The Truth About Weight Shift in Golf Swing

So it’s true, if you can’t get to your lead side than virtually nothing else in your swing really matters. You can have the best grip, the best backswing positions, the prettiest move at the top, but if your pressure doesn’t get back to the left for a ball sitting on the ground, your club will almost always bottom behind the golf ball.

And when that happens, you already know what you get. A swing that takes far too much effort. Fat shots. Thin shots. That ugly drop-kick hook that makes you want to put the clubs in the garage for good, and never see a golf course again.

I’ve been coaching golfers for over 15 years now, and I can tell you that this one issue…

Not getting to the lead side early enough blended with a poor golf swing sequence, is behind more bad strikes than almost anything else I see. I see this all the time from students.

The frustrating part? Most golfers know they need to do it. They’ve heard it a hundred times.

And yet most amateurs do not shift their weight properly during the downswing, which affects their performance. They just don’t know how to make it happen, or more importantly, when it needs to happen.

That’s what we’re going to fix today. I’m going to walk you through exactly why getting to your left side matters, when the weight shift in golf swing actually needs to occur (hint: it’s way earlier than you think), and how to train it so it becomes automatic. I also have a great video breaking all of this down on my YouTube channel if you’d like to instead see it in action.

Golf Ball on the Ground? Get to Your Lead Side!

Let’s start with the why, because once you truly understand this concept, you’ll never look at your swing the same way again. So imagine your golf ball is sitting there on the ground…

Well ideally your club should make contact with the ball first and then the ground. This is what the pros are consistently doing and amateurs are not. In a perfect world, the lowest point of your swing arc (what we call low point) should happen after the ball. Somewhere out in front of it.

From my experience I believe there is a direct correlation between how far forward a golfer’s low point is and how good their handicap is. The worse the player, the farther back the low point tends to be. The better the player, the farther forward.

Tour players are generally hitting the ground with their low point four inches or more in front of the ball…

Four inches! That’s way out there.

Think about what that means. They’ve taken an entire variable out of play. They’re not worried about catching it a little heavy because the club is still working down and through at that point. And even if they thin it slightly, it’s a different kind of thin.

The club is still descending, so they still get spin, still get height, and the ball still goes out there. It’s not that leading-edge thin shot that air mails the green into someone’s backyard.

Now compare that to the average amateur golfer who is camped out on their trail side at impact. Their low point is behind the ball. The club is already working up when it reaches the ball.

What do you get? Fat shots where the club digs into the ground before the ball, and thin shots where the club catches the ball on the way up. And even when you manage to time it just right, which you can’t do consistently, you still aren’t compressing the ball the way you should be. So this is where the weight shift becomes so valuable.

Important Distinction: Weight Shift vs. Pressure Shift

But before we dive into the shift, there’s a critical distinction to make. Many will focus on how to shift weight in the golf swing, but I oftentimes find it better to focus on pressure rather than “weight shift” or “weight transfer” as many amateurs are concerned with.

In the golf swing we don’t necessarily want our mass moving all around. Not to say we should stay dead still or completely centered either, but big movements up and down, to and from the ball, or laterally can lead to more problems if we aren’t careful. For that reason I like to look at how pressure moves…

The simplest way to think about this externally vs. internally.

• Weight Shift is the movement of your center of mass. If you move your torso for example over your right foot (horizontal direction), your weight has shifted. If you move too far, you “sway”.
• Pressure Shift however is more so how you push into theground. You can stay perfectly centered (no weight shift) but push your lead foot into the turf with more force to create power. You can even elevate your heels in the golf swing without really moving your mass. This is a form of moving pressure as well.

The Coach’s Analogy:
Imagine standing on two bathroom scales. Weight shift is seeing the numbers change because you leaned your whole body to one side. Pressure shift is keeping your body still but actively stomping down on one scale with your foot.

So as you continue to read along, consider the shifts and movements we discuss more so as pressure related movements (or at least a combination), and less so exclusively mass or weight. Again, it’s not to say all mass movement is bad, but for consistency sake it’s probably best to avoid big moves off the ball, and conversely way in front of the ball.

The Real Problem: You’re Getting Left Too Late

This is the part that surprises most golfers when I tell them. Getting to your lead side is not just a downswing move. It’s actually in many ways a backswing move! It sets the stage…

Let me say that again because it’s that important. The shift back to your left side begins while you are still going back. And really I don’t even like to think so much in terms of ‘backswing and downswing’, instead I prefer to think of it as ONE swing.

Check out Rory McIlroy above later in his backswing as he’s beginning to float back to the lead side. Most amateurs I work with do this way too late.

They wind up to the top, camp out on their right side, and then try to push off the right foot to start the downswing. They’re trying to go left and swing down all at the same time. That’s when you get the dreaded tilt and slide. The upper body hangs back, your arms take over, and the low point drops behind the ball with the club working up through impact instead of down.

You see this all the time at driving ranges. The golfer who looks like they’re falling backward after every swing. That’s a golfer who never got left.

Then sometimes these same golfers try to combat this issue by just putting all their weight and pressure left at setup and leaving it there the whole swing. While this may improve strikes at first, from my vantage point all the dynamism of the swing is taken out. It looks stiff and unnatural.

What the great ball strikers actually do (and this is true of everyone from Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy and the top players on Tour today) is get their maximum trail-side pressure much earlier in the backswing than you’d expect. It generally peaks somewhere between shaft parallel and lead arm parallel in the backswing. Some a little later, but really not at the top like most amateurs probably think.

So the right foot and right leg are doing their job early. They’re pushing you into your windup. And then, as you complete that windup, something really cool happens. (See a Swing Catalyst pressure trace below for a professional’s max trail side pressure in backswing.)

The Float and Fall: Learning to Use Gravity

I love using the analogy of a swing set for this move because it captures exactly what it should feel like…

Think about a kid on a swing set. As the swing reaches the top of its arc, there’s a moment of weightlessness. A float. The swing isn’t being pushed anymore. It just hangs there for an instant, and then gravity takes over and it falls back down. This doesn’t need to be thought of as a pause, but rather a transition, or the ‘and’ note between ‘1 and 2’.

That’s what happens in a great golf swing. As you’re completing your backswing, your torso and arms feel like they continue to wind up and float, while your middle and lower body begins to fall toward the lead side. You’re not pushing. You’re not lunging. Gravity almost becomes your friend here.

And when gravity carries you, it carries the club too. The low point moves forward naturally. You don’t have to work so hard for it. You don’t have to manufacture it. The sequence does it for you!

This is what it really means to have flow in your golf swing. Most players have zero flow. They’re mechanical. They’re segmented. They finish one move and then try to start the next one. Wind up, stop, push off, swing down. It’s choppy and effortful, and it never produces consistent contact.

In a way, you’ve gotta learn to dance with the golf club.

The great players look smooth because they are smooth. The movements overlap. The transition isn’t a hard switch, it’s a blend. You’re still going back up top while you’re already falling forward down below. That overlap is where the magic lives.

What “Getting Left” Actually Looks Like

Now here’s a critical distinction that a lot of golfers miss. You can get your pressure left and still have low point problems if your body isn’t stacked correctly.

What do I mean by stacked? Your rib cage and your belt buckle, your upper center and your lower center, need to be lined up over your lead side in transition. Not just your feet. Not just your pressure. Your actual body.

I see this all the time. A golfer will shift their pressure left, which is good, but they’ll leave their upper body hanging way back behind the ball. Pressure is forward but the chest is still behind the pelvis. And from there, the low point is still going to be compromised because the upper center, which is critical in controlling where the club bottoms out, never got stacked up.

When you get this right, you can see it in the finish. You end up balanced over your lead side, chest facing the target, everything stacked and stable––posted up like a pro!

This is especially critical when hitting the ball off the ground. With a driver on a tee, you can get away with a little more hang back. But irons off the deck? It really helps to get stacked up and you’ll be much more consistent with your ball striking off the ground because of it.

Why You Shouldn’t Turn Without Getting Left First

This is the part that connects everything together, and honestly it might be the most important concept in this entire article. It is pretty much impossible to rotate through the shot efficiently if you don’t get to your lead side first.

Think about it. If your weight and pressure are still shifted toward the trail side, your chest does not want to turn. Try it right now. Lean back to your right and then try to rotate your torso left. It’s difficult, feels bad, and doesn’t feel like you can cover the golf ball. You can probably see why this would also lead to more inconsistency in your ball striking.

Now get stacked over your left side and try the same rotation. Night and day. The chest turns freely. The hips clear. Everything opens up toward the target without resistance.

This is why so many amateurs struggle with rotation. They hear “turn through the ball” and they try to do it, but they’re trying to turn from a tilted, hung-back position. And when you tilt and try to rotate, you get what Tiger Woods once called “the ole.” That spinning, matador-style move where the body whips around but the club gets left behind or thrown at the ball.

We don’t want oles. We want efficient rotation supported by proper weight shift. Get left first, get stacked, and then turn. When you do it in that order, the rotation actually helps move your low point even further forward. It’s an amplifier. It makes every good thing you’ve already done even better.

But if you skip the getting-left part and go straight to the rotation, it all falls apart. You cannot shortcut this. The sequence matters.

Use This Left-Right-Left Sequence for Smooth Ball Striking

So let’s put this into a simple, repeatable pattern that you can take to the range today. I call it the left-right-left sequence, and it’s one of the best ways I’ve found to teach golfers how to create the proper pressure shift.

Keyword there: pressure. Once again here, we aren’t talking as much about weight. We don’t need to be moving our mass all over the place, but by focusing on moving our pressure along with slight mass shifts we can create a natural, fairly centered, athletic move.

So here’s how it works…

Left: Before you even start your backswing, there’s a small trigger. A slight press of pressure toward the lead side. You’ll see this in many of the great players throughout history. It’s subtle, sometimes barely visible, but it’s there. It’s your body’s way of cueing itself to get back there.

Right: Now you begin your windup. Pressure moves into the trail side as you load up. But here’s the key. This loading happens faster than most people think. You’re not drifting way to the right the entire backswing. The max trail-side pressure is happening fairly early. Think of like doing a speed skater exercise. We want to use that trail leg early to recenter ourself.

Left: As you complete the backswing, the pressure is already beginning to shift back to the lead side. This is the float and fall. The arms continue up with the winding of the torso while the body starts coming back down and slightly back to the lead side. By the time you reach the top of the backswing, the shift left is well underway. It’s not something you start at the top. It’s something that’s already happening. One fluid motion!

That’s the whole pattern. Left, right, left. It sounds simple, and honestly it is simple. But for most golfers, it’s a game-changer because they’ve been doing right, right, left. Or worse, right, right, and never getting left at all.

This little sequence creates a dynamic, athletic weight transfer. It’s the same kind of loading and unloading pattern you’d see in a baseball swing, a tennis forehand, or a boxer throwing a cross. It’s how athletes move to deliver the goods, and that’s not a coincidence. The golf swing is an athletic movement, and when you start treating it like one, everything gets easier.

That’s what we mean when we say Swing Like an Athlete™.

The Downshift Board: The #1 Training Aid That Coaches For You

One of the best training aids I’ve used for teaching this move is The Downshift Board. You’ve probably noticed it in the images throughout this blog.

All you have to do is stand on it, and as you swing it tilts based on where your pressure and weight moves. It gives you instant, honest feedback about whether you’re actually getting left or just think you are.

You don’t even need to hit balls with it at first. In fact, I’d recommend you don’t. Start with slow-motion air swings, feeling the left-right-left pattern beneath your feet. Feel the board level out and start to teeter back toward the lead side before you’ve even finished your backswing. That’s the float.

When you first start using it, just get the rhythm. Feel the dance. Wind up, and as you complete that wind, let yourself fall back to the front side. The board gives you that feedback in real time. You can feel when you’re camping out on the trail side too long. You can feel when you rush. You can feel when you get it just right.

Once that pattern starts to feel natural, and it usually doesn’t take long, you can begin making small, controlled swings with a ball. Don’t go full speed right away. The board will amplify any imbalances, so keep it smooth and let the rhythm develop.

When you step off the board and hit balls normally, you’ll be surprised how much that feeling stays with you. The board really teaches your body the pattern so you don’t have to think about it. It coaches for you.

The Best Golf Swing Drills to Transfer it to the Course!

Once you’ve grooved the feeling on the board, the next phase is to transfer it to regular ground. Two drills that we love for this are small step drills and heel taps.

The Step Drill: Set up to the ball normally but with a slightly narrower stance than normal. As you reach the mid and latter part of your backswing, begin using your trail side to make a small step towards the target with your lead foot, like you’re stepping into a throw. Then swing through. This exaggerates the shift to the lead side at the right time and makes it impossible to stay camped out on the right. It feels dramatic at first, but the exaggeration is the point. It rewires the pattern.

Just like we see in baseball. Watch any power hitter and you’ll see that lead foot stepping into the pitch. That’s not a coincidence. It’s how the human body generates power through rotation. Step, plant, turn. Golf is no different.

Heel Taps: Once at address, make a small trigger move towards the target (as covered earlier in this blog). While doing this, let your trail heel come slightly off the ground. In fact we actually see this tiny trigger move in some swings throughout history, like: Sam Snead, Dustin Johnson, and others.

As you make you begin backswing, let the right heel land to precede the motion of the golf club, and begin unweighting the left heel. Then again as you get towards the end of your backswing, land into the lead foot and plant the heel to properly shift back to the left side (just as you’d see in Jack Nicklaus’ golf swing (see below from a video I did months ago on Jack’s swing).

Both of these drills reinforce the same principle: you have to get left before you swing through. They just give you different physical cues to make it happen.

Both of these drills reinforce the same principle: you have to get left before you swing through. They just give you different physical cues to make it happen.

Ball Position: Stop Cheating Yourself

I have to address this because I see it all the time and it drives me crazy. When golfers start hitting behind the ball consistently, their first instinct is to move the ball farther back in their stance. Makes sense on the surface. If I’m hitting behind it, just put it closer to where I’m hitting. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. All you’ve done is put a band-aid on a sequencing issue. And now you’ve created a whole cascade of new problems. Ball too far back changes your swing path, tends to lead to lower launching shots, and basically guarantees you’ll never develop the proper shift to your lead side.

If anything, and especially in these drills, I want you to move the ball slightly forward. Yes, forward. I know that sounds counterintuitive when you’re already hitting behind it. But when the ball is forward, you have to get left to reach it. It forces the issue. It demands that your body shift and stack over the lead side because there’s simply no other way to make clean contact with the ball in that position.

Stop cheating the ball position back. It’s comfortable in the short term and destructive in the long term. Put it forward, feel uncomfortable, and let your body figure out that it needs to get there. That’s how real improvement works.

Common Mistakes When Learning the Weight Shift

Let me walk you through the mistakes I see most often so you can sidestep them.

Sliding Instead of Shifting

There’s a difference between shifting your pressure to the lead side and sliding your entire body laterally toward the target. The shift is about pressure and stacking. The slide is about your hips (or even your upper body) drifting excessively out in front of the golf ball.

When you slide, you actually lose your ability to rotate and use your lead side as a brake to post up (which is a powerful move). The fix: think of getting your pressure into your lead foot while your head stays relatively centered. Your body stacks over the lead side, but it doesn’t lurch past it.

Pushing Off the Trail Foot Too Late

This is the most common pattern I see. The golfer completes a full backswing with all their weight still loaded on the right side, and then tries to push off the right foot to start the downswing. By then it’s too late. The timing is gone. As I said earlier, it’s too much ‘backswing then downswing’ rather than one swing.

Remember, the right foot and right leg do their job early. They push you into the windup and the beginnings of the move back to the lead side.

All Arms From the Top

When a golfer doesn’t shift to the lead side, their hands and arms have to take over. There’s no body support, no ground-up sequence, so the only option is to throw the club at the ball with the upper body. This leads to over-the-top moves, early releases, and a low point that’s perpetually behind the ball.

If you feel like your arms are doing all the work in the downswing, it’s almost always because your shifts and sequence are off. Fix the shift and sequence and the arms might just quiet down on their own.

Trying to Turn Without Getting Left

I already covered this but it bears repeating because I see it constantly. Rotation without proper weight shift is a disaster. With driver especially I’ll often times see a big ole slice.

So begin getting left first, then turn. Not quite at the same time. Not turn first and hope you get left. The shift enables the turn. Always.

What The Pressure Shift Should Feel Like

When you get this move right, here’s what you’ll notice…

Check out the great Sam Snead above. One of my favorite golf swings! See the slight stretch and delay of the arms as he lands and shifts down into his lead side? See how his upper and lower body are fairly stacked up and ready to unwind? This is the way!

Do this right and the swing feels will feel easier. Not harder. When the sequence is right, you don’t have to swing hard to hit it solid. The compression comes from the geometry, the club descending into the back of the ball with the body stacked and rotating through. You’ll hit shots that feel like nothing on the face and watch the ball fly further than your hardest swings.

You’ll feel like you could walk right through the shot. Seriously. When the left-right-left sequence is flowing, there’s a momentum to the swing that carries you right through to the finish. You don’t have to stop yourself or catch your balance. You end up over your left side, facing the target, balanced and stable, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The ball flight changes immediately. You’ll start seeing a more penetrating trajectory with better spin. Shots that launch on a controlled window and hold their line. That low, boring flight that every golfer dreams about. That’s what happens when you compress the ball properly with a forward low point.

And the biggest one: consistency. When your low point is in front of the ball every time, the margin for error gets enormous. You can be slightly off with your timing, your face angle, your path, and still hit a playable shot because the club is working down and through. Compare that to the golfer whose low point is behind the ball, where any small error gets magnified into a terrible result.

This is what separates golfers who practice a lot but don’t improve from golfers who seem to get better every season. It’s not talent. It’s not athleticism. It’s sequencing. And it starts with getting to your left side.

Final Thoughts

The golf swing does not have to be as complicated as we’ve made it. At its core, it’s an athletic movement. A wind and an unwind blended with some slight shifts. When those elements happen in the right order, the club often takes care of itself. You don’t have to force positions. You don’t have to manipulate the face. You don’t have to think about twelve different things at once.

Get to your lead side. Get stacked. Turn through.

Left, right, left.

That’s the rhythm of every great ball striker who has ever played this game, and it can be yours too. Use the tools, do the drills, and trust the process. Your body already knows how to do this. You just have to stop getting in its way and start Swinging Like an Athlete™.

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