A problem move in your golf swing

Golf Digest

Most golfers start their journey swinging over the top.

They fix it by learning to do the opposite. To learn to loop it inside and swing out to the right.

It's perhaps the biggest breakthrough a golfer can have early on. Replacing the slices with draws brings with it more distance. Timing up this move is how most golfers learn to break 80.

But then, they hit another wall: They start getting stuck.

Getting stuck is when your arms or club get too far behind you on your downswing. It sends the ball in both directions.

It's the good player problem that never really goes away. Even Tiger Woods struggled with it. But getting your swing unstuck is the step that for these same golfers, transforms you into a consistently low 70s shooter.

Teacher Chandler Rusk specializes in getting golfers unstuck. So I called him up to learn about the most common reasons this happens to golfers...

10 reasons your golf swing is 'stuck' — according to a coach who's dedicated his career to fixing it

By Luke Kerr-Dineen

What You Need to Know

Have you ever heard of internal hip rotation? Well, it's important. As our own Ron Kaspriske writes here, it's a "key indicator of whether you can pick up clubhead speed."

Most golfers should be able to create about 40 degrees of it. When you struggle to do that, it can lead to an over the top move, too much hip sway, and lower back pain—all sorts of bad stuff nobody wants. Improving it all comes down to stretching a key muscle known as "TFL" located at the front of your hips.

Stop being so mean to yourself. We all do it: We call ourselves an idiot—or worse—after a bad shot on the golf course. But that may be doing more harm than you might thing.

Sam Weinman breaks down why here. In essence beating yourself up like this isn't actually harmless. It instills a subtle fear of failure that affects all your subsequent shots, and makes it harder to perform well. You need to take the pressure off after a bad stretch—not to add more of it.

How do tour pros warm up? We've talked about it a bit before, and I recently dedicated an entire Golf IQ episode to it here.

There are a few things I find interesting. One thing being how Scottie Scheffler loads up on short-and-mid irons. He hits way more of them than most pros. But the most interesting thing is the pacing. He averages one golf ball every 38 seconds, and that pace basically never changes. It sounds fast, but it's not. Try it yourself. It requires a certain amount of thought before you whack away.