Many people tend to use the hands too much in the golf swing.

This is very understandable. The only contact we have with the club is our grip in the club.

However, the golf swing is far more than a swing from the hands.

To generate the power required to hit the ball 250+ yards we need to make use of the big muscles in the body.

The Shoulders, back, abdominals, legs as well as the hands and arms need to be participating in the swing.

This drill is designed to quieten the hands in the backswing/ takeaway allowing the body to turn and build up some coil and resistance on the backswing.

From there the player should be able to turn the body back towards the target and have the hands, arms and club follow in good sequence with more power and control.

Watch any top player and you will notice a routine or ritual which he/ she follows before every shot they play.

What this is for is to help you perform better on the course when put under pressure.

We filmed this video at the end of the practice area as if playing on the course. This is something that you need to do to groove your routine enough to make it a natural process when on the course.

When top pros practice, they practice not only technique. Technique in fact will be a small percentage of the practice they do.

Most of the practice will revolve around hitting different shots, shots they may face on the course.

If you are practising in preparation for shots you may face on the course, it makes sense to practice these shots while practising the routine you will use on the course.

At the end of the day, practice is all about preparing yourself to perform at your best on the course.

So next time you go to the range, keep this in mind and spend at least half of your practice shots practising your routine as well as the shots.

When learning how to achieve a better impact we like to go through this 3 step process.

Using an impact bag which provides resistance gives the pupil a great feeling for the impact position.

But impact is not just a position, it is a point in the swing that the player needs to swing through.

So we like to move the pupil on to swinging in long grass to replicate the felling of resistance offered by the impact bag, while allowing the club to continue the through swing.

Once the pupil is able to adjust to the new impact in the grass and has a feeling to take on, we then try to recreate this feeling through the ball.

These steps will take some practice to get right, but the difference the pupil will achieve in his ball striking will be well worth the effort.

The most common cause we see for a shank is to get the club swinging in a way where the sweetspot of the club is behind the hosel .

From this position it is the hosel you are feeling instead of the sweetspot.

This can happen in many different ways. I the video I demonstrate this position with the club coming from an in to out path, but it can happen with a swing from out to in also.

It is my experience that many people suffer this as slicers and approaching from out to in.

With the face so far open that the hosel gets between the sweetspot and the ball, they then end up lagging the hosel into the shot.

Even when these players flip the clubface closed at the bottom they still shank it as the damage has already been done in the approach and the swing is already outside the ball.

One of Derek’s problems over the years has been a tendency to pick the ball clean, which on occasion becomes a thinned shot.

I this video I show Derek a drill which can help you learn to contact the ball on the way down and results in taking a divot after the ball.