Stay Relaxed and Supple to Maximize Distance (Video) - by Pete Styles
Stay Relaxed and Supple to Maximize Distance (Video) - by Pete Styles

We’d all want to hit the golf ball further, wouldn’t we? If we could take a magic wand and magic the ball to a 20 yards further I think we all would; but for a lot of golfers, the more they try to do that and get it to go 20 yards further the shorter it gets; they lose 20 yards every time they try and hit it 20 yards further and the biggest issue here as I see in most golfer swings is that when they try harder, they tense up and when they tense up they loose club head speed. When they loose club head speed you lose distance.

So it’s really important that when you hit the golf ball we stay nice and relaxed. And it’s a little bit more than me just saying to you, “Right try and relax, try and relax try and relax.” There’s a couple of different techniques that we could use. Maybe taking a deep breath is the first thing; most obvious thing. So when you stand over the golf ball make sure you’re breathing. You don’t want to stand over the ball really sort of still like this and then realize you’re not breathing and so a couple of deep breaths before every swing. Next thing is grip pressure; make sure your grip isn’t too tight. Generally for golfers tension will manifest itself in squeezing the golf club too tightly. That goes through the forearms into the shoulders and there as you restricted motion you can’t hit the ball as far or as hard as you would like. So let’s keep that grip pressure quite light. Easiest way to think of this is; think on a one to 10 scale. 10 is strangling the golf club as tight as you can, one is letting the golf club fall out of your fingers. You should be holding the club at about a four. If you hold it at four you’ve got a decent hold of it but it’s definitely not going to restrict the flow of the club or restrict the power of your hands can apply to the golf shots. So we hold it at four as we swing – the grip pressure might increase slightly as we hit the ball but it starts off as a four – not too much tension. The other thing is try not to reach out for the golf ball too much; try not to stretch out too much. If you naturally think about just reaching as far as you can that puts tension through a lot of your arms and your joints. Likewise if you pull in too much that’s quite tense. So the easiest way of thinking about generating power here is if I gave you a tennis racket and a tennis ball and asked you to hit the ball as hard as you can the first thing you do is you’d throw the tennis ball away from you to the right position. If you threw the tennis ball really near to you then you have to hit it from here – there’s going to be no power here. But if you throw it so far away that you have to really stretch there is no real power over there either. You would throw it so your arm is straight but not overly stretched and hit the golf ball in the same way. So I took three in the same way; it’s there, it’s out in front of me, but it’s not there; it’s not a stretch to reach for the ball. As soon as I set up to the ball it’s the right distance away – I’ve got nice relaxed grip pressure, my breathing is happening nice and smooth. I’m not too tense. That way I can go ahead and hit this ball nice and hard without too much tension. 2014-01-20

We’d all want to hit the golf ball further, wouldn’t we? If we could take a magic wand and magic the ball to a 20 yards further I think we all would; but for a lot of golfers, the more they try to do that and get it to go 20 yards further the shorter it gets; they lose 20 yards every time they try and hit it 20 yards further and the biggest issue here as I see in most golfer swings is that when they try harder, they tense up and when they tense up they loose club head speed. When they loose club head speed you lose distance.

So it’s really important that when you hit the golf ball we stay nice and relaxed. And it’s a little bit more than me just saying to you, “Right try and relax, try and relax try and relax.” There’s a couple of different techniques that we could use. Maybe taking a deep breath is the first thing; most obvious thing. So when you stand over the golf ball make sure you’re breathing. You don’t want to stand over the ball really sort of still like this and then realize you’re not breathing and so a couple of deep breaths before every swing. Next thing is grip pressure; make sure your grip isn’t too tight. Generally for golfers tension will manifest itself in squeezing the golf club too tightly. That goes through the forearms into the shoulders and there as you restricted motion you can’t hit the ball as far or as hard as you would like. So let’s keep that grip pressure quite light. Easiest way to think of this is; think on a one to 10 scale. 10 is strangling the golf club as tight as you can, one is letting the golf club fall out of your fingers. You should be holding the club at about a four. If you hold it at four you’ve got a decent hold of it but it’s definitely not going to restrict the flow of the club or restrict the power of your hands can apply to the golf shots. So we hold it at four as we swing – the grip pressure might increase slightly as we hit the ball but it starts off as a four – not too much tension.

The other thing is try not to reach out for the golf ball too much; try not to stretch out too much. If you naturally think about just reaching as far as you can that puts tension through a lot of your arms and your joints. Likewise if you pull in too much that’s quite tense. So the easiest way of thinking about generating power here is if I gave you a tennis racket and a tennis ball and asked you to hit the ball as hard as you can the first thing you do is you’d throw the tennis ball away from you to the right position. If you threw the tennis ball really near to you then you have to hit it from here – there’s going to be no power here. But if you throw it so far away that you have to really stretch there is no real power over there either. You would throw it so your arm is straight but not overly stretched and hit the golf ball in the same way. So I took three in the same way; it’s there, it’s out in front of me, but it’s not there; it’s not a stretch to reach for the ball. As soon as I set up to the ball it’s the right distance away – I’ve got nice relaxed grip pressure, my breathing is happening nice and smooth. I’m not too tense. That way I can go ahead and hit this ball nice and hard without too much tension.