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Can't Shift the Weight on the Downswing
I met the golfer who had difficulties shifting her weight to the front foot during the downswing.
She knew she was supposed to shift her weight to the back foot on the backswing and to the front foot on the downswing. But she couldn't do it and was losing lots of distance because of it.
But her real problem was in the backswing.
It's easier to shift your weight to your left on the downswing if most of your weight is on your back foot at the top of the golf swing.
If you feel like you can't shift your weight to the front foot, you might have the reverse pivot.
Here are the check points to see if you have the reverse pivot or not.
1) Can you raise your front foot off the ground at the top of your swing?
2) Is your spine tilted to the right at the top?
3) Are your hips not sliding to the right during the backswing?
4) Is your head turning back as your shoulders and hips turn back?
Her hips weren't sliding on the backswing. But she wasn't doing the rest of the check points correctly.
How to Transfer the Weight
To fix her golf swing, I asked her to check the following.
1) Lower the right shoulder
When you do this, your spine will tilt to the right slightly as well. After setting your spine angle, all you need to do is to turn around your spine.
This will make it so much easier to shift your weight to the back foot.
If you spine is straight up at address, no matter how much you turn, your weight will be still centered.
2) Raise the left heel
In most cases, it will be enough to check the above points.
But in her case, she needed some more help.
So I asked her to raise her left heel at the start of her backswing.
For her, raising the left heel made it much easier to transfer her weight on the back foot.
3) Turn your head
Her face was pointing straight toward the ball during the backswing. This was causing the reverse pivot for her.
I told her that her head should turn to the right as her shoulders and hips turn to the right.
Your head, spin and shoulders are connected. So it's natural for your head to turn as your shoulders turn to the right.
Also, as you shift your weight fully to your right side, your head should move slightly to the right as it turns to the right.
4) Flare out your toes
Women don't walk with the toes pointing out. So when they set up to the ball, they tend to have their toes pointing straight ahead.
But try to flare your right toe and turn. You will see that you can turn more on the backswing. She was surprised to find out that she can make so much bigger swing than before by flaring out her right toe.
Also, I ask her to flare out her left toe. This will help clear out her hips through impact and fix the tendency to block the shots to the right.
This also made it easier to shift her weight to her left heel at the finish.
It will take her some time to get used to the new weight transfer method. But she told me she already felt really good to be able to swing the clubhead much faster than before.