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Mike covers different exercises that help with your golf swing. The static back press is his favorite. 

Mike lies on his back as his feet rest on a chair. His quads are 90 degrees to his body and lower legs. He puts his hands on his stomach and relaxes.

Mike notices that his right shoulder is a little off the ground, as is his right hip. This means that Mike's body is twisted. He takes deep breaths and relaxes into the ground.

Next, wrap a rope around the heel of your right foot and pull your leg back. This stretches your hamstring. You should be able to stretch your leg past 90 degrees to 45 degrees. If not, it means your hamstrings are tight, which will show up in your golf swing.

Now wrap the rope around your toes and pull down. This stretches your calf muscles.

As Mike lay on the ground for the first exercise, he evaluated his body to see if his hip was up or if he felt twisted, which would show up in his golf swing. The key is to let your body stabilize and get back into neutral.

The following two exercises were stretching your hamstrings and calf muscles. If these muscles are tight, that causes a problem when you swing. When you set up to the ball, you don't want a lot of angle in your body or keep your knees flexed. Keeping your knees flexed while turning your body requires a lot of flexibility in your hamstrings, hips, and calves

Even though keeping your knee flexed became popular, it wasn't easy. If you are tight in those muscles, when you push your right hip out of the way, don't be afraid to straighten your right leg. Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones both did this.

These exercises are good for you; each tells a story about what your golf swing is and is not.

FITNESS STATIC BACK PRESS

A Malaska Golf Member wants to know how and why Mike does the one-arm swing.

Mike begins by swinging an iron back and forth, independent of his shoulder moving. Mike places a finger on the outside of his shoulder socket to show the pivot point. You aren’t moving your shoulder forward as you swing.

Your shoulder socket must be relaxed for your arm to swing. Mike demonstrates this and hits a few balls with his right hand and then swaps to his left hand. You will notice there isn’t much body movement, and the pivot is at the shoulder socket. The key is to loosen up your arms without much body movement.

As you go to your full swing, you must keep that same lack of tension in the shoulders. Your arms need to go faster than your chest to create more speed. If your shoulder sockets are tight, you can only go as fast as your shoulders can turn.

Once you have a feel for that, then it’s about making a swing with the same amount of lack of tension in your shoulder sockets so your arms can accelerate and hit the ball.

SHOULDER SOCKET TENSION

Looping the club is a way to get the momentum of the clubhead out in front of your body. If you let the club fall behind your hands then you are looping incorrectly. Here's how Joe looped the club using his arms and hands.

HOW JOE LOOPED THE CLUB

As you swing step forward with you trail foot. As you reach the top step forward with you lead foot then hit the ball. This helps to stabilize your lower body as your swing. It also loosens up your arms and shoulders. This allows you to swing and step and hit the next ball. If your arms and shoulders are to tight you can not swing and get back to the next ball. Your body moves to much. 

WALK THROUGH DRILL

Brian Gott, a Malaska Golf Certified Coach is answering Ask Mike’s this week. This question comes from Tyler Dunnigan. Tyler asked about lead arm depth in the backswing.If you remember, a while ago, everyone was focused on the towel drill, where we would stay connected by pinning the left arm against the chest and keeping everything tight. Well, that’s been disproven by biomechanics. We now know that pinning the arm against the chest causes too much rotation, flattens out your swing plane, and makes it difficult to get back to square and stay on plane.What we want is lead arm depth, but not wrapped around the body. We want a good shoulder turn, with the arm out and away. If you look from this angle, as I take the club back, the arm is not pinned against my chest. It does connect when it comes down here, but we don’t want it wrapped around the body.We want the arm to stay out. The angle between the chest and the arm only changes about 17 degrees for most good players. We just don’t want to get too wrapped around, as it causes too much rotation. The more we can get the arms out and up, the easier it is to bring them down. Mike has a drill in the M System called the Four-Step Drill, which will help with this a lot.The Four-Step Drill goes like this: Step one, take the club out; step two, rotate; step three, push the arms out and away; and step four, hit the ball. Remember, you want a good shoulder turn with the arm going out and away, keeping everything in front, not pinned behind. If the arm gets pinned behind, you end up with too much rotation, the club gets laid off, and you must play catch-up.So, try the Four-Step Drill, and remember: the club goes out, up, and away—not pinned against your chest and wrapped around.

LEAD ARM DEPTH

Take an alignment stick place it on the club shaft so it extends longer than the grip end. Then set up to the ball with the stick touching your lead side. Make your backswing. Once you reach the the end of your backswing. Now make the shaft pivot behind and touch your trail side. This will work the club out into the correct arch to run into the ball. This is a feeling that offsets the change of direction and gets the club in the correct arch. Rather than dragging the handle forward and having to catch the club up. 

ASHLEY - DIRECTING THE MOMENTUM OF THE CLUB

Brian Gott, Malaska Certified Coach, is subbing for Mike on this question. A Malaska Golf Member wants to know whether you can perform the Front Loader Drill before you make a shot on the course.

Brian demonstrates the Front Loader Drill, where you start the swing with the golf club extended out in front. Most other sports you play don’t start from a static position; everything has movement, and we react to it.

The Front Loader Drill helps you move back to the position in the backswing. You will likely lock up if you are too concerned about getting into the correct positions.

Before hitting a shot, you want to feel where you intend to swing. The Front Loader Drill is a great way to do this. Make that pre-swing and get a feel for it. Then, set up and reproduce that feeling when hitting the ball.

You will get a better result with your shot instead of getting locked up and worrying about what’s happening behind the ball.

FRONT LOADER DRILL ON THE COURSE

I have been working with Phil Blackmar for many years. Learn how he has improved me as a player and what we have done for golf together.

WORKING ON MY GAME WITH PHIL BLACKMAR

Doug Roberts is a PGA Class-A Member since 1996 and is currently rated by Golf Digest as the #1 Golf Instructor in Utah. He is a 2-time recipient of the Utah PGA Teacher-of-the-Year award. Doug is a Certified Staff Instructor for Malaska Golf and excelled for 25 years as a
Trainer and Instructor for the Jack Nicklaus Academies conducting golf schools in 14 countries and in 30 states across the USA. He is a National Staff Member of PXG, a Master Staff Instructor for the Patriot Golf Schools and is a FlightScope Certified Instructor.

Doug is a former Director of Instruction for the TPC of Scottsdale, the Estancia Club in Scottsdale, Victory Ranch in Park City and the Jack Nicklaus Academy of Golf at The Ledges. He is a past Lead Instructor and Video Analysis Specialist for the Nicklaus/Flick, ESPN and Jim Flick Premier Golf Schools and former director of Nike Junior Golf Camps in Utah. He leads his own popular golf schools, clinics and private lessons at The Promontory Club in Park City, Utah and also at The Entrada Club in St. George, Utah.

Doug played basketball, baseball &amp; football in his formative years before deciding to focus on his golf skills. These skills would lead him to be a 2-time All-Conference player at the University of Utah and play in the NCAA National Championships. He owns individual tournament wins at the Junior, Amateur and Professional levels. This blend of experience from playing competitively, to working alongside some of the game’s greatest instructors has provided Doug with the expertise to help all levels of players use natural forces and find athletic success in their golf.

MALASKA CERTIFIED: DOUG ROBERTS

NEW TASKS OVERRIDE OLD HABITS

Can you swing your arms faster than gravity?  Of course you can.   Can you swing faster than gravity in the right arc?  Challenge yourself to find out.

OVER TOP STICK CHALLENGE

Generating acceleration and force through impact.

IMPACT AND ACCELERATION

By understanding how the body is designed, you can have an optimal swing that avoids injury.

SWING HOW YOUR JOINTS ARE DESIGNED

Getting a feel for impact is very important. Practice making longer swings.

MAKING LONGER PITCHING SHOTS

Baseball can give you a feel for where you should be at impact. Start to feel what your right arm needs to do.

PRACTICING IMPACT WITH BASEBALL

DUSTIN MAY

To learn how to change directions you first have to understand that there is no top in a swing. It is a constant motion. So as your arms start back your body starts moving forward. The same as throwing a baseball, Or hitting a baseball, and or hitting a tennis ball. The sequences are all the same. 

CHANGE OF DIRECTION DRILL

Each person has a different swing. Finding the right putter for your swing is very important.

QUALITY TYPES OF PUTTERS

Creating width is not a matter of how far you can move the clubhead from your body, it is how far you can distance the club handle from your chest. Creating width is the first step to increasing distance with your driver.

CREATING WIDTH

Today's Mulligan Monday is all about fixing your backswing. Grab your tennis racket and practice swinging a forehand shot.

As you take the racket back on the backswing, the racket face closes and faces the ground. You complete your swing in a circle as you follow through to hit the tennis ball.

Combine your golf club with the tennis racket and practice making a tennis swing. You will find that it is the same motion and swing.

Use a tennis racket to feel your golf backswing.

USING A TENNIS RACKET TO FIX YOUR BACKSWING

Mike Malaska discusses the Fitness Series and gives an overview of what to expect. He will introduce exercises you can perform with some evaluation and show you what your swing does.

 All you need to do fitness at any level are bands, stretch cords, and a jump rope for cardio.

Mike stresses that fitness is about being consistent, not necessarily about a heavily structured program in a gym six days a week. The key to fitness is that it must be accessible. Mike can take the bands and stretch cords anywhere. He will pop them in his golf bag while traveling.

Mike's fitness routine is one that he has done for 35 years, and he doesn't miss it even if he is sick. He will demonstrate these exercises for warming up as well as strengthening awareness.

FITNESS OVERVIEW

How "under" affects a player at any level.

JULIE YANG

Most people don't know what the change of directions feels like. Practice other sports to get a better feel.

CHANGE OF DIRECTIONS

Welcome to the Malaska Golf live stream! This is our first live stream, and we’re thrilled to kick it off. We plan to host many more in the future. Our goal is to discuss topics that interest you and connect with you about what’s happening in the golf world.During this live stream, we answered your questions in real-time. Whether they were about the Open, a specific shot, a swing, or what a player might do in a tournament.Joining us today is Matt Baker, a certified golf coach with Malaska Golf, currently based in England. Matt will share his insights on the atmosphere and happenings around the Open in England and Scotland.

MALASKA GOLF LIVE 152ND OPEN REPLAY

M-System Lite M3: How the body works. This video focuses on this, especially the pelvis, which is an integral part of your golf swing.Mike is holding a cardboard cutout of a pelvis to illustrate how the hip sockets work. A black circle in the center (the center of your pelvis) and two others on either side represent the hip sockets.Understanding how the hip sockets move is critical to understanding how the rest of your body works. The pelvis is the stability and base for the upper body, and your lower body tells the pelvis what to do. Once you understand how the hips and pelvis work, the drills in M3 will make a lot of sense. Mike explains that, at this point, you already have most of the golf swing established.The M-System M3 goes in-depth about the pelvis and includes drills and exercises. This is important because people don’t use the pelvis correctly.Mike takes the cutout representation of the pelvis and places it on the ground behind a golf ball. Mike explains how the pelvis moves and works in relation to setting up to the ball. He notes that the goal is for the center of your pelvis not to move closer to the ball. You want to be farther away from the ball when you hit it.Most people get into trouble when they try not to sway; they kick their knee and stabilize their right hip, but their hip socket doesn’t move.Your pelvis moves closer to the ball on the backswing. Then, you try to push off your right foot again, and your body gets closer to the ball.Mike explains that the Tour Player’s left hip socket moves slightly laterally while the right hip socket moves back. They don’t move their hips much at all. In fact, their hips work away from the ball when they swing, accelerating the club out to the ball. It is important to feel how the hips work this way instead of moving closer to the ball.Next, Mike has a drill to demonstrate how this force feels and how you do that with a golf club. This is a great drill to feel how this force moves and how you offset forces with your golf swing. Mike has a couple of exercise bands with handles on one end. Javier stands on the cord ends while Mike holds onto the handles. The exercise bands are crisscrossed. This exercise is like the cable cross at the gym.Mike demonstrates how pulling the handles back and forth mimics the golf swing and how the pelvis, hips, and feet work. Note the pulling action, which moves your body away from the ball. The force pulling at Mike is the same force a golf club does.Next, Mike takes his driver out to replicate the same motion and hit the ball. Now, you are starting to feel how you are moving force in your feet. Your feet are an important aspect of your swing, and you should focus on that. The feet will tell your pelvis and body what to do.

M-SYSTEM LITE M3: HOW THE BODY WORKS

Sync up grip, release and body rotation to hit draws.

WHY CAN'T I HIT A DRAW

There is a way your chest, hips  and hands move and a way they do not move.  Here is a drill that will help you strengthen your feel for impact.

FINDING IMPACT POSITION

Speed comes with control. Learn how to curve the ball.

CURVING THE BALL

Hi, my name is Matt Baker, and I'm a Malaska Golf Certified Coach based in the UK. This is a great question from Russ John. His question is whether you should hold the angle in the right wrist at impact or throughout the swing.The answer is no, you shouldn’t forcibly hold that angle. Doing so creates tension and can cause you to lose speed and power by dragging the handle through impact. Instead, you want your wrist to hinge and unhinge naturally, with proper timing.At impact, there should still be a slight flex in the right wrist, but after hitting the ball, the momentum of the club will cause the right arm to extend and form a straight line, followed by the wrist hinging up. This slight wrist flex at impact is due to correct use of the club's momentum, and it's all about timing the hinge and unhinge properly.A key tip is to practice the pivot drill, which helps time everything correctly. Some golfers tend to stop their hips, releasing the wrists too early. By tying the swing to proper body movement—pushing the hips back and away from the target—you can create the right release at the right time for a solid, compressed shot.Instead of focusing on holding the angle, work on pushing the left hip back and through. Practice with smaller shots to get the feel, ensuring the wrists hinge, unhinge, and rehinge, along with the proper hip movement. This will help you strike the ball cleanly and generate more distance.

DON'T HOLD THE ANGLE AT IMPACT

If you are not confident in the shot you are making, you will not commit and will not hit a good shot. The first step to pre shot routine is choosing the shot you are comfortable with.

CHOOSE THE SHOT YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH

Mike and Hale share a few ideas that they feel could benefit the game.

THE GAME ITSELF

Dr. Debbie Crews talks about stepping outside of the box in order for you to play your optimum game.

DEBBIE CREWS - TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR GAME

Once your body starts working correctly, your swing will become easier.

YOUR BODY IN MOTION

One of Mike Malaska’s baseball heroes was Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax who played for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. In one of Sandy’s books, he made a comment about pitching. It was about being able to throw a pitch fast, softly. 

This statement impacted Mike at a young age as a pitcher, but it also again when he got into golf. The harder Sandy Koufax was trying to throw the ball, the more he wanted to maintain that soft feeling in his hands and arms. 

This concept also translates to golf. Mike explains to throw a baseball easily and slowly build up the speed without tension in your arm and shoulder. When you get to the point where you try to throw too hard, and your shoulder tightens, you actually slow down. 

In a golf swing, you are trying to make a nice swing without tension. You want speed; however, you don’t want tension. Make practice swings and see how big a swing and how much speed you can generate without any tension. Set up to the ball and replicate the swing. When you get tension, you feel like there is effort, which usually means a slower club speed. The Lever System isn’t working, which is the same thing Sandy Koufax was explaining. The goal is to create speed softly with the least amount of effort.

HOW TO CREATE SPEED SOFTLY

Getting the right nutrients and getting your body working correctly is very important. Practice getting your blood flowing.

PREPARING YOUR BODY FOR A TOURNAMENT

Reading greens is a critical skill at every level.

INTRO TO READING GREENS

Golf is all about having fun. Learn how Dan Quayle keeps the fun in golf alive.

GOLF SHOULD BE FUN

Mike takes another look at Kory’s grip. Because it's still not strong enough, he makes the adjustments using baseball analogies to get the point across.

KORY BUDINGER

The downward force and pushing up to make a basketball shot is the same motion applied in a golf swing.

SPORTS CONNECT: BASKETBALL

Finding the correct grip pressure like a pro

GRIP PRESSURE

SMASH FACTOR - OVERVIEW

Hello, I'm Matt Baker, a Malaska Golf Certified Coach based here in the UK. This is my at-home studio, and I want to address a great question from Ryan Bart. Apologies for the delay in getting to this, as it relates to something he noticed while watching Wimbledon, which was some time ago now.While watching the players at Wimbledon, Ryan noticed something very insightful, which ties directly into what Mike and our coaching philosophy at Malaska Golf emphasize—natural athleticism. What he observed was that no tennis player ever moves forward into the ball when they hit it.For example, if a ball is coming toward them, they don't move forward to play the shot. Instead, they instinctively move away from it to give themselves time, space, and room to execute the stroke. Whether they're playing a forehand or backhand, they never crowd the ball. If anything, they naturally create distance. This is an instinctive movement found in almost any sport.Take baseball as another example: if you’re swinging a bat, you don’t move up into the ball. You naturally create space and time by moving away slightly to make the swing more efficient. This concept is key in golf as well.The trick to understanding this is to start by mimicking a forehand stroke. You can use a racket or even something simple like a bottle—though my dog, Ted, might not be too happy with me using this as a prop! The point is to get a feel for how your body naturally moves. As with tennis, the racket goes up and then comes under to hit the ball. Pay attention to how your body works during this motion, particularly the pressure in your feet.When practicing this, notice how your left hip moves naturally. In the Malaska Method, we emphasize the importance of this "push-away" motion with the left hip during the swing. Golfers often say they struggle with turning their left hip, but when you give them a tennis racket, they do it instinctively without even realizing it.So, the drill here is simple: make some forehand tennis strokes. Practice this as much as possible to build a sense of how your body moves. Once you've got the feeling, pick up a golf club and try to replicate that same motion. Don’t overthink what the club is doing on the backswing or follow-through—just focus on swinging through the ball.Here’s how it looks: take a few swings, feeling that same "up and under" motion. Start slow, and you don’t need to hit the ball hard. If you’re using a tee, focus on pushing away as you swing through. You’ll notice that the motion becomes more fluid and natural with practice.This is the essence of athletic motion—creating space and letting the body move instinctively. Golf isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. The movements are already familiar; we just need to transfer those skills from other sports, like tennis or baseball, into golf.And that’s the beauty of the M-System at Malaska Golf—it simplifies the game by building on movements and patterns you already know.

MASTER ATHLETIC GOLF MOVES

Foot action cannot be overstated.  This is where your power comes from.  The more you can sequence this out in your swing, the more consistent and balanced you will be.

FOLLOW THROUGH PIVOT

LAUNCH ANGLE - DRIVER

Mike and Milo discuss their 7 years teaching together.

MIKE AND MILO LINES INTRODUCTION

The heel of the club leads the toe through the downswing and impact.

THE HEEL LEADS THE TOE

Join Malaska Certified Golf Instructor and Club Fitter Brian Gott as he walks you through all the clubs in your bag, the benefits, challenges, advantages, and diversity you may face when selecting your next set of clubs.

IN THE BAG WITH BRIAN GOTT

Driver-Getting The Most From Your Lag Shot Driver

DRIVER-GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR LAG SHOT DRIVER

Use a downhill set up and prepare for less loft.

DOWNHILL OFF THE GREEN

Your grip determines what the ball is going to do. Practice using different grips to get a feel for what your hands need to do.

GOLF TALK FROM THE QUARRY

This Quick Fix Friday, Harry Hooker is working on his chip shot. He tends to swing from the inside.

To “Fix” this, Harry has to make sure that when he chips, the ball needs to be back behind his right foot.

When Harry swings and can catch the ball solid with his inside swing, he can hook the ball into the flag.