Keeping arms wide on downswing

[propman]

I played today and concentrated keeping the right arm straight as possible in the backswing. At address, felt like right arm was locked in straight. Note my normal bad swing was collapsing both arms quickly where the shaft was almost around my neck (exaggeration but close to it) resulting in a over swing and bad contact..

 

When I keep the right arm straight, backswing is much shorter (which I want) and results in much better contact for the most part.

 

When I took some lessons last year, the instructor told me about the straight right arm and also to stand a little further from the ball. Of course, like the blockhead I can be, forgot all this until I reread the notes I took after the lessons.

 

Find it amazing how often I forget things which were taught to me.

[ebrasmus21]

I played today and concentrated keeping the right arm straight as possible in the backswing. At address, felt like right arm was locked in straight. Note my normal bad swing was collapsing both arms quickly where the shaft was almost around my neck (exaggeration but close to it) resulting in a over swing and bad contact..

 

When I keep the right arm straight, backswing is much shorter (which I want) and results in much better contact for the most part.

 

When I took some lessons last year, the instructor told me about the straight right arm and also to stand a little further from the ball. Of course, like the blockhead I can be, forgot all this until I reread the notes I took after the lessons.

 

Find it amazing how often I forget things which were taught to me.

 

Very interesting. My instructor wants me to have a soft right arm. My right arm being too firm was restricting my shoulder turn.

[glk]

I played today and concentrated keeping the right arm straight as possible in the backswing. At address, felt like right arm was locked in straight. Note my normal bad swing was collapsing both arms quickly where the shaft was almost around my neck (exaggeration but close to it) resulting in a over swing and bad contact..

 

When I keep the right arm straight, backswing is much shorter (which I want) and results in much better contact for the most part.

 

When I took some lessons last year, the instructor told me about the straight right arm and also to stand a little further from the ball. Of course, like the blockhead I can be, forgot all this until I reread the notes I took after the lessons.

 

Find it amazing how often I forget things which were taught to me.

 

Very interesting. My instructor wants me to have a soft right arm. My right arm being too firm was restricting my shoulder turn.

Relaxed arms (not wet noodle relaxed) through the swing is important. Arms are never locked straight - 3D of pros show that what appears straight on video is actually bent throughout the swing. That said, a feel of keeping the right arm straight until p2 or shaft parallel can help in managing over flexing and add width and a bigger shoulder turn for folks that almost immediately begin flexing it upon takeaway.

 

 

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[Nard_S]

I played today and concentrated keeping the right arm straight as possible in the backswing. At address, felt like right arm was locked in straight. Note my normal bad swing was collapsing both arms quickly where the shaft was almost around my neck (exaggeration but close to it) resulting in a over swing and bad contact..

 

When I keep the right arm straight, backswing is much shorter (which I want) and results in much better contact for the most part.

 

When I took some lessons last year, the instructor told me about the straight right arm and also to stand a little further from the ball. Of course, like the blockhead I can be, forgot all this until I reread the notes I took after the lessons.

 

Find it amazing how often I forget things which were taught to me.

 

Very interesting. My instructor wants me to have a soft right arm. My right arm being too firm was restricting my shoulder turn.

Relaxed arms (not wet noodle relaxed) through the swing is important. Arms are never locked straight - 3D of pros show that what appears straight on video is actually bent throughout the swing. That said, a feel of keeping the right arm straight until p2 or shaft parallel can help in managing over flexing and add width and a bigger shoulder turn for folks that almost immediately begin flexing it upon takeaway.

 

 

Both highlighted hits home and is timely for me. I've been off on swing for a month or so trying to "get ready". Yesterday was struggling again and decided to address take away. Straightened right arm and kept right elbow higher than left till P2 and fold of elbow. See Rory or Adam Scott. Changed everything. Swing had little break down or over run,, could find the slot, elbows chasing belly, bottom of swing moved forward 2", power as it should be. Remarkable because it feels like I'm so vertical doing it but in actuality it's right because hands/arms remain in front of torso instead of scampering behind it and never/rarely getting back. Swing felt a lot shorter but was text book in shaft position. I piped a dozen drives doing it and felt connected on all of them.

[RichieHunt]

This is what I’ve been working on as well. I had it going for a while, but then took a week off due to being under the weather and then the actual weather crapped out. So now I’m trying to re-groove it.

 

Watching CH3 at Bay Hill in the practice round I could see his pre-shot routine consisted of him staying wide to the point where the left wrist gets into flexion. This is part of staying wide…the right shoulder will start to go into ER and the left wrist will go into flexion. From there, it seemed like CH3’s concept was to just keep rotating, particularly the torso.

 

So the big thing I try to do is get my left leg, left hip and chest rotated prior to p5. I then try to feel like I’m keeping the right arm straight as I go from p4 to p5 and that should move the left wrist into flexion. I call it ‘the dangling position’ because the club almost looks like it is dangling from my hands.

 

 

 

 

 

RH

[ebrasmus21]

I played today and concentrated keeping the right arm straight as possible in the backswing. At address, felt like right arm was locked in straight. Note my normal bad swing was collapsing both arms quickly where the shaft was almost around my neck (exaggeration but close to it) resulting in a over swing and bad contact..

 

When I keep the right arm straight, backswing is much shorter (which I want) and results in much better contact for the most part.

 

When I took some lessons last year, the instructor told me about the straight right arm and also to stand a little further from the ball. Of course, like the blockhead I can be, forgot all this until I reread the notes I took after the lessons.

 

Find it amazing how often I forget things which were taught to me.

 

Very interesting. My instructor wants me to have a soft right arm. My right arm being too firm was restricting my shoulder turn.

Relaxed arms (not wet noodle relaxed) through the swing is important. Arms are never locked straight - 3D of pros show that what appears straight on video is actually bent throughout the swing. That said, a feel of keeping the right arm straight until p2 or shaft parallel can help in managing over flexing and add width and a bigger shoulder turn for folks that almost immediately begin flexing it upon takeaway.

 

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Well said. I think that's more accurate than my post above. Speaking for myself, my right arm wasn't relaxed enough and that's what my instructor picked up on.

 

These are interesting AMG vids for sure.

[3eagles18]

This video is a great visual and works for me.

Also, if you can find David Duval with Charlie Rymer on Golf Channel Academy, there is an explanation of "that you cannot release the club too soon" versus a cast or throw. There is a thread on GOLFWRX about that topic.

[Jbarretta]

Came across this thread after buying monte's no turn cast and have been googling different keywords related to wide in downswing.  My driving the last 2 rounds has transformed.

 

I would like to share my experience with mid handicappers like myself.  If you struggle with pulling the shaft in transition and cant break it, focus on tracing the clubhead wide on the backswing and in transition apply force with the hands away from the target staying as wide as possible on the downswing.  I have my own swing on video with wide downswing as my swing thought and i see a little less lag  but clubface is square earlier and even though you feel like you are tracing the same path in the downswing on video it will be narrower due to forward shift.  Also the body pivots better automatically and the sensation is the weight of the clubhead pulls the body into the pivot

Edited April 16, 2022 by Jbarretta

[KNOWMOREDOUBLES]

On 3/7/2018 at 6:25 AM, PorscheFan said:

 

Thanks. This may be a bridge too far, but the way I interpret the 3D comparisons in the video as a complete layman there appear to be two predominant reasons for the 'amateur' version having a significantly more bent right arm:

 

1 - The left arm collapses slightly (resulting in what I interpret as a true loos of width). This in turn reduces the stretch/extension in the right arm.

2 - The shoulder turn is significantly shorter in the amateur version. Because the left arm (thus both hands and grip) get to a similar place as the pro version, the lack of shoulder turn results in the distance between the right shoulder socket and the arms/handle being significantly shorter. The only way the right arm can accommodate that shorter distance is to bend more.

 

When I looked at my own swing in the mirror after watching this I noticed that I was getting a full shoulder turn (so no issue with 2), however I was bending my left arm a little. The result was that my right arm bend was nowhere near as bad as the amateur example, but was not as good as the pro example.

Would it be more advantageous to have a very short swing with width (let's say left arm parallel to ground at most) even without much shoulder turn vs. lot of arm bend and still with little shoulder turn?  Is there a point where you lose speed if the arm swing gets too short? 

[betarhoalphadelta]

2 hours ago, Billywhizz said:

 

 

 

I believe you have this backwards. Torque, as you point out, is force x distance. The better way would be to state that the hands are applying torque to the club, i.e. force applied at a distance from the central point (body) which is generating that force. 

 

The player generates force with their shoulder turn. That force is applied as torque to the handle of the club, i.e. force times distance. 

 

Let's assume that the pro and am can generate identical force with that shoulder turn, so we'll call them both F. At the hands, you're applying torque, not force. So what you've labeled as FP should actually be TP, and what you've labeled as FA should actually be TP. 

 

This should be:

 

TP = F x R1

TA = F x R2

 

Because R1 > R2, TP > TA. 

 

Think about it... If you could generate MORE power via bending the left arm, wouldn't you expect a guy like Kyle Berkshire to do it? But what do you see from him at the top?

 

[Forged4life]

8 hours ago, KNOWMOREDOUBLES said:

Would it be more advantageous to have a very short swing with width (let's say left arm parallel to ground at most) even without much shoulder turn vs. lot of arm bend and still with little shoulder turn?  Is there a point where you lose speed if the arm swing gets too short? 

The guys that have a short backswing (finau, rahm etc) all have massive shoulder turns still 

[wagolfer7]

Mark this day 4/18/2022 as the day we've gone too far.  

 

NASA and golf should never be in the same sentence, paragraph or topic.  Dr Kwon may have got us to the line, but this took us over it.       

[betarhoalphadelta]

39 minutes ago, Billywhizz said:

 

Kyle has probably discovered he can get more energy into the club by applying forces on the grip over a longer hand path.  If he folded  his arms while still applying the same upper body torque (ie. maybe using the same ground reaction forces ) he would have his hands closer to his upper body pivot (and his hand force would be greater as per the physics equations)  but he'd decrease his hand path. I'm assuming Kyle can get more energy to the club with a  'smaller force over a longer hand path'  vs  'a large force over a shorter hand path'.

 

I seem to remember a research article by some NASA rocket scientist (who is an avid golfer) proving that bending of the left arm can dramatically increase clubhead speed (for golfers who have limitations in their body pivot to create a large hand path).  If I find it , I will attach it in another post.

 

However, as I've said before, the bending of the left arm will increase timing issues in the downswing , so increasing clubhead speed doesn't equate to a solid accurate strike.

 

19 minutes ago, Billywhizz said:

 

I've just found the research article and he isn't a NASA scientist but worked on missile systems.

 

, Vol1. No.1, JIC, Journal of Informaiton and Computing Science (worldacademicunion.com)

 

 

Fascinating stuff, and thanks for backing up your claims with the background data. As an engineer, I appreciate that 😉 

 

However, I see a critical flaw here. He chooses the time of swing to be 0.34s. That's fine; a 1/3 sec downswing is completely in line with what we see from the Tour Tempo folks (albeit a little slower than most pros). 

 

But herein lies the problem:

 

 

He finds that to accelerate the diagram on the left to impact in 0.34s results in a lower maximum velocity than accelerating the diagram to the right to impact in 0.34s. OF COURSE it would! The path the club must traverse on the right to reach impact in 0.34 seconds would be MUCH longer than the path traversed on the left.

 

So if you have an arbitrary constraint of "downswing time" but you have a longer path to traverse, it will require more force to complete that downswing in the same amount of time. Of course, that will result in more clubhead speed...

 

He touches on a left shoulder shift, but it doesn't appear that he uses this as an independent variable in the simulation. He also has maximum torque values, but I believe those to be "sanity check" terms so that you don't solve for a corner case solution that would rip someone's forearm from their upper arm due to the level of forces involved. 

 

He hasn't shown that the "Vardon swing", with significant elbow bend, in a person of a given strength and mobility, will produce higher clubhead speed than a conventional swing. He's shown that a triple pendulum model, if you control for downswing duration, results in higher speeds for longer swing paths. 

 

That said, I'm still willing to be convinced... There are frankly additional muscle for forces here at work that could come to bear. I could imagine a triple pendulum model where the active use of the tricep muscle to straighten the bent left arm would generate more of a "whip" effect at the clubhead that would generate speed at the point of impact. 

 

But this guy didn't do it. 

[jonsnow]

On 4/18/2022 at 6:49 AM, Billywhizz said:

 

 

Some amateur golfers can get as good a pelvis/ribcage turn as the pros but have limited shoulder girdle movement (ie. retraction, protraction etc).  So the amateur golfer might have to bend their lead arm (and right elbow) to get what they envisage as a full backswing as per that AMG video. The pro golfer can therefore increase the clubhead path in the backswing better than the amateurs giving them the opportunity to apply forces over a longer distance (ie. deliver more energy into the club).  The irony is that the amateur golfer, by bending the arms, has actually created a situation where he can apply a greater force to the club via their hands for a given torque in their upper body albeit over a shorter clubhead path  (see my diagram below).  Although he can create more force on the club via his hands there is the added complexity of timing the straightening of the left arm in the downswing  plus maybe other complexities that may require correction (ie . maybe not having enough time to square the clubface).

 

Although a bent left arm seemed to work okay with Harry Vardon.🙂

 

 

 

I was told there would be no math.

[Simpsonia]

15 hours ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

 

Fascinating stuff, and thanks for backing up your claims with the background data. As an engineer, I appreciate that 😉 

 

However, I see a critical flaw here. He chooses the time of swing to be 0.34s. That's fine; a 1/3 sec downswing is completely in line with what we see from the Tour Tempo folks (albeit a little slower than most pros). 

 

But herein lies the problem:

 

 

He finds that to accelerate the diagram on the left to impact in 0.34s results in a lower maximum velocity than accelerating the diagram to the right to impact in 0.34s. OF COURSE it would! The path the club must traverse on the right to reach impact in 0.34 seconds would be MUCH longer than the path traversed on the left.

 

So if you have an arbitrary constraint of "downswing time" but you have a longer path to traverse, it will require more force to complete that downswing in the same amount of time. Of course, that will result in more clubhead speed...

 

He touches on a left shoulder shift, but it doesn't appear that he uses this as an independent variable in the simulation. He also has maximum torque values, but I believe those to be "sanity check" terms so that you don't solve for a corner case solution that would rip someone's forearm from their upper arm due to the level of forces involved. 

 

He hasn't shown that the "Vardon swing", with significant elbow bend, in a person of a given strength and mobility, will produce higher clubhead speed than a conventional swing. He's shown that a triple pendulum model, if you control for downswing duration, results in higher speeds for longer swing paths. 

 

That said, I'm still willing to be convinced... There are frankly additional muscle for forces here at work that could come to bear. I could imagine a triple pendulum model where the active use of the tricep muscle to straighten the bent left arm would generate more of a "whip" effect at the clubhead that would generate speed at the point of impact. 

 

But this guy didn't do it. 

 

I think the writer falls into the trap a lot of incredibly gifted academics do when they don't fully understand something. They try to reconcile something they don't understand (the golf swing) with something they do, easily measured and simply modeled physics models. It's a sort of square peg, round hole situation. On the other hand, biomechanists like Dr. Kwon and Sasho McKenzie start by measuring the best, fastest, and longest in the sport to figure out what they are actually doing that makes them so much faster and better than everyone else. The golf swing is so dynamic, it's essentially impossible to model in a vacuum without having the starting point of full 3D-measured models. If it was so easy to model, scientists and engineers would have done it 30-40 years ago before the advent of all the modern 3D measuring devices. 

[jonsnow]

On 4/20/2022 at 6:06 AM, Billywhizz said:

 

There is no need for the maths as you can prove it with a little experiment. 

 

Stand quite close to an open door , place a hand near the edge of the door with a very bent elbow and just rotate your upper body to push your hand against the door.  Then repeat the same standing further away from the door with a straight arm using about the same effort as before to rotate your upper body .  Did you find it easier to create enough force to move the door with a bent or straight arm?

 

You should have found it was easier to create a higher force with a bent arm. 

I was told there would be no science either.

[Scottbox]

On 3/6/2018 at 3:56 AM, haager831 said:

so are you consciously reducing right side bend in downswing?

Yes. Right side bend happens closer to impact. People achieve it too early via dropping the trail shoulder, sliding the hips ahead of the upper body, yanking the handle, trying to "hold lag". 

 

I like to think of keeping my lead shoulder down and "front loading" the arms, as my teacher calls it. That is, getting the arms down in front of the body. A lot less moving parts and a lot of good things happen all at once.

[Nard_S]

6 hours ago, Scottbox said:

I like to think of keeping my lead shoulder down and "front loading" the arms, as my teacher calls it. That is, getting the arms down in front of the body. A lot less moving parts and a lot of good things happen all at once.

I do this and throw elbows closer together at the same time (externally rotate both forearms), it works really well for me.

[betarhoalphadelta]

On 4/18/2022 at 6:43 AM, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

I believe you have this backwards. Torque, as you point out, is force x distance. The better way would be to state that the hands are applying torque to the club, i.e. force applied at a distance from the central point (body) which is generating that force. 

 

The player generates force with their shoulder turn. That force is applied as torque to the handle of the club, i.e. force times distance. 

 

Let's assume that the pro and am can generate identical force with that shoulder turn, so we'll call them both F. At the hands, you're applying torque, not force. So what you've labeled as FP should actually be TP, and what you've labeled as FA should actually be TP. 

 

This should be:

 

TP = F x R1

TA = F x R2

 

Because R1 > R2, TP > TA. 

 

 

FYI I reversed this myself. For a given amount of torque, you can apply more force at a shorter lever arm than a longer lever arm. My apologies.

 

That said, I'm still not convinced it's a better way to generate clubhead speed. But I didn't disprove it above.

[Djmc25]

On 3/6/2018 at 5:56 AM, cardoustie said:

Well this is an ironically timed post because that's what I am working on, and it is a game changer for me. A week in Myrtle to test on course starting Thursday

 

My arms and angles were very steep and narrow coming down per iteach

 

I just think of wide or straight right arm. Impact is so much more consistent

 

The crazy thing it has me eliminating an arm over run and I almost have a GG freezer feel now at top of swing

delayed response here, but I have been working on the feeling of getting wider from the top (obv I don’t, but I tend to pull down / get narrow and it stalls rotation) and I feel like I don’t have to think about tempo anymore. 
 

I simply keep the right arm feeling like it’s 180 degrees (it ends up at 90, versus feeling 90 and I’m closer to 45). Huge difference in compression and consistency.