club is pitched in a position where it’s pointed kind of halfway between the ball line and my toe line. Now, I would say anything from kind of the golf ball to about halfway between the golf ball and your toes is a good spot to be. But when players do this drill wrong, again, it gets too flat too early. Now, we’ve lost that ability to shallow the club in transition. So, if we can run this thing down our leg and make sure that it’s pointed kind of halfway between golf ball and toes, we know that there is now space available to shallow the club like we want in transition. Okay, so I really like that drill for just it’s a nice visual and it kind of makes the player keep their forearms a little bit more closed. It gets that club in a nice steep position in the back swing so there’s room to shallow it out. So far, everything you’ve said has been about like earning the right, which is great. Earning the right to do the action. So to earn the right to keep your posture, you have to start like this with good posture. To earn the right to shallow, you have to not be super shallow. You have to not be super shallow too early. 100% right. What do we think? So on that one, I thought it was pretty good. On the one we got uh earlier, I don’t think it was steep enough. Okay. And the reason I say that is because I think the first two/ird of the back swing was steep enough, but then at the last second, you raise your hand path up and you start to get the club really laid off. So laying the club off is just getting it shallow early. So I would love to see you, like we talked about, delay your hip turn a touch and then feel like you point the club at that corner of the room at the top. That will that will basically negate you rotating your forearms late in the back swing and getting the club pointed to that corner. Okay, that’s you shallowing it too early. Got it? We got to get the back swing steep enough. the whole back swing. Okay. Not shallow it too early. You cannot shallow it too early. You need to make sure you don’t shallow it too early. Okay. Let me Let’s try the drill. I I want to see see this one as well. So, I’m going to put it like this, right? Yep. Exactly. Right. Okay. Now, the goal here, let’s get the ball out for one shot. You’re going to feel like this kind of runs down the lead leg. And then most golfers do this. So, we don’t want that. And you’re going to let it run down the lead knee. And then once you check yourself at about chest high, the shaft, you can turn your chest a little bit. There you go. You could you would want the shaft pointed kind of halfway between the golf ball line extended and your toe line extended. So this would be fine. This would not be so fine, right? Okay. Because that club’s really shallow and it’s probably going to come back down like this. Okay. It might. Man, that that is a really good feel. Honestly, you have to also make sure your hands don’t go out away from you, otherwise you’ll get disconnected. Yep. Okay. So, run it down. Perfect. Now, feel like you you’re going to feel like you point it Yeah. right there. I love that. Now, as you finish the turn up to the top, try to point your thumbs at this corner of the room. There you go. I know you hate that feel. It feels so weird. I know. So, now this club has a ton of space, right? When you had it up here like this, it’s like, “Oh, Cordy, nice. That’s shallow. I hope you’re started down by now, but I don’t think you were.” So, it’s probably going to tumble this way. But, if you can get it up here or it’s loaded a little bit more down the line, now there’s some space to let this thing shallow out a little bit on the way down. I know you’ve worked with freezers and stuff on that a lot. I’m going to have to. Yeah, for sure. This is my off seasonason is going to be right here. Okay. So, I love this. Honestly, this drill is sick for for And that’s really good for you because you tend to rotate your hips a little too early and so that kind of helps you delay the hip turn. Now, turn up to the top. Yep. Point those thumbs over here. There you go. Trying. There you go. Yeah. It’s awesome. That’s awesome. I’ll say this too. Uh, even if it doesn’t look like Michael Lassaso, if you can take Cord’s version and make Cord’s version 10% better, you win. Like, don’t look at a pro and say, “Gee, I have to make it look like that.” Uh, let’s just make it a 10% version that’s better than yourself. Your current self. What I’m noticing already is like the setup you put me on, I didn’t even do the setup that time, but like activate all my muscles. Now, rotating more is like, okay, I’m like, whoa. You feel like you’re going to pound this ball. Yeah. Yeah. like a lot of good things happening cuz maybe I’m just falling into what’s comfortable. Like there’s a lot of comfort. The future of golf could absolutely involve shallowing the club because the speed gets more important and we find shallowing helps with speed. Yeah, you could see a lot more of it. Speaking of speed, people should speed to subscribe to this channel. Absolutely. Because this video is is so great. They also subscribe to your channel. I would love that. Your YouTube and Instagram. You have a ton of great stuff going on. I love I always like scroll through your Instagram and see like what’s the drill that you’ve done today. Well, I like watching golf well stuff. Yeah. Thank you. It’s good. Okay. Anyways, back to the back to the program. Where were we? Back to the programming. All right. So, let’s just let’s assume you’ve gotten the posture in a pretty good spot. Y let’s assume you’ve got this nice back swing where the shaft of the club stays let’s just call it pretty well on plane. Let’s say the golf club is either pointed at the golf ball or maybe slightly inside it all the way up to the top. We’ve now got great posture. Um we’ve got the club in a position where there’s room for it to shallow. Yep. How do we do that? Right. Sounds great. Uh, we just feel it and go back. Exactly. Okay, let me grab a couple. So, I I think there’s there’s we we talked a lot about training aids. I would love to show with some training aids and then as players get good with that, we take the training aids away and we try to do it with feel. All right. So, shout out George Gankis. Okay. Cuz he’s he’s the king of dominated and he’s the king of training. I mean, that’s kind of the swing we’re talking about, right? Yes. 100%. The club’s shallowing out, the player staying in posture. So when we looked at Michael Lasasso and it’s still live there on the TV, you could really see how externally rotated the trail arm was. So external rotation for those that don’t know, this would be internal. Think about winning an arm wrestling match. This would be external where it goes the other way. That external rotation move actually helps the club shallow out. So if you put this on and you make it click, it actually helps you create some shallowing. Now, it’s not easy, uh, but it’s really beneficial. So I’d like to teach you that piece. Remember the two shallowing pieces we talked about from an arm mechanic standpoint. One is the flexion and two is this external rotation. So let’s start with this. Okay. So this is we’ve got setup how to do a good back swing. Now we’ve got to start the down swing, right? We’ve got we’ve got to learn 100%. And I’d say a lot of this shallowing happens in the down swing. Maybe maybe transition even. Okay. So let’s do this without a without a club first. There we go. Now just hold that club with one hand. Right hand only. Okay. Let go with the other hand. Okay. Go to like shoulder high freeze. Okay, now if I said internal rotation was that way, that’s steeper. Let’s see some external. Oo, I love that. Now, here’s the key. You tried to click that was really good. Most golfers when they try to click that or shallow it, what do they do it with? They do it with their body. They put their left shoulder up and their right shoulder back. Yeah. So, I know it looked like you wanted to do that to start and I was like, “No, no, no.” So, we’re going to keep this left shoulder down. Let’s put both hands on it. And just freeze up there. Freeze. Okay. Now, let’s see if you can get your right elbow to click this thing. Boom. So, that’s lassaso where that right elbow’s lower than the left here, but the left shoulder’s lower than the right. There you go. Now, that’s shallow arm mechanics and pretty steep body mechanics. I think you control the face pretty well from there. Let’s do that one more time. So, here we go. Now, hold on. Thumbs thumbs that way. Thank you. Now, let’s click it slowly. Yeah. Then, hit it. Good try. Proud of you. Okay. I thought you were That was fantastic. Okay. No, that was good. Now, let’s talk about what happens to the face of the club, which is the most important thing when the club shallows. Uh we’ll do this for the camera. As the club gets shallower, the toe of the club starts to rotate a little bit open. So, while people do this drill, I always tell people this is part of earning your right to shallow the club. If it’s if the face is too open, you have no chance. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to put on your second favorite training aid. We’re going to talk about the second way to use arm mechanics. Okay? So, we’ve got the external rotation of the shoulder. We also have flexion of the lead wrist. So, that’s that G snap we’re going to use. The more you keep your wrist extended on the way down. Number one, the face stays open. Number two, the shaft stays pretty steep. If we can start to create some flexion, that’s going to close the face, and it’s also going to help us shallow the club back out. So, okay, if you want to try one more with just that, that’s fine. But I’m almost thinking we double you up. Let’s double you up. So, let’s put this on left middle finger. Okay, there we go. We’ll hit it. We’ll get it tightened up. Whoops. On the way there. Shout out. Whoop. Yep. All right. So, let’s go up to the top. But also, just generally speaking, as a player who under rotates, why would we not flare this out? Not that much. Let’s start over. Okay. Let’s just go like five degrees both ways. Like your left toe is 20° out and then this one’s square. So, let’s go 10 on the left foot. So, slide that in. 10 on that foot. Oh, boy. That’s like grinding teeth, isn’t it? That’s like so painful for you to do that. Yeah. You hate that, don’t you? I feel Yeah, I’ve got a hip. My right hip is not as mobile as my left one. Makes more sense. I’m compensating, right? I think that. Well, this will help me though. I need Yeah, I was going to say no good. Take some stress off. Yeah. Yep. Okay, good. You got your pelvis under you enough? I think so. I can feel my glutes. I’m going to turn the camera on and see cuz I doubt it. Okay, go ahead. I haven’t ever set up and felt my glutes under me. That’s pretty good. Okay, I would take that all day. All right. Now, let’s feel like we run this thing down the leg. Perfect. Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. Thumbs. Let’s see some snap, crackle, pop. Come on. Right elbow. Oh, come on. Why did we go so fast? I hated that. Tell you what, what am I doing? I don’t know. It’s not golf. We’re going to turn this on live mode. Yeah, we like that. Okay. So, you can see it. Okay. Pelvis under. Yeah. Okay. Pelvis is under. Oh, I like that. All right. Hand path in. Good. Thumbs. Thumbs. Thumbs. Thumbs. Thumbs. There. Now, slowly do the elbow for me. Do the wrist. It doesn’t get much shallower than that. Okay. Start over. What does that look like? Do it without me. Oh, it’s not that crazy. Feels insane. Feels like lassaso. Yeah, it feels shallower than lassaso. That’s because your body is going to stay in some steep position. Okay. Almost. There you go. Yep. Yep. Rotate there. Good turn. More thumbs. More thumbs. Not more. Hands up. Keep your hands back there. There you go. Okay. Then that elbow there. That’s so shallow. Now that’s all frozen and uncomfortable. If you were able to do those blended and fluidly, it look pretty good. So, let’s do one of the slowest swings ever. Let’s do an eight iron that goes 18 yards. Okay. But you’re not going to pause anywhere. Okay. I would challenge you to do a ton of the thumbs. Okay. Okay. The thumbs is hard for me. The thumbs is hard. I know. that way. And then I want to hear them both click before you get like waist high on the down swing. All right. So engaged. We’re going to go this way. Good. Thumbs go. That’s pretty good. You tried really hard. So again, if we look at this one, I don’t actually think this is going to look that bad. I don’t think it gets a whole lot shallower than that. That’s very good. Could you maybe have done a little bit better at getting your right elbow in front of your shirt? That’s hard for me. It is. Yeah. So there’d be some slow reps that need to be done with that guy. probably without a ball, then with a ball. The face is closed. And now you’ve earned your right. Yeah. To stay in it and rotate. You don’t have to pop up out of it. And I think you do a pretty good job of that. But that right arm is in a crazy spot. Okay. So, that’s you keeping your chest really low and turning through it pretty nice. We’ve got setup, back swing. We got top of back swing. Top of back swing. Transition. Yep. Now, we’ve got is it rotate? Is that our next? We’ve got some rotation. And we’ve really got staying in posture. So, when we looked at your swing specifically, because it was a little laid off and it got a little shallow, a little early, it wanted to start to get steep and you, you’re a good player, you sensed it and your pelvis went like this and your chest lifted just a little bit. Okay. So, you use early extension to shallow. You do. Okay. Because it was too shallow too early. Got it. Okay. So, what I’d like to do is I’d like to teach you to do the opposite. Let’s work on trying to get the pelvis to work back in transition and then try to get the chest to even lower like we saw Michael do. and let’s do it at at an insane rate. Okay, my favorite drill for this is such an exaggerated crazy drill that I think it’ll might actually help you. So, I want you to take uh your setup with that new setup that we talked about. So, you’re going to go ahead and put your hands on the club and I really want you like we got to you got to push your tailbone as far forward as possible. Okay. Now, once we’re here, I’m gonna have you take your setup and and grip the club like you normally would. And then, without changing your forward bend, without changing your knee flex, I’m gonna have you take this club and grip all the way down to the edge of the grip. So, this thing’s going to be hovering 6, 8, 12 inches in the air. You will only be able to hit this ball if your chest gets lower, and you will hit a bunch of them thin. So, the purpose isn’t to hit the ball. Awesome. It’s to teach you how to lower your chest in transition. So, what I have you do, try to mimic that back swing where we keep that club nice and steep. Now, in transition, get your chest as low as you can. Push your pelvis back while you do it and try to keep your chest low enough to make contact with the ball. Obviously, getting this thing way up here, it’s going to be hard to hit it pure. But the feedback you’ll get is you’ll hit a bunch thin and you’ll know you need to lower even more. Okay. Let’s do a little Should we do a little before and after? Should we film one? Yeah, let’s film one normal and let’s film one with the drill. Let’s do it. I’m going to coach you through this uh hip placement more. I got to look at this. Uh get your weight more on the balls of your feet. You can bend forward a little bit. More back up from the ball. Get your pelvis in front of your toes. It’s way too far back there. All right. Now, create space and get a little bit more comfortable with a little less knee flex. Come on. Pelvis more. This is hard. You’re doing good. More. More. More. Where? There. Look at the ball. Don’t look at me. Oh, that looks fantastic. All right. How do you feel? Terrible. I know. I feel like I might cramp up. Okay. Good. Now, choke down. Keep your pelvis there. Don’t move it back. Okay. There you go. Now, alls I want to see is your butt move back in transition and your chest lower. Try not to hit it thin. Go. Okay. Good job. Okay. Thought I’d do it. Did you hit it? Was it a little thin? It was thin. Sounded thin. Yeah. Sorry. Hold on. Let’s look at He told me not to hit it thin. I was trying not to hit it thin. Bad listener. All right. So, even though you felt like your pelvis was way up there, it’s actually pretty good. Jeez, I can take that all day long. That is weird. There’s impact, though. Right on it. So, I love seeing your pelvis create a little bit of depth. That club got a little laid off. Got laid off. Okay, it’s my bad. But now when we get down to the ball, you don’t have any pelvic thrust. No, doesn’t look like any pelvic thrust toward the ball. So there’s setup, there’s impact. I think that’s pretty good. But you had to really push your hips forward at impact or at setup, right? Yeah. Oh, it feels like I’m on top. Absolute nonathletic, right? Not athletic. But actually, you know, I am because the glutes are engaged. Yeah. Like everything is they are. And and if we look at your balance points here, you’re you’re pretty close to where we want. You got to make sure the weight stays sort of on the balls of the feet while you while you do this. So, let me get you live here. Okay. So, this is your favorite drill because if we want to do this modern swing, we need to you got to get your chest covering the ball. Posture and rotate. Posture and rotate. And if you if you force yourself to like to make contact with the ball, where are you going to have to be? You’re going to have to be way down there. Exactly. Right. If you early extend and get your chest lifting at all, there’s no doubt, right? Okay. Okay, let’s try one. Got it. I’m going to do this better. Pelvis, come on. There a little more weight on the balls of the feet. Let’s go. There we go. I don’t know. It was good contact, wasn’t it? I think I even might have not laid it off. That I doubt. I’d probably tell you that might be too much space. Yeah, not bad, actually. Nice. So, that looks pretty covered with the chest and pre- rotated, right? Let’s see where it was at the top. Not bad. Look at that. Take that all day long. Getting better. I’d take that all day long. So, if I drew a line through this, your goal would be to have the club covering that red line or maybe even club head on this side. Okay, that’s pretty good, though. Yep. I would take that all day out of you. We could probably work, and this would be the hard one for you, that G-box and that that right elbow one. That would be the the the key to getting you to look more like Lassaso does right here. Okay. So, another drill on the down swing. Yep. Again, this is steep body mechanics, right? On the down swing, we just taught you how to keep your chest nice and low. Let’s talk about the rotation piece. So, this one’s hard. There’s a lot of layers to this one, too. One that I’ve found very useful, especially with my online students, is to preset being open at impact and then just kind of doing a baby back swing and trying to get back to that same preset position. So, I want you to set up. Okay. This would be set up. Now, show me what you think impact should look like. Okay. And we just talked about this. There should be two butt cheeks to the camera. Yep. Exactly. With your pelvis back and your chest should be a little bit open with some side bend, too. And this elbow’s in front of the belly button. Now he’s got some nice shaft lane from face on. I want to see what this kind of looks like. So that looks really good to me. Now what would it take for you to just take the club head back just above my foot and then get back to that same spot. So just a gentle little swing. It’s almost like a chip. Yep. Let’s try one. You want me to hit it? Yeah, let’s do it. Okay. Go ahead. Try to rotate. Okay, that was decent. So I would have you look at that and say, “Can you see two butt cheeks? Can you see the back side of your shirt?” if you can. You did a nice job. Again, we don’t have to look like mania and Michaelaso. We just got to look like a better version of Cordy. That feels crazy. All right, let’s do it again. I’ll look like that. Oh, yeah. For sure. And it looks good, doesn’t it? Normal. It doesn’t look anything crazy at all. Okay, so you’re going like this. Good. And you love this elbow behind you, so I hate that. Yeah. There we go. Good. Chest, pelvis, chest, pelvis. There we go. Little longer back swing. Turn through it. Don’t send your arms to the ball. Just turn through it. There you go. Love that progress. So, I like seeing obviously we get you back down into impact. That trail arm, man, that’s going to take some work. That right elbow. Yeah, for sure. All right. So, we look at impact is a terrible strike. Chest is open. Chest is low. And then your pelvis is pretty open, too. See, what I like to see is the ball outside the club at impact, personally. But, but why would that be? Let’s talk about that. If you rotated more, your left shoulder would be further from the ball. Okay? That would pull the the hands closer to you and it would pull the toe of the club to the ball. So, even though it’s a bad strike, maybe you did what you were trying to do a lot better than you previously did. So, that’s why I like indoor practice for learning how to swing a little different. 100%. If you’re out there on the range and you do that, you’re like, “Okay, whatever that was, not doing that again.” Yeah. But I actually think you did a nice job. So, in summary, we got our setup dialed in now, which I needed a lot of work with. We got a great back swing feel. We’re getting steep. Yep. Steeper transition. We got to shallow it. Yep. Get that trail elbow, which I also hate. That’s a tough thing. Um, we got to work on that. And then we have to cover the ball, keep our posture, those words while we turn. Right. Exactly. Um, okay. So, that’s the what, we got the why. Now, we promised people some drills that they could like work on if they want to feel this. Um, take us through a couple. Absolutely. Let’s start with setup. I don’t think there’s a substitute for like a mirror or some video, but the one thing you really struggled with, which I think would be a good drill here, um, is getting your pelvis in the right spot. Your tendency was to have your pelvis way too far back and then on the down swing, the only place it’s going to go is is forward. So, I kept telling you, push your pelvis more over your heels. Push your pelvis more over your heels. So, a nice way to do that is to actually just force that with a wall. Okay? So, if I were to come over here and say, “Hey, let’s get just 3 4 in right here from the back of the heel to the wall.” Now, your job is let’s set up to a golf ball. Butt can’t touch the wall. So, it would look like this at setup. Okay. Now, I’ve got some space there even. So, I’m I’m good to go. This is fine for me. I’ve got space now to go back, push my pelvis into the wall, and go. So, let’s see you try that again. Heels just a few inches from the wall. Maybe make it a little bit easier to start. Go a little bit further. Right there. Good. Now, let’s pretend there’s a golf ball. Now, you should feel, like you said, engaged. Yeah. Right. I do. Okay. Butt should not be on the wall. Okay. Not on the wall. Okay. Why does this look so much better than 10 minutes ago? So, armpits over balls of feet. That looks pretty good. Might need to go a little bit more this way. So, could you get comfortable if a ball was there? Yeah. See, I think that looks light years better. Now, I got to flare that, too, which you Yep. Exactly. Now, let’s see. If we go back. Yeah. You do that a bunch. Then you would want both cheeks. Yeah. On the wall kind of. Sure. It’s more of a setup. More of a setup. 100%. Now, let’s say you’re on the range. You’re like, “Great, Justin, and now I don’t have a wall.” Oh, yeah. I trust me, I’ve heard it all. We’re going to put a stick in the ground. This is turf, so it won’t work. But that’s going to be your wall. So, you’re going to put your heels just a few inches away from that. And then we’re going to try to make sure our butt isn’t knocking the stick over. So, that’s your feedback for the range. So, if you’re looking to help your setup, I like that one. Okay, perfect. Okay, back swing. What do you got for back swing drills? Back swing. I’m actually going to probably borrow from what we started with. We’re going to put the alignment stick on the lead side of the club. Let’s try that out. I actually like a little bit of a visual here cuz I keep telling you where to point that stick. So, I’m going to give you a visual for the ball line. Okay. Ideally, as you run this stick down the leg, again, the idea here, not letting the club get too shallow too early, this would be incorrect. So, this has to run down the lead leg. Now, let’s just make sure you point it inside this stick, okay? because that would be like the ball target line. Got it. Okay. So, that’s really good up to here. Let’s do that one more time. So, even though this is going like I don’t know, this feels outside to me, right? It probably does. Yeah. As long as the club head feels outside, that’s okay. Let’s make sure your hand path stays inside. Okay. So, when I tell people to get the club head more outside, they typically mistake that for hand path more out. And now this is disconnected. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, hand path in but club out. There you go. Yeah. Y. Now run that thing all the way down your knee. Perfect. And I would say like, yeah, right there. If you could turn a little bit more. There you go. Not tilt. Just turn. There you go. Fantastic. So, the viewers can see that that’s pointed basically right at the ball line. I would say that’s acceptable. Maybe even here would be okay, but we would want to avoid something that’s too shallow too early. Again, this is back swing, okay? Because then we don’t have room to shallow the club. Okay, that’s really good. Let’s uh let’s do a mini version of this. We’re just going to pretend that this stick is that T. So, this would be like a laser beam or a flashlight coming out. We’re going to try and do the same thing, but with the T. So, as you take this club back, try to point the T inside this guy right here. Hand path in. Yeah, perfect. And you can kind of visualize that right there. But this is more of a visual visual aid than anything. Okay. Trying to make sure that T is pointed. You could hit shots with this. You could hit shots with this where I don’t like people hitting shots with the alignment stick. Man, there turn. I’m still not doing the same thing cuz I see the club go like this when I stick. I go more like that. You do. It looks good. Okay, good. Now hand. There you go. Sweet. Then obviously we have our down swing drills with our Well, I’ll get into that in a second. Yeah. Okay. The only other one for the back swing uh that I tend to tell people that get it too shallow too early would be another wall drill. So, do we want to go through that? Let’s do it. So, go ahead and follow me. You’re gonna put your uh you’re gonna put your feet about a foot from the wall. Now, slide this way. Okay. All the way over here. I’m gonna have you do a back swing. All right. All right. So, in this drill, this is a crazy drill. This is not like a take this feel and do it every time. But if you want to feel a steep back swing, this is what we do. Go ahead, take your setup. The goal here, your hands can get close to the wall. The club head can never touch it. So, if you get this thing too shallow too early, bonk. Okay. So, we are going to feel the hands work in in in, but the club head can never touch it. So, that feels crazy steep. Yeah. Interesting. Boom. Yeah. Really nice. This would be excellent for you to make sure you don’t get too laid off. Yep. There you go. This feels really good. Your hands can get to the wall. Yeah. Your club head can’t. So, do that. Freeze at P2 with no hip turn. Now, turn, turn, turn. Thumbs there. Yeah. Sweet. Okay, that’s pretty good. So, I like that one, too, for players trying to get the feel for that steeper back swing. The key is not just moving your hands out away from the wall. Okay. So, the hands can get there, the club cannot. So, if we’re doing those drills for setup and and back swing, let’s talk about a nice downswing one. So, the one you really struggled with was the movement of this trail arm. So, let’s give you a drill you can do with no training aid to really learn that. Okay. So, if you were to set up to the ball, again, perfect little setup position. If you were to keep the keep the right hand only on the club, but then go ahead and take your left hand and put it behind the elbow here. What you’re going to notice if if you do this correctly, you can really not let this elbow win the race and slip off. If you can keep the pressure here, it’ll really help you feel like that trail arm stays external and in front of this shirt seam. So, if we were to do a example here, we’re going to go ahead and go open palm behind the elbow, right hand only. Load up to the top. And then again, I’m not letting the elbow win this fight. I’m going to keep my elbow in front, pressure on the back of it, and I’m going to go ahead and turn through. If you can do that, you’re going to get that nice effect like Lasasso has of that elbow going external. Shows up lower than the left elbow. Right elbow lower than left, left shoulder lower than right. That’s going to help you keep that club in a shallow position. Okay. Really hard to hit shots with. I’ll do my best. Little baby one right there. So, but you’re going to see the elbow in front of the shirt seam and you’re going to see a little bit more external rotation there. That that back swing’s too flat. But you can see that elbow’s in a better spot. So, I like that one a lot. It’s a really good feel. Uh, as you as you gain a better feel with it, obviously add add two hands to the club, add some speed. Let’s see if I can do it or not. I don’t know. I don’t know if you can. I like your confidence. Really? Just kidding. Let’s get this out of here first. Okay. So, we’re going like this. Good setup. And then here now. Oo, not bad. Okay. I liked that a lot. Let’s film that. Three, two, one. Man, my hips just rotate on the back swing. They do. They do. It did really well. So, as a comparison, so if we look at both these positions, your hands are in about the same spot, right? Look at the position of your right arm on both of these. This bad boy is like way back here. It’s like higher than your than your hand. Uh, and then this one here, I think he did a nice job that So, that drill really accomplished that feel for you. Obviously, you’re probably not going to hit on the golf course like that, but doing some drills to get that feel, I think, is really nice. I like that one. So, a really nice kind of all-encompassing drill uh for shallowing anyway is is to have some kind of external cue. So, something you have to like miss, right? In order to do this, right? So, if we were to go about a club length away from the ball and we were to put a stick on the ground at an angle about the angle of your club. Okay. Now, you can fudge this and move it around a little bit. I typically like it just a little inside the ball line. Now, here’s the goal. I’m going to get this out of here cuz it’s broken. We talked about steep back swing, shallow down swing. So, what I like to see people do is kind of go over on the back swing and then under on the down swing. Okay? Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean your hands. It means the club head. If someone struggles like you with the hands going like you don’t really struggle with this, but I see a lot of people do. If the hands go out and the club head gets inside, if your hands go out enough, you can still get over that thing. So, what I’ll tell a lot of people, it’s okay for the back of the shaft to ride up that thing a little bit. Okay? That that helps you keep the shaft pretty steep, too. So, I’m gonna move it just a tick. Thomas Fleetwood somewhere is proud. All right. So, I’d love to see back of the shaft kind of touch right up. Good. Now, we’re going to get back into posture. Right elbow lower than left. We’re just going to miss on the inside. There you go. So, that’s a really nice showing. Julie, you want to try one? I’m nervous, but I definitely can. It would be better if there was a pool little anything for the video. So, we’re going to go up and then that’s nice through. Okay. So, that like it doesn’t let you think much about your mechanics, you can’t really. It’s you’re just like, I got to miss this. Just miss that on the top, miss it on the bottom. So, for the players that don’t love to dive into external flexion, like, all right, perfect. Let’s go over and under. Yep. Like, and I think that’s a good way. That’s a good way to do it. I use that with a lot of inside and over the top slicers, and it’s brilliant. Yep. Yep. Last thing that we need to talk about drills is this idea of covering and staying in posture. Yep. Is the best one, the one that we did earlier of certainly my favorite. Should we try it? Yeah. I love that one. I mean, I I had never heard of this until you mentioned it. Yep. And it like just makes the most sense. Now, I think you’re doing it enough. Like I would So, sit up normal. Okay. Let’s get your pelvis under you a lot. Okay, perfect. Love that. Now, don’t change your posture. Okay, I’ll slide this up to you. Doesn’t that look a little higher? Yeah. I think you had it like here. It needs to be like Maybe I was cheating. I think you might have been. Okay, now I don’t like this drill anymore. All right. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s see. Here we go. Oh, you pretty is a little thin, wasn’t it? It was a little thin. I have it on. Sorry. I have it on live. That’s why I didn’t read it. Let’s do one more. Yep. That’s good. See, that was perfect. All right, let’s go again. Okay, up there. Good. That’s normal setup. You normally choke down that far. Start over. Okay, there we go. Good. Now, setup stays the same. Hurt right there. Yeah, let’s do it. Oh, so good. That’s so hard, is it not? It is really hard. It’s real tough. See what it looks like. Pretty good job with the back swing there. Yeah, there you go. Your chest is down. I’m already doing it. That looks pretty good, man. Good work. Okay, so I love that one for getting the chest back in it. That is really good. That’s got to be one of my favorite drills I’ve ever done to learn how to stay in posture. It’s like uh pass fail. It’s either you did it or you didn’t. Right. Okay. So, modern golf swing. Talk to us about the the players you work with. Who is this best for? Like is this for everybody or is this just for like high handicaps or young guys or old guys or like I think anybody would look at Lassaso’s swing and say wow I like I or a batia and be like wow I want that swing right um let’s be honest a lot of like physical capability issues you got to deal with uh you’ve got to be able to stay in posture you’ve got to be able to rotate and side bend and do all these things if you’re a highle player looking for speed looking for uh better club face control I think it’s really good not to say your average 8 to 12 handicap shouldn’t be working a little bit on this too, but I think we’ve demonstrated some extremes. Those extremes would be nice to practice to maybe alleviate some steep arm mechanics, shallow body mechanics for a lot of golfers. Um, but to think you’re going to step up there and make it look like that every time, that’s silly. Like I said before, whoever is watching this, if you’re steep and you stand up or stall or tilt or whatever, like we just need to get it 10 20% better. Yeah. And so that’s where it’s like anyone watching this could look at Lassaso’s impact and say, “Well, I can’t do that.” No, I I know and you shouldn’t try. Uh, but if we can move it a little bit away from what a poor golfer does and closer to what good golfers do, I think that’s reasonable goal. Well, dude, this is super fun. Thanks for having us out. Like I’d followed you for so long. Yeah, I know. I feel like you’re uh Minnesota based, too. So, it’s like the fact that we haven’t crossed paths is crazy. This is great. Thanks. Appreciate you coming out. Absolutely. Why don’t you get your pelvis back under you here? Let’s get one more good one. going to yell at me more, but I am. I’m going to be like texting you in a few minutes. I just want that clip of you saying more. No. Yeah. More. More. Good. Okay. All right. Let’s see if we can put it all together on a slow one. Okay. I want you really feeling thumbs, elbow, pelvis. Love it. That was pretty good. That’s for the video. When we’re done with the lesson, if you tried hard, I’ll give you a high five even if it doesn’t look great. Oh, so that’s reasonable. Almost down the line. Almost. Pelvis does move in a little bit. So, we’ve got work to do with that elbow, man. Man, that Yeah. Yeah. We got to get the right elbow lower than the left, which is not while the left shoulder is lower than the right. That’s close. So, we got more more work with the G- slot, more work with this if we can. More things to be done next time.