How Can I Stop a Chicken Wing? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler
How Can I Stop a Chicken Wing? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler

Okay, the question, how can I stop a chicken wing? I’m going to show you what a chicken wing is. But the correct answer would be, as we come in we want to turn the hips and we want to reach for the target. That’s the correct answer.

So what is a chicken wing? A chicken wing is referring to the position of the arms at impact. It’s when somebody tends to come in and they tend to come in and the arms are like this, they are kind of splayed open. So instead of being here, they are like that. So if I do that, watch what’s happening to the club. The club is actually getting pulled up. So if you are in a chicken wing position, you are going to have a tendency to do this sort of shot. Here I’m over the ball, swing the club back and the arms come up and I top the ball, I might miss the ball, but you can see what’s happening. The one thing that we are not going to do is get the golf shot hit as well as we possibly can do because the arms are coming up. So you think “Right, okay, I understand that, that’s the chicken wing” because that’s the question; what is chicken wing and how to get rid of it. If you set yourself up and I set you right, what I want you to do now is I want you to set yourself up and I want you to swing the club back. You can see my left arm is fairly nice and straight, the club is an extension of my left arm. If I said to you now, from here I want to concentrate on two things. I want to concentrate on turning your hips slightly. Now I know we are senior golfers but we can turn the hips. We don’t ask you to come right round here, just turn your hips ever so slightly, gives you a little bit more rotation. I want to work on that, I want to turn those hips as we go back slightly, the left arm is fairly straight. As we come into the ball, I want you to turn the hips through and I want you to reach out for the target. Remember, the chicken wings was when we got here we were up here. So let’s do a practice on this without the ball. So over the ball, rotate your hips. You see how my arms are extended? Because the mirror image of this is what we are going to show you now, back into the ball, turning the hips through and I’m reaching out for the target. So if I put that into practice, set myself up, from here, rotate my hips and keep my left arm straight, and you can see I’ve really kept my arms nice and straight because I’ve gone through. I’m reaching for the target and what that will do is help me to actually hit down through the ball, get a much, much better strike and get rid of this horrible problem of pulling the arms up. Put it into practice. It’s not as hard as you think, let’s keep it nice and short and sweet. You’ve got the knowledge, off you go. 2014-05-14

Okay, the question, how can I stop a chicken wing? I’m going to show you what a chicken wing is. But the correct answer would be, as we come in we want to turn the hips and we want to reach for the target. That’s the correct answer.

So what is a chicken wing? A chicken wing is referring to the position of the arms at impact. It’s when somebody tends to come in and they tend to come in and the arms are like this, they are kind of splayed open. So instead of being here, they are like that. So if I do that, watch what’s happening to the club. The club is actually getting pulled up. So if you are in a chicken wing position, you are going to have a tendency to do this sort of shot.

Here I’m over the ball, swing the club back and the arms come up and I top the ball, I might miss the ball, but you can see what’s happening. The one thing that we are not going to do is get the golf shot hit as well as we possibly can do because the arms are coming up. So you think “Right, okay, I understand that, that’s the chicken wing” because that’s the question; what is chicken wing and how to get rid of it.

If you set yourself up and I set you right, what I want you to do now is I want you to set yourself up and I want you to swing the club back. You can see my left arm is fairly nice and straight, the club is an extension of my left arm. If I said to you now, from here I want to concentrate on two things. I want to concentrate on turning your hips slightly. Now I know we are senior golfers but we can turn the hips. We don’t ask you to come right round here, just turn your hips ever so slightly, gives you a little bit more rotation.

I want to work on that, I want to turn those hips as we go back slightly, the left arm is fairly straight. As we come into the ball, I want you to turn the hips through and I want you to reach out for the target. Remember, the chicken wings was when we got here we were up here. So let’s do a practice on this without the ball.

So over the ball, rotate your hips. You see how my arms are extended? Because the mirror image of this is what we are going to show you now, back into the ball, turning the hips through and I’m reaching out for the target. So if I put that into practice, set myself up, from here, rotate my hips and keep my left arm straight, and you can see I’ve really kept my arms nice and straight because I’ve gone through. I’m reaching for the target and what that will do is help me to actually hit down through the ball, get a much, much better strike and get rid of this horrible problem of pulling the arms up.

Put it into practice. It’s not as hard as you think, let’s keep it nice and short and sweet. You’ve got the knowledge, off you go.