Learning how to use your trail arm in the golf swing is the key to synchronizing your arms and body during the backswing.
Most golfers we observe take the lead arm and swing it across the body going back, in an attempt to create a swing plane.
Not only is this unnecessary, it introduces several problems of its own that do not occur when the trail side controls the movement.
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The Trail Arm Drill teaches you to go back correctly by "presetting" the trail arm to the position it will be in at the top of the golf swing, then holding it there as you turn back.
This allows you to feel and understand that the rotation of your body is what transports the club back, rather than pushing it across with your arms.
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The basic throwing motion you have likely done thousands of times already will make learning RST much easier.
One of the things that I talk about a lot in my golf clinics and on the website is how the right arm works to provide speed in the golf swing.
Several years ago I wanted to demonstrate the difference in speed between the left and right arms in the golf swing, and so I researched it and set up a test (see the results here).
In the end, the empirical data demonstrated that the right arm produced significantly more club head speed than the left.
The reason for this is the same reason that you’ve never seen a pitcher in baseball setup to throw the ball with his trailing arm and then switch and throw with his lead arm (please, post links in the comments section below to your videos trying this!).
There’s just no speed there!
Sequencing Is the Key to the Golf Swing
The reason that the right arm is so critical in the golf swing is the same reason it’s so critical in the throwing motion.
The proper sequencing and accumulation of speed of all the moving parts is what separates an average golfer from one who swings the golf club at Tour-level speeds.
Let’s look at the basic, high level sequencing of a throwing motion.
These aren’t necessarily in precise order as many of these things are happening simultaneously, but you’ll get the idea:
Chuck Quinton is the founder of the RotarySwing Tour online golf instruction learning system. He played golf professionally for 8 years and has been teaching golf since 1995 and has worked with more than 100 playing professionals who have played on the PGA, Web.com and other major tours around the world.
