If you also want to lift the golf club up during the backswing, you need to understand why this might be a problem for the overall technique. If you are looking to develop a large amounts of power than simply lifting up the arms away from the body is not going to enable you to do that, because as the arms in the club lift up away from the body, you really sacrifice the amount of the body turn that you need in the backswing. Also as the arms lift up in a way from the body, if you want to hit a successful shot, from this position, then the club and the arms have to rejoin a normal position and then move down through the ball.

Now when your arms and club come away and then when the arms have to rejoin, that is a movement in a series of movements which is very hard to consistently do. And when you are introducing movements within the swing which are not consistent then you are going to start having issues. It’s a lot easier if you can get your arms and club a little bit more connected, to the turning motions of the body. And then use the bigger muscles to start driving the stroke. When the arms in the hands lift up and away from the body, it is then using the finer muscles to try and rejoin and to try and hit successful shots.

So that is why if you are lifting up the club and you are moving the arms away from the body; it can become quite a big problem within your swing. In an absolutely ideal world, we don’t want to see any of this, though we want to see a lot more of connectivity and turning in the overall technique.