As a golf coach, what is the most important thing to do in a golf swing?
Simple, WEIGHT SHIFT.
Weight shift has a lot of impact to a swing especially on whether you will duff the ball, hit a good strike or top the ball. Of course, weight shift has some relationship with pressure shift and yes they are not the same.
In weight shift, we refer to the shift in the body mass while pressure would be where your feet puts pressure onto the ground. For instance, your body mass can be shifted to your leading foot but your pressure could be more in the trail foot. Essentially it means you're using your trail foot to push your body mass to the lead side. That's not what we want because if you do that, you'll realise it will be hard for you to rotate your hips towards the target at impact.
In weight shift there's two aspects to it - How to do it and When to do it.
How to do it. As mentioned, we don't want to use our trail foot to push our weight or mass towards the target. Instead, feel like the pressure is on the leading foot (Left Foot for right handed golfers) when you shift your weight
When to do it. For a lot of professional, their peak horizontal force happens before transition. What does it mean? It means they've already shifted their weight before their backswing reach the top. This will allow ample time for you to rotate your body. Imagine if you only want to shift your weight at the top of the backswing, you also need to add in torque/rotation to the hips as you swing down and somewhere club parallel, you have to exert vertical force. Too many motions in a very very very short time. So shift your weight before you reach the top.
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