How and Why: Correct Arm Rotation Key to Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
How and Why: Correct Arm Rotation Key to Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if we’ve established that a golf swing is a rotary reaction you know we are standing in the middle of this circle and everything is turning around that circle. There is one area that we can really accentuate to encourage more club head speed and actually straighter shots as well. And its an often an area that I see a lot of golfers make a mistake with and it’s how they rotate their hands and arms through impact, we set it with our hands and arms in front of us, and if we swing back and push through and the hands and arms stay in front of us we’ve limited power. It’s not a bad way of chipping to be fair, but we’ve limited power certainly in the aspects of trying to hit a full swing. And in reality rotating the hands and arms back and through is a great way of generating more distance, more accuracy and that’s how the best players are hitting the ball 300 yards off the tee. And here is a great exercise for you to work on if you don’t feel like you’re rotating correctly. When I take the left hand and place it on top of the grip we are going to set the right hand then actually put it down below the grip so on the shaft sticker. Now keeping your left arm as straight as you can on the back swing and then also keeping your left arm as straight as you can on the follow through.

And what you’ll appreciate to do that is your right hand has to travel much further than your left but it has to travel there in the same time frame, therefore your right hand must be travelling faster. So it’s encouraging your right hand to really overtake and travel much faster than your left hand. And once you’ve done that a few times you get the idea that this side is moving really quickly, you could then bridge the gap a little bit by just bringing your hand up to the base of the grip, three or four more swings there, left hand straight and whip through, left hand straight and whip through, then slide the hands up to their normal position and feel like you still got the same speed of rotation coming from the right hand. And it will really stop the sort of passive hands, the pushing left wrist and the chicken wings that you might be experiencing at the moment, and I’ll encourage you to get your hands firing and really accelerate through the ball, more distance and less shots leaking out to the right hand side. 2015-03-25

So if we’ve established that a golf swing is a rotary reaction you know we are standing in the middle of this circle and everything is turning around that circle. There is one area that we can really accentuate to encourage more club head speed and actually straighter shots as well. And its an often an area that I see a lot of golfers make a mistake with and it’s how they rotate their hands and arms through impact, we set it with our hands and arms in front of us, and if we swing back and push through and the hands and arms stay in front of us we’ve limited power. It’s not a bad way of chipping to be fair, but we’ve limited power certainly in the aspects of trying to hit a full swing. And in reality rotating the hands and arms back and through is a great way of generating more distance, more accuracy and that’s how the best players are hitting the ball 300 yards off the tee. And here is a great exercise for you to work on if you don’t feel like you’re rotating correctly. When I take the left hand and place it on top of the grip we are going to set the right hand then actually put it down below the grip so on the shaft sticker. Now keeping your left arm as straight as you can on the back swing and then also keeping your left arm as straight as you can on the follow through.

And what you’ll appreciate to do that is your right hand has to travel much further than your left but it has to travel there in the same time frame, therefore your right hand must be travelling faster. So it’s encouraging your right hand to really overtake and travel much faster than your left hand. And once you’ve done that a few times you get the idea that this side is moving really quickly, you could then bridge the gap a little bit by just bringing your hand up to the base of the grip, three or four more swings there, left hand straight and whip through, left hand straight and whip through, then slide the hands up to their normal position and feel like you still got the same speed of rotation coming from the right hand. And it will really stop the sort of passive hands, the pushing left wrist and the chicken wings that you might be experiencing at the moment, and I’ll encourage you to get your hands firing and really accelerate through the ball, more distance and less shots leaking out to the right hand side.