Lower body swing or arms swing?

Swinging a golf club is not unlike making cookies or a cake.

Flour is the lower body,
Sugar is the arms.

One provides the base, one provides the kick.

If you have too much of one and not enough of the other, you get sweet sludge or something that tastes like Styrofoam.

Remember when everyone said Cholesterol was bad and everyone stopped eating eggs? Now the consensus is we need some for good health. The right kind. Sound familiar when related to arm movement in the golf swing?




  1. Nicolaas

    Hello Monte,
    I appreciate there must be a balance; the question is where?
    I understand that there must be some arm swing together with some body swing, not just one of them.
    This is a point of consideration, Thank you for your help.

    Kind regards,
    Nicolaas from The Netherlands

    • Monte Scheinblum

      The balance has to be told to you by someone who knows what they’re doing, or by trial and error….or both.

  2. Michael Schmidt

    In your experience with students do you find that the more athletic the student is the less they have to consciously think about the lower body? Natural athletes IMO tend to shift their weight naturally when throwing a ball, swinging a bat, and yes swinging a golf club. I’m an ex college basketball player who is also analytic by nature. When I got into golf I read all I could and the typical ‘lead with legs’ and ‘don’t go over the top’ and that advice actually did more harm than good. Many 68 ballerina swings later, with the help of your blog, Ive realized I need to consciously start my transition with my right shoulder and fire my arms a bit later. I actually turn now and don’t shoulder dive flip swing as much, though I’ll always fight that habit.

    Thanks for all you contribute to hacker nation.

    • Monte Scheinblum

      Yes, better athletes tend to use lower body automatically, so it’s even worse when they over use it.

      • jamie h

        Think I tend to suffer with this. I’ve always been athletic and the biggest issue I have with my swing these days is my ‘Bump’ is a little more of a slide. Your zipper drill helped me with this


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