Three Common Weight Transfer Sins (Video) - by Pete Styles
Three Common Weight Transfer Sins (Video) - by Pete Styles

So there’s three fairly common sins that could be caused by poor weight transfer. Now if I initially address this golf ball in my normal stance position, my bodyweight is going to be relatively 50/50 for the mid iron that I have here. Now the first sin would be driving the body weight onto the left side during the backswing. So we sometimes see golfers as they windup their shoulders, they get too much bodyweight going into this left leg and it often causes or is caused by the left knee bending in too much. We drop the left hip too much and we lean too aggressively onto this left side. Now this isn’t strictly related to what some golfers would talk about as a stack and tilt process. This is far more aggressive than that and therefore far more detrimental than that. This is actually just tilting left, spine angle tilts left, body tilts left, left leg collapses. This is not a good position to be in. The problem from here is the only real way out of this would be to then back out of it and go the other way, finishing on the back leg, the classic reverse pivot. So it’s too aggressive, into the left side and then back out of it, like I stressed that’s a stack and tilt thing, that’s just too much aggressive movement onto the left leg.

The next area where some people get stuck with their bodyweight transfer is they get onto their right side but then they never get off their right side, they get stuck. So we see golfers that are so determined to turn back behind the ball. They really get over this right side. They get well turned back here and then do nothing and just stand there and slap at it from here. We’re going to cause problems with hitting the ground before the ball, going to cause problems with topping the ball, potentially pulling the ball to the left hand side, all sorts of awkwardness by having too much of a sway and then never recovering from here. And then one other area where golfers can really struggle with moving their bodyweight correctly is actually if they start off in the wrong place. If when they address the golf ball, they don’t have the bodyweight in the correct position right from the start, they’re going to struggle throughout the whole swing. So in a setup process here, particularly for mid iron, we’d like to feel that the bodyweight is going to be 50/50 left and right and 50/50 toes and heels, everything is nice and comfortably balanced. And a great way of checking that would be to do a little tap. So we tap the toes and the heels, so we go tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap the toes, tap the heels. And each toe and heel should move off the ground evenly. It should take even pressure to move each one. If you were sitting back on your heels too much, you’d find it really easy to tap the toes but almost impossible to tap the heels and you’d have to move your bodyweight to tap the heels. Likewise if you’re too far forwards, the heels would lift easily but you’ll never get your toes off the ground. So that toe tapping exercise can help us determine where the body weight is within the actual setup. Now there’s slight difference here with the bigger clubs, take a driver, we’re probably going to sit back 60% onto the right side with driver. So 40%/60% with driver and then go the opposite way with a wedge or pitching action, where actually would have the ball more to the center and have 60%/40% leaning onto the left side. But for generic full swing with a normal mid iron 50/50 is going to work really nicely for us. Go ahead and implement those corrections in your technique and see whether your bodyweight is moving correctly to help you improve your golf. 2015-08-12

So there’s three fairly common sins that could be caused by poor weight transfer. Now if I initially address this golf ball in my normal stance position, my bodyweight is going to be relatively 50/50 for the mid iron that I have here. Now the first sin would be driving the body weight onto the left side during the backswing. So we sometimes see golfers as they windup their shoulders, they get too much bodyweight going into this left leg and it often causes or is caused by the left knee bending in too much. We drop the left hip too much and we lean too aggressively onto this left side. Now this isn’t strictly related to what some golfers would talk about as a stack and tilt process. This is far more aggressive than that and therefore far more detrimental than that. This is actually just tilting left, spine angle tilts left, body tilts left, left leg collapses. This is not a good position to be in. The problem from here is the only real way out of this would be to then back out of it and go the other way, finishing on the back leg, the classic reverse pivot. So it’s too aggressive, into the left side and then back out of it, like I stressed that’s a stack and tilt thing, that’s just too much aggressive movement onto the left leg.

The next area where some people get stuck with their bodyweight transfer is they get onto their right side but then they never get off their right side, they get stuck. So we see golfers that are so determined to turn back behind the ball. They really get over this right side. They get well turned back here and then do nothing and just stand there and slap at it from here. We’re going to cause problems with hitting the ground before the ball, going to cause problems with topping the ball, potentially pulling the ball to the left hand side, all sorts of awkwardness by having too much of a sway and then never recovering from here.

And then one other area where golfers can really struggle with moving their bodyweight correctly is actually if they start off in the wrong place. If when they address the golf ball, they don’t have the bodyweight in the correct position right from the start, they’re going to struggle throughout the whole swing. So in a setup process here, particularly for mid iron, we’d like to feel that the bodyweight is going to be 50/50 left and right and 50/50 toes and heels, everything is nice and comfortably balanced. And a great way of checking that would be to do a little tap. So we tap the toes and the heels, so we go tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap the toes, tap the heels. And each toe and heel should move off the ground evenly. It should take even pressure to move each one.

If you were sitting back on your heels too much, you’d find it really easy to tap the toes but almost impossible to tap the heels and you’d have to move your bodyweight to tap the heels. Likewise if you’re too far forwards, the heels would lift easily but you’ll never get your toes off the ground. So that toe tapping exercise can help us determine where the body weight is within the actual setup. Now there’s slight difference here with the bigger clubs, take a driver, we’re probably going to sit back 60% onto the right side with driver. So 40%/60% with driver and then go the opposite way with a wedge or pitching action, where actually would have the ball more to the center and have 60%/40% leaning onto the left side. But for generic full swing with a normal mid iron 50/50 is going to work really nicely for us. Go ahead and implement those corrections in your technique and see whether your bodyweight is moving correctly to help you improve your golf.