Summary To Prepare For Your 1st Tee Shot
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Swing Thought Steps:
- Choose your golf club
- Tee up your golf ball
- Line your feet in the direction of your golf shot
- Take hold of your club
- Set your golf posture
- Check knee, hip, and shoulder alignments to your foot alignment
- Firm your posture
- Pull your right armpit – shoulder unit towards your right heel
- As your turn proceeds, lift your arms up, out of your turn
- Stop at your desired takeaway spot
- Execute the return swing motions as you have been trained
NOTE: I have given a brief series of steps that will be your basic guide for playing a golf shot. Some steps above will be taught to you in future lessons. These are given now so you can see where you will be going with this training.
Training Summary Steps:
- Mentally commit to making your rib cage – armpits arc from over your right foot through your set-up position to over your left foot
- Go to your STANDING TRAINING POSITION
- Pull right shoulder – armpit unit back until front of both shoulders are over your right foot.
- Brace your hips and legs with a brief burst
- Almost at same time tighten left back, side, and tummy muscles with a brief burst.
- Feel your upper body increase power from a quick burst of movement to its start position and then coast through to be over your left foot
Detailed Summary Of Training Steps:
- At the 1st Tee or your home training station:
- Mentally commit to doing a perfect takeaway turn
- Hands to opposite shoulder and squeeze arms to ribs
- Adjust feet to shoulder width
- Make your whole body snug and think, "Am I comfortable?"
- Ask yourself: Where is my spine?
- Change focus to feel the line from right armpit to spine between shoulder blades
- Change focus to lower back muscle covering kidneys
- Use lower back muscle to pull right armpit – shoulder area straight back to be over your right heel
- Stop when your shoulders are both above your right foot
- Notice your breast bone will be over your right knee or right ankle
- Did you feel your left side muscles stretching around the "equator" of your spine?
- Did you feel some softening of your left buttock muscle as you turned to your right?
- Did you feel your right hip joint area become uncomfortable as it moved out of its starting position and backwards towards your right heel?
- Did you notice your hip area including your hip joints arc towards your right ankle?
- Did you feel your right thigh muscle stretching?
- Did your right knee rotate slightly in place or flip/move backwards?
- Did you feel your right calf muscles stretching in a circular direction to the right?
- Did you feel firm control in your ankle to prevent rolling over the outside of your right foot and to maintain stability on the floor/ground?
- Did you feel a FIRM left hip, leg, ankle, and foot arc slightly forward and to the right?
- Brace your hips and legs: The direction to BRACE YOURSELF OR BRACE YOUR HIPS AND LEGS is done by tightening your right leg muscles in a circular motion to the left. Your left buttock muscle is to tighten in a circular motion to the right. These actions…
- Pull your left hip 1 or 2 inches towards your left heel
- Feel your belt buckle (or belly button) move 1 or 2 inches from center towards your left toes
- Start the tightening of these muscles with a burst that lasts just long enough to trigger the movement.
- Feel flexing of tendons, muscles, and ligaments in joints that experience takeaway movements as you stop your takeaway and begin your return swing.
- Did you feel your hip mass arc from right to left around your lower spine and tail bone.
- Almost at same time tighten left back, side, and tummy muscles with a brief burst.
- Feel your upper body pick up power to its start position and then coast through to be over your left foot
- Do you feel your body mass/weight "shifting" or rather arcing around its pathway from near your right foot to be over your left foot?
- Do you feel your leg, hip, tummy, left side, and left back muscles all working to "throw" your right armpit – shoulder area into and through its power arc?
- Did you feel your momentum help you to flow or coast through your starting position and to your finish over your left foot?
- Did you feel your right back, side, and right tummy muscles relax and stretch to allow a free flow of your body turn to your left foot. NOTE: This may the sensation you are to feel when you hear the term "releasing" in connection with your body.
Critical Reminders:
- Notice the question, "Where is my spine?" Your attention goes to the "axle" of your turn.
- Notice the concept of "change focus". This helps you develop an orderly flow of steps to do as you prepare for your first swing movement.
- Your phases of your golf shot includes "change of focus" as part of your routine. As you get close to the end of this training you will learn a routine that will take care of all concerns with where your ball will land — before you even get into your golf posture.
- You focus on one specific task until completed. Then your focus goes to the next task. These tasks are deliberate and each can last several seconds. You will train yourself for each task at home and they will be automatic at the golf course.
For Those Of You Who Teach Golf:
I have provided much information based on my teaching methods. You may wonder if I teach everything in 1 or 2 lessons to my students. The answer is "NO".
All the lessons, in the posts before this summary, cover in detail what I actually teach within 20 minutes of my first lesson with a student. (I am summarizing direction steps down to a handful of steps for a complete standing turn sequence.) Each student learns only a small part of the detail when they need a bit more explanation to the briefest of instructions I verbally give them.
The detail I have provided is for your awareness of what to observe in your students responses to your directions. If you see a movement that interferes with their efforts you can correct the fault AND also be aware of how to correct without triggering other issues. The detail I provide will help you become more aware and will help you expand your own knowledge of similar thoughts of body movement.
<Continued with this lesson>