STEP 2: UNLOAD YOUR ENTIRE TRAIL SIDE

Body-only release

Having loaded our trail side properly, we now need to understand how to use this stored power. You will generate effective power when you look to hit the ball not with your body, your arms or even the club, but with your entire trail side, which turns down and through the ball. Here is a drill to help.

2. Trail-side rotation

From here, turn your trail shoulder and hip down and through to impact; your chest and belt buckle will start to face the target. Allow your arm and the club to fall in naturally with this downward rotation; with a feeling of ‘turning’ the clubface on to the ball. While this looks like a ‘held-off’ release, that angle in the back of the wrist is in fact the natural result of the strong rotation of the trail side; if you were to swing through from here, the butt of the club would whip back against the lead hip.

Grip a lofted iron around the centre of the shaft. Take your golfing posture, holding the club across you as shown, its shaft parallel with your target line, your hand opposite your trail thigh.

Hands/arms release

In this common movement pattern, the trail side has not fired at all and the hands and arms alone have worked the club down to the ball. Note how side-on this position looks, and how the weak, early release of the club has sent the handle in against my body. This isn’t just an inconsistent, handsy impact position; it is also a weak one because you are powering the club with smaller muscles, adding loft to the face, and removing any chance of applying downward, squeezing force into the ball.

Perhaps you’ve heard of ‘bodyreleasing’, or using core rotation to power the ball. It’s a dangerous instruction. If we try to hit the ball through rotating the chest only, we can end up in this sort of position: the upper body dragged forward and the club moving weakly with it. There has been no whip-like braking point, no transfer of power down the line and no release of the clubhead. You’ll hit weak, short shots all day.