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The Arm Swing Illusion / Jim Waldron's Swing Philosophy


Kiwi2

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ok I get you now. Thanks for the detailed answer. I agree that this may be a problem for all but the most flexible.People thought Dustin Johnson was immune, until this Fall. I think Joachim Niemann does what you are describing. Yes there are many ways to swing, but like one guy said, you can pound in a tent peg with your forehead too, but that's not the optimal way to do it. I like Jack Nicklaus' swing. Works for me.

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Look at Jason Day. Massive pelvis rotation and he stands up at impact. He is already suffering the beginning of back issues. Missed the president's cup because of it and it's not the first time he has had to withdraw with back issues.

Some guys who I think are in for some injuries, especially the back. Justin Thomas, Koepka, Rory, D.J. however he has lasted longer than I thought. Guys who's swing will last forever, Mickelson, Cory Conners to name a few. Phil has never had a back issue. I realize though that the four I mentioned are probably the four top players in the game so how can you argue with success. I'm sure Tiger would have traded almost anything not to have suffered that way. His Millions were not helping him when he couldn't walk or stand up.

Again, in my opinion the way the swing is taught now is downright dangerous to the body and especially the back. Most Am. or guys who just play once a week or barley practice can get away with this forever. If you play everyday and practice a lot then your back will eventually have issues.

Again, this is my opinion only. I do not wish to get into debates about swings or teachers or what works or not. I don't care to each is own.

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Hey man, sent you a DM. Thanks.

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Holy s***t

ive struggled for any sort of consistency with golf I’m a 15 handicapper

reading this thread triggered the epiphany

ive had lessons a few times i overswing and really struggled to stop (I can see the driver head in my backswing) two instructors I think have tried to get me to swing in the way Jim teaches but used differing language and I struggled to get it (one piece takeaway anyone?)... but seeing the demo of the arms moving without the pivot and also the vids above with Rory’s swing from above got me

the overswing was clearly me whipping the club inside and then trying to get the club somewhere above my shoulders causing my head to lift and all sorts of path issues on the way down

2 range sessions and 2 rounds of golf concentrating on taking the club away at 45 degree angle Keeping the club in front etc and it’s been a revelation

driver 3 wood and long irons have always been an absolute lottery for me blocks slices and hooks and pulls riddled my game but since trying out these theories the path has been consistent but also the strike has been a massive game changer ... it’s even effective in bunkers

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  • 1 month later...

I respectfully disagree with some of this, although it might be semantics. Hip rotation is essential to prevent back strain during the swing. There will always be some degree of lateral spine bend in a healthy swing. This is necessary to "preserve the spine angle" which turns out to be kind of an oxymoron. I think this is the source of my disagreement - it often looks like there's no bend when there actually is.

Now, there is another way to keep the spine straight and that is to attempt to swing with the shoulders, with the hips not rotating, and this is guaranteed to cause back injury. This is the way I see a lot of modern young pros swinging.. no hips. I would bet Hogan and Snead never had back issues. (As an aside the very young guys are doing more and more Gankas-style hip action which is undoubtedly a healthier and actually more traditional method, and another source of potential confusion in these discussions. I will skip over the fact that in the swing all of your power comes from rotation and hip/leg action).

The real source of injury as I see it (and I think as you see it) is when players overemphasize the lag and lateral bend that comes with it. As you described I think these severe angles probably put too much stress on the spine. By standing more upright you avoid this, and might not even feel like your'e rotating hips or bending (although you are, if you hit with any power or consistency).

The second even more real threat as I see it is not the swing itself but the fact that Tiger applied this swing over at least 50,000 hours of practice over his life. Same thing happened to Kobe's achilles.

Just my 2 cents. It's an interesting debate. I do think the basic swing illusion method is extremely useful and effective. I'll add that i'm a surgeon so I have a vested interest in my own back health and the anatomy of the swing!

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It is an interesting debate. I have other thoughts on the matter besides this one. I blame a lot of today's equipment also as a factor in this. The equipment is much more upright , which naturally causes a more upright swing, which is in vogue now.

The players now are taught a more flat back setup. After that they take the club back causing a steeper angle with the shoulders and thrust or turn a fire the hips first. I see it written all over these forums. With the thrusting or firing of the hips along with the steeper angles caused by the setup and upright equipment It's a recipe for injury.

My setup is much taller or higher chest. It naturally allows easier, freer rotation and a shallower angle of attack. My equipment is three degrees flat which is more in tune with the older school swing.

If you think about it, my downswing is arms first. Body reacts and goes with the motion in a natural way. There is no stain on my back or firing of my hips. They just react to the motion. I don't turn my hips at all on purpose. Yes, they turn but much more naturally in a reaction to the arms. There is always a little side bend but it is not as severe as a steeper more upright angle. Tiger still has some side bend but not like he had. I also agree hitting 500,000 golf balls can also cause huge problems.

It is an old school approach and swing. I feel it is much safer. At least for me it is. I have swung like this for 40 years and have carried a 0 to 3 handicap my whole adult life. Without one injury.

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I totally agree with all this.

 

Have been thinking/toying with this and it seems like (based on anatomic theory alone) the things that would avoid strain on the back are:

-Shallower swing

-More upright spine posture

-Free hips

-More forward ball position

-Opening of the right foot/leg (toe away from target), and possibly even having the right foot back a little in the stance (for a right hander), which would be a "closed" stance.

 

Just theory but it seems like a more Moe Norman type swing arc that pivots around the left leg on the downswing puts very limited stress on the back without really violating any of the ASI principles.

So, I've been toying more and more with a "closed" stance for woods with my right foot back and away from target, and a more open stance as I get into higher lofted clubs all the way down to wedges. It seems to add power and help with rotation and plane issues with the big sticks while adding loft and allowing for a more upright slicey shots with wedges. Essentially i'm hitting draws with the longer shots and cuts with the short ones, which is how you want power to be allocated, but also seems to work with swing arc/D plane issues. I also think pivoting around the left leg in the finish creates a larger swing arc which has its own benefits. Need to play more with this on the range this weekend.

Anyway, I was hurting my back in the past by initiating rightward spine flexion (concave to the right) in the backswing and not waiting to the transition, then increasing this bend in the downswing (which I think can actually help with wedges and short swing arcs). Transition of the bend from one side to the other at the right time is essential with full swings, if you bend.

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My right foot is slightly back of my left foot at address for my longer clubs. It has been for years. I do also flair my left foot out slightly. My arms swing freely and my body reacts to that. Like I said above, it is an old school swing and is not taught like this anymore.

Back injuries are like people who smoke. Some people can smoke their whole lives and not have anything happen, others can't. Some guys can swing like this their whole lives and not get hurt. Others, like Tiger can't. Phil is a good example of an arm swinger but he tries to hit the ball too far and he has always been a little loose with his mechanics. It is catching up to him now.

There are tons of guys on the Champions tour who have never had issues.

So you never really know. I have always been fearful of a back injury. I need to work and feed the family. If I was a pro and the tradeoff of ten or twenty years for a lifetime of income then I can understand it, I guess. They have a surgery at the end and hopefully ride off into the sunset with there millions. Everytime Tiger swings a club I wait for him to fall to his knees. I hope it doesn't happen but I think he is tempting fate.

Golf has changed, the swing has changed. The guys practice way more now. I never practiced in my youth. We played, that was our practice. I'm not sure the old guys hit balls like they do now. Because they get to the sites earlier and faster by plane they have much more time to beat balls. The old guys drove and never got to the sites until Wed. Got in a little hitting and teed off the next day in the tournament. Those couple of days on the road, nobody was hitting golf balls.

Good luck working on this.

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  • 1 month later...

Just watched Module 5 again since it was released and picked up quite a bit this time around. It's remarkable how the instinct to swing the arms on at the ball is so strong and keep creeping back into my release. I'm loving the chip version of the woodchopping drill and plan on focusing on it quite a bit.

I see that the rest of the modules have been released and have my eye on Module 8 to see guru Waldron's unique perspective on timing the release.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for hthe feedback, O. Yeah Mod 5 on the Release is a good one, ton of info on both the Lever angles release mechanics as well as how the Pivot Thrust works to start the Release Dynamic. Yes Module 8 is the last one in the Great Shot!: Mastering the Craft of Ballstriking video instruction series, devoted to Tempo, Rhythm, Timing and forward swing sequencing. You can have Tiger's swing mechanics but if you have Joe Hackers tempo, rhythm m or timing - you will hit it like Joe Hacker. Mechanics gets way too over-emphasized online, those Dynamic Factors covered in Mod 8 are vitally important as well.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

JIm, what is your solution for someone that has always dipped that right shoulder too much in transition to shallow and now needs to figure out to get the right feel to get the right shoulder out to the ball instead of just right tilting/dipping right shoulder and then having to straighten arms to reach ball. It's very "scary" to think shoulder out to ball without being OTT but I imagine you've seen people who just dip that right shoulder with little "out" and then get stuck.

Should someone like that think about keeping the left shoulder down/left tilting longer after transition? (have you seen the Alex Noren practice drill?) It feels crazy but, of course, when I look in the mirror, isn't that crazy looking at all.

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Great question and really only one possibly correct answer to a question that is framed like that, ie with 100% clarity in terms of swing theory, meaning you know exactly what you want your body to do, but the body simply does not carry out the proper movement pattern theory. The answer is two part: 1. you need to get that intellectual clarity to move to a deeper level of your mind so that the "light bulb" moment of insight happens in your subconscious mind Swing Map and not solely in your conscious intellectual mind. Just contemplating that theory deeply and kind of "playing around" with the concept is how that happens mainly. 2. you need strong Awareness in Feel Channel for doing the new movement pattern vs doing the old incorrect pattern. Doing the new pattern first in super slow motion in front of a mirror is the first step in that Process, to be sure you are actually doing it in reality, then focus on the feel of doing it correctly. Then intend to repeat the feel still in slow mo, then graduate to half speed Then full speed correct motion is fairly easy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been playing for only 2 seasons now and have learned everything on my own. Just stumbled upon this last week and it is a night and day difference in ball striking for me. I've been swinging with my arms this whole time and had no idea what the swing was supposed to feel like. It's so effortless now. This completely changes everything and makes me enjoy the game so much more.

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  • 1 month later...

Just stumbled across this thread because every year I start off as about a 16 handicap and maybe can get down to 12 by the end of summer, usually towards the end I start to get very frustrated because it seems like I hit my limit of no matter how much I practice I cannot improve past a certain threshold with my current swing, after reading the first 30 pages and just now realize that I am doing exact illusion of what Jim is preaching. I always "felt" like my swing was like good golfer but that was illusion talking. Cant wait to get out and actually try this concept.

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Actually kind of interesting, I wish I could include links with this post so I could show you my old swing compared my new one but I was reading through this on my lunch break and once he started to break down the illusion on how your mind interprets good players swing and to what there actually doing, it actually made complete sense to me, I pretty much had my aha moment in the office before I even attempted the swing. I was comparing what I was doing to a slo mo of Justin Rose, and that made it click even more,

Luckily I had a friend slo mo my swing last week so I pulled it up on my phone and sure enough my back swing was low and I was coming down on top of the ball the opposite of how all the pros are doing it. To make this happen I had to compensate with a bunch of arm/hand movement and was almost jumping while I was swinging, hence my constant inconsistency with my clubs.

Went to the course yesterday to try and play 18, the new swing really clicked for me on the 15th hole. Parred on 16,17. On the 18th I hit a 331 yard drive (downhill), right down the middle on a par 5, 150 yard pitch onto the green, missed the 15 foot eagle putt by 2 inches for a tap in birdie. I don't think I have ever piped three straight drives down the fairway like I did on 16,17,18. Its kind of funny, I feel like once I started to get the whole back swing down its like the follow through just felt so natural compared, doesn't seem like I have to try that hard to get the same distance.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

ASI is not a "swing thought", which I never recommend golfers to use in any case. It's a reality that all good players show in their swing to some extent.

It means understanding the proper relationship of arm swing to Pivot, and how to attain the proper lead arm to chest angle during the backswing so as to avoid the two extreme flaws of being too much "behind" the body or "stuck" or too much "in front" or too close to torso mid-line. Also a great introduction to understanding the golf swing as an athletic motion that happens in 3D space, as opposed to the dominant view in golf swing theory traditionally as 2D.

2D view of the swing is full of optical illusions - ASI is just one of them - that create a false understanding of what the body is doing in a pro quality swing.

Understanding ASI also will indirectly help golfers shift from an upper arm dominant swing motion to a Pivot dominant motion, which has many benefits, especially consistency of striking the ball solidly in the middle of the face, since Pivot based swing has way fewer moving parts, and way less "slack" in the body motion than arm dominant swing.

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Having now read many, many pages of this thread, I can safely say that this is the missing link for me. I've always struggled to stop my arm getting inside too early and overswinging, but this has changed that. ASI and the RPM concept have both given me the control and simplicity I have always craved in my swing. It's early days yet with these feels, but I'm confident that this is far more than a flash in a pan.

Jim, thank you so much for your time, efforts and patience with the people who can't/won't understand the utter simplicity of this illusion.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Jim,, Thanks for your time and expertise. Very informative and sounds like you have helped many golfers. I try to imagine an extended line from the the target THRU the ball. I take the club head away on a line SLIGHTLY to the inside of that line. And then up. It works well IF I make a good shoulder turn. I have always felt doing this cuts down on my wrist/hand rotation in the hitting zone, making for less FLIPPING and a straighter/more accurate shot. Is my takeaway Approach similar to what you teach, just explained different

JC

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Hard to say without seeing a video of your swing. Words are not very good at transmitting body movement pattern information accurately.

 

I can say this: in the swing model that I teach, the clubhead arcs slightly to the inside of the target line right at the moment of takeaway or very shortly after the start.

 

Blending the arm push away properly with the pivot - rotation of core, hips and torso along with left side bend - and with wrist c0cking and hinging properly allows the shaft to track back on same plane angle as Setup during takeaway segment of the swing.

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Further adventures in a post illusion world: I've always had a more pivot driven swing, but can get handsy when I'm tired and don't feel able to rotate through (I have a health condition).

The issue was always not seeing the illusion and having a tendency to get a bit deep in the backswing which led to a bit of an OTT pull.

Now that I can see and understand the illusion I have so much more room. The work I'm doing now with my backswing is to fully integrate that tiny bit of conscious movement that's required of the arm unit with my torso rotation. On the downswing I simply pretend that my arms have disappeared and I just rotate back through. Not looking at the ball REALLY helps with this too.

It's like going back to my best ballstriking days but with a very clear feeling/visualisation of where I need to get to going back in order to make the downswing as simple as I've always liked it to be.

Thanks again, Jim.

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Yeah, the "space" that opens up in front of your torso when the arms behave correctly is amazing. No more getting in your own way!

I teach ZERO active arm motion on the forward swing, as you describe. It does NOT mean "slow arms" , it means not doing anything with arm muscles to move the arms independently of the pivot, in the toward the ball and/or target direction. Rotation of upper arms in the sockets is a good thing though.

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