Unleashing Your Power Potential In Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Unleashing Your Power Potential In Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

So now I'm going to talk about how we're going to generate the power in the downswing. We've already created a huge amount of power, the big shoulder rotation turning on the engine for the backswing. Now a lot of golfers get to a very powerful position and then appear to almost waste the energy in the downswing and still don't hit the ball as far as they'd like or as far as they think they should. And the major issue here is sequencing, they don't sequence everything in the downswing correctly. The feeling should be, that once you're at the top of the backswing here, there's an uncoiling motion. The uncoiling starts from the left side, starts to drive across this way, so the left side will pull back, the right side follows, the hips are rotating, the chest is rotating. But notice what's coming last in this race, the club head. So there's a race to the finishing line and my left side wins the race. My right side comes through quite quickly and then my hands come second to last but the last thing that comes though is the club head. Now if you're a golfer who gets the club head to the ball first and everything else stays behind it, the lack of sequencing there, the lack of proper sequencing is the thing that's causing you the most issues with your lack of power.

Now I'm going to demonstrate this in a very specific fashion and I'm going to put myself out there and make a fool of myself. I'm going to take two golf balls; I'm going to throw one with my right hand and one with my left hand. And I am right handed, so you'd expect the right hand to be a little bit stronger and go a little bit further. But generally speaking, when you throw a ball with your right hand, it might look quite smooth, quite easier. Everything was sequenced quite well and it goes a long way and now if I throw with my left hand, it goes about 30% shorter than with my right hand. That is not a 30% weaker in my left hand but my sequencing was very poor and I would suggest that it certainly felt very awkward. I would suggest it probably looked quite awkward throwing with my left hand, it just wasn't well sequenced. And that's what I see in golfers who don't hit the ball as far as they would like, effectively, they look like they're throwing with their wrong arm. But the thing is with this, you can practice your way out of this. So you can learn to sequence everything correctly to hit it a long way. When you see most golfers on the TV, they look smooth, they look well sequenced and you might not necessarily feel like that in your game. So one thing I would like you to do to practice getting is better sequencing is, do two different types of swings. Go to the range and hit some half shots. When you're making half shots, you'll generally find that your body is easier to monitor what the body is doing, to see how things are working and to see how things are turning through in the correct sequence rather than just slashing away and hitting as hard as you can. So the first exercise, do everything at half speed and then you want to test whether that's benefiting you. So to test it, do a few and I stress a few not many full speed swings as in absolutely flat out with no golf ball. So just the fastest swing you can manage, turn back and hit through. And what we'd like to see when do that is, we're able to retain our balance because if we are badly sequenced, the chances are we are out of balance after we make that super fast swing. So make your nice smooth steady half speed practice swings and then a couple absolutely flat out but feel how you are able to retain your balance. That's a good sign that you are getting better sequencing and it's a great sign you're going to be able hit the ball further when we introduce the golf ball again.
2015-11-02

So now I'm going to talk about how we're going to generate the power in the downswing. We've already created a huge amount of power, the big shoulder rotation turning on the engine for the backswing. Now a lot of golfers get to a very powerful position and then appear to almost waste the energy in the downswing and still don't hit the ball as far as they'd like or as far as they think they should. And the major issue here is sequencing, they don't sequence everything in the downswing correctly. The feeling should be, that once you're at the top of the backswing here, there's an uncoiling motion. The uncoiling starts from the left side, starts to drive across this way, so the left side will pull back, the right side follows, the hips are rotating, the chest is rotating. But notice what's coming last in this race, the club head. So there's a race to the finishing line and my left side wins the race. My right side comes through quite quickly and then my hands come second to last but the last thing that comes though is the club head. Now if you're a golfer who gets the club head to the ball first and everything else stays behind it, the lack of sequencing there, the lack of proper sequencing is the thing that's causing you the most issues with your lack of power.

Now I'm going to demonstrate this in a very specific fashion and I'm going to put myself out there and make a fool of myself. I'm going to take two golf balls; I'm going to throw one with my right hand and one with my left hand. And I am right handed, so you'd expect the right hand to be a little bit stronger and go a little bit further. But generally speaking, when you throw a ball with your right hand, it might look quite smooth, quite easier. Everything was sequenced quite well and it goes a long way and now if I throw with my left hand, it goes about 30% shorter than with my right hand. That is not a 30% weaker in my left hand but my sequencing was very poor and I would suggest that it certainly felt very awkward. I would suggest it probably looked quite awkward throwing with my left hand, it just wasn't well sequenced. And that's what I see in golfers who don't hit the ball as far as they would like, effectively, they look like they're throwing with their wrong arm. But the thing is with this, you can practice your way out of this. So you can learn to sequence everything correctly to hit it a long way. When you see most golfers on the TV, they look smooth, they look well sequenced and you might not necessarily feel like that in your game. So one thing I would like you to do to practice getting is better sequencing is, do two different types of swings.

Go to the range and hit some half shots. When you're making half shots, you'll generally find that your body is easier to monitor what the body is doing, to see how things are working and to see how things are turning through in the correct sequence rather than just slashing away and hitting as hard as you can. So the first exercise, do everything at half speed and then you want to test whether that's benefiting you. So to test it, do a few and I stress a few not many full speed swings as in absolutely flat out with no golf ball. So just the fastest swing you can manage, turn back and hit through. And what we'd like to see when do that is, we're able to retain our balance because if we are badly sequenced, the chances are we are out of balance after we make that super fast swing. So make your nice smooth steady half speed practice swings and then a couple absolutely flat out but feel how you are able to retain your balance. That's a good sign that you are getting better sequencing and it's a great sign you're going to be able hit the ball further when we introduce the golf ball again.