In this video, golf's biggest YouTuber Rick Shiels walks you through his ultimate 30 minute range session. Starting with the basics around the technique, he then moves onto into some of the games and challenges you can take on at the range that will improve your overall skill set. Use Rick's framework to power boost your game for the year ahead.
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00:00Oh, I've leaked it. Hang on, ball. I want it to feel like your heart is racing, certainly
00:07on the last few shots, because that's how you're going to best develop your skills.
00:12All right, guys, Rick Shields here, top 50 coach for Golf Monthly, and today I'm going
00:21to show you a 30-minute power boost range session to get you ready for this season to
00:27have the best golfing season you've ever had. So let's hit the clock, 30 minutes. We're
00:32going to break this up into three different elements. The first 10 minutes is all going
00:36to be about getting your basics correct, things like alignment, ball position, and technique.
00:44I'll somewhat say the boring stuff. Let's go through that first. Even though it's boring,
00:48it's incredibly important. First thing I want you to do is get a couple of long golf clubs
00:53out of your bag, something like the three and four iron, and we're going to use one
00:57of the golf clubs for an alignment aid and another golf club for a ball position aid.
01:04You'll even still see right now some of the best players in the world, when they practice,
01:10they will have ball position aids out and alignments. It's so unbelievably important.
01:17What I want you to do with this alignment one on the ground, I want you to pick a target.
01:22I'm going to go for that blue flag that's just to the right of the 100 marker. I'm going
01:26to put this club just running parallel to the left of that line. I'm then going to make
01:31sure this club is at perfect right angles to the club on the ground because we're going
01:37to use, I'm just going to use something quite lofted to start things off like a pitching
01:41wedge. We're going to use the club that's on the ground here to use as a reference point
01:48for our alignment. You can see there, my right foot and my left foot are perfectly
01:53spaced between that club. Then this club on the ground, we're using mainly for ball position.
01:59For a pitching wedge, I've got that absolutely smack bang in the middle of my stance. If
02:04anything, it's just a reminder. It's almost setting that kind of default setting back
02:10to make sure that you're not getting out of place with where you aim or where your ball
02:14position is going to be. What I would do from here then is hit a few shots to warm
02:20up and also just to get your eye in. I've got my alignment. I've got my ball position.
02:27I can work on a few nice easy shots. It's not always like me. I just hit that exactly
02:36over that blue flag that I was aiming for. That gives me a lot of confidence that my
02:40alignment is absolutely spot on. Each time when you address the ball, almost step out
02:46of that mold and come back in again. Don't get lazy. I'm going to hit about 10 shots
02:51doing this, making sure this drill is absolutely nailed on to start things off.
03:19I'm really happy with that. I feel like I've got my eye in for my ball position and my
03:24alignment. The next thing to work on is your technique. Again, I'll be honest with you,
03:30the slightly boring stuff, but we want to get out of a practice session. We want to
03:34improve even if it's by 1%, even less than 1% as long as every time we go to the range,
03:41we improve by that little amount. The best way is in-person lessons. Go and see a coach.
03:47Look on techniques that you need to work on, or there's a few YouTube channels out there,
03:51obviously Golf Monthly's, or my own where you can pick up on some golf tips. What I'd also
03:56recommend to get hold of is something like this. This is basically a monopod with a little stand
04:03on the end. You can attach your phone to this handle. I'm going to set my phone up and just
04:08take a few videos of my swing so I can have a look at my technique in slow motion. Top tips,
04:13have the camera placed at waist height and have the angle of the phone in between where your feet
04:18are going to sit and where the ball's going to sit. The reason why we have that positioning is
04:23because if the angle of the phone is too far to the right or too far behind you, the actual path
04:29of your club coming down will look totally different. Almost the aspect ratio just will
04:34look totally wrong. So making sure that phone position is at waist height and in between your
04:39feet and the ball, pretty much in line with your hands, is the perfect location. And this is where
04:45I'm going to get a little bit more technical. So for myself, I'm working on keeping that club face
04:49more closed going back. So this is my main focus right now. I'm almost forgetting results for a
04:55minute and focusing solely on this point in my golf swing. Exaggerating that feeling. I'm not
05:03too worried about where the shot's going to go. This is the technique element of your practice
05:08session. Exaggerating that move. And then looking at your phone and getting that feedback. So what
05:26I like about this now, I'm getting that instant feedback. I can see the feeling that I'm getting
05:31from that swing is matching up with the actual reality of my club face being more closed or more
05:37square, which is exactly what I'm working on. You know what I love about this as well, I'll often send this to a
05:43friend or I'll post it online or even send it to the golf coach I've been working with just to get
05:47that kind of feedback. Or sometimes, I don't know if it's a real true practice session if you've not
05:52actually shared it on social media. Makes you just feel a little bit better about yourself. That
05:56everyone's not practicing and you are. You're getting better. This is invaluable feedback. We've
06:01all got these in our pockets now. Use it. It definitely helps.
06:08Okay, so that is the housekeeping stuff done. They're the things that will definitely help you start your practice
06:14session off well. I mentioned earlier, a bit of the boring stuff, but very, very important stuff. Right, next up, it's
06:22time to test yourself. I've got a few really simple games here that you can do this with. So the phone
06:27goes away, the monopod goes away, these clubs get put back in the bag because now it's time for you to start
06:34getting in the zone of doing some testing yourself games. I've got three really good ones. The first one is a
06:40distance challenge game. So start off with one of your irons. Now, what I want you to do is think about when you
06:46practice, you want to improve on your weaknesses. You don't want to just practice all the time your strengths
06:52because there's no massive value in that. You're already good at that. Practice your weaker shots. So for
06:56example, my weaker shots, I'm not particularly very good from 100 yards and in. So that's what I'm going to
07:01practice here. And dead simple, I'm going to grab my sand wedge, quite a lofty golf club. And I'm going to set
07:07myself a task. I want to hit 10 shots in a row. And each shot, I want to gradually be further than the last shot.
07:16If I fail in that task, and I hit a shot that's too short, I've got to start again. Now there's two ways of doing
07:23this. You can do this visually at driving range or a practice ground. Down here at the driving range, we've got
07:29the technology here of Top Tracer. So I'm going to reset all that. And I'm going to work on the carry distances,
07:36each time being a little bit further than the last. Let's see if we can get 10 in a row that accomplishes that
07:43feat. So the first shot I'm going to hit about 25 yards is the goal. And 25 yards is the shot I hit. So I'm really
07:55happy with that start. So the next shot, I want to hit past 25 yards. But I don't want it too long. Something in the
08:0330s, low 30s would be an incredible start to this challenge. Should be good. 31. Okay, so really strong start. I'm
08:16going to go kind of 40 yards for the next one. A bit heavy. Oh, I got away with it. 33 yards. We've done three in a row
08:33so far. Let's see if we can get 10.
08:47Strong.
09:01Oh, right. We failed. We managed to get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Oh, we almost got up to 9 and then we failed. But that's good
09:13because it means now I've got something to work on. The big thing as well is track your result. Get your phone, have a little
09:20notepad in your golf bag and say this time I managed to do 8 out of 10 because next time you've got something to work on.
09:28Right, next challenge is all about controlling trajectory. Starting off low and aiming to try and hit it higher. So again,
09:35similar to last time, you can either use your visual perspective of how high these shots are going to go or using technology
09:41like Top Tracer. I'm going to now move up to my 7-iron and the minimum yards I've got to hit this is 100 yards. So I can't just
09:49chip it 50 yards in front of me. What I'm going to start off by doing is hitting it super, super low, as low as I can possibly hit a
09:557-iron and then each time just trying to change the trajectory a little bit until we finish actually trying to hit it super, super
10:03high. Again, a bit like the last challenge, if we can do 10 in a row, it's an amazing achievement. So let's see how we get on.
10:11Hunt's got to go minimum 100 yards, I'm going to start really low. So there's a couple of things you can do here from a technique
10:16standpoint as well. To hit a 7-iron lower, ball position further back in the stance, hands further forward. One thing that creates
10:24height is speed. Speed and loft increase height. So we're going to decrease the loft and hit it softer, slower. And let's start off
10:33nice and low. I'm going to try and hit a little low 100-yard 7-iron. That's a really, really low flight. Got a bit longer than 100
10:47yards, 125 yards and it went 48 feet in the air. The next shot we're going to go slightly higher. But again, it's got to go over 100
10:56yards. So this time I'm going to hit the ball a tiny bit faster than the last shot just to get that height.
11:03That's a nice strike. There we go. We've elevated the shot by 10 feet. So now we're going to go a little bit higher, similar ball
11:16position, a tiny bit faster. So the first three I've done very good so far. I'm going to just tweak this a little bit, change the
11:27trajectory. I'm going to put the ball position slightly more towards the middle of my stance because that's going to bring the loft
11:32back to its more natural setting. But I'm still going to hit this super soft. Might be higher though. Yeah, 52. Okay, middle of the stance. I'm
11:51going to go a little bit faster this time. So I've done six so far and successfully got to this stage. I'm now going to move the ball
12:01position a little bit further up in my stance. Again, to increase the loft. This is going to be interesting. I'm going to hit this over 90
12:09feet. It's starting to get quite high now. That should be good. This is good in practice because I've got to shot number seven now. I'm
12:24starting to feel the pressure. I want to get to number 10 and it's good to practice under pressure. Keep the ball position forward. I'm
12:30going to go a little bit more speed. I've got to try and get over 104 feet in the air. Easy. Okay, two more to go. 118 to beat. Ball position
12:44forward. Almost maximum speed. Okay, last shot in the 10. Ball position forward. Maximum speed. As hard and fast as I can hit
13:00it. And our last little sprinkle of magic. Finish with really, really high hands because it keeps the loft on the face. I've got to be 132
13:10feet. I'm going to send this to the moon. And that is 10 successful shots, each going higher than the last. Last challenge to test
13:26yourself, the driver. It's going to be a dead simple list. 10 shots and you're going to picture a fairway. How many times can you hit the
13:34fairway? And again, great ways of doing this. Out on the golf driving range here, you can pick a couple of flags. There's two flags, a yellow one on
13:41the right, a yellow on the left. And I can picture that as my fairway. Or using top tracer, I've come here on the long drive driving range
13:49fairway effectively. I'm going to hit 10 shots and see how many times consecutively I can hit the fairway. How many out of 10 shall I say I can get? And again, this is
13:58great. You can note it down on your phone or in a little notebook and each time try and improve on your previous score. Right, let's go. What I want to try and get out of
14:07this as a practice session and for everybody watching is I want it to feel like nervous. I want it to feel like your heart is racing, certainly on the last few
14:16shots, because that's how you're going to best develop your skills and how taking your game from the driving range to out on the golf course. Let's go. 10 shots. I'm
14:26somewhat even nervous on the first shot. It feels like a first team, first team nerves type of vibe because you want to start strong. I'm picking my line, really
14:35visualising where I'm going to hit this. And let's start off straight down the middle of the fairway. That should be a very good start. One out of one.
14:51Tiny bit right. Should be good. Just, but we're on the fairway. I'm not trying to hit these as hard as I can. These are all fairway finding drives.
15:22That was a little bit high and definitely got affected by the wind. I'm not looking for distance. I'm looking for accuracy. That's four out of four so far.
15:40Right, this is the point where it starts to feel a bit more nervous. I've just hit six really good drives there straight down the fairway. We've got four more to go to get 10 out of 10.
15:51The old heart is pumping. This is what we want. We want that excitement. We want that kind of nerves. Can I finish strong? This is coming down the straight. I've got a good round of golf going. Can I keep hitting fairways?
16:03Not my best, but it's straight down the middle. Straight down the middle. Three to go. Oh, I've leaked it. We might have missed the first fairway. Hang on ball. Hang on.
16:27Oh, I got lucky. That wasn't my best shot. The old nerves started twitching, but this is good. This is what you want in a practice session. Two more to go.
16:36Okay, this is it. Last shot. Again, they've not all been pretty. They've not all been perfect, but this is the one. I'm on for a record score. 10 out of 10. Can I finish? This is walking down the 18th hole. You've got a good round of golf going.
16:58You just want to finish strong. You want to hit that great tee shot. Well, this hard work on the driving range will help you next time you get in that situation. Heart is pumping. Hands are twitching. Can I finish with a 10 out of 10?
17:14Hang on to that right hand side. Oh, it's absolutely perfect. That is good. That's good practice. I feel motivated with that. And next time I got on the golf course, I can't imagine hitting it anywhere else apart from straight down the middle of the fairway. Right. Next up, let's challenge someone else.
17:37Right. The last section of your practice here at the driving range is to challenge somebody else. Whether that's a friend or whether it's actually just someone else at the driving range, ask them if they fancy a bit of a competition. This is a way that you can put everything you've just worked on for the first two sections of this practice session into a more realistic setting.
17:59So you can do things like nearest the pin challenges, who can hit it closest, whether it's at a target at the driving range or again, using top tracer technology or whether it's a longest drive challenge against each other. And you could even finally pretend you're playing a hole again, either on the range by using different targets or why not jump on one of the most famous holes in the world using top tracer. And you know what? Why not make it a bit spicy as well? The loser has to do a forfeit.
18:28Whether that's clean the other one's golf shoes or even simply carry the other golfers clubs back to the car, make it mean something because then you're going to at least try your best and it matters. Like you want that bit of nerves. You want that bit of excitement to definitely put you in the right frame of mind.
18:47That is how you power boost your practice session ready for a great season. Go out there, work hard in your golf game, because believe me, when you play well, you enjoy it a lot more. We'll see you next time.
19:17Transcribed by https://otter.ai