Why Your Downswing Is Doomed Without This Move (Simple to check)

Your Downswing Is Doomed Without This Move

Most amateur golfers miss this crucial move—and it’s quietly destroying their swing. In this video, I reveal the key downswing move that all elite players make: returning the arms to the delivery plane. This move is essential for power, consistency, and solid ball striking… yet so many golfers never get back to that line.

I’ll show you exactly how to spot this move in your own swing, what it should look like using clear visuals, and a simple drill to help you start doing it like the pros. If you’ve ever wondered why your practice swing looks great but things fall apart with a ball in front of you—this is likely why.

Don’t let this common mistake hold you back. Let’s fix it today.

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00:00 Introduction
00:24 What Great Players Do
01:01 Amateur Swings
02:00 The Perfect Swing?
07:29 Swing Drill

When students come to me for health, it’s often because they just don’t know why they’re struggling with their golf games. They don’t know what to work on to get better. Now, if I was in that situation, this is the first thing I would check because this is possibly one of the most crucial moves in the golf swing. And it’s really frustrating because it’s actually quite easy to check and work on in your own game. So, let’s look at what the best players do because they all bar a few tend to do this. We’re going to take a line and put it from the huzzle of the golf club through the bottom or the lower part of the trail elbow and extend that all the way up to the top. Now, when these golfers, these great golfers get to the top of their golf swing, the club and the hands are always above that line. But the two checkpoints that almost all great players hit in the down swing at impact is they return to that line quite soon into the down swing and their club shaft is perfectly on that line at impact. And you can see some great golfers on the screen here who are obviously incredible players demonstrating that movement. Now, when we take a look at some of the amateurs that I’ve helped over recent months and years, what do we see? Well, often they’re in a great position at the top, but they don’t return to that line in the down swing, and so they struggle to get the hands into the right position at impact. These golfers are going to struggle with consistency. They’re going to struggle hitting straight shots, and they’re going to really lack power. So, let’s fix it. Now, the drill that we’re going to run through to fix this fault is actually really, really simple. But how do you actually look for it in your golf swing? Well, here’s how. You’re going to get your phone on a tripod ideally down the line, take a video, and then you’re going to place a line that goes from the huzzle of the golf club all the way up through your elbow right the way through your back. Now, if you’re not sure how to draw a line, there’s going to be loads of apps out there that help you do that. If you’re currently using an app, drop it in the comments, help everyone out. If you’re not sure, drop down there. There’s going to be loads and loads of suggestions. Then you can play the video and see whether you’re above that line, under that line. There might be a few of you on that line. Let’s first dive into how the golf swing works. Because if you can really understand this, you not only swing the golf club better, but you deeply understand why. And it helps you kind of fix problems going forwards. So, one of the biggest misconceptions is that you shouldn’t lift the arms, you shouldn’t swing the arms, you shouldn’t do anything at all with the arms. It should be just body rotation. The arms follow. Let’s show you why that’s just false, basically. And I’m just going to take my finger. I’m going to place it onto my bicep and my thumb onto the chest. So, let’s keep the arm and the chest and let’s keep that relationship the same. And let’s make a full body rotation that we would in a back swing. That would be my body pivot. Now, is that where you see the lead arm finish in most golfers back swings? Nowhere near. I mean, that’s waist high. And we always see that arm much much higher than that. So, in the back swing, you have basically got your body pivoting or rotating through around about 90 degrees. But then as well as that, the arms lift. Now you might have a flatter golf swing, you might have a shallower golf swing, but your arms are still lifting. We cannot get away from that unless you want your back swing to finish with your hands around here. So when we bring the golf club back in and we do that, there’s my relationship. We rotate through 90 degrees. That’s not the end of your back swing. You probably had some wrist set. That’s not where you finish your golf swing. The arms have got some lift. That is the key part. When the arms lift in the back swing, they have to do the opposite in the down swing. This is where we see the biggest fault because what so many amateurs will do is they will lift the arms correctly in the back swing. But they start the down swing with a body rotation and the arms drop relative to the chest far too late in the down swing. You can see what that’s doing to the shape of my golf swing. It’s replicating what we saw from those kind of amateurs at the start of the video. So, in the down swing, we have to learn how to blend, the dropping of the arms, and the rotation of the body. That is why I’ve got this little device sat on the uh on my trousers. Just going to give us a little reference point. So, here’s what I’d love you to do. Take a setup. And the first little exercise you’re going to do, I’ve got an eight iron. You’re going to chip some golf balls, connecting the arm to the body before you turn them down swing. Make your back swing as normal. Then you’re going to take those arms and you’re going to lower them relative to your body. See how my trail arm is now reconnected with that little device? That’s lowered the arms. You can see straight away that’s done to my swing shape. Now I can start to add some rotation and just collect the golf ball. Now, it’s not gone very far. But I’ll tell you what, it was solid. It was straight. My club path was pretty damn good there. That’s exactly what I’m looking for. That’s how we make golf swings. Now, think about what I did in that golf swing. I lowered my arms. I turned my body. Gave me a pretty good shot. What happens after I do those exact same things? Lower my arms, turn my body, but this time in a different order. This time I’m gonna turn my body and lower my arms. Whoa. Well, that one felt very different. Okay, look at the path. Way left to target now. So, my path was left. My swing looked terrible. It felt awkward. The ball went left. I did the same things, but I did them in the wrong order. That is why you will struggle with your golf swing. That’s why you get steep. That’s why your hands get high. That’s why you feel like you’re standing up. It’s not that you’re doing the wrong thing. It’s that the order is wrong. Great players, you know, we can name them. We saw them at the start of the video. Have the correct order. So, watch what happens again when I do this the right way. I turn, I lift my arms, I lower my arms, I add my turn. I get so much more consistent strikes that way. I know that one went a little bit right. I get so much more compression that way. and I’m going to get so much more distance. So, straight away with one simple little thought and idea, you can start to instantly improve the shape of your down swing. You can start to get rid of those steep over the top movements that you’ve maybe seen in your golf swing if you did that little experiment at the start when we asked you video of your golf swing. And ultimately, what we’re looking to do is blend the two movements. Because if I simply lower the arms this way, you can see where the club’s going relative to that line. It’s going under it, under it, under it, under it, under it. So, if I keep lowering the arms, but don’t turn the body, I kind of get the opposite. I get the club too far on the inside. Now, what kind of strikes am I going to get from here? Well, pretty poor. I’m going to, you know, struggle to strike it. If anything, I’m going to kind of top it and thin it. So, if we just lower the arms and we don’t use the body, terrible results. If we turn the body, then lower the arms, terrible results. The great players blend the two. That is the key part here. So, this is the next little exercise where you’re going to start to blend it all together. You’re going to take an alignment stick, place it on your target line. Let me just make sure that is lined up. That’s pretty good. This is now your reference. This is going to tell you how to blend the two. This is going to get you that tour pro look to your downing, body first, arms second. Nowhere near. Want to avoid that. If I lower the arms, lower the arms, lower the arms, lower the arms, lower the arms, but don’t turn the body again. Look, I miss that position. But if I can lower the arms and turn the body at the same time, I start to find these really, really consistent delivery positions. Notice how my trail forearm has reconnected this little device. My club shaft is nice and parallel to the alignment stick that’s on the floor. What’s that going to give me? Well, it’s going to give me a very neutral path. That helps me hit straight shots. It’s going to also help me compress the golf ball. That’s going to give me more distance. And because I’m doing it the right way, I’m getting more consistency. And that’s really, really key. So, without hitting any shots, you can just go ahead and say, "Can you blend? Can you blend? Can you blend?" And I just really want you to pay attention to my forearm and that little red device. Notice how they are connecting. They are connecting. And when I can connect them earlier in the down swing, it becomes much easier for me to hit good, solid golf shots.