Why You Can't Hit Your Irons As Far As You Should - STOP THIS!

Get This Free Practice Plan

Transcript Summary- 

So this week, I was at Canterbury driving range, just working on my own game when I noticed the guy next to me struggling—topping his irons, hitting fat shots, and struggling with his driver. I couldn’t help but watch, and eventually, I asked if he wanted a bit of help. He was more than happy to accept, telling me he’d been practicing for hours but wasn’t improving. This is something I see all the time—golfers working hard but making mistakes that actually push good golf further away. I didn’t have loads of time, but in just an hour, we made a huge transformation. By the end, his swing looked effortless, the ball was flying further, and he couldn’t believe how easy it felt. He went from frustration to enjoyment.

In this video, I want to show you exactly what we did because this is one of the most common faults I see in golfers. I’ll show you how to develop a smooth, effortless motion that guarantees more consistent strikes—not just with your irons but with your driver too. And if you’re new to the channel, consider subscribing. I post videos like this every week to help you improve your game, plus there’s always a free practice guide linked in the description so you don’t have to remember everything.

Now, Sam—he’s in his mid-to-late 50s—should have been hitting the ball much further, especially considering how much effort he was putting in. His swing was all tension and force, gripping the club for dear life, and the harder he tried, the worse it got. My first goal was to introduce some freedom into the clubhead. You can’t create speed if you don’t allow the club to swing. To help him feel this, I started with a simple drill—holding the club in front of him and letting the weight drop. But he was still too rigid. So, we switched to a towel drill, letting the towel whip freely, which immediately helped him feel the natural flow of the swing.

Once he got the sensation of letting the clubhead move, we added some structure by guiding him into key positions—hinging the club to his trail shoulder in the backswing and then to his lead shoulder in the follow-through. This gave him a clear destination while still maintaining the freedom of movement. Then, we worked on rhythm by standing with feet closer together, simply letting the ball get in the way of that flowing motion. Within minutes, his clubhead speed increased, and the effort level dropped.

The next step was adding more power while keeping that effortless feel. Sam had been keeping his body too static, trying to stay still for control, but this was actually robbing him of speed. To fix this, I got him swinging a heavy range basket back and forth, showing him how his body naturally reacts to create momentum. This movement allowed him to engage the ground properly, adding even more speed without extra effort.

Finally, I needed to give him a simple way to take all of this to the golf course. I introduced him to a classic exercise from The Inner Game of Golf—saying “Da” at the top of the backswing, “Da” at impact, and “Da” at the finish. Instead of forcing positions, he just focused on feeling where the club was. We started slow, building rhythm and timing, then gradually ramped up speed while keeping it smooth. By the end, he was absolutely booming shots, smiling from ear to ear.

So, if you’re someone who feels like you’re putting in loads of effort but not getting results, start by freeing up the clubhead and allowing your body to move naturally. I promise it’ll feel so much easier, and your shots will be more consistent. If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone who might benefit, and if you’re new to the channel, hit subscribe. And if you want to see me getting a lesson from the world’s No. 1 golf coach, check out this video with Pete Cowen—it’s a beauty! Have a great golfing week!

Full Transcript- so this week I was at Canby driving R just practicing hitting some shots working on my own game when the guy next to me I was kind of watching him hit shots iron shots topping on the ground fatting them whenever you drew got drive out it just was all over the place so I just went in I said do you mind if I kind of give you a bit of help and he's oh please please do he said Danny I've spent hours and hours practicing I just don't seem to be getting any better and I see this a lot he was making the same mistakes I see golfer after golfer doing every everything he's doing is actually pushing good goal further and further away I didn't have a load of time but I spent just about an hour with him and by the time we finished his swing was looking easy and effortless and he said in his own words I cannot believe Danny how far that's going it doesn't feel like I'm trying it feels so much more relaxing more importantly it was consistent and the smile he was smiling he gone from frustration to enjoyment in this video I want to show you exactly what we did because this is a fault I see over and over again with golfers I want to show you how you can start to develop an easy effortless motion that helps to guarantee more and more consistent strikes not just with your iron but your driver too before I get into the video look if you're new to the channel your first lesson of mine please consider subscribing at these videos like this one every single week to help you improve your game plus remember you'll never have to remember a thing I'll always put a free download practice guide in that description box below so Sam's in his mid to late 50s and should have been hit the ball so much further than he actually was particularly if you saw how much energy and effort he was putting in to the actual shot let me show you kind of roughly what it looked like so he got over the golf ball like this and this I'm going to exaggerate but it kind of looked a little bit like this lots of energy lots of effort coming into the shot 70 M hour worth of Club speed right now within 20 to 30 minutes we got him looking like this nice and relaxed looking like this so tell me what looks more relaxed more effortless so I've now just hit it roughly the same distance with a fraction of the effort that's what I started with Sam I said let's get you there first then what we'll do is I'll show you then how we then ramp it up but keep it effortless so let me show you what we did to kind of create this effortless motion first in the first 25 minutes and then gradually show you how we gr this up to something that just lit up his face so like a lot of golfers the more Sam tried the more control he added to his golf swing to the point at which he was gripping for dear life there was so much tension in his body his legs his torsa ultimately was trying really really hard so goal number one was to get some freedom in this club head and it's not always as easy as it sounds so I said to him look to get Club head speed the club head needs to be traveling with speed what you're doing right now you're not allowing the clubhead to swing you're kind of like really forcing it with the body but there's nothing going on with the club head so I need to teach you how to let this club head swing so if you want to set to experience what I I gave with Sam grab a pause the video grab a club and do this with me so hold the club out in front of you here and all I want you to do is is feel the weight of the club just dropping so there's a heavy weight to this this is really really important so I started that off with Sam said right Sam now what we're going to do is this I want you to swing that weight over the head and then all I'm going to do is this I want to let that weight just drop down to the ground so you're going to let it just drop sounds simple doesn't it the first thing Sam did was pick the club up and then go like this he's still really really rigid so what I did initially I said look let's just get a feel of this I've got him to probably seen this if you watch the channel so I got him to grab a towel to start with and I said look get the towel swing it over your Trail shoulder here and then just let the towel drop down you'll feel like the towel almost kind of like whipping it's oh yeah I feel like it's like there there's like a a speeding up isn't it right so now you've got that kind of sensation of the whip see if you can create a slightly louder noise it doesn't have to be aggressive it's just not that is it right it's a there there's a little bit of a whip so I then said look put the towel down we did this a few times backwards and forwards so you'd experience that kind of motion of the towel and then what we do is we kind of go one imagine the towel just whipping a little bit right so now we start to let some flow of the club happen really really important we did this for five six seven minutes right so you got that feeling now we clearly want to have some control of this club but we need to control where it goes in our back swing and I follow through so I need to help him with some Direction so once he start to feel the club head and it was now starting to swing I said look right this is all what happens in your swing if you hold the club out in front of you leaving the butt alone just hinge the club up so it points just over your Trail shoulder not over here not over here just point it over your Trail shoulder so notice how everything's just working just hinge it there don't lift it just hinge right now what you're doing here is this this is look the position of where the club's going to be in your free quart position back swing that's where we're going to go to today right just here right perfect simple right so that's your destination your back swing on your follow through this is your follow through move the butt leave the butt alone hinge it over your lead shoulder okay now what position is that well this is now your follow through your free follow through position so now look we're here so now we've got that position and that position right so all want you to do now is is you've got that kind of feeling we're not going to kind of focus on those positions excessively but you now know we're going to swing to here and swing to here but you're going to start to let this flow right so we again we alternated with a towel a little bit so we grabbed the towel a little bit we went right okay so you now know this position's there and there so ultimately the trail elbows folding on the way back lead elbows folding on the way through and you're feeling the whip in the middle of those thing so you're feeling the whip at the middle and you know both sides of the Swing so he's now starting to in a sense create look destination here allowing the whip at the bottom but we're focusing on the back swing and the down swing and allowing that flow naturally to happen so as he starts to go we got his feet fairly close together so right now let the ball get in the way of that swing so that we're collecting the golf ball on the way of that motion so suddenly now look at this backwards and forwards we start to make a few little motions now 74 M hour worth of Club speed with speed starting to creep up but I just not trying to hit it very hard at the stage just allowing the club just to swing in a really effortless way and suddenly what we're finding is he he's hitting the ball further speed's coming up and there's no effort this is the starting point now there's just two more steps I want to help Sam with one was to he see we can ramp up this power a little bit more and the second thing was to really help him take it to the golf course so the first thing is just like the arms in the club Sam was incredibly static with the body he was really controlling the motion if you aren't hit the ball well it's completely understandable for you to want to stay really rock solid but I'm going to I just gave him this ex we actually used actually at the time we had some range balls and a b basket so you can do full you know gra a full basket arranged balls and it does the same thing right so what I want you to notice here is this in order for me to swing this with momentum does my body stay static looks weird doesn't it it doesn't look natural so I want you to it says give yourself permission to move there's so much talk about staying still and and and and controlling the motion but a lot of times it's just robbing you of your natural Motion in your goal swing it certainly was Sam so if you grab something heavy you know it could be a shopping basket could be like I've got some heavy balls here and what I want to do is if I start swinging this with momentum if I wanted to swing this and I I started off initi just swinging it just around about hip height notice how really if I'm doing it naturally there's a natural movement of my my body here to the right and that helps me to swing the club and then as I come back now my body's already want to move back this way otherwise I'd lose my balance it naturally happens and then look I throw it here here so just watch for a second and notice what you see as I swing this bag backwards and forwards am I moving excessively right to left not really I'm actually staying quite under control but I'm not trying to stay still there's subtle movements and that movement is me reacting and working with the momentum that we've just created in this bag and what we've just created just a minute ago in The Swinging Golf Club can you see this notice how my legs are almost here pushing off the ground pushing off the ground that's helping me create momentum now all I did with s is say look take that feeling look and rather than now stay static just get a sense look of you in a sense using that and just create some momentum so you've got the arms working I'm going swinging and now as opposed to trying to get this motion where you're swinging the arms freely but nothing's happening with the body you're allowing and giving yourself permission to move to provide that momentum in this golf club right and if you can switch between the two when you're particular on the driving Ridge you'll start to feel how to ramp it up so nice and simply I I we we almost went backwards and forwards again quite quickly we got our s set here and I said look don't try try to move excessively just give yourself permission to provide some momentum look in this club if there's momentum in the golf club here your body will start to work naturally to coordinate this so look at this in action now so I'm going to do now is slightly widen my stands just a little bit here and I'm going to add a little bit of more momentum in this motion so it's one two right so you should see there extra whip down at the bottom right and we jump up there to 84 mph for Club head speed so what's creating this whip is is I'm really in a sense ramping up and as I'm coming down my legs are kind of reacting naturally to create even more snap at the bottom this is happening naturally without that momentum of the golf club I've got nothing to coordinate nothing for my body to communicate with yeah so but if I feel that heavy weight swinging my body then kind of works one and two right right and if I want to increase that even more so let's say if I want this is 79 if I want to increase that to let's say over 200 yards I I didn't suggest you do this I'm literally going to do it even faster I'm going to create even more momentum let myself go even more one two didn't quite strike that one amazing there but you'll probably see the speed jump up there we go look 93 Miles hour for Club head speed right so you can see here the only way I can create all of this and this is what saying to Sam is by learning to get allow that momentum in the in the club head and allow the freedom of the body to provide even more momentum in the back swing and in the down swing now to take it to the golf course I give him one final thing I said look you can't think of all that stuff on a course so you do the practice on the practice ground and then what I want you to do is this you know there are three kind of key points to uh to the swing right at the top right at impact and right on the way through and I don't want you to be trying to really fixing and trying to achieve all those positions it just leads to tension so I gave him something that I learned from a wonderful um coach who wrote a brilliant book The imag Gamer golf back in 1974 wonderful exercise and I said look when you feel the club reaches the top of your swing I just want you to say du when it reaches impact when you notice reaches impact say da and when it finishes say da at no stage do I want you to try to hit a position there and there if you do you'll just breede tension there's a big difference between trying to hit the position versus oh there it is there it is there it is I'm paying attention I'm observing so it looks like this da da da so I got him to make a few swings just kind of imagine this you're on a golf course now da da da and you can see here I'm coordinating this motion backwards and forwards and as he's doing this it's just da da da he could feel himself every so often losing focus am I doing it right dny ignore all of that Sam you keep paying attention are you can you feel the club there there and there if you lose it your only objective is to find it again da da da and we started off and he's timing and his rhythm da da right now he wanted clearly to hit that ball even further so all he did now was speed up the motion da da da da da da now he got the timing and the Rhythm he knew he could do this so da da da and bit by bit that is what he took to the golf course and that is what he started to kind of just booming be grabby smile on his face so look I really hope this puts a smile on your face please please please this is one of the most important things any of you can do in the golf swing start to let the club swing freely start to allow some freedom in that body don't try and lock it down all the time and you promise you you're going to start to feel it's just more effortless hope you enjoy the video if you know somebody who would really appreciate this please share it if you're new to the channel press that subscribe button and the Bell if you'd like to see myself getting a lesson from the world's number one golf coach check this lesson out I did with Pete count it's an absolute Beauty until next week have a wonderful golfing week.