Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we're going to look at how to use impact bag correctly so that you learn to get a better impact position. So an impact bag is just a heavy duty plastic bag or rubber ice bag, soft, it's filled with maybe towels, possibly sand. But towels are best because it's like the impact from your little bit more. There's more resistance in there, and you can hit this impact by quite firmly to learn the feeling of where to be a impact.

There's two ways we can use this impact bag to help us. So first of all I'm going to place the impact bag to this opposite my left foot, and I take my stance up. And the correct position to be in at impact is to have 80% of your way on your left foot. You've got your left foot, your left hip, your left shoulder, all in a vertical line. Your left arm is really straight and your hands are in front of your left thigh, so really creating this really straight line between the left shoulder, the left hand and the club head. The hips have rotated so that now towards the target and the right heel is up off the flow with your right foot rotating onto your instep.

So if we set the impact bag opposite the left foot here we can work on swinging back and hitting into that impact bag to create that straight line, and we can just do that at the pace that you're happy with so you can see that's the position to be in a impact. We're not achieving this position where the hands are in front of the left thigh. The hands on over the top of the impact bag, and the club heads flicking up into the impact bag. The second way we can use that impact bag to help us if we stand it up vertically we can now use it to learn the position that the shaft should be, and just before we strike the ball.

So if I setup, I've got the impact bag more in the middle of my stance now. So I want to swing away and I want to work on swinging back in, so the shaft of the club strikes the upper part of that impact bag. If the club heads strike in the impact bag like this, you're not going to create that straight line. It creates this flicking action in your wrist, so work on swinging back, swinging in, and topple in the bag over so you learn to get this forward lean in the shaft. You got the hands forward of the club head so now if that's the position you're swinging into here, the right elbow will now straight now and really put a lot of power into that ball as you're fire into impact and how do you achieve that straight line position, so that's how to use an impact bag correctly to improve your impact position.