If you’re tired of inconsistent ball striking, weak contact, or feeling like your swing just isn’t quite right… this is the video you need.

In this lesson, we break down the trail arm and trail wrist — and how using them correctly can completely transform your swing.

✅ How to set the wrists in the takeaway
✅ How to fold the trail arm for power in the backswing
✅ How to deliver the trail arm and wrist through impact for maximum speed and consistency

Most golfers never learn this, and it’s one of the biggest reasons their swing lacks power, accuracy, and consistency. Don’t let that be you.

🎯 Whether you’re slicing, hitting weak shots, or just feel stuck — this could be the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.

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00:00 Introduction
00:34 Wrist Set Takeaway
03:05 Trail Arm Fold
05:52 Trail Arm Delivery Position

Most golfers ruin their golf swing because of how they move their trail arm, both back swing and down swing. In this video, I’m going to teach you how to load the wrist correctly in the back swing, how to fold and set the arm correctly in the back swing, and then how to unload both of those during the down swing. That’s going to give you much better quality of golf shots. So, the reason I’m using this is because it’s going to make it a lot more visual for you. Obviously, you can do this with just your palm. You can do with a golf club, but using this and I’d love you to try and grab something like this because it will make it a lot more visible. If I imagine this was a golf club and I set myself up here, obviously my left hand would be on here. So, you’ll notice in that face on camera that my trail wrist has got a little bit of bend in it. Not a huge amount, a little bit. And if I was to open up my fingers, they point down towards the ground. Now if I was to take my thumb and work it upwards, this would be my wrist working. We call this radial and nar deviation. But this isn’t all that happens in the wrist in the back swing. If you look at the top of my back swing, what is my trail wrist? What does it look like? It’s very, very bent. So when I’m making this movement here, that’s not really introducing the bend in my wrist. So the wrist in this trail arm is going to work in this fashion. And then the knuckles are going to get pulled back towards my forearm. That’s what puts the bend in that trail wrist. So if I show you that again, here’s my setup. Fingers point sort of between my legs. Thumb up, knuckles back. And I want you to just look at where that bat faces. It faces down towards the golf ball. So as we start to blend those two together, we get the racket moving in this fashion. Now so many of you will have something like this. When you move the club away, a roll or rotation, there is very little bend in that trail wrist and the racket or the bat starts to point more up towards the sky. So, this little exercise is great because it’s going to get you to really sense what that correct movement is in that wrist. If I do that and introduce a little bit of rotation, then I start to get something that looks like this, where the racket or the bat starts to point down at the ground and I feel like I’ve got pretty much as much bend as I can have in my trail wrist. What we’re learning there is how to load the wrist. That’s really key because loading the wrist is going to be great for power, but it’s also incredibly important for club face control. So, if you’re a short hitter or you’re someone who sprays it left or right, just working on this wrist position is going to give you two things that you probably want. More efficient power and more control of the club face. So, exercise one is literally just to move the racket in this fashion and add a little bit of rotation as you do it. And what you’re going to start to get to is this position here. Then we can start to think about how we actually get the trail arm to fold. And we do want it to fold. Is going to go into what we call external rotation. So let me show you what a bending arm would look like. This is incorrect, but this is quite common. The wrist might work well, but the elbow will then bend and get pulled behind you. What did the racket do? Not a huge amount. It stayed pointing in that same position. Now my elbow’s gone high. It’s gone behind me. And this is a really difficult position to recover from. So we got correct here, but then just a bending of the arm and the racket stayed down. What we actually want after this movement here is we want the arm to bend but fold and rotate. So notice where the racket is now. is facing more towards you and my elbow is facing more down towards my pocket or my hip area. So we can feel that simply by taking the lead hand making this shape and placing it behind the elbow. What that’s going to do is it’s going to make it incredibly difficult for me to bend the arm behind me because my arm is in the way. So I can now go wrist bit of rotation and now I can start to fold my arm and this is what I’m looking for at the top. Racket is facing the sky, elbow is facing down and my arm is rotated. Now by doing those movements I am setting or loading the wrist and setting or loading the arm. Two incredibly important movements that you need in your golf swing. So what we can start to do is blend it together. So, we go here, here, and then we turn and fold. And all the time, I’m trying to be aware of the bat or the racket in where it’s facing. I certainly don’t want this, and I certainly don’t want sort of this movement here. Then, we can start to introduce the golf club to that. So, when I’ve got a golf club, it’s probably advisable to do this with two hands simply because when you do it with one hand, the club’s actually quite heavy and it can become quite difficult to make those movements. So, I’m going to go both hands on, but I’m still going to be aware of what my trail arm and trail wrist is doing. So, I’m going to be going wrist set and load it here. Right arm is then going to fold and set. And I get into a position at the top which is really desirable in that trail arm. Arm is folded correctly. Wrist is loaded correctly. The best way to improve your down swing is to simply start it from a better back swing. I see this all the time. If we can get you from setup up to the top with this trail arm in position loaded, the right wrist loaded, your down swing is automatically going to be better. So, let’s get ourselves into that perfect position at the top and then look at what’s happening in down swing. So, we’re going to go set load the arm. The key part here is when you come into delivery position, the elbow should be closer to the target than the wrist. And what we’re here seeing is the racket again facing down at the ground, but my arm is still in what we call external rotation. So many of you at this point would have the wrist closer to the target than the elbow. We get this gap in here. We can see that the wrist is closer, the elbow is back. Now, that movement is where you’re going to get your early release from. It’s probably where you’re going to get your over the top from. It’s going to give you poor strikes, weak strikes, not going to be very consistent. So, what you’ll notice is as I get from the top, my elbow leads. And notice when I get to this position, still got bend in that trail wrist. Yes, the elbow is leading, but I haven’t yet started to release this trail wrist. Now, what I can start to do is start to rotate through and ensure that I’ve got the racket pointing down at the ground. I’m never holding that position. That’s where I want to be at impact, but the right wrist is always in the process of releasing, letting it go. But what happens then is when you look from down the line, the elbow stays very close to the body. It’s never this way away. It’s never going this way and away. These are movements which create hooks. These are movements which create slices and pulls. So what we’re looking for is this. And then as we put pressure on the golf ball, the right arm is staying connected to the body as the wrist is starting to release. So let me show you what I would look to do as a drill to piece these all together. I would go setup. I can start to set and load my wrist, load my trail arm, hold that trail arm, hold that wrist position, and then from here, I can turn and let everything go. And just look at the shot I’m able to hit. Nowhere near full speed, but compressed ball then turf. It felt great. Attack angle was good. everything I needed to do and without any hassle at all to control the direction. I didn’t really have to think about squaring the face manually because I positioned it correctly through the golf swing.

24 Comments

  1. Every time I’m struggling down the range I come home and always find your video which seems to always identify my issue and give me drills to practice! I’ve been following you now and it’s been great! Thank you so much!

  2. Thanks for the video chris. Does the same movements apply to the driver? Is there any changes to be made? Thanks in advance

  3. It's amazing to me to see instructors demonstrating ideas with a weightless object as if it worked the same as a golf club. The reason he's not using a golf club is because he can't – because it's not weightless and it won't work for his demonstration. Good luck trying to swing a golf club as if it's a child's tennis racket.

  4. Very good session, how you went into detail on body movement with the arms was incredibly helpful, thank you, looking forward to your other videos.

  5. Thank you Chris. Quick question though: if you wanted to open the face a bit more, would you do it by bending the trail wrist back less?

  6. I think about holding a tray of food at the top. If you ever had to wait tables to get through college you get it. It will never actually be as flat as holding a tray of food but feels like this

  7. Thank you Chris for a wonderful video lesson! As a leftie playing golf right handed, I have struggled with this forever but somehow managed to stay in single digits, due to my short game, primarily. However, I lack(ed) power off the tee, especially with the driver. This fixes the proble / confusion that I have. Thanks again 🙏🏻🙏🏻

  8. Bravo Chris – by far the best and easiest to understand club face control and trail elbow relationship on tube. Thankyou sir.

  9. Wow…Great video!!! clearly after watching I’ve been making the mistakes all along. Thnx for the all advise

  10. Brilliant clarity and I do love the benefits of the table tennis bat / visual aid. Great clarity on the sequencing in relation to the wrist, arm fold, arm rotation, body pivot. Simply brilliant instruction.

    Myles

  11. Not sure if it was this video but your one tip about waving HI to a person behind you has made a huge improvement in my swing. I'm swinging easier and hitting it farther. Came here to say thanks.👍

  12. Chris, I just started working on this movement. As always, your explanation really helps clear up the idea of the trail arm on the downswing. Honestly, this has been the hardest thing to work into my swing. Thanks!

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