How To Cure Golfers Elbow? – Best Exercises | Things to Avoid
Today, we're going to be discussing a very, very serious topic in the golf swing, and that is elbow pain. Now we recently released a video a few months back that dealt with elbow pain, but we just talked about the lead arm. So if you haven't seen that video and you're one of those golfers that's battling with some lead arm elbow pain, then go ahead and click the link in the description below. That'll take you over to part one of this video.
So the reason for making this video, is a lot of you guys have been writing into us saying, "Okay. We're actually battling with some of that elbow pain, but in our trail arm, and we want you guys to discuss on that and why it's happening in the golf swing, and give us some, a couple of solutions on how we can start fixing it, so we can play injury free this upcoming year?"
So that's exactly what we're going to be doing today. And at the end of this video today, guys, I'm going to be showing you a really, really great bonus video, that's going to teach you how to add speed to your golf swing the proper way with your right arm, so you're not putting it in a dangerous position any longer. Let's go ahead and get started now.
Okay, guys. So I know exactly how frustrating it can be to leave the driving range, or leave the golf course, and start to feel some of that nagging pain in your trail elbow, and never really have any sort of idea as to what's causing it. And that's what we're going to be discussing today. And taking a big amount of information here and condensing it into a small amount, just to kind of give you a real good idea of what's happening is the bottom line is, is that you're just overusing your right arm, or your trail arm in your golf swing.
Now I know. A lot of you are probably standing up at home right now, getting ready to throw something at your computer screen saying, "Chris, I've this a 1,000 times. I did not just sit through one of your longest intros ever just for you to tell me that I'm overusing my right arm." Don't worry. I'm going to give you a little bit of substance today. Just sit back down and relax. So the first common mistake that we see from golfers is that we just put our right side of our body in a dominant position.
Now why is that? Well, because it feels powerful. It's our dominant side of our body. We've got it in a position to where it can start to take things over, and start to try to get things moving down the fairway as far as humanly possible. It feels powerful to us. That's why you see tons and tons of amateur golfers tend to slice the golf balls, just because they're trying to use too much of their arms and not enough of their body. It feels powerful to do that. But right from the set up position, what you do is you tend to put your right arm in that dominant position. You get it way up on top of the golf club here.
Now what that looks like from down the line when you take your set up position, if your friends, or your camera, or whoever's been watching you, notices that your right forearm is way up above your left. That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's signaling to your brain, "Hey, I got control of this weapon here and I'm ready to start using it as much as I can, as hard as I can throughout the entire golf swing." It's really important that you start your set up position in a much more passive position. Now there's a good way to do this.
What I want you to now, is if you've noticed, like I said before, that your right arm's way up on top of your left, then go ahead and just grip the club in your left hand and let your right arm hang freely underneath your shoulder line. Now if it's hanging freely here, I want you to take it nice and relaxed, and just move it straight across your body, until it can get its hand on the club. That's going to produce a little bit of what we call axis toe. We talk about that a lot on the website, which is really good for us to be able to get our head in behind the ball and address. It also allows us to turn our body properly, without running the risk of reverse pivoting.
But more importantly, for this video, we're talking about how to put the right arm in a much more passive position, so that you can focus on weight shift and body turn now. That's a really, really big part of how to produce proper speed in your golf swing. I know. A lot of people are like, "Okay, Chris. If I'm not going to use my right arm, how am I going to produce the speed?" Well, there's a lot of big moving parts and you do use your right arm in the golf swing. It's just how you use it to produce that speed, and that's what we're going to talk about at the end of the video today, so that's the first thing. So go ahead and get your set up into a much more passive position.
Okay, so now that we've gotten past the set up stuff, let's get into the fun stuff here, and talk about a solution for you players that have just predominantly overused your right arm in your golf swing, causing you to get a little bit on the steeper side, causing you to dig these big tomahawk chop divots. So what I want you think of today is this. I want you to think of your right arm becoming a passive conduit to transferring energy from your body. So if your body were doing all the big, heavy lifting, your right arm is going to be a passive conduit that's going to be transferring all of that energy, regardless of you having to actively try to use it.
Now I don't disagree that the right side of the body helps produce some speed in the golf swing. It's just how we produce that speed. A 100 times out of a 100, we see all of us students that are right side dominant all want to try to produce their speed with their right arm too early in their swing. And that's exactly where you start to put stress on the critical right elbow. That's where it stems from, is just trying to hit the golf ball too hard.
Now I get it. It feels powerful. If I were to take this club and try to fling it down the fairway, I would use my right arm, and I would throw it as hard as I could. It feels powerful for us to use that. But that's where you start the golf swing off on the wrong tone. That's where you start to change the path of the club is on, the pitch that the shaft is on. That's when you start to get the club coming in too steep. That's when you start to put a lot of stress on that joint.
So what that looks like from down the line, for those players that want to fire their right arm too quickly, is you start to see the angle of attack coming much steeper. So the angle of attack would be coming down really steep here, instead of a nice, shallow angle of attack. You would also notice, when you start to fire the right arm, what does that do to the right elbow? You see how it wants to externally rotate away from the body? I got a lot of force working in this direction away from the target. That's where you're starting to put a lot of stress on there.
Also, because it's on a much steeper angle of attack, if you're one of those players that digs these big tomahawk trench divots, now you're starting to put that elbow into a position where it's going to start sustaining a lot of stress down there at the bottom of the swing arm. And it's just all from overuse age. That's why I said at the beginning of this video, is just from using it too much.
Now I know that you're looking for a tip today on how to overcome this, and I actually have quite a few students doing this. And it's just, again, going back to that point that I alluded to at the beginning is, think of it becoming a passive conduit. So I actually have a student that does this three times before he hits every golf shot. I'm not sure if he's driving his playing partners nuts. Or, if he's holding up the golf course, but he's doing this three times. He holds his arm out to his side and he closes his eyes, and he turns the muscles off in his shoulder, and he lets his arms fall. He does it three times before he hits every shot.
I know he'd be driving me nuts if I had to watch that three times before every shot, but what this is doing for him, is it's giving him some awareness. Because I told him. I'm like, "Even if you take your right arm off of your body, you're still going to use it too much." What this is doing, is it's telling his brain, "Okay. I don't want to use my arm at all." So what he does is, now once he gets into that set up position, okay, and he's ready to rock and roll, he just feels like his right arm is just turned off.
Because, again, at the end of the day, when you get to the top of your swing, you already have this angle achieved between the right wrist and the right forearm, and this angle between the forearm and the bicep. This is a big, big position of leverage, which is great for speed. Even if you were to do nothing with it and use your legs, those angles are going to release down at the bottom of the swing arm, and that's where you're going to get that boost of speed. So, again, the whole point is, is just not using the right side of the body or overusing it.
Okay, so let's wrap things up and do a quick recap of today's video, just so you guys have a good, clear understanding of what it is that you need to be doing or what you need to be working on to help avoid this nagging injury in your golf swing. And again, it stems right from your set up position. So I want you to make sure that you get your right side of your body in a much more passive position, or your trail side in a much more passive position for those left-handed players at home. Sorry. I don't mean to be disrespectful. And you can do that by gripping the club in the lead hand, and reaching straight across underneath with the right hand. And now, you've got your forearms more in line, so now you've got axis tilt. You're ready to start your golf swing off with weight shift and body turn the correct way.
Now the second thing is, is just becoming more aware of how you're overusing it, and you can do simple little things, like our student was doing. Turning your muscles off in your shoulder, because at the end of the day, you're going to have these angles achieved at the top of your swing, that you're going to be able to get rid of with lots of speed. That's leverage. That's where you get a big boost in club head speed.
So if you guys have any questions or comments for me, please feel free to post those up below. Also, do me a big favor and click that like button. Also, remember to subscribe to our channel. That way, you get some updates on videos when we put those out. For those of you players that are ready to start adding speed the proper way this year, without putting your arm in that elbow position, I really encourage you to click the link that's on my hand right now.
That'll take you over to the website. We'll show you this video. It's one of our members' favorites. I'll also put a link in the description below. Click on that video, watch that video, and it's free in its entirety. And this is going to show you how to properly add speed to your golf swing that's not going to put you in harms way. That's really, really important. So let's get out there. Let's play some great golf in 2017, guys.
