How To Sync Your Arms Up With Your Body

Another way of describing how to sync your arms up with your body would be to talk about timing. How do we time the weight transfer onto the front foot? How do we time the hands and arms getting back down in front of the body?

Well, in my experience much of these questions can be answered by understanding the role of the hips during the swing.

Generally, the higher handicap players don’t slide their hips laterally enough during the downswing. This causes the majority of their weight to stay on their back foot during impact, which affects their low point control.

The lower handicap players have no problem sliding their hips laterally during the downswing to shift more weight forward, but in an effort to hit the ball with more power – over rotate their hips too early. This causes the spine to extend (early extension) and they lose their original posture or inclination to the ground..

If you analyze your own swing, you’ll see your pelvis move closer to the ball, and your head raise up and away from the ball.

So having the ability to time the slide and rotation of the hips during the downswing is important as it allows the hands and arms to fall back down in front of the body and not break down. By break down, I simply mean the elbows coming apart.

Again, if you analyze your own move you’ll see a bent lead arm and a internally rotated trail arm (instead of externally rotated).

Here’s a video I shot explaining what I’m talking about. As always, please feel free to contribute to the conversation and leave a reply with any comments and questions below.