Perfect Golf Backswing: 3 Simple Steps | Pro Technique in 2021
If you like that backswing, listen up because I'm going to teach you how to do it in three simple steps. The golf backswing is not nearly as complicated a most golfers make it. In fact, I'm going to make it so stupidly simple, that you can learn to master it today with three simple letters. That's all you've got to remember.
R-E-F is how RotarySwing refers to learning how to make the movements in the backswing. R-E-F stands for rotation, elevation, and flexion. If you can understand those three things. Then this whole backswing business, and you struggling getting across the line, lay it off, taking the club way back to the inside, putting yourself out of position, reverse pivot, et cetera, is all covered and can all be fixed by understanding how we teach you R-E-F, rotation, elevation, and flexion.
So first, let's talk about rotation. Now, in my takeaway videos you heard me talk a lot about how to rotate your body, and that's really what we're talking about. But during the back swing, there's also something else that has to rotate, and that is your arms. Your arms have to rotate a little bit, to set the club on plane. When you look at the club sitting here. If I was just standing here face on, just by rotating my forearms, a little bit. You can see how it puts the club on an inclined tilted plane. Here's it's vertical, now it's inclined. That's the rotation that is happening while your body is rotating. Your body rotates back and your arms rotate, your left arms rotating internally, right arm slight external rotation to set the club on plane. Don't worry about the details of that. They're relatively small movements.
The big movement during the backswing, I like to tell people "big body swing, tiny little arm swing." That's really the key. If your body's controlling the movement of that club, and the clubs only moving because your body's turning, then you're going to be on the right track. So I'm rotating my body during the back swing, a little bit of arm rotation.
The second part is elevation. This is where every amateur I've ever seen, almost every single one, gets this wrong. Elevation is the key to keeping the club working back on plane and not underneath, and to the insides. So let me show you what I mean. Most golfers take the club back like this, and the club gets worked inside, and they come over and then this creates this crazy, over the top move. The trick to getting away from this is elevation. If I elevated my arm, which is simply what we call arm elevation from the shoulder socket, or sometimes call it shoulder elevation. All I'm doing is elevating my arms from where they started at address, straight up and down in front of my body. This is key.
Your arms move this way during the back swing. Amateur arms move this way. There's a huge difference. Your arms need to only go straight up and down while you're turning. Now what does this do? This creates a plane. My body rotating creates the depth in the backswing and my arms elevating creates the vertical movement in the swing. And I put these two together, so I'm just doing this, while doing this. Watch what happens. Created a swing plane didn't it? If I put my club back in the picture, I'm just doing elevation, rotation.
How would the club ever go back in here? The trick is golfers know they need to get the club back here somewhere, and so they take their arms and they swing the club back there. Your body is what creates the depth in the swing. Rotation is what shallows out the swing. Your arms need to work vertically, that's elevation. So if I can rub my head, rub my head and pat my belly at the same time. Nope. I can't do that. But I can do this and this to create a perfect backswing. Don't ever try to create a swing plane by swinging your arms, that will always move your arms to far into what I call the depth dimension of the swing. Your arms need to stay in front of your body, and to do that, they only move vertically. If your arms are moving side to side, your arms will always end up buried, flat, and deep behind you.
So rotation, elevation, and now flexion. Flexion we're talking about just bending my right arm at the elbow socket. You know at some point you need to create this lever in your swing, and that's what is going to allow you to create some release at the bottom to get some force, some thrust here out of this flexion move. You can't go to the top of your swing like this. There's no levers here, there's no power. So we need this angle and that's what allows the club to finally get set at the top.
So all I'm doing, rotation, elevation, flexion. Now let's see what that looks like if I put those two together. I'm going to go really slow. I'm rotating, while I'm rotating, I'm starting to elevate, keep turning, turning, big body turn right at the end, add a little bit of flexion. Hey, that's not a back backswing there is it? Rotation, elevation, flexion. Rotation, elevation, flexion creates a pretty good backswing. The great thing is you can practice all indoors without ever hitting a ball. At this time of year, wherever you are, you can build a perfect backswing indoors in front of a mirror. Because what you need to do is practice creating this in a front of mirror so you can see exactly where your arms are and then get into your posture and go to the top, and rotate to move your arms together to the top. That's what will create a perfect backswing.
Now I have a video that I want to share with you called Five Minutes to the Perfect Backswing where I talk about how to check these position of your arm in relationship to your body, how to transport them to the top. So you can learn a perfect backswing. So check out this bonus video, I promise you, your backswing is going to be dramatically simpler after you watch it.
