Sean Foley's Philosophy and More Drills

Right Arm Chipping Drill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaetqIw-Zmk
One of the drills that I really like, when I started out with 10 year old kids was to start really simple, was to start with the right hand and just hitting little chips maintaining the wrist angle.  Once they got really good at doing that, I get their club in their left hand and get them to do a similar thing.  One side is pushing and one side is pulling.  The left side is more of a linear body movement,

and one side is more of a pivot movement.

  Because if I stop my pivot with my right hand, I'm going to get going like this [see below] which is basically flipping the club at impact.

So I start out with that because I want to educate both hands.  Homer Kelly, writer of The Golfing Machine talks about how there are swingers and hitters.  I like the idea of that there are strikers to where both swingers and hitters are not just one dimension.  I would think of a swinger as Vijay Singh.  People ask, "how does Vijay hit it so stragiht when his right hand is off the club?"  Well, he's in ulna deviation with his left hand and he's in full suponation (see below).

It's just his right hand that is off the club.  So he's a big puller, he's pulling hard with his left side and the shot that Vijay hates is a hook, so he has to put a glove [under his left shoulder and swing with a lot of pivot].  I like to teach both sides, but people are going to be one or the other.  Sean O'Hair is very much a swinger, but Tiger is all right handed, so he's a hitter, so we have to make sure that pivot stays up.  So when you get a hitter who's going early into the extension, this way (see below) they're going to be pretty inaccurate.

So I start that with with kids first, obviously they are going to be better at one or the other, but I've gotten 15 year old kids who have gotten up to 150 yards left and right handed with a 7 iron and hit it very straight.  Then from there, we go into proprioception, so I get the kids in bare feet hitting balls, and what happens is, 40% of your proprioceptors are in your feet, (proprioception is where we are in an unstable environment/ state) so when you slip on ice, you put your hand down, that comes from proprioception.  So it's either your head or your arm.  So I'd get kids in bare feet hitting with their left and right hand.  Then I would get kids standing on their left leg side.  

I was really fortunate because where I used to practice, Moe Norman used to hit balls, and I could tell early on that he didn't really move off the ball.  And I was being told that you have to move way off the ball, and I wasn't really talented enough to get back to it.  So I would watch Moe and I would do some of the stuff that he was doing, and people told me, "ah you can't hit like that, that guy's crazy."  I responded, "that guy flies balls into garbage cans for hours in a row."  So that led me into it a little bit, and then my dad picked me up The Golf Machine, and that was kind of a fixed post, but there are different variations of pivots, and I thought, "if I have to be back on my left side at impact, why get too, too far away from there."  By no means am I left tilting my spine, that's not that at all, it's like a vertical centralized tilt.  So if I stood on just my left foot and tried tilting to the left, I'd fall over, and if I tilted too far away from the target I'd fall over.  I think I got this drill from Bob Toski in Golf Digest.  I liked Bob Toski because he was about my height and he smashed it.  So doing this drill here causes you to rotate and create depth, because one of the only ways to stay balanced is you have to pivot through [your midsection - hips, pelvis].  So you've been told to keep your lower body quiet to keep your X-factor, stretch, etc, but since the backswing is a counter movement, that stretch is happening in the transition.  So let the lower body go on the backswing, keep it moving.  I never see a discus thrower not moving both ways.  So from up on one leg, you just hit half shots to half shots.  And the nice part is that you're really organizing  from a neurological standpoint that you are on your left side at impact constantly.  So I'm not left tilting.  

I think that even if you go to hit a ball, even if you want to be centralized, when you swing to the top, your hands and arms and the golf club are moving to the top with some momentum, so there's going to be some shift.  I think mathematically in a model, it makes complete sense to swing on a fixed axis and just pivot around it.  But the human body, we are ligaments, tendons, muscles, sometimes muscles are shorter on one side than the other, it's kind of a beautiful idea, but there is going to be some movement and lateral motion from right to left.  But I never want to see in any of these drills that people's eyes are moving a lot.  Like I can stay here with my head and load up on my right side massively, which is actually going to help fire/ push into my left side.  But to me, the problem is, because of target acquisition, when my head's going all over the place, I have to recalculate on the downswing where the ball is, just with my coordination, my hand eye coordination.  So I would take the kids from right hand, to left hand to until they were really good at it, where they could chip good with it, where they could pitch good with it, and then get them on one foot.  

From there we would get into some transfer drills and get into the kinematic sequence without letting them know that that was what it was.  So I got them to set up normal, then put their feet together, then take the club back from there, and right when they got to hip height, they had to step and hit.  So that's in transition creating that stretch and the shortening of that muscle over that isometric center, core.  Justin Rose does that, that's ten minutes of his warm up every day to get those things firing.  See the problem is, is that when people go to the range, when you're going to warm up, you're literally going to warm up, and I watch so many guys kibosh their round on the range.  Whereas like Hunter, he hits it so good on the course because on the range he never really sits there and sees the shot and goes through his breathing, he's just warming up.  So this tool is going to create a heightened sensory awareness which is lie turning off these frontal lobes and letting all those motor skills start to come in.  But I've not seen anyone use it, that didn't make them improve, it doesn't mean that they made the tour, but if they improved five strokes then that's a good thing.  

I think the only player I've met who has meditated his whole life has been Tiger.  There has probably been no one more in the thick of the battle.  Just to see how calm he is when he's going through that when everyone else is you can tell that they're shaken up.  What breathing does is that it's hard to think and breathe at the same time.  And he's taught how to breathe from the diaphragm, it's not just panting short breaths.  It's the way he's using his diaphragm, the position of his chest, the position of his chin and it works in what we call a centering.  

Most people aren't actually aware of their breathing.  Probably the only time we are breathing consistently is when we're sleeping.  What happens when the mind is going and its speeding up, and the nervous system is speeding up, we're not focusing on that.   

http://www.golfchannel.com/media/12-nights-academy-sean-foley/

How would you describe you teaching method/ philosophy?
Really my teaching method has been an amalgamation of everything I've seen, heard, or experienced.  So if I was to give credit to everyone we wouldn't have time to do the show.  That being said, it's obviously a function of bio-mechanics, which is important because

1. we have to understand how the body moves, how the body works, because it is making the golf swing.  
2. The second thing is that we have to understand the geometry in swinging in an arc and what those principles hold true to.  
3. Thirdly there is the physics of velocity and speed.  

That being said, I think there are three lessons that everyone should be improving in in these three areas: 

1. the first one is hitting the ball first every time, so solid contact.  Extremely important whether you shoot 90 or whether you shoot 70.  What's defined as solid differs in both of those, but generally they equate to the same difference in score.  So when talking about solid contact, the first thing is recognizing that the weight is forward and the hands are forward.  If you do those two things you'll hit the ball first and get the ball on line, which leads into the second point... 
2. Understanding that the ball has to start on its target line.  As far as ball flight laws go, the ball doesn't curve to the left because the face is pointed to the left.  The ball starts to the left because the face is pointed to the left.  So something really simple for people to understand is that the ball is going to come off at a 90* angle from where the face is pointed.  So if the ball has started right and is slicing, you've hit it with an open face, if the ball has started to the left and hooking, you've hit it with a closed face.  So really understanding and recognizing that coming into impact the face square for a straight shot, being open for a draw, and being closed for a fade is really important for people to understand.  So when your clubface is square, if you swing to the right, the ball is going to curve to the left and if you swing to the left the ball is going to curve to the right.
3. The third and final principle is that you want to work on your game to the point that you're ensuring that you only have one miss.  Golf can be difficult enough that it is a game measured in failure, so as long as I know that every bad shot I hit is going to go right of my target, that helps me to get rid of the fear of playing holes with water on the left and out of bounds on the right and knowing that I'm not going to have two misses which so many people are plagued with.

To have solid contact is a function of understanding that in the golf swing we're just trying to rotate around our spine, there's not a whole lot of lateral movement; there's going to be some lateral movement in some players based on fitness and flexibility, but for the most part we want minimal movement into the right side (4:00).  Now from the top of the backswing, to understand how to hit the ball solid and compress it, our weight has to be forward at impact.  I would say 90% on the left side with the belt buckle and sternum either on top of, or ahead of the golf ball, and then from there the hands are forward and the shaft leans.  Those positions as much as they look on top of the ball, we need to realize the ball is going to get up in the air, one because the ball is compressed, so it's going to come off at an angle based on the loft of the club, and two its going to continue to go up in the air because the friction of compressing it is making it spin backwards which creates drag and lifts the ball further up in the air.

If I have my hands forward and a neutral grip, the face is going to be open at impact which is going to start the ball out to the right, so the only way I can make it curve back to the left is if I hit the ball from the inside.

How do you get them to only have one miss?
Ball position and alignment, and others (like grip, posture), and I won't say that there's one way to do it, but if the ball is back in my stance, I'm definitely going to have the tendency to hit it right to left just based on the fact that the ball is going to be hit earlier on the arc, whereas a ball up in my stance, I'm going to be hitting it later in my arc and it's going to be slightly more on an out to in.  So if I want to curve the ball to the right, I want it up in my stance, and if I want the ball to only curve to the left (because I don't want to miss right) then I'm going to put the ball in the back of my stance.  So just simplifying those ideas of ball position and alignment.  Understand that if someone tries to correct a overhook by aiming farther to the left it's a double edged sword because they will be swinging further out to the right, and trying to point the face at the target, the ball will hook even more.

Drill: start with the ball position just off the left heel.  Put your right foot on its toe, and then hit full shots.  What you'll find is that you're very consistent from here, because I can play golf if I didn't have a right leg, as a right handed player.  It would be really difficult playing right handed without a left leg.  That takes us back to Ernest Jones and one of the earliest teachings of the game.  (7:10)    


Why do you put the club up against the back of the head?
Well, there are lots of reasons, there is a big lateral move towards the target on the downswing, but there never should be that much off of it on the backswing.  When you get to the top there is still a force/ pressure in the right leg which is helping us to create a force in between both feet.  So this isn't just loading into your left side, you're still loading into the right, but you can still feel a pressure in the left quad.  Optically your eyes haven't moved that far off the ball.  This drill ensures that your eyes don't move off the ball where your brain would have to make new calculations on the distance to the ball, and that's just hand-eye coordination.  By staying in a single axis, by keeping everything centered, as we start to drive forward into our left leg and move forward it allows us to ensure those principles that I talked about: hitting the ball solid, starting it on the intended target line and having one miss.  To me it's like: the ball's not going to move, so why should I?  This supports the idea of the function of the arc, so as we create an arc around us, the more I move across the ball laterally, the more the circle turns into an ellipse.  And fourth, maybe the most important for most golfers out there, is that if I start bent over in flexion in my posture, and from here my head starts moving off the golf ball,  you can see that my shoulders start turning very level.  Well in order to hit down on the ball, my shoulders are going to have to get steep again.  Then the club must redirect over the top and then we are attack out to in which is the genesis of the slice.


Plato said that "insecurity comes from not understanding the concept" and I think the reason that a lot of people don't improve is that, although they have their drill or their swing aid on their elbow, conceptually we have to be able to draw a picture recognize why it is what we should be doing.  Most people do not have this recognition.

I know you have a lot of your students hit balls barefooted.  Why are you doing that with a student?  What are you trying to accomplish? (11:05)
It's understanding that the feet are the keyboard to the brain.  And we lose a lot of function in how our feet work when we are in shoes with stability and spikes and all that.  Hitting in barefoot maximizes balance.  Two it gets to the point of really being able to create power; all the biomechanic experts I've talked to all talk about the necessity to root yourself to the ground and grip the ground.  So once you're in this position here and you've got that connection with the ground, you're able to use the ground.  When I'm capable of using the ground, I'm capable of putting force into the ground and then that force is going to come up through my body.  That's really the genesis of clubhead speed.  And really a simple analogy, "its the earthquake that causes the tsunami."  It is also an environmental teacher.  It's going to teach your brain 50 things about what you need to understand (11:54) that would be very difficult to explain auditorily to the student.

I want you to still try to create speed, and I want you to hit the shot staying in balance and holding your finish until the ball lands.

Our foot is where we house all of our proprioceptive qualities, which is basically our brain's awareness of where we are at in an unstable environment.  And secondly our foot is full of mechano receptors which are receiving our mechanics.  So they are educating and integrating all of these super important muscles, the core into the legs to help us become more proficient.

This is a drill that I picked up, I've seen it a million times, but I got to a point to where it was explained well to me; what it is is a transition move, to drill how to generate power from the ground up the body and out the clubhead.  It seems like it might be difficult to do, but it's quite simple.  (13:30)  You start out in a normal ball position, step out to where their feet are together, and then as they start back, the first part of this drill is as the arms are moving back, the lower body is starting forward and the upper body is turning against it.  It creates some good stretching through the left side of the body.  The energy that we are putting into the ground are called ground reaction forces, and as they are going into the ground, they are rebounding back up  through us.  And that is really the start of clubhead speed.

What was the best tip you ever received?
(15:00) The late great Canadian golf professional, Ben Kearn, who was my mentor growing up; Ben always used to say, nothing should be done at the expense of balance.  He was making a point about the golf swing, but he was also making a point about life, so as a coach he was much more than a golf coach, which I think is what great coaches are.  And ideally is that I think you shouldn't be doing anything in your golf swing that's going to affect the balance that you have.  So if you ever took a kid who was very talented and just started playing golf, if you can just teach them to focus on staying balanced, you start to notice a lot of the hand angles, plane angles, things like that would be in position.  So one of the first things that I think people need to realize is that within balance there is sequence.  The club has to travel the furthest distance.  So if the club has to travel the furthest distance in the arc, it has to move first.  The hands and arms are moving the second furthest distance, so they follow the club, then the torso, and then the hips move fourth.  From here (the top of the backswing) it's the opposite sequence with: driving the hip first, having the torso move second, having the arms move third, and then the club moves last.  The difference of why that's the case, is that the body is going to be rotating at impact at about 4 mph, while the club at impact could be moving up to 100 mph.


A tip for the low handicapper:
If you look at golf, 70% or more of the strokes come from 110 yards  and in.  Even on a 470 yard par four that still holds true.  So if you had 10 hours to practice a week,  a low handicap is based on having time to do so, because golf is difficult.  So if you had someone with 10 hours of practice, 70% of that should be done from 110 yards and in.  And as far as ball striking goes, you'll see people hit 50 7irons in a row on the range.  And they think they are hitting it well.  You have to practice your routine as much as you don't practice doing it.  So you need to simulate practice like it's game time, so you change each club, target, and shot every time.  So if you hit 50 balls, you hit Driver, 7iron, SW, PW, low, high, left to right, right to left, because we are out on the range and we are practicing ego.  Well if we haven't been practicing that we get a false sense of confidence where many low handicaps can't take it from the range to the course.


Still today I don't know what's right, but I have a pretty good understanding of what's wrong and if I can teach people what's wrong and not to do it, they can be better for it.

Really as a golf coach what I like to see is that they continue to improve and continue to improve.