The Biggest Backswing Takeaway Mistake in Golf

A tutorial from GRF Golf Head Coach Marcus on why the conventional method to starting the backswing with a takeaway might not be such a good idea. Then as always a couple golf drills and exercises for you guys to explore your own means of initiating the golf swing.

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DISCLAIMER:
Marcus Bell is a registered exercise professional and sports bio-mechanist but any exercises recommended or suggested in this video are performed purely at the individual’s own risk.

If you were to throw a ball you wouldn’t go straight into a one piece takeaway you’re not going to take your arm away at the same time you move you’re not going to use a big transverse rotation you’re going to use frontal this is a common issue that I see almost every day

And I think it’s a misinterpretation because the one piece takeaway and the intention to take the club away with the rotation of the body could be stopping in fact it could be killing your sequencing it’s one of the biggest problems before the body even gets moving really that throws absolute spanners into the

Sequencing of the body and it’s one of the reasons why most people struggle sequencing before they really get going because they’re so intent on methodically taking the club away and trying to keep the arms and the shoulders and the Torso rotating together and it plays havoc with the

Interaction of the body in the ground because most people come to me wanting to know about ground reaction forces and how do I use my lower body and the moment they put a ball in front of themselves they put the club Behind the ball and they start to take it away very

Diligently very focused very deliberate really in an attempt to keep everything online to prevent any potential unwanted slices and hooks but in doing so what they’re doing completely unnoticeably is they’re killing the action with the lower body that foot ground interaction becomes so passive instead of driving the motion from the

Ground and using those forces to swing the club they’re actually taking the club away with their upper body and the lower body now just serves to support that movement very passively so the pressure doesn’t really move very dynamically in fact it’s almost static and then when we change direction or

When we speed things up and want to create some speed we’ve already created problems at ground level and this has gone completely unnoticed and makes it almost impossible to recruit the ground now effectively to sequence the swing and create that speed that they wanted in the first place so they may be able

To control the swing to a degree where it’s kind of keeping the ball in play but it’s at the cost really of an effortless swing because it’s very effortful because they’re having to put all the effort in with the upper body that’s where they’re creating the power and not

Using that lower body the bigger muscles essentially the power muscles the power joints to get the speed and the distance so ultimately they can swing easier and sense the club better and have more awareness and control for what they’re doing so that’s why this video is going to be so important because what

We need to understand is where these rotations come from how do we actually make our back swing how do we start this thing how do we rotate now contrary to many beliefs and many lesson videos and books and magazines the Torso doesn’t really rotate like this that is an element of

Rotation but we actually get Rotation by allowing the rib cage to tilt just like the pelvis when you walk one side of the pelvis tilts and anterior one posterior the riv cage is doing the same thing and what this creates is a rotation so for example if you watch

This if I hold my arms out like this like I’m hugging someone hi guys the GF travel Club is revisiting the glory resort we’re in Turkey from the 10th to the 15th of March 4star venue amazing courses five nights four days of coaching with myself on one of the JF

Staff Plus on the course with our JF Tour player Mark Foster we’ve got six places guys follow the link in description and we look forward to seeing you there and maintain that shape and just rotate this is what most people assume is rotation and it is a form of

Rotation but that’s a lot of mass moving together and it’s not really affording as much flexibility for adaptation but if we start to use the spine in the rib cage how the design for motion then we can tap into these movements much easier and we can start to adapt our swing much

More effortlessly so rotation of the body looks like this notice as my right arm goes up and my left arm goes down notice the zip curves there’s lateral flexion and notice if I keep going I’ve got rotation so just by tilting the rib cage the spine responds and now I’m getting

Rotation and then I can add a little bit of the earlier rotation which is transverse rotation this is frontal plane and this is transverse and we’ve got two simple exercises for you to tap into these you might have seen this exercise in lots of lesson videos this

Is the wrecking ball exercise and this is for the frontal plane action latal flexion with a blend of transverse but it’s predominantly frontal plane and this is how we need to start the swing I’m going to use a grf board and a grf balance pad we can use

Anything you’ll have seen kettle bells you’ll have seen medicine balls and they’re all okay the only thing I would suggest is that our arms should be hanging naturally that’s why I’m using a balance pad using a kettle bell puts us into a lot of internal rotation protracts the shoulders and

Locks things out we actually want to control movement ourselves we want to be able to regulate the movement ourselves and not feel constrained like we have to assume this position under tension to access this type of motion we want to be relax we want to feel the motion and any

Necessary tensioning is undertaken in a very natural responsive way so we’re going to stand on the JF board I’m going to take the balance pad and hold it comfortably with my arms just hanging below my shoulders and ensuring that when I swing this it’s just going side to side with no excessive rounded

Motion we want this to travel in a more vertical Direction so it really is a more frontal plane action that’s a side to side action not a horizontal rotation which is transverse and what we’re going to do we’re going to get swinging now I’ve got the RF board you

Can make your own piece of wood on a golf club on an old Shaft or a piece of dowel or a broom handle no problem at all grab something like a dinner plate be careful maybe a paper plate is better but something like something that’s rounded like this a frisbee something

Like that even a football hanging down arms are relaxed no real lifting going on forcing movements we’ve got to take all that away we’ve got to just rock but what you might be doing is what I’m doing and we don’t want this this is everything moving together and it’s hard

To recognize what’s moving when and I’m not really transferring Force to swing this balance pad the best way if I wanted to put more effort in it’s the whole system and it’s really effortful but if I start to disassociate the body movement from The Swinging of the balance pad like this start

Again make a nice rhythmical movement rocking the board from side to side now keep the length of the Swing the same it’s only pretty short it’s just outside my feet now I’m not going to swing longer but I’m going to start to swing faster and now my use of the

Board is disassociated from The Swinging of the balance pad we’ve broke the two movements up it’s no longer together the use of the board go first and then the pad reacts then we can start to soften it off and use this Rhythm and start to accentuate the motion with our

Shoulders and now you can start to see the wrecking ball what I suggest you do is very quickly put that down while the feelings fresh in your bones take your golf club grip it lower down just off the floor make some swings what you’ll notice is this move

Movement is very much a side to side using the wrecking ball motion and this momentum has been driven from me using the ground using the board and then the body reacts and now the club reacts what we can start to tap into now are the transverse rotations and these

Rotations are the big rotations and this is the slingshot so put in the club to one side getting the balance pad back out back on the grf board this time instead of this being in a vertical Place relative to my shoulders we’re now going to lift it up

So it’s horizontal so it’s level or just below the shoulders but just out in front is good because we want this to be a 90° action and watch this now this action is where the big rotations and the speed’s going to come from and this is the

Slingshot you can lower it a little bit to sternum height if you want that’s going to make life a bit easier but essentially now we’re isolating the big rotations of the body these rotations this transverse rotation typically just gets used up straight away at the beginning of the takeaway

And we lose the all important stretch across the body these joints just don’t get actively stretched enough because we’ve used it up and now we’re swinging with our arms we need to into these big rotation because essentially now we get a greater displacement of the mass we’re

Get in a bigger rotation we can actually start to create a lot more angular momentum using this motion and this is going to help create a reaction it’s going to help actively stretch the body for that very responsive and dynamic recoil whereas if we’ve used this up early in our takeaway

We don’t get that stretch later on and therefore we’re trying to somehow find these power sources they’ve lost we’ve lost that elastic recoil we’re trying to somehow recreate them from some other place in the body and it typically just becomes an overuse of the upper body the

Shoulders the arms the wrists and we get those early releases swings over the top and all the stuff that you hear about whereas if you use this transverse rotation later you’re going to be tapping into them at a much more advantageous time in your golf swing so we got to feel it

First now what I suggest you do is start in your follow through so for me as a right-hander I’m over here board’s tipped on my lead side I’m going to rock the board back swing Rock the board forward swing and this slingshot action is going to be critical to

Recognize as we get further into our back swing so how do we blend this together well if I switch the board around here we’re going to start off in frontal PL L and it’s not just frontal there’s a bit of transverse but it’s typically in our mind we’re just swinging side to side

And all we’re doing in our mind is we’re swinging side to side and then we’re going to go horizontal and suddenly now as I’m swinging up it’s going from a predominantly frontal plane into a transverse got all this rotation here and stretch across the body at a

Moment in the swing when we want it if I do it face on here you’re going to see me use that side to side motion and now it turns into a horizontal motion and notice I’ve rocked back this frontal plane really does encourage this lateral shift and this lateral shift quickly turns into

Rotation turns into a push off the ground an unweighting and it turns into a reloading of the lead side and now I’m on my lead side with all this rotation ready to use so notice the downswing doesn’t start here at no point am I having to hold anything and shift

Across I’ve actually already shifted to my lead side so as the body is moving into to a heavily transverse rotation pressure shift to the lead side so essentially this is how we load those muscular chains for that stretch reflex that active recoil so we can push off the floor and fire These

Chains notice I’m holding this place now I’m not a massive advocate of positions and this is not a position as such it’s just you recognizing where you are in space recognizing the form of your body and the tension the load we’re on the left as a rander I’m on my lead side I’m

Rotated but it’s not stacking it’s not the stack until we’re not going straight here that happens quite a lot we got to just let ourselves explore side to side and then once you’ve got that momentum here now I can start to rotate and change direction so what does this look

Like with a club in our hands this is where the one two three comes in starting on your back foot class that a zero that’s your start point then we’re going to go one two three one and two are frontal one two that’s your frontal one

Two so that’s your Wrecking Ball one two wrecking ball two to three is your slingshot one two three okay it’s one of those if you blink you can miss it okay because this is the time when we’re introducing the impulse bang we’re loading to the floor

As we load the body one two three and then you can feel this place and you know where we’re going to be going from here but I’m not going to show in this video because this is priming the system ready to go we are using the ground now to unload

Load and then we can unload and that’s where we go vertical but we’ve got to have these in place first to maximize our use of the ground so guys get yourself on a board use your one two three if you’re struggling for a balance pad or finding something use a golf club

Karate chop grip that will do so guys wrecking ball to slingshot for Power