Where SHOULD Your Arms Be In Your Golf Swing?

If you’re wondering where your arms should be…

A common question I get asked during lessons is: where should my arms be during my swing?

In this video I talk through not only where your arms should be, but what other variables need to be in place to JUSTIFY or OPTIMIZE the placement of your arms in your golf swing!

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A question I get asked all the time is Justin where should my arms be in my back swing and it’s a really good question but the answer unfortunately is that it depends right so let’s just assume for a minute that we’re a golfer who doesn’t want to swing on an extreme

Path like say 10 degrees from the inside and hit massive hooks or doesn’t want to swing 10 degrees over the top and hit massive slices right let’s just assume we’re a golfer that wants to swing relatively straight into the ball and hit shots online that don’t curve a lot

Whether you prefer a zero path or not irrelevant okay well what we have to recognize is that the golf swing is really just a system of balancing things that steepen the swing and things that shallow the swing well I think we could all probably agree that AR an arm swing

That is very flat and around us that is a shallowing move that helps us swing more from the inside a golf club or a hand path that works very vertically and is very upright and steep well that’s obviously a steepening move and would help a golfer swing outside in but again it’s

Not the isolation of these variables it’s how they work together right what’s more important than where your arms are in space is how the club head is moving in space or or more specifically the location of the club head kind of in the downswing okay so I’m going to give you

A very simple example here let’s go ahead and pretend I’m a player who has a very very flat arm swing Okay so let’s say neutral would be kind of having my lead arm on my shoulder plane let’s say I’m either there or slightly below that well my swing right now is programmed to

Be very very flat and very inside so what I need to do if that’s me is I need to find elements that steepen the swing well if you watch a lot of players that are high level players with a flat arm swing what you’ll notice is in the

Downswing they are very rotary meaning they rotate very well without much slide what does that do well well if I was just to take my arms from right here and only rotate my body you can see how outward that pitches the golf club that rotation is a steepening move so you

Balance the flat arm swing and the rotational aspect of the Swing without a lot of lateral movement and what you end up with is a very neutral swing Direction so players that have a very flat arm swing my recommendation to you is let’s really work on rotating really

Well without much pelvic slap or slide with the lower body a really good drill if that’s you if you have a flat arm swing and you’re struggling with pushes and blocks and you know you need more rotation is to take a cup and what we’re going to do is take the

Cup B bottle water whatever and put it just outside your lead ankle what you’re going to do is on the downswing you’re going to shift your weight to your lead side but you’re immediately going to post up on the left side and not slide into the cup if you slide too much you

Will knock the cup over and that’s how you know you’re not getting that Balancing Act of getting the arm plane flat and rotating but instead you’re sliding which is getting you too shallow right but what if you’re not that golfer what if you’re the other golfer the

Golfer that has the upright swing right so let’s just say I went up to the top of my swing and my arms were very vertical well now if I rotate like the other golfer did with the flat arm swing oh my goodness this golf club is so

Steep I’ll never be able to play the game right so one way to sort of balance this out again if you’re a golfer with a more vertical arm swing or upright is to add some of that lateral slide with the pelvis and avoid some of the rotational

Aspects okay so if I go up to the top with a very upright swing think Justin Thomas or Dustin Johnson and I start to add some pelvis slide you can see that my right shoulder wants to drop down my lead shoulder goes up and it has a shallowing effect to the

Golf club okay okay so as I slide this pelvis that club head location drops more behind me again it’s one matchup that works to get that swing direction to be pretty straight right so if you’re someone who has a very upright swing and you fight a leftward path a really good

Drill for you is to take the same cup put it on the inside of your Trail foot and what we’re going to do now is go up with that upright swing that we have and in transition we’re going to try and knock the cup over that is going to

Ensure we’re getting some lateral pelvis slide and allow the club to shallow and get a little bit more on plane on the way down so is there a perfect spot for your arms the answer is no it’s all about balancing the Steeps and the shallows