Set up at address. Move your lead leg so it’s almost touching your trail leg. This moves your body and if you keep the shaft straight … it moves the clubhead many inches behind the ball (depending on the length of the club).
Swing the club back and simultaneously replant your lead foot somewhere near where it was at address to recenter.
I like how it teaches you that it is a swing and the ball simply gets in the way. I also like how it can delay the opening of the hips so that post impact acceleration has leverage.
What I’m confused about is if it causes too much lateral movement of the hips. When you step your lead foot to almost your trail foot at set up … it literally moves your hips a few inches (to the right if a righty).
I guess … the meat of the swing only commences from the 4:30 line so if that looks good … it is all good … regardless of what came beforehand?
Bradley Hughes did a video about the Adam Sandler swing. He is actually in agreement that the step drill does a good job of teaching the weight shift. As long as at P3 your weight is still significantly on you back foot and by P4 it’s on your front foot you should be good.
I really feel my hip and upper body separation doing this drill. I was making big full swings and absolutely smoking a ball with 5i. Actually, putting the club forward past the ball a little bit and right foot stepping first as well. It’s the hardest I can hit a ball… but it’s a loose cannon, big dispersion for me. I like the ground pressure feedback though. I would do a few and then mimic the foot pressure with a controlled swing. How’s it been going since this post?
Step drills can be a huge benefit to a player with the correct focus. The two items I have my students work on when doing step drills are 1) Being aware of how they interact with the ground and 2) The transition specifically top of backswing to early downswing. Number two gets neglected most of the time when I see players doing step drills and they never gain the full benefits from the training session.
