Addressing Spine Angle and Spin Loft to Improve Wedge Performance

Our assessment with PGA TOUR and KFT veteran, Tyler Duncan, revealed how limited thoracic spine mobility could be creating attack angle and spin loft issues with his wedges.

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All right, so today we’ve got Tyler Duncan here at TPI, former champion on the PGA Tour, won in 2019 at the RSM Classic. He’s got a great team around him. It’s coach Andrew Johnson, Mike’s trainer, talking to Mike and the trainer. Looks like we’ve got some mobility issues that maybe are affecting his golf swing. So, this should be an interesting one. If you like videos like this and more content from my TPI, make sure you hit the like and subscribe button below. We’ll keep you notified anytime a new video launches. Okay, tell me swing. What’s going on there? right elbow lifting sort of club trying to like cross over the line. He’s always had a really good shallow transition where he could cover the ball down at the bottom as he’s gotten less a little less mobile and the Yep. more lift correct. Yeah. A little more of the straightening of the leg, a little less into the right hip and then thoracic is stopping kind of going forward a little bit and then starting to crown across the line. Makes sense. Whereas when he just would turn back, almost turn through, there was very little head movement toward the ball. So what Andrew’s telling me makes a ton of sense. You know, anytime you lose mobility, when you stop turning, you still want to get the club up in the air. So what sounds like what Tyler’s been doing is he’s just been using his arms. His arms keep going, the club keeps going, the club crosses the line, and now when the club crosses the line of the target, there’s lots of compensations that have to happen to time this properly on the down swing. So, starting to make a lot of sense. What’s the miss? The last year, my miss has kind of been a chunk, which I’ve never had. And that’s from, you know, taking it back, dipping, and then, you know, trying to find the bottom. What are we seeing in the screen, Wes? What’s the big From the body perspective, starting from the ground up, dorsif flexion tightness, hip tightness. Um, also shoulders are pretty tight on that. He does have a thoracic rotation limitation, a tight really tight wrist that you do not have a lot of. So besides his ankles, his hips, his spine, his shoulders, his wrist. He’s great. It’s great. Kind of a little interesting background. He said when he won he was around 150 lbs, a little leaner, decided to put on some bulk, got up to almost 160 65 lbs. If you’ve got a great engine that works really good in a motorcycle, all of a sudden, if you take that same engine and you put it in a, let’s say, a semitr, it’s probably not going to work the same. So, you got to remember that when you change your frame, you also have to change your engine. Uh, and it can change your golf swing a little bit. It sounds like you got a great team around you. How can I help? Approach play is kind of come and gone a little bit. This This year has not been great. Finesse shots or distance wedges? It’s like distance wedges all through pitching and It’s like when it’s timed up, it’s really good. Yeah. And then when it’s not just chunk, it’s like, you know, I’ll make a couple birdies, then I’ll, you know, chunk a wedge and make a bogey and then all of a sudden that momentum is He’s just making a lot of soft, I call soft bogeies where, yeah, he’s driven it perfect. He’s got 110 yards and then all of a sudden he’s dumped it in the front bunker and he’s like can’t get it up and down from there and I’m like, “Yeah, okay. What is happening?” Okay, good. You said the weakness on the approach shots. Was that distance control or accuracy? Like if we sit here and do Trackman, I’ll hit a lot of the numbers we’re looking for. I don’t think it’s a distance control issue. I think it’s So you think it’s a left or right issue? I don’t think not necessarily. I think it’s more of like I overspend my wedges, which is why it’s hard for me. It’s like if I get a back pin with a wedge, I’m like pretty much like no chance. So do you know why you overspend your wedges? No. Back spin has always been like one of our we’ve always been fighting back spin. There’s only two ways to create spin. Yeah. Right. Club head speed and spin loft. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. The only two things that can create spin. So I would say it’s got to be spin loft. I think it’s got to be spin loft. Yeah. Is the attack angle saying he’s extremely down. His attack angle would say he’s probably less now, but somewhere seven. Okay. be my Do you know if his loft looks like it’s crazy coming through? Like is he not not to me but Okay. You know, one thing that’s really important to understand about spin and back spin on your wedges is this concept of spin loft. Spin loft is the difference between your attack angle and the loft of the club. So the more your club’s going down and the more loft you have on it, the more spin loft you create. So if you think about Tyler’s mechanics, he kind of gets his trunk in front of his lower body. That leads to helping the club go down. So he has a very negative attack angle, right? If you do that, that can create too much spin. It can also, if you have this forward leaning upper body and swing down, you can also chunk and hit heavy, right? So both complaints kind of go together. You said he shifts forward a lot. I mean, does do you feel like uh so it’s a hip shift forward? Big leaning shaft forward. He would lean back. He used to lean the shaft way more than he does now. And that didn’t take some of the spin off. Um, no. My peak height is high with irons and stuff. I do know like what you know what it is. 115 to 120. Oh, really? That is high. Okay. All right. So, it means he’s hitting down. He’s got he’s got to have a downward attack. So, sounds like what I need to do is give these guys as much data as we can and then we can go through and and uh and make sure we’re all on the same page on those. So, I think we should do a physical screen. I should do some power testing just to get an idea of what you can physically do. We should get you on the force plates and get you on the 3D. We’ll do those three things. Let’s go to work. So, the good news here is I think the team’s working on the right thing. I think what I’m more interested now is to try and talk about how they’re attacking this cuz again, this could be a technical problem, but like he just doesn’t know how to keep his trunk back or more importantly talking to Mike the trainer. Sounds like this might be a physical problem. Imagine you’re standing in a barrel. Don’t touch the sides of the barrel. Athletic posture, fivearm posture. Rotate your lower body, but don’t move your upper body. Either side. Harder to the right. Yeah, looks a little harder to the right. Let me see. Do that again. Down there. Let me see you go. Kind of bumps a little more on the right. Little bit. Let me see you. Same thing. Just rotate your upper body. Just don’t move your lower body. That’s easy. Okay. Keeping those heels on the ground. Let me see you squat and come on back up. Where do you feel that? Do it one more time. Quads. Okay, go ahead and get rid of the bar. And you can just drop it. Hands like this. And does that make it any better? Let me see. Squat. Nope. Lay on your back real quick. Grab on. Keeping your knees together. Pull your knees to your chest and come back down. Try and keep your butt on the ground and just pull your knees to your chest. Where do you feel that? You feel that in the front of your hips? Yeah. Grab both hands onto your right knee and pull to your left shoulder. And now both hands on your left knee and pull to your right shoulder. You want tighter? Right one again. Yeah, I think so. Not much though. Let’s see. There’s not that much movement. So, let this leg go down for a second and totally relax into whatever’s comfortable. Any discomfort here at all? Yeah. Zero’s no pain. 10’s horrible pain. What was that? I wouldn’t say pain. It just felt like, you know, like you’re moving. You’re stretching a little bit. No pain. Just checking your labor. I’m just making sure it’s all good there. Okay. Both knees bent, feet together, hands up in the air. Go ahead and lift your butt up in the air for me. Go ahead and extend your right leg, keeping your pelvis nice and level. And keep it out there. If you feel like there’s anything going to cramp, you let me know. Now, compare that to the other leg. Definitely more shaking on the right. This one’s harder. So, if we’re going to have a contest, you’re using your left leg. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, that’s easier than this. This right hamstring feels like it’s going to Okay. All right. You can come on up. I don’t know if that makes it weaker or not, but keeping your back pressed, slowly raise your arms till you feel like you have to arch your back. Pretty easy. Okay. And now the left leg can swivel. Keeping all your weight on your right leg. Rotate to the left. And then compare to the left side and rotate to the right. Those look similar again too. Okay. So internals turning in consistently harder than turning out for him. Man, look. You can feel this. Okay. So, if I hold your rear foot here and I take your forefoot, I move your forefoot around. You feel that? If I hold your forefoot, move your rear foot around. Pretty good. I get here, hold your rear foot. I mean, I can’t even move the forefoot here. If I hold your fore foot, I you feel I can’t even move your rear foot there either. I can go this way. I just I can’t go that way. Like you feel it every time like so I think a lot of people don’t think about the ankle as a very important joint in the golf swing. But it’s your connection to the ground is your foot, right? So all your power is starting from pushing into the ground and those ground reaction forces come back into your body. And where you push from your foot can dramatically change on the direction that those ground reaction forces come back into your body. Most players will push into the ground from the inside of their right foot. If you can’t get the inside of your right foot to push into the ground, that could be a big problem. So, I just I I can’t leave this like this. I’m going to do a little get this like I I bone is not moving at all. This is where probably you’re fighting dorsif flexion a lot too. This is called eversion going this way. Yeah. Your foot’s stuck in inversion. What that does, it creates patellar tracking issues because the the angles are off. Okay. Right. So, um look, look at your look at your right foot right now. See how it’s like this? Mhm. Mhm. You see how different that is? Yeah. Right. So, it’s sitting like this. That creates all these issues over here. Like, this is a huge deal. Like, I haven’t looked at your swing yet. I can tell you right now, this is a huge deal. What I’m seeing with Tyler here is I’m seeing that he’s got what’s called restricted ever. It’s hard for him to rock his foot in to be able to push from the inside. So he almost lives on the outside. You live on the outside of your foot. Now it’s kind of like a sprinter going to the left, but they start off to the right. That’s not a great place to push off of, right? So it’s almost like how the entire reaction starts is from the ground. If it’s starting from the ankle, we really need to solve that. Okay. Um I I would say nothing surprising there. Everything I was already told what we were going to find there. It’s saying the most likely things that you might do due to your body. First thing is loss of posture is the up and down over here. Third thing is the slide. You know, you got three pling mechanisms. You got the wrist, you got the shoulder, and you got posture. Um, want to make sure he’s not using posture to to plane because of the shoulder. So, maybe a little bit of shoulder external, too. But I’m not freaking out yet. All right. So, I think the good news here is uh I’m seeing what I was told I was going to see. I’m seeing some mobility restrictions. They’re not horrible, but there’s a bunch of them. I I think some of the biggest restrictions were ankles bilaterally. It’s kind of hard for him to get mobility in his ankles. Trunk rotation below 40 degrees both sides. I really like that to be like 60° or more. So at trunk rotation and some external rotation of the shoulder. Again, ankle, trunk, shoulder. All of these are going to affect the plane that the golf club moves on. Right? We have what I call three planing mechanisms that players use to get the club on plane. First is your wrist, right? So you need to be able to flex and extend your wrist to be able to move the club. Second would be your shoulder. your shoulder. The more you externally rotate your shoulder, the more you can lay the club back. If you can’t externally rotate your shoulder, it’s really easy for the club to get across the line, which is something they’ve been complaining about. And then, of course, your posture. You can stand up to shallow the club or flex to steepen the club. That’s one of those mechanisms that we really don’t want you to use. We want you to use your wrist and your arms and not have to use your posture. So, we’re going to just do a counter movement jump. You’re just going to squat and jump. Couple easy ones just to get warmed up. Now, we’re going to go look at some power just to see is the lower body way more powerful than the upper body. And with Tyler’s restrictions in the ankle and some of the stuff in the trunk, I just want to see if it’s affecting his power in any way. You’re going to get ready to jump. You’re going to squat or you’re going to hold. When I say go, you’re going to jump straight up. Get ready. Go. 22.1. Nice. That’s perfect. Just pass it as far as you can to me. Yep. That’s it. Nice. So, when you’re testing power, it’s really important to understand in golf that we’re not like martial arts. There’s no weight classes, right? So, big guys play against small guys. So, if you think about when I’m doing power testing, if I give you a medicine ball, let’s say I give you a 4 kg medicine ball, the bigger guys should be able to throw it farther than the smaller guys. Nice. Nice. That’s a good one there. This is why mass matters. If you’re much bigger, you have an advantage. And smaller guys, like guys like Tyler, they need to maximize everything they’ve got. Slow. Can you do it eight times? Yeah. Switch sides. What do you think? What’s your guess? Not much more. Tyler’s really interesting. When we get to global testing, his lower body is above PGA Tour average. He’s got some great power in his lower body. When we get to his core and his upper body, he was just a little bit at the lower range of PGA Tour, but he’s also a smaller guy. As you can see, if we wanted to hit it farther, those are the two areas we’d want to bump up a little bit. If I look at his local testing, which is comparing him based on people his body weight, he’s way above average. So, I think he’s maximizing power for what he’s got. So, the good news is for him, he’s pretty balanced. Yeah. You know what I mean? Now power from physics power equals force times velocity. So force think of it like strength and think of velocity like speed. So to be powerful you need strength and speed. You can’t just be strong. You can’t be fast. You got to be strong fast right? So the app looks at the data and says okay if I want to improve this does he need strength for speed? It’s going dude strength’s not a problem. It’s just saying uh I need more speed there. So if you’re like oh I want to add some more training to my upper body. I’m not talking about laying down on the bench press and getting stronger here. It’s saying that’s not going to do it. Like I need explosive upper body stuff, metal stuff, punching bags, things like this, like increase the speed of your upper body. If I go to core, it’s saying same thing. I’m telling you, you kick ass on the strength part. I know you said you bulked up and you did some stuff over there. Maybe that’s why that’s all good to go. But, uh, right now, that’s the last thing in the world we’d be telling you to do. It’d be more explosive stuff. Love that. Okay. All right. Let’s go hit some balls. Double plate ready. Double plate ready. Double plate ready. Wow. You got some good numbers. You just surprised me there. I like that. I like being surprised. Okay, so first impressions with the force plate. I’m impressed. Actually a little bit surprised uh because of the ankle restrictions we saw in the gym, some of the mobility. I wasn’t sure how well he was going to be able to load and drive off the lower body, but it looks great. The driver looked amazing. He’s got way above PJ to average from lateral force. Um hit a couple six irons for me real quick. He was 45% above tour average on lateral force there. That’s some impressive numbers there. Double plate ready. Double plate ready. 10 yard stuck. Double plate ready. Man, that was so good right there. Wow, dude. You got some great numbers. So, this kind of gives me an idea of how you’re starting the power. When we get to 3D, it’s going to show me how you transfer the power through your body. You know how to start power. So, this this is good. is when you have this reverse spine angle or your trunk leans towards the target. It’s really important to know like when they do that. Sometimes you can create all your ground reaction forces from the ground. Perfect. And then later in your downswing, you start to lean your trunk forward. So just from my brief interaction of watching him hit balls. Visually I can see looks like his trunks going towards the target. So I’m thinking that maybe this is something that happens near the end of his back swing. So I really to get a better understanding now I got to go to 3D. So far, watching you swing and then looking at the force, I had like a hypothesis of what I thought might be going on. I’m 99% confident you guys are working on the right thing, but I might be able to give a little more insight on some of the wise there. Sometimes people come in and say, “Here’s what’s going on, Bubba.” And I’m like, “I totally disagree. I I I mean seriously like there’s some where I’m like what the hell are you talking about? Um what you’re saying is is the problem. I mean that thought did cross my mind. No, it happens all the time. It happens all the time. Yeah. Well, that’s what a lot of people use this just to make sure like, hey, are we missing something? But uh you pretty much I think you’re seeing what I’m seeing. Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to no force plate, just hit some six irons. Yeah, there’s big difference between driver and iron. Big difference. That’s good. Explains what you’re complaining of. When we get to the iron, you can see his sequence is off. His lower body is late. Now, what do I mean by that? So remember, if you start from the ground, the first thing that should happen is those ground reaction forces start to come up through your body and your pelvis should start to rotate first. It should then transfer energy to your trunk. Your trunk then transfers to the arms, arms transfer the club, and the club hits the ball. Now, we saw Tyler creating ground reaction forces from the ground really good. But now what we’re seeing on the 3DS, it’s instead of the lower body going first, then the trunk, then the arm, then the club. What’s happening is it’s almost like the energy starting from the upper body, starting from his arms and the club. So, it’s like imagine the tip of the whip starts at the same time as the handle. So, I saw the handle look great, but I didn’t know the tip of the whip was going at the same time and the energy is clashing in the middle. Typically, here’s what we see with the best players in the world. You get to close to the top of the back swing and most players, the first thing they do is they start pushing lateral. There’s a weight shift, right? That’s normally the first force we see. Then we see rock, a little bit of rock and roll. Then we see twist and then we see jump. That’s the normal what we call kinetic sequence on forces. It’s how most players create force, right? And I get on the force plate and I look. Okay. So, I go forward in your swing and I look to see which of these yellow dots happens first. I see you twist then rock then jump. Now, why would you twist before you rock? And again, it’s not a lot, right? It it was it was almost at the same time, right? Twisting takes the club behind you, takes the club in front of you. So, if for some reason if the club does get over here, one of the first things you do is you’ll twist to get this back here and then you’ll rock and then you’ll do your normal sequence. That’s very common with guys that cross the line kind of like Andrew said if you’re going to get in trouble sometimes that happens. So there that could bleed in there a little bit. Um but I’m I look at that and I’m like that’s pretty damn good. So second thing is magnitudes. This 31 right here that’s percent of body weight. You’re pushing 31% of your body weight lateral. You’re pushing 23% of your body weight rock and roll. You’re pushing about 19% twist and 218% vertical. PGA Tour average 23 21 198. I mean this is like crazy magnitudes. You have way high numbers, right? So I look at this and I’m like man that’s awesome. Now just remember this is percent body weight. So when you push at 218% if John Rom pushes at 170% you might be equal, right? Cuz he’s a big dude, right? Type of stuff. So smaller guys we have to push harder, right? So I look at this and I’m like man that’s pretty good. Now his lateral, your lateral is like I said almost 45% higher than our PJ tour average which so when you push lateral you push lateral like you do a good push there and then your vertical 218 this is one of the highest correlations to the club head speed. Third thing I look at on the force plate is the timing. Okay so you might have the perfect sequence but what if you did it in the back swing? I’m like I don’t know how it needs to be in the down swing. The question is where in the down swing does it need to happen? Typically what we see is we see all the ground reaction forces start right before the top of the back swing and they finish before the shaft is vertical because forces precede motion as you push. It needs time for those forces to get to the club. If you did it later, there wouldn’t be enough time and you’re just using your upper body. So the earlier you do it, the better, right? So I look at yours. I go to your your final ground reaction force, which is vertical. It happens on this shot. It was slightly past vertical. That just means out of all your stuff that I just talked about, I I think your sequence is good. I think your magnitudes are great. I just think it’s a little late. The question is, is it a vertical that’s late or is this late? Is this late? But if I go all the way to the top, your lateral, see the where your lateral occurs. And here’s the top of your back swing. See how that’s after the top of the back swing? Most people start the ground reaction forces before the top of the back swing. You really start after the top of your back swing. So, I just think everything starts late, right? So, when you did the force plate, here’s what I I saw. I was like, “Holy crap, this guy’s got great sequence. He’s got great power numbers.” I’m like, “He just does it kind of late.” Like, you start doing it late. That was the first thing in my mind. I’m just telling you what I was thinking. So, I was like, “Let me see what he does with it and how he transfers it through his body and see if I can figure out why it’s late.” Because I haven’t talked about why it’s late yet. You with me so far? Okay. So, now I go, “All right, he’s creating power. Now, I want to see how efficiently he transfers power.” Now, let’s think about this. If you’re going to transfer power through your body, what would be the most efficient way to do this? You would start with the lower body, transfer it to your trunk, transfer it to your arms into the club. It’d be like this is the handle of the whip and you go through your body and crack the whip. You wouldn’t go club and then lower body and then arms and then trunk. So that’s the next thing to look at is do you transfer it properly? So I go look at your driver. You can see, okay, your pelvis accelerates, right? Gets to about this fast. And then what it does is it transfers energy to the green line. That’s your trunk. Your trunk accelerates and goes faster. Then it transfers energy to the blue line. That’s your arm. Arm goes faster. Then it transfers to the club and the club goes the fastest. I’m like, I see energy just increasing. I see it going. I’m like, this is perfect. Right. I look at the timing and I go, let’s look at the timing here. The the red should the pelvis should peak first because the hip should go fastest first. And I’m like, there you go. Red goes fastest first. I go a couple more frames. Trunk should go fastest second. The green goes fastest second. Then you should transfer to the arms. Arm goes third. Club goes far. I’m like, dude, I don’t know how to make this better. That’s freaking awesome. Right. So I look at this and I’m like for a driver I’m like if you’re not worried I’m like I’m not this is money. I love the way I’m like that’s great right? So then I go look over here the get your sixiron. Why is the trunk peeking first? Trunk peaks first. Green peaks first then the pelvis peaks and then the arm peaks. Do you see it? I see. Yeah. Green peaks first. I’m like I’m like green pe I’m like now he’s out of sequence. I’m like that’s why he doesn’t like the iron as much as the driver. Right. It’s just not as efficient. like that can create problems. So, whatever goes positive first starts your down swing. Red goes positive first. Your lower body starts the down swing. Then your trunk goes second and then the club and the arm almost at the same time. Okay. So, that’s how you start your transition. If I go to your sixiron and I go, what starts your swing? Blue. Look at pelvis is dead last. So, lower body goes first, trunk, arm, club. Iron, it’s trunk, arm, and then the pelvis goes. I’m like, you with me? Yeah. Okay. So now I’m going, all right, now it’s making sense. Iron, he loses sequence. Why does he lose sequence? Pelvis is late, right? It’s really coming out of the gates late. Uh I’m noticing forces start late on the ground on the ground force. When you do it, they’re great. They’re just late, right? So I’m like, you’re trying to catch up here with the six higher and I’m like, I just need to get the lower body going first and we’re done. Right. Right. Okay. So grab a club, set up like you’re going to hit. I want you go to the top of the back swing. I’m going to completely exaggerate now. I’m just going like law of averages, right? If I took you like this. If I took you like this. Okay. Rotate your lower body first. Start your lower body. Good. And then your trunk. Okay. Is that easy? Mhm. Okay. Now, come back to come back to setup. Go to the top of your back swing. I’m going to go this way here. Okay. Start your lower body first. Is that easier or harder? Harder. It’s way harder. Right. What’s easier to do here? Yes. Move the trunk first. Right. I think you do this. So, stand over here. Actually, I don’t think this this is this is what you’re This is what the data is saying you’re doing. Data says you do this. Right ankle, right hip, little little mobility issue. You don’t like the load. You kind of go this way. You bump this way. Because you bump this way, the platform kind of tilts like this. And now the trunk is leaning towards the target. I exaggerated for you over here. Now from here, now just think about it from here. If I try to do my my normal rock, this is just a bad position to do this in, right? Um if I hell, if I twist early, I’m really in trouble over here. So basically what happens is guys go this way and instead of starting with their lower body, the first thing they try and do is somehow they try and get back to here and then start their sequence, which is what you do. You’re you’re trying to recover so you can start your sequence. You’re great at recovering, right? It’s just you have to start late because your trunks, I think, in the wrong position. Now, that might be there because you don’t load like back to what what have you guys been working on. Can we load this better? I think that would help stabilize the platform. Probably get you over here, and that might solve the whole problem. I just want you to understand what that is going to solve. You with me? You can go as far left as you want, but the ratio, my head to my pelvis is away from the target. It’s not towards the target. Like stacking tilt players, if they go this way, they’re dead. You go this way, it’s it’s okay. You go this way, you’re dead. Okay. Yeah. If I go this way and I start to do my swing, what’s my attack angle? More down or more up? More down. Definitely more down. Creates more spin left. Yeah. Creates crazy spin with wedges, right? So, you know, this would be no spin with wedges, right? This would be crazy spin with wedges, right? Um, so it feeds that narrative as well. Same same thing. So, to me, it’s we got to get you to stabilize your lower body so that the trunk doesn’t get in front of your lower body. Okay. So, I really think we’re now getting into the real cause of Tyler’s reverse spine angle. Like we said before, it’s too much excessive side bend and extension that gets you into this problem. Well, what could create the excessive side bend? Well, if I get my lower body swaying out to the right and get my right hip up in the air, it’s already putting me in left side bend, right? So, as the lower body as the lower body goes to the right, the trunk goes to the left to counterbalance, and that can get you in trouble. I never want my upper body getting out in front of my lower body. Now, he he’s able to create good ground reaction forces, but he’s it’s just not stabilizing the the pelvis, right? So, he’s getting out, and I always feel like it’s important to feed what they need. So, how do I feed what he needs? I get him to feel what it feels like to prevent the lower body from moving to the right. So, I try and make him move to the right. Set up like you’re going hit real quick. Um, take a back swing for me. This is This is what I would do. I can do this all day or you can start to fight me. Can you turn and prevent me from doing this? Okay. Get a little more flex in that knee. Load. Load in there. Load. load in the like the boxing rotation. I’m just gonna do this till he gets really pissed. I’m trying to dig into this right foot and like I just want you to understand there’s your problem. Yeah. Right. You can push me this way and I’m going to block you. You’re just like You’re like you can’t stop me. Yeah. Right. That’s what we need to do. We need to stop that. Imagine there’s electric fence right here. Like Andrew was saying, little shaft there. Yeah. You see that? Let go. Let go. Hands like this. Right here is a pot of gold. Just grab it. Grab the pot of gold. Don’t touch the electric fence. Grab it. Here’s the pot of gold over here. It’s over here. Need me to grab it? It’s over here. Good. Did you touch the electric fence? Come back to the center. Come back to set up. Don’t touch the electric fence. You’re not over at the gold. How do you get over here and not touch the electric fence? Let me see you like literally get over there. Yeah, but don’t touch the electric fence. Put Come over here and be the electric fence real quick. And then your hand right there. Yep. Do it again. Come back to set up. Move the electric fence over there. Get it over. Keep get Yeah. Rechar. That was you getting electrocuted. A lot of it’s in this ankle. I think ankle. I think ankle and watch. And thoracic spine. Turning your spine. turning your spine versus that’s that’s a fake turn. That’s a fake turn. Here’s turning. Yeah. Right. I think that’s what we need to work on. So, we got two things that can happen from this point forward. He can start to feel this and start to make changes really quickly or he can struggle, right? We never know what what’s going to happen with players. A lot of this depends on physical abilities, right? If he has the ability to if he’s been working on this enough and he can feel like he can actually use the body parts, he’s just hasn’t done it in a while, this usually gets better. But if he still doesn’t have those physical abilities, this could be a struggle. Show me a 50 to 100 yard shot. It’s close to that. 78’s no good. It’s a back flag. 75 back flag. Sorry. All right. So, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to we’re going to go look at his distance wedges. That’s the number one reason he’s here. It’s what he really wants to improve. And might as well go after the back pin while we’re at it, too. This is the one that he doesn’t like. So, we’re going to take a look at that and just kind of get a baseline. But this is where it’s gotten tricky now that I’m trying to get into my hip more and stay more bent. Feels like it stalls you on the down. Yeah. Okay. How far did that go? Uh, flew 85. 85. I got Nick Guy here from uh Tyler’s tour department set up with the Trackman so we can look at Tyler’s numbers. And right away we can see that he’s got 10 degrees more spin loft than average for this type of shot. And that kind of helps us understand that the problem really is there. He’s spinning it too much. 27.3 on launch. Still a little bit of loft delivered to it. A little short, but not not too far off 72.4. So I think one of the wishes of a lot of amateurs is to be able to spin their wedges. Now here you see Tyler claim that he spins it too much. This is usually a good player problem. Now, why do most amateurs have a hard time spinning is because they don’t create enough spin loft. Now, spin loft is the difference between your attack angle and your loft. So, in other words, if I take a wedge, let’s say my wedge has 60° loft, right? And I swing down at the ball, that’s a downward attack angle. Let’s say I swing down at one degree down. And let’s say when I have my loft of my club at impact, let’s say the loft is 45 degrees. If I take that down one, go to 45 degrees, the difference between the two is 46 degrees. That would be 46 degrees of spin loft. If I want to spin the wedge more, what I can do is keep that same 45 degrees of loft, but just swing down farther. If I swing down at 10°, okay, well, now if I have 45 degrees loft, and I’m swinging down at 10°, my spin loss 55, right? I think what a lot of amateurs do is if they say, “Hey, I’ve heard about this spin loft. I want to swing more down.” They swing down, but at the same time, they deloft the club. Right? So if you deloft the club, so let’s say you had 45 degrees and you’re swinging down at one. Your spin loft is 46. If you say, “I’m going to swing down more.” And instead of 45 and one, you go to 40 and you swing down at six. Your spin loft’s still 46. It didn’t change. Your spin won’t change. Right? So one of the keys with great players is they swing down, but they maintain loft. And that’s what creates that zip when the ball hits the green. When you set up, I want you to set up with your left hip higher than your right hip. And I want you to try and keep your left hip higher in the back swing. which is impossible by the way, but I just want to see you try. Let me just see you do a practice back swing that way. So, get your left hip higher than your right and try and keep it there in the back swing. Let me just see a back. Yeah. Yeah. Let me see. Okay. Let me just see that real fast. Try to hit it 75. Yeah. Try and hit 75. I don’t really care if it goes. We’re going to try and control that spine angle. We can’t let the spine or the trunk lean towards the target. So, the first step is to try and get his trunk leaning away from the target. That should dramatically lower his attack angle, which will reduce the spin lock. Left hip. I want you to exaggerate like you would never play golf like this. Left hip high. Okay, that’s pretty good. It feels like when he does that loft dumps, it’s coming in coming in real shallow. Wow, that went up. Yeah, it comes because it it looks like to me on there it come it dumps and it comes in real shallow and the club just passes, right? Because I heard scraping. So weird that the spin loft would go up though. Isn’t that weird, Nick? Isn’t that weird that the spin loft would go up if he did that? No, because dynamic loft went up too more than the attack went down. You’re saying? All right. So, good news, bad news. It looks like he’s able to maintain his trunk behind his pelvis, which is great. The problem is, bad news is his spin loft didn’t change. This is a challenge, not surprising. Sometimes this can happen. Sometimes players like certain like launch angles and they make adjustments even subconsciously to keep it the same angle, but uh it’s not nothing we haven’t seen before. So, we’re going to keep moving forward. Show us in slow motion like just facing a super slow. How do you release a golf club? That’s that’s that’s why. Okay, man. That’s But I don’t know if I want to go there. So, when we say flight one, what do you do? That’s what I see. Because I asked him to do that when you walked away and he didn’t do what I thought he was going to do. What What do you What do you do? Yeah. I I make sure this left hip’s clear and then I kind of just stay down through it longer. I I need to talk to you real quick. Let’s go. Come on. Come on. Anytime the release of the club is a problem, this makes me a little nervous because this is a one of the best players in the world. Somebody who’s spent their entire life learning how to control the club face. You know, changing grip, changing the way they’ve released, that’s that that’s like every degree matters on the the direction this ball moves. So, this can be something that can be quite challenging to players. The problem is is when the face is open and then you get forward, that takes your spin off and goes to 50. That creates the spin. So, the only way I can get rid of this spin is I can either get rid of the loft, right, or get rid of the attack angle. But the problem is when I did something to get rid of the attack angle, the loft went up even more. So, um, the only way to get rid of that spin is to change the way he releases that um to to to more a release. Like it’s going to feel like a duck hook to him, but the spin will go away. Yeah. Um, I just don’t know if you want to go there. So, sometimes I’ve got some questions that I want to ask, but I don’t want the player to hear this. I want the coach to explain me a couple things because I I don’t want the player to start thinking about things that I’m not sure if we’re going to implement. So, anytime we’re talking about the way you release the golf club, your hands, I kind of I’d like to talk to Andrew, the coach, first and then kind of make a game plan and then bring it to Tyler after. Is the spin this big of a problem? Like, like we need to solve this. We need to solve with the wedges. He rarely does he hit a wedge like this. Yeah. you know. So, so he’s always he’s always he’s always done he’s always done that. You’re saying he’s always No, he So, what he used to do is so he used to go here. He’s always been weak grip, open face, but when he got to here, he’d start backing up and really leaning the shaft. Yeah. But did he do that with his hands? Cuz I don’t see him doing his hands aren’t doing that. That’s what That’s what he would do. If I get over here, I’m going to totally exaggerate. If I get over here and I do this, dude, it’s hook central. Yeah. Right. So, most guys when they get over here, instead of releasing, they start to back off to keep it straight. Mhm. Now, he’s done that. Now, I want to get him over here, but if he gets over here and he does this over here, this is going to happen. Yeah. This is 2020. Look at that. Look how Look how good that is. See how much more my over there he is? He’s leaning away from the target. Like I said, like what happened to that? So, good. The good news is he’s done that. You think it’s body? That’s That’s what That’s what I think like Well, that’s a good news that that he knows what it feels like now. What What does his release look like there? He gets a little jammed there. But oh man. Okay. Um Okay. So, here’s what I’m going to tell you, dude. If we work on getting him back to where he was over there, if he still has this release, it’s going to be high cuts. But that might give him a reason to release it a little later. He’s always played with that open. So Andrew showed me some swings that he’s done in the past. And the good news here is he’s actually had the normal pattern before. In other words, trunk was leaning away. It looked like he had more of a shaft lean with a release of the face. So this isn’t like something that would be new to Tyler. This is something that he used to do. It’s always easier to remember an old pattern than create a new pattern. And it’s making me think even more that maybe the physicality problem, the physical limitations have led to these compensations. And once we get rid of those, this will be a good feeling. Which way are you leaning? Yeah. The upper body is a little more. You’re leaning away from the target. Right. So, so you used to do this. Okay. Used to be here. He would come down and then he would late release. Right. I I don’t know if it’s ankle, hip, physical. Could have been, who knows? Maybe bulked up a little bit. He he started doing this. Now I start leaning towards the target. You start leaning towards the target and you come and you come down and you release. That’s hook central. So what most players do is they instead of releasing they hold off and they keep the face open and it hits nice shot. You’re at that point now where your your release is open. Like your your it’s probably 20 30° more open than most guys. If I put you over here, dude, it’s going to go high right. You’re going to have to release again. What I’d like to see if if we’re okay with an experiment is left hip’s high, keep the left hip high, come over here and release one where you almost like trying to knock it down with your hands. Okay, I want to see what that does to the spin left. So now I’m going to ask Tyler to go back to a feeling that he used to do, right? Show him like, hey, you used to lean the shaft forward and close the club just to remind him what it was like because maybe it’s been a couple years and and he doesn’t remember, but he’ll remember the feel. So, just giving him the feeling of what he used to do and see if he can just reproduce it. Less information is better right now. Flight it down with your hands. That’s got to look better, huh? Yep. Just make sure you flight it down now. No more reason to keep the face open. Nope. So, that was You need a lot more to this. Good. Now, don’t let go of the club. slow motion. Start to come down. Start to come down. What you did right here is you used to do a little little bit more of that. That’s what gets rid of the spin. Remember spin loft is you take your attack angle and your loft, right? And the bigger those are apart, the more you’re going to spin your wedge. So if you swing down, right, and your face is open, that’s the recipe for spin. And that’s what you do. You keep the face open and you poor lean and it’s like that’s crazy. You spin. So I got to do one of the either got to get rid of your attack angle or get rid of your loft. Well, you’ve got almost 50° of loft and you’ve got like 70° of attack angle. There’s way more room to get rid of the loft. Yeah. And that’s by doing that. Okay. That’s what shuts down the loft. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, do one like that. Do one a back swing like this. And as you come down like almost feel like you’re hitting a low knockdown with your hand. That was closer. Feel like is that still closer or no? on what you It’s in the right direction. We can do We can do way more. Can you flight it with the controlling the Andrew’s pushing you to the right, I’m pushing to the left. That’s what I’m going to try here. Cool. I don’t think you have the feel right yet. Drop the club for a second. Face me. Face me. Take your hands like this. And I want you to do this. I want you to just like you’re going side to side. Yep. Get that feeling. Side to side. Okay. Okay. Now look at me. Now we’re just going to rotate. We’re going to turn. I’ll just turn. Good. Tell me what the feel difference between. Now look at me. Go rock side to side. Okay. Close your eyes. Go. Close your eyes. Lifting with what we’re working on. That’s what I’m trying to process in my head. Cuz when I rotate this way, Yeah. When I go this way like you want me to, that knee’s straightening. Okay. So it’s not staying bent like we’re trying. So that’s what you feel. You feel your knee straightening when you rotate. And then when you rock, what do you feel? I just feel kind of movement. Movement from where? Just your feet, your pelvis, your shoulders. What do you Here from the hips. Okay. And then when you turn, you feel like just your leg straightens. I feel like this leg straightens. Okay. Get that hip more behind you. Um Okay. Well, let me ask this. Can you can you athletic posture and just turn? Can you stay athletic and turn? So, here’s the frustrating thing. A lot of times feel and real are very different. Tyler’s telling me like, “Hey, I can feel what you want me to do.” And he tries to demonstrate it like he’s doing it right, but he’s not doing it right. He’s still rocking and his trunk’s still leaning towards the target. So, he’s having a hard time of differentiating feel from real and feeling the bad move from the good move. Anytime this happens, a player can’t learn. If you can’t feel the difference, you can’t learn. It’s going to feel here. So, you’re going to feel versus this. Yeah. Versus this. Now, from here, all I just want you to do is just turn. I just I just I just want you to turn. Okay. Just just turn. Okay. Does your right hip go high as you turn? To get the left hip higher, do you have to flex your right knee a little bit? Like what do you have to do to get your left hip higher? Yeah. So almost have to soften the right knee a little bit. Yeah. So that’s fine. Andrew wants you to keep that left that right knee soft anyway. Right. Yeah. Right there. If he gets it back, even if it’s a little bit less than it was, because he’s in a better position, it’ll create more. Exaggerate the left hip setup feeling. Get yourself. Yeah. Good. Can I see you do one where I call it pelvic punch? You’re gonna do the drill. Get your take it back to here and just hold. And then when I say go, you’re just gonna hit one on no back swing. So, one of my favorite drills is called the pelvic punch drill. And this really shows players what it’s supposed to feel like to generate power from the ground up. In other words, to do a pelvic punch properly, you’ve got to use the power from the ground, or else you’re not going to have enough power to hit this ball anywhere. So, you’ve got to start the swing with the lower body and then transfer to your upper body. If you’re used to using your upper body to generate the power, this is a really challenging drill. I think Tyler and I can both see that this is something that he’s been avoiding for a while. See, what I’m hoping is he does this enough, then the the release will happen automatically, right? That’s So, get your left hip high. Now, do the good turn in your range of motion. It’s going to feel short. Now, hold when I tell you you’re just going to hit the ball. One, two, three, go. Let me look at that real fast. Let’s do it again. One, two, three, fire. Exaggerate it. Do the good turn. One, two, three, fire. Let’s take a look at that real quick. Andrew, I want to speed up. Yeah. And you’re not exaggerating. You can get left hip even higher because your left hip doesn’t look high. You’re not exaggerating. Do a couple more pelvic punches. One, two, three, fire. Discount the four and fire. Okay. Now hit a ball with the same feeling. No pause. Yeah. See? Yeah. You can still see the upper body leading, right? Can you see that in transition? Upper body wants to go. He likes to He likes his power has been here, but I know his power is the lower body. We saw that in the gym, right? I’d love to use your superpower. I think you’re right. I think he’s hitting his barrier. I think that’s what I don’t know if it was from strength training or whatever, but he’s you can see how when he does it right, he doesn’t have a lot of range and that’s going to freak him out. Well, that’s one of my questions I was going to ask you when we were talking earlier. You said basically thoracic rotation is limited by one of three things. Fal tissue. Yeah. I’m going to I still need to check fascia and spine on you as you come. It’s hard for me to even breathe. That we saw that in the gym, right? That’s right. Cuz we’re going to put with my We’re going to we’re going to put down a plan to try and make that so that feels easier. But the more you do this in your swing, the more loose you’re going to get anyway. If I look at most guys, watch my watch the club face. Most guys on the down swing, by the time the club is here, the face is pointing at the ball. They’ve started to do this. They’ve started to close the face, right? And this is what the release looks like with most guys. And you go, “What the hell? They’re going to hit the ball left, right? I mean, doesn’t it look like it’s going to hook, right? Why does it not hook?” Well, if you do that same release, the exact same release, but turn your body as you go through. That’s what square compression looks like, right? If I do this, if I do this, if I get my upper body over here and I do this, there’s not enough turn, the ball will hook. You can’t do this, right? you have to back off the throttle to square the face up, which has happened for the last four years with you, I think, right? You’ve you’ve changed your release. So, when when you say, “Hey, I’m going to flight this.” Okay. Most guys, if they say, “I’m going to flight this.” They might knock they might knock it down and they’re going to go even more. They’re going to they’re going to deloft the over here. You don’t do that. You’re here. So, how am I going to knock how am I going to Every time you go, “I’m going to you want me to flight it?” I’m like, “I know what you’re going to do. It’s just not the way. You’re you’re going to go more this way. you’re going to try and cover more over here. And I’m like, this is what I don’t want. And you’re like, oh, it’s harder for me to flight it over here. I’m like, I know cuz you the way you flight it is is over here, right? So, I just I’m trying to decide like this this is a lot. This a lot of this is a big change. Um to get rid of some spin on a wedge. Um this is where my head station is. Um, the only way you’re going to do this, like I said, and again, if if you’re willing to try something that you’ll never play like this, right? You can do exactly what you’re doing over here. But now, I mean, I need to see you I need to see you do that. Can my wrists even do that though? Yeah, just do one like. Who cares? Do it one time in your life and forget about it. Just keep it on the ground. Keep the ball on the ground. Low duck hook. Can you do more than that? Can you get it lower than that? More. More. More. Can Can you go more? It won’t go any more than that. Uh, let go with this hand. Can this go more now? Uh, put your other right hand back on. Let go with this hand. Can this go more this? So, it’s the left hand that won’t go more. Yeah. All right. All right. So, I think Tyler and I are both starting to realize no matter what we do, whatever we do to try and make the swing easier, he’s hitting a physical barrier, right? He feels like if he does it properly, the club’s only going halfway back. And that kind of takes us back to the physical screen. I’m starting to think that these these limitations we solve with mobility are a lot more important than we maybe initially thought. Your tendency is you want to go bump and then lean with your upper body. And that’s created all these problems because now you can’t release or else you hook. So, you backed off your release. Does that least make sense to you? Right. So, and I mean, Fred Couples became number one in the world doing something like this. Yeah. You can play good golf here, right? You know what I mean? Um, but you said here’s my problem. It’s spinning too much and I now it’s it’s costing me on the green. So, to fix that is a is a basically a two or three-step process how you look at this. We got to get your spine angle in the right place and then we got to fix the release. Yeah. Do hit one with a stronger grip. Just Just do the new position with a stronger grip. I got a feeling you’re going to like that one. Yeah. 166. There. There’s the 16. So, okay. Well, here’s an option with your distance wedges. We go stronger grip. Can we try that a couple times? Let’s hit a 75 with a stronger grip. Go for it. Yeah, perfect. 278. I mean, the other option is, like I said, the the question is, is it worth it? We could keep him where he is and just lower the loft by strengthening your grip and now it’s not going to spin. Um, or we can here’s what most tour players do. Get over here and knuckle down. I mean, watch watch this. Do you know why the strong grip does this? I think it’ be good for you to set up like you’re going to hit. Okay. Um, go slow. I’m asking you if that’s strong enough. Is that strong enough? Um, let me see. Set up. Can you see that knuckle? No. Then it’s not strong enough. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Now watch. Come on top of your back. swing. He’s like, “What the hell?” Now start to come down. And now notice from here the face is already pointing at the ball where before it was it was over here, right? And I’m going, “Hey, turn it down.” You’re like, “I can’t.” Well, now you don’t have to turn it down. It’s already face is closed. It just closes the face. Okay. Right. That’s that’s what a lot of guys just do that. You know what I mean? Okay. So, we finally ended up here where we kind of strengthened his grip. Now, Andrew said earlier that he’s always had this weak grip. And if you think about it, if your grip’s weak on the club, it’s hard to close the face because it’s almost like a weak grip position is almost like I always say it’s hard to shut a shut door. It’s almost starting shut. So it’s hard to it’s hard for your arm to turn more which turns the face closed. Where if I start with a strong grip, it’s really easy as I supenate the face just closes. But if I start really weak, it’s like I can’t I don’t have enough range of motion anymore because of where I’m starting. Yeah. I mean, that’s in the world of height. Spin off the I mean that’s in the world of height. That’s what that’s what Nick’s looking for. Yeah. That’s your answer. I think your problem is weak grip with open face. That’s like 135. That’s a 9. That that’s that’s the that’s how you create you want to create spin. That’s how you create spin. Yeah. But it makes sense now. At least you understand if you’re going to get over here, uh, if you want to flight the ball, you can’t do this anymore, right? So, I I got to close the face. I mean, yeah. I mean, you can see it from here. That’s the direction we need to go, though. What? That’s the direction we need to go. We need to get your I know we we can’t let your trunk keep going forward. Yeah. you’re no matter what you do, you’re just going to keep getting bad habits and then it’s the point we’re going to have to change it. Yeah. Right. So, we got to get your trunk back over there. But now, when we put your trunk back over there, your old release, you’re not going to like, right? So, we either have to go stronger grip or [Music] release. That’s your right over left field. That was money. your miss is going to be a little high right type of miss until your hands start going gez I got to I got to close this down right now the problem is if you’ve always played with a weak grip it affects all parts of your game right like itffects how you control the club face and I almost feel like we just go strong grip it’s kind of a band-aid it might work it might work close this but uh I still am not convinced that he knows what it really feels like to control the spine angle I I feel like there’s there’s still more deeper issues here I think we need to go in the gym in front of the mirror. Do a couple drills over there just to show you that because I think if we you see it and then we come out here and do it, I think you a little bit better. So, just leave this right here. Okay. Now, show me the good turn. Okay. Now, look in the mirror. Is it still or did you move that way? I moved that way. Okay. That’s We can’t do that. You keep doing that. You keep swaying. Yeah. I just want you to know like it’s it’s still going to the right. Now, is your spine like this? I think so. My hip’s still out, but still out there. Make make it better. If we’re going to practice something, we might as well make Get your left hip high. Now, good. Now, come back. Now, let’s just rock rock this way. Yeah. Now, look, look in the mirror. Do that again. Do the back swing. Hold there. That’s what we saw when you walked in. Okay. You understand how different Yeah. That is from actually coiling. Yeah. So what just understand your foot doesn’t like to go this way. Your hip doesn’t like to turn. Your spine doesn’t like to turn. So you just said screw it. I’m just going this way. Yeah. So you just had this fake turn. You just you go this way. Right. And now when you’re in this position right here, right? It’s just so easy to cover with your upper body, right? Where most guys they turn, they step into the pitch and they sway. Right. Yeah. I need you to get that feeling. Turn. Step into the pitch and swing. Keep going. Do a couple of those. Turn. Step into the pitch and swing. Good. Look in the mirror. It’s okay. I’ll take baby steps. Let’s Let’s check the back swing. Set up. Look in the mirror. Check the back screen. Looks You could do way better than that, right? I mean, not much. Look in the mirror. Look in the mirror. Come. Come back. Yeah, that’s fine. Okay. So, go ahead. Turn. Turn. Look. And when he feels like he’s turning properly, his truck is still leaning towards the target, right? He can see it now visually in front of him. And I think it’s really highlighting how physically difficult this is for him. Bend forward like put your hands like this. And then all you’re going to do is without without moving lateral, you’re just going to turn like this. Turn like this over. Yes. Do that a couple times. Now look in the mirror. Start. Start at the start. Go to start. Okay, it’s on your right hip. Now turn. It’s right off your right hip. Right. Now turn that way. Now look in the mirror. It’s still on your right hip. Right. That to me looks like your pelvis didn’t go this way. Just your upper body just went, you know, like your upper body went like this. Yeah. Yeah. Do that one more time. Now I want you to pay attention to what your lower body feels like. Can you feel the difference between that and that? What? Describe it to me. Well, this is just, you know, my hips are shifting and then this is turning like I can feel it. It’s hard for me to get this hip back and the torso that way. Correct. Agreed. That’s what we need to work on. Yeah. Right. Cuz you’re like, I want to do one over there. I’m like, until you can do it here, you ain’t going to do it out there. What I want is even if you just did 30°, I want it done right. And then the more you do it, like if if you’re like, “All I can do is 30 degrees.” Like, “Cool, let’s just do this a 100 times,” next thing you know it’ll be 32 degrees and then it’ll be 35 degrees and in four weeks you’ll be like, “I can do 50 degrees,” right? But right now you’re just you’re not doing it. Yeah. I want to get to the point you almost go like you go here, you arch your back, you go this way. It’s like everything’s over here. Like I want you to just I just want you to turn. So what what tells me is that spine’s more involved than anything here, right? Because soon this is basically when he’s he’s staying flexed now. When he goes to extend and side bend, he goes, I can’t do it. He goes this way. I think one of the things we were noticing outside, too, is it looked like it was easy for him to fix the lower body, but his trunk just kept leaning towards the target. I think we’re both starting to think now that maybe this trunk range of motion is the big problem. That the pelvis is doing the right thing, but because the trunk can’t turn, it’s just it just keeps tilting towards the target. and that this might really have come down to a lack of mobility in the trunk. Let’s let’s do a little faster check real quick. So, you’re gonna go um down on the ground. Take your phone out of your pocket like this. Right knee in front, left knee in back. Same thing. What’s that? Yeah. So, good. Good. And keep that at 90 degrees. 90 degrees. Perfect. Now, if there’s a laser beam coming out of your chest, it’d be parallel with this thigh. I want it perpendicular. So, turn to the right. Put your forearms down on the ground over there. Keep going all the way to the right. Good. Forearms down. Okay. Now, if I said, reach this arm out as far as you can in front of you off the ground. Reach it up off the ground. Up up up up. And if I say, take a big breath in, breathe out, and try and drop this shoulder down to the ground, but keep that hand off the ground. How far can we go? Okay, you got that feeling? Yeah. Breathe out. Try and drop that left shoulder down. And one more. Big breath in. Expand your rib cage. Reach. Okay. Now, take both hands like this on the ground and elbows locked. Come all the way up into a press up facing that way. Feel that mostly right here. Facing that way. Big breath in. As you breathe out, you’re going to slide all the way out towards the mirror. All the way out. Breathe out. Okay. You’re going to go facing me like we were before. Like this. If you can still move. Yeah. Knees apart. Forearms together. Okay. You’re going to sit back to your heels. Put your right arm behind your back. Look to take a big breath in. Expand your rib cage. Breathe out. Look to the right and raise your right shoulder to the sky. Okay. Big breath in. Expand your rib cage. Breathe out and raise the right shoulder to the sky. Come over here real quick. Have a seat. Arms like this. Head against your forearms. Just rest into my hand. Rest in my hand. Totally relax. Totally relax. Relax. Much tighter here than here. Agreed. Yeah, that’s where I get get a lot of it. So, we do have a little bit of spine. So, we got you got a little bit of all three. You got a little bit of spine, fascia, and rib. Yeah. Um, let me just knock that out. Turn. Head there. Feet this way. On your back. On your back. Okay. You see these arms here. I’m going to see if we can. So, starting about there. Take a big breath in. Let all the air out. Good. Big breath in. All the air out. We got it all the first time. We’re going to go like this. You’re going to give me a hug. Give me a hug and relax. Good. Good. Forearms. I think the first one broke everything loose. Totally. Totally realize. Oh, that’s a magnet. Let’s go back over to the mirror. That was a big deal. Spine was pretty locked up on you there. But the good news is like a shotgun went off. Let’s go back over front here. I just want to see if we break some of this loose. Does it feel easier to do this? Are we just fighting your body? Like nothing worse than me telling you to do something you can’t physically do. I want to know if we’ve been doing that for two hours on the range. So, go ahead and rotate. I mean, that was a much bigger turn. Holy crap. Did you see that? Holy crap. set up like you’re going to do again. All right. So, that’s that’s spine. So, we got we got through we got some spine made the biggest difference. We went fascia. It wasn’t huge. We did ribs, it was a little bit, but spine was huge. So, like I’ve said in the past, anytime you have restrictions in the trunk, it can come from any of the big three. The fascia, which is the connective tissue that wraps around your body, it can come from the rib cage or it can come from the spine. Any of those areas can create restrictions. So, a lot of times with players, what I like to do is I like to attack each of those one at a time and then recheck to see what the difference is. I think it was crystal clear here that when we went after spine mobility stuff, ribs helped a little bit, fascia helped a little bit, but when we went after spine, Tyler responded really well. So, left hip stays high. Good. And go ahead and turn. Dude, look at the mirror. I I can feel it. Okay. So, I hate I hate to say this, but I I think I’m gonna say this on camera so so other people can learn about this. Um, I always say like what separates a beginning coach from an expert coach is beginning coaches tell people to do things they can’t physically do. I feel like I’ve been doing that for two hours with you. Right? I’ve been trying to get you to get over here and it is clear as day that you’re hitting a wall that you’re just like you’re looking at me like, “Dude, I’m trying, but I I can’t do it.” We break that loose and all of a sudden you’re like, it’s like freedom. Yeah. I’m coming at you. This this I think he’s prior to you, right? So, we got to get this to the point where Andrew can tell him to do some of these things and it’s not like it’s a wall. The good news is it’s T-spine. Let me see you go down hands and knees now like we were doing before. And big breath in. Expand your rib cage. Expans and breathe out. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Hold. Hold. Big breath in and relax. Okay. Now you’re going to come down. Big breath in. Expand your rib cage. Breathe out. Hold. Which way is your spine going? Wrong line. Can’t do that. Okay. Do it the right way. Closer. Let me just tell you something. Like, listen to me. The difference between that and that is the difference between you having to think of something and not having to think of something. Yeah. Right. And the more you think about it in here, you don’t have to think about it out there. Right. Right. So, do it again the right way. Because how easy is it to watch how easy is it watch me to step put your right hip high and turn like this? Yeah. Right. That’s what you like to do in your golf swing. Right. I want you to step keeping pelvis and turn. Now we’re working T-spine. Yeah. One more time. Make sure you do that right. So I think a last step now is to is I call clean up now. to go look at all the things you’re doing to help your golf game to make sure that that bad pattern that was developed because of a physical limitation isn’t permeating through all of your routines. So Mike and I go through his workout and you’re starting to even see like even simple things like pushing and pulling and medicine balls, he’s got this pattern of he wants to tilt. So the good news is we see it now, he can feel it now and now we can start to do the good patterning in every everything he does from practice swings to exercises in the gym. And this will all transfer much faster when I go when I go this way. Just understand what you want to do. Look in the mirror. You want your right hip to bump. You want your hip to bump and your spine to go that way. This is the wrong way. Correct. And here I But I feel like my hip is more behind me. It’s just this. It’s the platform tilts this way. I can’t let the platform tilt like this. Okay. I mean, I just threw open my mouth a little bit. Come come over here. There’s the upper body leading the lower body. I mean, that’s death in your golf swing. Yeah. If you watched me do this, I’d go like this. You just went like this. Yeah. I’m like, I want to cut my head off. Yeah. Don’t do that. Okay. Let me see. Do it the right way. Good. Now, you see the wheels, the the hamster wheels going. He’s like, he’s like, wait, I notice how you want to you want to lead with your upper body. Instead of this way, you want to go this way. Yeah. And go ahead and bounce it to him. Okay. Okay. The hell are you doing? Just kidding. Okay. Yes. Let’s do it again. Let’s make that coordinated. The push is a little late. I want the push from the foot to drive the arms. So, feel like the foot is driving the arms. The arms aren’t driving and then the foot going. Yeah. Yeah. Feel that difference? Yeah. Leg drives the arms. You should push so hard forward it makes makes you jump backwards off the road. Yes. I think the first thing we should do is teach him how to create power from the lower body. I was asking him to take away the upper body and use the lower body, but he he’s not good at the lower body yet. We got to get the lower body or else I’m telling him to do something that he’s like, I suck at this. I don’t want to do this. Right? Even though I know you’re more explosive down there and this will get really athletic because the power in everything we said was the lower body’s strong and creates power. That’s what I mean. Like I want to use your superpower, you just haven’t been using it. So I want to train it first and then you’ll use it, right? So um like this feels foreign to you, right? Where whereas most guys come over here and they push the ground forward and that’s what that’s what this is what creates lower body drive. So just take that entire lesson and move it to every exercise in the gym instead of a golf swing. Absolutely. So every medicine ball throw, every push, every pull, everything it needs to be here, here, breathe, turning this way, and then lower body driving, exploding, all this stuff until the point where he goes, “Man, that feels athletic.” And you will get to a point where you do this and I say, “Hey, go do this again.” You’re like, you’re going to go, “God, that feels horrible.” You’ll be like, “I can’t believe I was doing that.” Yeah. That’s what it’ll feel like. But right now, you were not there, right? But it will get there cuz your legs are way more powerful, right? We need to get this to the point where it feels more powerful and your lower body feels powerful. we do that, the world’s going to change. Yeah. My T-spine feels so much better. Good. Good. All right. So, we had a long hard day here with Tyler Duncan, but again, it’s a fun day. Anytime you’re seeing light bulbs go off, I think it’s a fun day. I think the moral of the story here we saw is that physical limitations will drive your golf swing, right? Tyler’s a great example of this. Mobility restrictions caused him to have to turn in a different way that was affecting his distance control, really affecting his spin loft. Hopefully, a big eye opener for him. It’s a reminder for me to make sure that uh we we attack physical problems first. And I think that’s important for all of you out there that uh don’t ignore the physical part. It can be the root cause of all your problems. So, if you guys like content like this and you want to see more, please hit the subscribe and like button below.