Found New Cause of Shanks

[Scottsdale24601]

I have been a shanker for many years. It is a terrible thing.  It physically hurts. It is embarrassing. It ruins your game and your confidence.  It makes your playing partners and all witnesses cringe.  

Over the years, I have identified the following causes of my shanks:

1) Standing too close to the ball.  I remedied this by employing a setup routine that prevents this.

2) Allowing my left knee to bend outward instead of inward on the backswing.  I corrected this by allowing my lower body to be turned as a reaction to the turning of my upper body, and to think in terms of coiling my body. 

3) Here is the new one I discovered today.  This may have been the root cause of all my shanks through the years: ALLOWING MY SHOULDERS - MAYBE JUST MY LEFT SHOULDER- TO PUSH OUT FROM MY BODY DURING THE BACKSWING.  There is a Pilates exercise I used to do.  I would stand erect, extend my arms straight out from my body at shoulder height, and then reach out as far as I could with my arms, then bring the arms back to the starting position.  IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT I HAD BEEN DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS ON MY BACKSWING!!!  At some point in the backswing - probably right after the initial takeaway - my left shoulder was coming forward from its socket, forcing the plane of the swing outward from my body, into the shank zone.  It was also causing a hiccup in my backswing rotation that created other problems.

I hope this can help someone else.  Good luck!