Golf Balance Drills: Better Contact and Distance

Want the Secret to Longer Drives? Improve Your Golf Balance and Hit the Ball Farther with 2 Easy Drills and this Cool New Training Aid.

If you care about smashing the golf ball, hitting iron shots with razor-sharp precision, and getting your best-ever distances, you care about golf balance.

Higher clubhead speed can definitely increase your yardage, but balance is an equally important key to finally getting more distance. In fact, better balance is the secret to cleaner, more controlled contact with the golf ball. And as every golfer knows, the better your contact, the farther your ball flight.

So, how do you improve balance in your golf swing?

Well, the key is improving pivot. This is one of my favorite skills to teach, as I’ve seen countless students transform their contact with better pivot. That said, pivot is an under-acknowledged aspect of a powerful golf swing. It can also be challenging to teach and tricky to learn. It’s one of those pesky golf skills that require learning how to feel the correct technique in your body. This is one reason so many golfers still struggle to consistently make the kind of solid contact that launches the ball.

The truth is, there is a simple way to master pivot and start hitting the kind of distances you’re truly capable of. And you can do it with just a couple easy drills using a training aid called the Pin High Pro.

I’m going to share these drills with you, but first, let me explain what I mean when I talk about pivot.

Understanding Pivot and Pressure in the Feet

If you’ve read many of my other articles or watched other videos, you probably already know my rule of thumb for pressure in the feet. I talk about it a lot, because—once again—balance and tempo are more important than many golfers realize.

But in case you’re new, here’s the gist:

When you take your setup, you want to start with a little more pressure on the lead foot than on the trail foot. I recommend of a balance somewhere between 55% / 45% and 60% / 40%.

Now, when I talk about “pressure,” I’m referring to something you might think of as “weight.” I generally don’t like to use the term “weight,” because it’s a little less accurate and sometimes puts golfers in the mindset of swaying their body from side to side. We’re not going for a swaying motion.

Instead, the goal is to pivot, rotating the body around the golf ball. To facilitate this motion, you want to think about focusing pressure down into your feet and into the ground, even as you shift pressure between feet.

I’ll teach you a couple drills to help you shift pressure at the right moment for the perfect balance and tempo. But first, let’s talk about the tool that’s going to help you do that.

How the Pin High Pro Improves Golf Balance

Balance and pivot are related to how pressure is distributed between your feet and the way pressure shifts over the course of your swing. As a golf instructor, I’ve often used pressure mats to observe the exact pressure percentages in my students’ feet. But for their own practice—and for yours—it helps to have a way to check and evaluate their own foot pressure in real time.

This is why I use the Pin High Pro with a lot of my students. The Pin High Pro is basically a 3-ounce disk that fits under your foot and makes a clicking sound under the weight of 30 pounds or more. It was engineered by Carl Papa with the objective of providing immediate feedback for golfers trying to perfect tempo and balance in their golf swing.

I love that it helps my students hear exactly where pressure shifts are happening during their swing. I also like that the training aid costs about as much as a round of golf, so it’s an affordable option for anyone hoping to improve balance.

Most importantly, I like the Pin High Pro because it helps my students get more out of these next two drills. Rather than having to consciously feel the shift of pressure in their feet, they have a clear auditory cue. This means more exact feedback and faster improvement.

(For more information or to purchase the Pin High Pro, click here.)

The Backswing Drill

We’ve established that you want to set up your golf swing with more pressure in your lead foot.

Then, when you start to swing back, pressure should shift from your lead foot to your trail foot. You want to feel like the pressure is working down into your trail heel, and this should happen early in your backswing.

To drill this pressure shift:

1. Place the Pin High Pro under your trail heel.
2. Take your setup with more pressure in your lead foot. (The Pin High Pro should not click.)
3. Start your backswing, shifting pressure into your trail heel so you hear the Pin High Pro click.
4. Shift back into setup position, and repeat the backswing and pressure shift.
5. Once you feel you’ve gotten the shift down, take your golf shot.

Remember, the key is to hear the click early in your backswing. When you’re able to consistently nail the timing of that backswing pressure shift, you’re ready for the next drill.

The Transition Drill

Okay, so on the backswing, you’ve shifted pressure into your trail heel. You want to keep it there as you continue to the top of your swing. Then, early in the transition, you shift that pressure back to the lead foot.

Here’s the drill for the pressure shift in transition. This may feel familiar . . .

1. Place the Pin High Pro under your lead heel.
2. Start at the top of your swing, with more pressure in your trail heel. (The Pin High Pro should not click.)
3. Start your downswing, shifting pressure into your lead foot so you hear the Pin High Pro click.
4. Shift back into top-of-the-swing position, and repeat the transition and pressure shift.
5. Once you’ve gotten the shift down, take your golf shot.

Once again, the goal is to hear the click early in the transition.

The Big Picture

These two drills combined help establish a balance, rhythm, and timing that will help you make solid contact with the golf ball. The overall goal is to create a tempo of shifting pressure back, then forward.

Even once you’ve gotten that balance into your body with the Pin High Pro, I recommend using the phrase “left, right, left” the next time you hit the golf course. (You can reverse that if you’re a lefty.) Even just repeating that phrase in your mind helps you return to the rhythm you worked so hard to master.

The result will be more consistency in your balance, rhythm, and tempo.

The byproduct of those improvements will be better contact with the golf ball.

And the result of better contact is that goal we spend our entire golf lives chasing:

Your best distances yet.

What Do You Think?

Has this advice been helpful? Do you have your own tricks for mastering and improving balance? Any thoughts our questions about the Pin High Pro?

Whatever is on your mind, I hope you’ll share it in the comments. We love the discussion, and the more we hear from you, the better we are at providing the kind of information you need to play better golf.

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