Changing Your Swing Dramatically in Three Weeks - Dr. Luke Benoit Series (Golf IQ Podcast)

[iacas]

I like to listen to things that challenge my perspective and way of doing things. I don't always agree, I don't always change what I'm doing for the most part, but I almost always learn a bit and make a small change or two.

I think that I had a similar experience with three (the fourth episode wasn't really related) episodes of Golf IQ with Dr. Luke Benoit (links below).

I found these episodes almost provocative, and Benoit makes a few shocking (to me) statements. He also says a lot of things with which I agree, too, but I'm more interested in the shocking things. I'd like to think most of them aren't just a form of advertising, but… perhaps they are, as the podcast series seems to be at least subtly to promote his as yet unreleased $20/month Parallax app. It all seems to be tied to or similar to this: https://rypgolf.com/pages/ryp-ignite. That page says many of the same things said in the podcast, namely (emphasis added by me)…

Quote

Built around the proprietary 7-Step Swing Change™, you'll rebuild your mechanics from the ground up — the right way. You'll go beyond positions and learn how to sequence, integrate, and retain change through the 5 Up, 5 Down, 5% Rule™.

But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. The short version of my notes from each of the three (or four) podcasts is below. Please assume all quotes are lightly paraphrased, and it should hopefully be clear which thoughts are mine and which are Benoit's:

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Podcast 1: https://overcast.fm/+7Qf99wzRQ

• 2:50 - "Blow up traditional model of golf teaching, best way to get better is not to go to the range." - I tend to agree, and often recommend to students that they get some foam balls and make motions in mirrors or in their garage. As little as 3 minutes, 5 times a day can lead to change. (Not a ton, but more than doing nothing five days a week and going to the range once and playing once.)
• 3:40 - Benoit/his players struggled to make changes because he tried to hit good shots while changing his swing. Again, I tend to agree.
• 6:20 - First mention of seven step process. I'll talk more about this later on, but this isn't fleshed out well.
• 8:00 - "The engine is the pivot, the arms are the steering wheel." One of the confusing things here is that Benoit talks about how he doesn't work on backswing much, but the pivot which is step 1, and the steering wheel (particularly at the top and through the transition), are backswing, no? I agree with the descriptions: pivot = engine, arms/hands = steering wheel. I disagree strongly that most golfers don't need to work on the backswing.
• 9:20 - Benoit says "first we make sure the pivot is good, then we start 2/3 back and into the downswing." So what do you do when the pivot isn't good? Benoit gave an example of how he fixes EE by forcing the golfer to move the chest down dramatically (example). Hmm.
• 10:00 - "Some coaches think the backswing matters. … Let's fix terrible transition and terrible impact. … Pretty easy to attach a good backswing later." Hmmmm again.
• 10:45 - Mentions starting with no ball, then alternating freezers and smoothies. Gives GG credit earlier for popularizing the freezer, which… That's been around since teaching.
• 12:30, 13:00 - 30 days to get "close to Tour player looking swing." and "Modern instruction sucks at teaching change." Hmmmmmm. Big promises.

 

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Episode 2 - https://overcast.fm/+7Qf-QTNOQ - Skill transfer episode

• 1:11 - No ball, foam ball, real ball. No problem with that progression from where I am. I've started using no ball and foam balls more. Golfers are more accepting of it than I thought they'd be. Being indoors I already saw benefits of not worrying a ton about ball flight immediately (even though my QuadMAX is running all the time).
• 2:00 - Mentions the seven-step process and Parallax app again.
• 3:00 - Criteria is "within 5% of a PGA Tour model for five consecutive swings. … You start every session at the beginning, with the pivot/engine" with no ball and a club on your shoulders before you get to move on. This is backswing, right?
• 4:00 - Engine (pivot), steering wheel (arms), foam ball, real ball. At this point I'm still not really sure what all seven steps are. Best I can figure:
  1. Pivot with club on shoulder (backswing only?)
  2. Pivot with club in hands (steering wheel)
  3. Freezer
  4. Smoothie
  5. Hit a foam ball
  6. Hit a real ball
  7. ???
• (cont.) Are 3 and 4 without a ball? I know he wants you to alternate freezers and smoothies at one point, too. Maybe the real #3 is a good pivot backswing and downswing?
• 7:00 - ACE loop - Analyze, Calibrate, Exaggerate. Okay… Fine with all of those. That's how I teach people to practice, and feedback is critical.
• 8:10 - "Perfect process is pivot at home (club across shoulders, no ball), freezer (add steering wheels, full speed downswing), step 3 is freezer/smoothie alternating" - Not clear on the seven steps.
• 9:20 - Benoit wants you to think about 17 things, not one, two, or three, and "in 2-3 weeks your swing will look 'unbelievable'." Hmmmmm.
• 10:50 - After freezers/smoothies alternating, real golf ball with same alternating. Still not sure what the seven steps are — maybe I'm a dummy.

 

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Episode 3 - https://overcast.fm/+7Qf9oUORI

• 1:00 - Benoit hates block practice. My problem is they never define it very well, like good block practice. Also, I'm not sure how just working on the pivot until you can make 5 swings within 5% of a PGA Tour player's pivot isn't block practice.
• 2:00 - "Look at how people practice in other sports and there's very little debate." @MonteScheinblum and I have talked about this too — players in other sports do a bunch of block practice. They do a bunch of skill practice, too.
• 4:00 - LKD points out that it's block practice when you just work on the pivot. 😄 
• 5:00 - Impact opposites. "Solves path and face issues. Just do opposites. … We don't care about how your mechanics do it." Hmmmm. IMO golfers who try to hit hooks (or whatever) to fix their slice often learn a horrible way to do it. Golfers rarely self organize well/efficiently.
• 6:30 - "Good players use alignment sticks. … Lab step 1 - good setup, consistent. Step 2 - no alignment rod, switch targets."
• 8:30 - "If you're shanking it I'm just going to teach you to hit the toe and it's not that hard." We disagree here. Sometimes it's a hand-eye coordination thing, or a concept mismatch, but most often, IMO, it's a swing that's prone to hitting it off the toe. I can shank a ball on command, but I tend to palmar flex and get a little handle high and hit it out of the toe. Changing the mechanics is the true long-term fix, not just learning to shank it on command.
• 12:00 - "You should never be thinking of swing thoughts on the golf course." But then he says swing feels are okay? I call them one and the same.

 

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Episode 4 - https://overcast.fm/+7Qf_uta5g

• 1:00 - Discusses transfer to the arena (golf course), so… not particularly relevant to this thread/topic. I will say that they differentiate between a swing thought as a sentence or words and I think of a swing thought and a feel as the same thing, because I've not really known anyone thinking "keep your left arm straight" during the backswing (but I'm sure they're out there). Anyway, not really the topic, so…

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So… some thoughts. Consider these bullet points, but just in paragraph form.

I'm still not sure what his seven-step process is. They touched on it a few times, and maybe I missed it or I'm being a dummy… but what are they? Maybe the step I missed is moving from your garage/home to the range to the course?

The "attach a good backswing later" part stuck out as one of the most intriguing things he said, because… I teach a lot of backswing, and golfers generally make a much better downswing from a better backswing. They have a different problem to solve. I also found this bit confusing — the pivot and the "steering wheel" stuff felt like it was backswing… and the pivot within 5% of a Tour player stuff includes the backswing… no?

I think he's going to be hard pressed to actually come up with something that will have everyone making a "tour looking golf swing" (paraphrased) "in about 30 days" (barely paraphrased). Golfers have deeply embedded patterns that are tough to change. Even going from no ball where you can exaggerate the crap out of a movement to a foam ball sees a huge drop-off in quality or amount of exaggeration, in my experience.

The backswing stuff, man, I'd love to dive deep into that. So many golfers create such a screwy backswing, with momentum and body parts going all the wrong directions, that I have a lot of doubt about "attach a good backswing later." Just as I have a lot of doubt about the ability of golfers to truly "fix" things by just doing the opposite.

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What are your thoughts? I gave links above, but I'm sure you can find the episodes on your podcast player of choice.

Does anyone know what the seven steps are?

[saevel25]

25 minutes ago, iacas said:

I disagree strongly that most golfers don't need to work on the backswing.

Yea, it's more you don't want to make the golf swing more harder than it needs to be. A bad backswing just requires more compensation that has to happen in a 1/3rd of the time of the backswing. Might as well use the time more efficiently. 

26 minutes ago, iacas said:

Benoit gave an example of how he fixes EE by forcing the golfer to move the chest down dramatically (example). Hmm.

I would say, first is there any physical limitations causing this. I do not think there is one cause to it. I am not sure chest down is good. I wonder if that would cause more issues. 

30 minutes ago, iacas said:

My problem is they never define it very well, like good block practice. Also, I'm not sure how just working on the pivot until you can make 5 swings within 5% of a PGA Tour player's pivot isn't block practice.

Block practice is scientifically valid. If you are a beginner, block practicing something is very important. Repetitions matter ALOT. If someone is more skilled, then something more specific matters more. Even then, if it is something new to them, then repetitions are a strong correlation to developing a skill. 

34 minutes ago, iacas said:

"You should never be thinking of swing thoughts on the golf course." But then he says swing feels are okay? I call them one and the same.

I think we have an entire thread on this, or a good discussion. PGA Tour players have 1 or more swing thoughts going on. 

37 minutes ago, iacas said:

The backswing stuff, man, I'd love to dive deep into that. So many golfers create such a screwy backswing, with momentum and body parts going all the wrong directions, that I have a lot of doubt about "attach a good backswing later." Just as I have a lot of doubt about the ability of golfers to truly "fix" things by just doing the opposite.

I agree. I mean, a pivot is half the backswing, lol. So, I think him saying attach a backswing is like attach half a backswing? What the arms do matter, and yea people can do some strange stuff. 

What if the golfer has a great pivot, but right arm gets behind their body, and the right elbow bends like 120-degrees. Not like I don't know much about that at some point in my life. Kinda-of tough to make a good downswing. Lots of compensation needed. IDK, I agree with you on that one. I think nailing a good backswing makes like so much easier. 

The episodes have been sitting in my new episode list. I am going to have to click play the next time I want to find something to listen to. 

[iacas]

The seven steps seem to be:

1. Learn a good pivot.
2. Do a freezer from the top with a fast downswing. ("Learn to do the downswing first because that matters more.")
3. Smoothie. Smooth backswing, fast downswing.
4. Freezer with foam balls.
5. Smoothie with foam balls.
6. Freezer with real balls.
7. Smoothie with real balls.

From ~6:00 mark in this video (queued to 5:45):

I'm puzzled as to how step 1 isn't "backswing" and why he says you should just "attach a good backswing later." It's step 1!

[Ty_Webb]

On 8/9/2025 at 8:16 PM, iacas said:

I'm puzzled as to how step 1 isn't "backswing" and why he says you should just "attach a good backswing later." It's step 1!

Me too - if you ignore your backswing and get yourself into a perfect position at impact (and obviously the dynamics are good too), then why would you want to change your backswing at all? Surely changing your backswing at that point is just going to mean you need to do something different to get to the impact point. That seems very strange to me.

Also just to touch on the swing thought vs feel thing, I'll have a swing thought, which might be a sentence, but it's how I communicate to myself the feel that I'm trying to create. So something like "keep my left arm straight" might be what I say to myself in my internal monologue, but I'm saying it to generate the feeling of a straight left arm in my imagination so I can recreate that feel in reality. For a long time I was trying to tidy up my backswing (ha) and I had a tendency to sway off it with my hips. I needed more internal rotation in my right hip. So I'd set myself in that position, remember the feeling and try to recreate that in the backswing. After a while I didn't need to set it up because I knew the feeling and could just aim to do that in my backswing and I could recreate it. At that point I'd just say to myself "internal rotation of the right hip" and that was my swing thought, but I wasn't actively trying to internally rotate my right hip because of the words. I was creating the feeling that matched the memory of the feeling I had. Now I don't even need to think about it at all. It just happens.

[GolfLug]

On 8/9/2025 at 5:15 PM, iacas said:

The "attach a good backswing later" part stuck out as one of the most intriguing things he said, because… I teach a lot of backswing, and golfers generally make a much better downswing from a better backswing. They have a different problem to solve. I also found this bit confusing — the pivot and the "steering wheel" stuff felt like it was backswing… and the pivot within 5% of a Tour player stuff includes the backswing… no?

In the least I'm puzzled. I'm not sure there is some reverse engineering process to attaching a backswing later but I don't see it either. 

On 8/9/2025 at 5:15 PM, iacas said:

I think he's going to be hard pressed to actually come up with something that will have everyone making a "tour looking golf swing" (paraphrased) "in about 30 days" (barely paraphrased). Golfers have deeply embedded patterns that are tough to change. Even going from no ball where you can exaggerate the crap out of a movement to a foam ball sees a huge drop-off in quality or amount of exaggeration, in my experience.

Sorry if I'm digressing here a bit from the intent of this thread but is this guy's goal to get to a the Joaquin Niemann type super right side bendy goofy impact position? Maybe it's the PGA Tour type super desirable position but is that the prototype for everyone? I'd probably sit it out. Not sure if my body can learn it or if I would even want it. I suspect I'd start developing new pain centers (I have a few as some of you know..).

[mdl]

I share some skepticism about literally *zero* backswing work, and just adding it back later. My generous take is that maybe the idea is if you really groove the lower body only backswing (which I agree is weird they're not calling backswing training) and then the flow including the arms from A3 to A5 (which is how I'm interpreting Erik's summary of what they're advocating?), then perhaps it is true that people generally figure out how to slot the club into that ingrained A3-A5 flow? Like, there are some really killer mistakes you can make with your body from the chest down in the backswing that will more or less doom your swing. But if you just call those all "pivot" and get that right, then really what's left is "steering". And if you've ingrained the flow you want to feel A3->A5, maybe people generally will figure out how to stay close enough to the "right" positions A1->A3 to get to that ingrained flow from A3+?