After Lesson Work: Help me with weight shift please.

[SpacklersEdge]

Small amount of background. I have worked myself down into the 12-13 hdcp range. However, I had gotten to a point where I was getting as much out of a round score wise as possible with my swing. I was missing a lot of fairways, my normal shot would be pull fade, or even a pull slice. This type of shot I felt was not getting maximum distance. (This was worse with longer clubs, and not really an issue with wedges etc. due to the shorter club). I worked hard to correct this by trying to flatten my swing, as I knew I had a tendency to be over the top. So, I worked for the last month or so on taking a flatter backswing. When I would get it right, I could hit some good shots or drives, but many times it would be a dead pull, maybe 20-30 degrees left of target.

So this week I went and had another lesson with my teacher. After taking some swings we looked at the video. The first thing that jumped out was my impact position. At impact, my right (I am right handed) foot was parallel to the target line. This is to say I was pivoting this foot 90 degrees by impact. So, what my teacher pointed out was that even though I was trying to flatten my swing by working on my backswing, the real problem was that I never got any weight to my right side/foot during the backswing at all, and my first move would be to throw my right shoulder around and pivot.

My teacher worked with me and I ended up swinging about 60% during my practice swings, thinking only of getting the weight to my right side during the backswing, and then back to the left through the swing. This was veery difficult for me at first and I had a tendency to fall forward. Also, it felt like I was swinging like an old man, and I would never be able to hit the ball as hard as I would like. After some time of focusing only on weight shift, I hit a few balls. To my surprise, the ball was going as far as my usual drives, but with a much lower ball flight. Also, they were not fading or slicing, but flying much straighter, but sometimes just pushed.

When we looked at these new swings, I was surprised at how much better they looked. The pivot was gone, and my overall balance and finish position is much better. Also, the best part was that my DOWNSWING was now flatter, and was not across the ball. It was really revealing that working to get my backswing flatter really did nothing to flatten the downswing for me (classic over the top I know!).

So now I have played two rounds working on this, and here is what I would like help with.

1. I am hitting a lot of balls off the toe of the club now, this occurs with every club from driver to wedges. What can I do to fix this issue, or why is this now happening?
2. If I move closer to the ball fix issue #1, I end up hitting behind the ball. This is something I never did before.

I know both of these issues are related to the weight shift, so what I am really looking for is any videos or especially drills I can work on related to weight shift. I need to engrain into my brain what the correct shift and subsequent finish position should feel like. I know what is should LOOK like, but making my brain do that is not easy. I need to FEEL it first with some sort of drills. TIA!!

[RC]

I'll take a stab at it, but it is hard to do when you cannot actually see your swing.

First, when you have been steep and over the top for a while and start doing a change like you are doing, that critical moment at impact may still have some of your old tendancy to pull left too soon, hence the toe shot. Focus on making sure your left wrist stays relatively flat at the top of the backswing. An old drill used to be to take a tongue depressor and rubber bands and afix these to you wrist so that it did not cup, then at impact feel like the back of the left wrist precedes the strike and is going down the line. This will keep the club well extended through impact.

The modern swing does have a little wrist flex at the top, about what you would get flipping a fishing pole to throw a lure. However, learning to hit a flat wrist push draw (something that starts right and works back to your line) is a good thing to learn because it cures a lot of impact issues.

Continue to focus on the weight shift... get the weight on the inside of the back foot going back and the outside of the front foot going to the finish. Go toss flat rocks, skipping them on water and you will feel the motion of loading on the inside right foot. Or think of the shot putter coiling back to throw and notice how the right leg braces. Once you get that, the downswing is rather a relaxed upper body following a good lower body shift and turn.

Good luck.

[sdped1]

What about spine angle? I watched a vid from Shawn Clemont and a slight tilt of your head and spine to the right side should promote weight shift to your right side. Other than that RC hit on a lot of good points. Every good throwing,hitting etc motion naturally should put you on the right side on the backswing(tennis,baseball hitting and pitching etc) your hips rotate to act as a counter balance the weight shift, otherwise you would fall backwards during the downswing because you couldn't get back to left side.- Steve

[Zeph]

What about spine angle? I watched a vid from Shawn Clemont and a slight tilt of your head and spine to the right side should promote weight shift to your right side. Other than that RC hit on a lot of good points. Every good throwing,hitting etc motion naturally should put you on the right side on the backswing(tennis,baseball hitting and pitching etc) your hips rotate to act as a counter balance the weight shift, otherwise you would fall backwards during the downswing because you couldn't get back to left side.- Steve

On the backswing, make sure you got little or no lateral movement with the hips. The upper body turns, weight is on the back foot, but the hips still stay in the same place. They don't sway back with the upper body. From the top you bump the hips, left knee forward, weight shifts and turn the hips, torso trailing behind. The lower body and lower spine fire up and the torso stays somewhat still, letting the shoulders turn and arms swing freely under it.

Try to prevent the torso from moving toward the target. It should be pulled in that direction. The back eye is on top of the right foot and the head is staying still during the downswing, maybe moving a bit forwards as a result of the lateral movement of the hips, but from there does not move in any direction until the club is somewhere around parallell to the ground through the finish, then it is pulled up by the rest of the body.

[SpacklersEdge]

What about spine angle? I watched a vid from Shawn Clemont and a slight tilt of your head and spine to the right side should promote weight shift to your right side. Other than that RC hit on a lot of good points. Every good throwing,hitting etc motion naturally should put you on the right side on the backswing(tennis,baseball hitting and pitching etc) your hips rotate to act as a counter balance the weight shift, otherwise you would fall backwards during the downswing because you couldn't get back to left side.- Steve

My problem is not getting "back" to the left side, it's getting to the right side at all. My problem is that I was keeping my weight on my front foot too much, and then swinging steeply down and across.

[RC]

I probably should have mentioned an old Harvey Pennick analogy -- it is like you would throw a bucket of water on a fire. You could not do it very well without a proper weight shift and hip motion. The upper body turns and loads the right leg, then you fire and shift left to throw the water. Harvey used simple ideas that were profound.

[ScottyWrrn]

all i can say to you bro is to make sure that in the back swing make sure your weight is totally on your right side by going into your back swing and balancing your body on your right foot and then pause at the top of your swing just long enough for your hips to start first