How to Increase Clubhead Speed in Golf - 3 Drills

Quick answer: Clubhead speed doesn't come from swinging harder - it comes from moving pressure into the ground and back out of it. Load roughly 60% of your weight into your trail leg in the backswing without swaying, then get about 70% onto your lead side before impact. That's what lets you use ground reaction force: when you push into the ground, the ground pushes back, and that force reaches the golf ball. Add the right 3:1 tempo and genuine acceleration through the ball and the speed shows up. (Left-handers: mirror every direction in this guide.)

In this post, WhysGuy will cover:

• The key factors that actually create clubhead speed in the golf swing.
• How much speed you need for the distances you're chasing.
• Three Pressure Plate drills you can do on the range or at home.

Golf seems to be all about hitting bombs these days, and golf courses aren't getting any shorter. As time passes it becomes more and more important to increase and optimize your clubhead speed - if only to stop hitting hybrids into par 4s all day.

So what's the secret to hitting it long? A new driver, speed training, weight lifting, something else?

At the end of the day it comes down to one thing - clubhead speed - which comes from a mix of swing mechanics, weight and pressure transfer, equipment and more. All of those matter, but we'd argue the most essential requirement is a proper transfer of weight and pressure. If you can't get your weight and pressure to your lead side at impact, creating speed is going to be extremely hard work.

What Actually Creates Speed

When it comes to clubhead speed, you need to understand it before trying to add it to your swing.

Speed is not tempo. You can have a slow tempo and still generate a lot of clubhead speed. And telling somebody to simply swing harder won't do the trick either, because what we care about is maximizing speed at impact with the golf ball - not across the whole motion.

Instead, speed is a combination of three things: the right 3:1 tempo, accelerating through the golf ball, and moving your weight and pressure effectively throughout the swing. The third is the one most golfers have never measured.

How Much Speed Do You Need?

Useful to know what you're actually chasing before you start chasing it.

If you're a long way off those numbers, the gap is almost never effort. It's usually pressure that never made it to the lead side.

Pressure Plate Basics

With your Pressure Plate, start with your weight 50-50 or slightly forward of center. As you make your backswing, aim to get about 60% of your weight into your trail leg - without swaying. You'll know you've done it when the board tips to your trail side, away from the target.

If the board tips but your whole body travels with it, that's a sway rather than a load. Our guide on how to stop swaying covers the difference.

But the downswing is where the real magic happens. As you transition, you should begin applying pressure to your lead foot. To tip the Pressure Plate toward your target you need about 70% of your weight on your lead side - and it's imperative that you get there before impact.

This is what lets you use ground reaction forces: forces that result from leveraging the ground. Put simply, when you push into the ground, the ground pushes back, and you translate that force to the golf ball. That's where effortless speed comes from.

Drill 1: 3 x 3

Mount your Pressure Plate and take easy swings to get the feel of it. Make sure you're getting the board to tip away from the target in your backswing, and toward the target into your follow-through.

Once you have the hang of it, alternate: three shots on the board, then three shots without it. The idea is to take the feeling you created on the Pressure Plate and apply it to a shot without it. That transfer is the key to making any swing change stick - a feel that only exists while you're standing on a training aid isn't a swing change yet.

The good news is you don't need to hit golf balls to make gains from the Pressure Plate at all, which is what the next two drills are for.

Drill 2: Activate Your Lead Side

If you watch long drive competitors, you'll notice they use the lower body incredibly well. Specifically, they create ground reaction force by pressing aggressively into their lead side on the downswing.

You can learn this too, at home, without a club:

• Stand on the Pressure Plate.
• Practice rocking back and forth the way you would in your golf swing.
• Apply pressure with your lead foot to begin the downswing, and again through impact.
• Do this 15-20 times a day.

Without turning this into a scientific paper - learning to generate swing speed is less about building muscle and more about training your muscles to move explosively. You're teaching your nervous system to move quickly. Keep that in mind while you train, because it explains why frequent short sessions beat occasional long ones.

Drill 3: Lead Leg Lift

Another reason long drivers create so much speed is that they aren't afraid to lift the lead leg on the backswing. You'll see it on the professional tours too, when a player wants to rip a drive an extra 10-15 yards.

As you hit balls on the Pressure Plate, feel your left foot (assuming you're a right-handed golfer) come off the board. You'll fairly quickly feel more rotation in both your hips and shoulders in the backswing.

Then, as you transition into the downswing, press down aggressively with your lead leg through impact. Done correctly, you'll feel yourself pushing off the ground and the ball should come out with more speed.

This one also works with no golf ball. Fifteen to twenty a day.

Why You're Not Gaining Speed

• You're swinging harder, not faster. Tension in the arms and hands slows the club down. Effort you can feel in your grip is effort that isn't reaching the clubhead.
• Your pressure arrives late. Getting to your lead side at impact is too late - the sequence has already passed you. It needs to happen in transition, which is why drill 2 exists.
• You're sliding instead of loading. A sway feels like a big backswing but moves your center of mass rather than pressure into the ground. Read our guide on how to stop swaying if the board tips and your hips travel with it.
• You only train speed on the range. Speed is a nervous-system skill, and it responds to frequency. Two 10-minute sessions at home beat one long range session a week.
• You're chasing speed instead of strike. Speed only becomes distance if you find the middle of the face. Our guide to smash factor covers the other half of the equation.

Key Takeaways

• A golfer looking to increase clubhead speed should start by optimizing their weight and pressure shifts, not by swinging harder.
• Roughly 60% into the trail leg going back, roughly 70% onto the lead side before impact.
• Ground reaction force is free speed - push into the ground and the ground pushes back.
• The three drills above work with or without a golf ball; two of them work in your living room.
• The WhyGolf Pressure Plate gives you the real-time feedback to know whether your pressure is actually moving.

Check out our YouTube channel for drills and tips: