Weight Transfer

Sorry for the late post again. There are some reasons why I didn't post and I did share it in ~my life~ blog. Alright, today I'm going to talk about Weight Transfer. Probably, many of you all might know what is WEIGHT TRANSFER. But do you swing apply the weight transfer mechanism? Some may answer YES, some UNSURE and some, NO.

Let's put it this way. Just like any other sports, weight transfer is seemingly just as important not just in golf. I'll show you some of the pictures that represent body weight transfer before relate it to golf.

(A) take a look at how Zidane kick a penalty shot

(B) look at the sequence of one basketball player throwing a free throw...

(C) how a badminton player, sequence to SMASH a shuttlecock...

The reason why I show this three pictures is to prove that, not just golf, other sports also in need much of weight/body transfer to deliver a more powerful shot. At (A), when a footballer is kicking a ball. You don't expect them to kick a ball just by standing in front of the ball, and kick it just with their legs. That will definitely kick a ball, but it won't give a powerful blow at the ball to make the ball travel faster and fly further. Therefore, players will run a certain distance, and when they get near the ball, they will rotate their hips and turn their body to slightly inside and rotate back- to kick a powerful ball. Let's see (B), when a basketball player, is having a free throw in a location. In order to deliver the power, they couldn't just use their hand, yes and unless their hand are very powerful. But even NBA players who are strong, they still bend down knee and upon throwing the ball, pushing their knee straight - just like delivering their body weight to the ball and with their hand power to throw the ball. In (C), a badminton player who wanted to make a SMASH, a power SMASH I mean, they will rotate their shoulder and body, and rotating back with the power of the hand, and WHOOOOOOSH!

The reason why I ask you all to identify the weight transfer in your swing is because

1. To have a more powerful shot


2. More energy saving shot (where you don't have to use all your hand power in order to get one distance, you can use ur body weight to give you more power boost)


3. To have a more fully-fundamental right swing in golf

Let's take a look at Sergio Garcia swing sequence that I took from Golf Digest. Garcia weight transfer is pretty obvious that's why I take his swing, as an example.

At the beginning, as usual, a player will have a balance weight distributed at both our feet. During the take-away of Garcia swing(pic3), you can see that Garcia have transfer the weight from his left leg to his right a little even at the beginning when he stretches his arms.

In this pictures, we can see that Garcia have move probably 60% of his body weight to his right leg. Keep your eyes on Garcia's knee, our knees in golf are the weight-controller. Garcia have shifted his body weight using his left knee( that see that the left knee tend to bend more than the right), with his right knee still remain a little bend( right knee shouldn't be straight as the purpose of right knee, is to hold the body weight temporary - if you straighten your right knee, it is problematic for you to hold your weight and to deliver a powerful shot)

Look at Garcia's footwork. FANTASTIC!!! Though his knee is seem relatively too flexible, but that's where Garcia got his power. When you reaches the top, just like Garcia at pic 2, 71.5% of your weight should be at your right leg and the left over in your left leg. At picture 3, when Garcia is coming down, look how stable his knee and hit footwok are. This is the IDEAL foot and knee work for golfers. HE is able to move back all his weight back from right to left with a very powerful stable stance.

During this time, his knees were back to 50-50 %. Perfect work! Look at his downswing at pic 2, see how he transfer his power, from right transfering the weight probably 7.5-15% per SECOND to his left foot. Tiger did the same way! At picture 3, look at how Garcia transfer all his shoulder, hand, foot and most importantly, body weight at the shot. This is POWER DELIVERY.

So guys, probably some of you might think that moving your body is SWAYING YOUR GOLF SWING. It is true IF you over-move your body and purely used your body weight just to hit a shot. I once face the problem of swaying. To overcome it, I end up staignanting my whole swing, and was having a roller coaster ride until I got back my weight transfer mechanism correctly. But if you able to coordinate your HAND, SHOULDER, WAIST, FOOTWORK, AND WEIGHT TRANSFER correctly, you can definitely play a much stressful(because you don't have to focus all your power just on your hand) game and gain further distance for your golf balls.