Troubleshooting Your Golf Down Swing Squat (Video) - by Pete Styles
Troubleshooting Your Golf Down Swing Squat (Video) - by Pete Styles

As happens quite often with these new changes, trying to incorporate new things into your swing; I won't expect it to be a scene where it's transition into learning a new move, and going out, and ripping through and you drive straight down the middle. There might be a few little tweaks, a few little teething problems where you don’t quite hit the ball as well and often as you like. There are three key areas that we might actually find ourselves getting into difficulty here. The first is going to be hitting the ball fat. Now it stands to reason that we've got a swing where we normally sing back from the same height every time, now suddenly we’ve incorporated this dropping and slowing action. The club comes into the ground too soon, and probably going to be hitting the ground before the ball. And also with the driver, the club shouldn't hit the ground at all, never mind before or after the ball, the driver should not hit the ground; the ball should be up on a tee, but it shouldn't be clean straight of the surface.

So be careful with this new dropping action as down swing squats; not actually hitting the ground before the ball. The second area that might have a concern with is actually hooking the golf ball and turning the ball to far down the left on the side. This is in an area particular because golfers don't rotate enough when they're learning this down swing squat; so you tend to find a golfer swing to the top, get the squat, stand up and hit the ball, but they haven't actually rotated correctly through the ball. And because of that falls on the down and up motion; the hands and arms actually take over through the ball, rotating the club face too far left and actually hooking the ball away down the left hand side. So let's not mistake the fact that this down and up does not replace the rotation. It's down, up and rotate at the same time, not down and then stand up; so down and the down swing, up and rotation as you come through. That should stop the ball hooking, if you reignite and restart your hip rotation. The one last area where golf is can sometimes struggle with this, is actually sort of the contradiction for why we're doing this in the first place. Some golfers lose power, so you think, "After all that work I'm learning that down swing squat, I'm actually lost power". The problem here is golfers don't quite do it explosive attitude; they kind of just drop, and then lift, and then hit but they don't really explode into it. So you lose the feature of this movement; you lose the reason to do this motion. You kind of get down stand up, hit the ball and it goes down the middle; but it doesn't go as far as it should have done. What we really need to be doing here; you explode in as we come through, giving it maximum force. And again the easiest way to think about that swing is just watch Rory Mcilroy; soon as you watch his swing you'll go, "Okay I get I, I now know what I should be doing. I really should be going down and into this ball with the next very explosive approach". If it's not possible for you to do that, that's not the motion for you. But if you watch Macoroy you think, "That's a bit of me, I could learn a bit of that. That's what I want to do to hit the golf ball as hard as possible". Then good luck to you, go ahead and try and learn that down swing squats.
2016-07-26

As happens quite often with these new changes, trying to incorporate new things into your swing; I won't expect it to be a scene where it's transition into learning a new move, and going out, and ripping through and you drive straight down the middle. There might be a few little tweaks, a few little teething problems where you don’t quite hit the ball as well and often as you like. There are three key areas that we might actually find ourselves getting into difficulty here. The first is going to be hitting the ball fat. Now it stands to reason that we've got a swing where we normally sing back from the same height every time, now suddenly we’ve incorporated this dropping and slowing action. The club comes into the ground too soon, and probably going to be hitting the ground before the ball. And also with the driver, the club shouldn't hit the ground at all, never mind before or after the ball, the driver should not hit the ground; the ball should be up on a tee, but it shouldn't be clean straight of the surface.

So be careful with this new dropping action as down swing squats; not actually hitting the ground before the ball. The second area that might have a concern with is actually hooking the golf ball and turning the ball to far down the left on the side. This is in an area particular because golfers don't rotate enough when they're learning this down swing squat; so you tend to find a golfer swing to the top, get the squat, stand up and hit the ball, but they haven't actually rotated correctly through the ball. And because of that falls on the down and up motion; the hands and arms actually take over through the ball, rotating the club face too far left and actually hooking the ball away down the left hand side. So let's not mistake the fact that this down and up does not replace the rotation. It's down, up and rotate at the same time, not down and then stand up; so down and the down swing, up and rotation as you come through.

That should stop the ball hooking, if you reignite and restart your hip rotation. The one last area where golf is can sometimes struggle with this, is actually sort of the contradiction for why we're doing this in the first place. Some golfers lose power, so you think, “After all that work I'm learning that down swing squat, I'm actually lost power”. The problem here is golfers don't quite do it explosive attitude; they kind of just drop, and then lift, and then hit but they don't really explode into it. So you lose the feature of this movement; you lose the reason to do this motion. You kind of get down stand up, hit the ball and it goes down the middle; but it doesn't go as far as it should have done.

What we really need to be doing here; you explode in as we come through, giving it maximum force. And again the easiest way to think about that swing is just watch Rory Mcilroy; soon as you watch his swing you'll go, “Okay I get I, I now know what I should be doing. I really should be going down and into this ball with the next very explosive approach”. If it's not possible for you to do that, that's not the motion for you. But if you watch Macoroy you think, “That's a bit of me, I could learn a bit of that. That's what I want to do to hit the golf ball as hard as possible”. Then good luck to you, go ahead and try and learn that down swing squats.