Using your arms efficiently for your iron shot!

Introduction

For today's blog, we will be going over how to use your arms efficiently for your iron shots! Angel Martinez from Epic Golf Studios will be helping out Steven, a new golfer who started out recently. Steven enjoys golfing out on the course and his average score is about 30-40 handicap, roughly somewhere in the hundreds. His favorite thing to do is to hit the ball hard; The feel of impact is a great feeling, especially when the ball travels far! As for his flaws, he states he's very steep and over the top during his swings and has a problem with early extension. In general, he would like to improve his performance with all the clubs, specifically his driver. Whether it is due to the steepness or early extension, he tends to slice the ball a lot.

According to Angel, new golfers or anybody starting out always prioritize getting better with the driver. It seems to be the first thing they mention!

Do you slice your irons?

Steven took lessons at the very start and slowly transitioned to watching golf lessons on YouTube! He believes he does not slice his irons as much, and Angel will take a look to see how Steven does with irons before proceeding to other clubs. Angel often hears new golfers saying they want to fix their driver, and in order to do so, they need to understand the fundamentals and the makeup of the clubs.

What is the biggest difference between a driver and an iron?:
For one, the length of the club is longer and harder to control. You also have to factor in the design of the club; When looking at an iron, you will notice a lot of grooves, which allow the ball to rise and spin on it. Angel often compares the grooves on an iron to the tire treads on a car; if there's a lot of water on the road, the car will hydroplane. Upon inspecting Steven's irons, he notices that there is a lof of dirt within the grooves, making them useless. Even with a good swing, the ball will float and you will have no control over the direction. The grooves are on the face to grab and spin the ball to obtain a certain trajectory. For a driver, there are less grooves on the face and a bulging roll on the surface is present. This allows the player to work the ball a little more. So to start, Angel will have Steven take a swing with an iron first! For all starting out, if you can't accomplish a proper swing with an iron, it will be very difficult to jump to a wood. While Steven is taking a swing, Angel will be watching his grip and posture.

Watching the shot Steven just took, it is clear that the ball travelled left to right and it was due to the club path going from out to in at 9 degrees, which is quite a lot! When talking about club path, it's very important to understand that zero degree club path is optimal, but very difficult. It is ideal to have a club path with a two degree variance.

How to fix out to in swing?:
Angel will now take a look at the camera replay to see what to correct. Steven's posture is very good and we will draw some lines on his posture to confirm. These lines will help see how the club is traveling on the downswing!

This is a very good swing! The hands and club really match up with Steven's spine. Every thing looks great at the top of the swing but starts to travel outside of the guide lines.

You'll notice that the club head aligns out here by Steven's neck and ideally, the club should align with Steven's shoulder.

Now the club head is outside the hands, and this tells us that the out to in path is about 9 degrees.

How do you fix an out to in swing?

As shown in the video, Steven's takeaway looks really nice and his swing is very good at the top. What Angel will work on is the transition down to the golf ball. Angel will start by having Steven setup and start his swing; Once Steven is at the top of his swing, Angel will hold his shoulders down and ask him to get the club to the ball. Instinctively, Steven swings his entire body to get the club to the ball. When Angel swaps with Steven to demonstrate what to do, all Angel does when being held down is let his arms swing down while his shoulders are being restricted in place. The concept behind this is to let gravity do the work and have the club drop from the inside. By practicing the motion of bringing the club to the top, letting gravity bring down your arms, then following through with a pivot to finish the swing, you get a better sense of how the club is supposed travel to the ball.

Results?

Now that Angel has shown Steven the path the club should take to the ball, Steven will now try a practice swing. Angel is not looking for distance, but rather, to see if the concept is being applied to the swing.

You can see that the swing path has been corrected! This was not rehearsed and just a small understanding of the mechanics of the anatomy will help the swing. For those reading, you have to remember that rotating your shoulders also plays a huge factor in getting the club path in to out. Combining the shoulder rotation and effectively dropping his arms and following through with a pivot using his natural instincts completes the swing. Next time your out golfing, keep this in mind to fix any out to in issues you may be experiencing!