Need help - early extension and downswing sequencing

[mfsmoonshine]

Hi everyone,

 

I have been working on trying to get my hips more involved in my swing. Specifically the downswing where I feel I am not achieving sufficient hip rotation to allow space for my arms to drop into, resulting in flipping the club. Is my transition into the downswing too quick? When I really focus on turning my lead hip around and behind me, I tend to hit fat shots. My misses are hooks and fat shots. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

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Edited July 6, 2022 by mfsmoonshine
added link

[Valtiel]

Generally speaking you have the common problem of how you're moving your weight in the backswing and where your arms are ending up.



From your first move back up to the top of the swing you're progressively leaning more and more towards the ball while your head sinks down, whereas most pros either stay fairly centered or even shift away from it slightly while maintaining height (any sinking normally happens in the downswing). This issue often comes from a combo of too much left hip movement and not enough right hip movement in addition to a general incorrect intention behind where you should be moving your weight. You mentioned being concerned about creating space for your arms to move in to, but these moves are in opposition to that. I've reused a Cam Smith gif I made yesterday with some extra lines. We can see in the backswing he starts with a *slight* bump away from the ball which is very common (note the line in front of his cap) and he otherwise maintains this position, whereas you're sinking aggressively down and towards the ball. I'd argue that you're standing a little upright and athletic and that the position you're sinking down into is more where you should be starting at address (more tilt at the waist) combined with a little more knee flex. The goal then when rotating back is to derive your rotation from driving the trail (right) hip back by straightening some of that knee flex while feeling like your lower body is pulling you back AWAY from the ball slightly, not towards it. This is how you create that space you mentioned. 

You said "When I really focus on turning my lead hip around and behind me, I tend to hit fat shots" and I wanted to clarify whether you meant clearing your lead hip in the downswing or getting your *trail* hip around behind you in the backswing. Either way what I mentioned above is the goal with the backswing, now to look at transition:



Three moves here that are bad news. First, you reach the top of the backswing by throwing your hands way too far behind you. Not in an "overswinging" sense, the length of your backswing is fine, but in the sense that your hands are behind your feet. This depth (distance from the ball) is far too much and is considered "stuck", something that is then exacerbated by the fact you resist getting them unstuck with what looks like a manufactured "shallowing" move in transition which gets them stuck further. Combine these two problems with the fact that your lower body also makes a big move towards the ball (away from the red line behind you and more across the red line in front of your head) and you're completely handcuffed here in terms of space to freely swing the club.

You now have to speed up your hands far more than you'd need to from a more neutral position to get them unstuck, which we see by how violent your follow through is despite not producing *that* much speed at impact, and this creates several problems. First, since you're dropping them behind you so much in transition you're now coming into the ball excessively from the inside, which is hook/block city if your timing is a little bit off. Second, because you only have a tiny amount of time to work with in the downswing and so much of that is being spent trying to get your hands unstuck and to the ball, you can't sequence properly with your lower body. Fat shots are caused by your club's low point being behind that ball, and that is normally caused by not shifting your weight into your front side early enough. BUT, shifting into your front side will cause a club that is already stuck to become even more stuck, and this is you get the negative feedback loop of problems compounding and reinforcing each other. The last thing to note before I try to summarize in a way that will hopefully be helpful...



This ball position is pretty far back, which is common compensation for hitting fat shots that can actually make it worse. You want a ball or a ball and a half more forward than this to help encourage you to get into your front side once you can get your club in a position that will allow you to focus on doing this. So with that said:

Things to work on first:
1) Minor posture adjustment; a little more bend at the waist and a little more knee flex + forward shin tilt.
2) Focus on keeping your distance from the ball in your backswing by consciously pushing your lower body/right side back and away from it to create rotation while trying to keep your left hip more still. This will likely feel different and weird, thats ok. 
3) Keep your hands working more vertically in the backswing to keep them from getting so far behind you. You want your hands about even with your right shoulder with a mid iron not behind/left of it like they are now.

Give those things a shot and post some videos if you can. There are plenty of things to do after you're comfortable with these but that's a lot to take in to start with so try this stuff first. 👍

Edited July 6, 2022 by Valtiel

[mfsmoonshine]

@Valtiel, thank you for the thorough and detailed breakdown of my swing. I really appreciate your time spent. It is nice to hear someone else confirm my feels and problematic tendencies. 

3 hours ago, Valtiel said:

You said "When I really focus on turning my lead hip around and behind me, I tend to hit fat shots" and I wanted to clarify whether you meant clearing your lead hip in the downswing or getting your *trail* hip around behind you in the backswing.

 I meant clearing the lead hip in the downswing. 

 

3 hours ago, Valtiel said:

The goal then when rotating back is to derive your rotation from driving the trail (right) hip back by straightening some of that knee flex while feeling like your lower body is pulling you back AWAY from the ball slightly, not towards it. This is how you create that space you mentioned

Correct me if I'm wrong here. What I takeaway from this is that if there is a glass pane leaning upright behind me, the ideal rotation should see my left cheek not move off/away from the pane? Focus on moving the right hip back and up into the pane.

 

3 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Second, because you only have a tiny amount of time to work with in the downswing and so much of that is being spent trying to get your hands unstuck and to the ball, you can't sequence properly with your lower body. Fat shots are caused by your club's low point being behind that ball, and that is normally caused by not shifting your weight into your front side early enough.

Assuming my hands are not too far behind at the top of my backswing and I am not dumping them, at which point should I shift my weight into my front side? Is there a feel or drill that can help achieve this?

 

I will definitely try to improve on the mentioned items and report back with progress (hopefully). Thanks again!

Edited July 6, 2022 by mfsmoonshine

[Valtiel]

On 7/6/2022 at 7:51 AM, mfsmoonshine said:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here. What I takeaway from this is that if there is a glass pane leaning upright behind me, the ideal rotation should see my left cheek not move off/away from the pane? Focus on moving the right hip back and up into the pane.

 

Assuming my hands are not too far behind at the top of my backswing and I am not dumping them, at which point should I shift my weight into my front side? Is there a feel or drill that can help achieve this?

 

I will definitely try to improve on the mentioned items and report back with progress (hopefully). Thanks again!

The pane of glass is a good visual yes, and you will want to *feel* like your left hip doesn't move off of it, but in reality it always will a bit. But yes, you want to feel the emphasis on the right hip just going straight backwards almost as though your left hip is the hinge and your right hip is the doorknob. It is this sort of exaggeration that actually gets us much closer to rotating around our center since generally speaking the natural movement is to do the opposite, which is throwing your left hip out in front of you and keeping the right hip fairly stationary. 

Generally speaking you will want to feel the transition into the lead leg happening as the backswing is ending, with the goal being roughly 50/50 pressure wise between your two feet by the time the backswing ends. The downswing can then focus on the remainder of the travel into the lead leg as you push it backwards while unweighting your right side to facilitate this and keep that right side from coming out towards the ball. Another visual to think about is a manual transmission. The downswing is you taking off in first gear and moving towards shifting into second, but you have to GET into first gear to start with which involves the clutch, and that is what you're doing at the end of the backswing. As you reach the top and you start shifting off your trail side you're engaging the metaphorical clutch so you can then shift into gear immediately in transition to accelerate. Most people try to do all of this at the beginning of the downswing, which is metaphorically similar to attempting to shift into first gear at the same time as you depress the clutch, which usually creates friction/grinding and obviously isn't smooth. Here is a visual for the move i'm talking about:



Adam, Rory, and Xander (like pretty much all pros) driving back towards 50/50 as they reach the top. This is obviously more pronounced with the longer clubs, but a version of this sequence is basically universal among pros. 

Edited July 8, 2022 by Valtiel

[mfsmoonshine]

@ValtielThere were three things I have made an effort to correct. Firstly, I have spent time trying to get the feel of bringing my right hip back in the backswing. I think I have made some progress in my initial hip turn.

 

Second, I want to stop letting my head fall down in the backswing. When trying to combat this, my body feels as if I am standing up. It is a pretty weird feeling because I do not want to promote my body standing up. It is slightly better than before but still needs work.

 

Lastly, I am trying to steepen my swing plane as my hands were getting way too behind and stuck. I have not made much progress with this. Do you have any feels or drills for this? I am wondering if my posture can be influencing this. Am I standing too far from the ball? the further out my arms have to reach, the more round my backswing will be because of balance (see the picture for reference). 

 

 

[Valtiel]

9 hours ago, mfsmoonshine said:

@ValtielThere were three things I have made an effort to correct. Firstly, I have spent time trying to get the feel of bringing my right hip back in the backswing. I think I have made some progress in my initial hip turn.

 

Second, I want to stop letting my head fall down in the backswing. When trying to combat this, my body feels as if I am standing up. It is a pretty weird feeling because I do not want to promote my body standing up. It is slightly better than before but still needs work.

 

Lastly, I am trying to steepen my swing plane as my hands were getting way too behind and stuck. I have not made much progress with this. Do you have any feels or drills for this?

 

Your initial hip turn back is ok, the problem is that everything after it is not, i'll break that down and address your other questions after. This is going to be a big "feel vs. real" issue that you'll need to work on.



Initially this is alright in terms of hip movement, right hip is going back slightly. Your head is still dropping at this stage though, so to feel like you are standing up when you're actually still moving down is something you're going to have to train yourself out of. The best thing you can do is basically assume that everything you "feel" like is happening is probably wrong and at this stage not to be trusted. Moving on though:



Right hip movement back has stopped and you've started falling towards the ball and on to your toes again.



And again.



And again. Your hands are also already on the deep side still (too far behind you) and your transition move is still to push them even deeper behind you. This is still the same "intentionally getting yourself stuck" I described before, this has to go. It's puts your hands very far out of position, steepens the shaft plane even further, and is coupled with you shifting even further again on your toes. All of this is backswards from what you want to be doing.



You then drop your hands straight down behind you which basically puts the club on a collision course with the ground just in front of your right foot. My quote from the previous post still applies here: "First, since you're dropping them behind you so much in transition you're now coming into the ball excessively from the inside, which is hook/block city if your timing is a little bit off. Second, because you only have a tiny amount of time to work with in the downswing and so much of that is being spent trying to get your hands unstuck and to the ball..."



Everything is stuck here and you're forced to speed everything up to get unstuck. You've moved a significant amount towards the ball and you're still up on your toes. If we look at this last position against your address position and compare it to the pros:



Broadly speaking the pros have some combination of "down and back" forces working in the downswing whereas you are coming up and forward. Notice the positions of their heads and butts compared to yours and you can see why you're struggling. To get into these positions requires a ground up understanding of where your weight and force is supposed to be going in the golf swing and where your arms generally need to be to not screw that up. For the latter you're going to want to do some work in front of a mirror so you can see where your backswing is going, and more importantly feel what the right and wrong positions feel like. This is because you said you were trying to steepen your backswing plane to correct your hands getting too deep, but like the hip turn you only accomplished this in the first portion of your swing only to revert back to getting deep and stuck again. If anything you're actually MORE stuck in these swings than you were previously, so you need eyes on where the club is going via a mirror because your feel can't be trusted at this stage. 

As for the lower body stuff, that might be a chicken/egg issue with what your arms are doing, but fixing the arms likely won't solve everything because you're starting to shift your weight towards your toes in the backswing before any other forces are pulling you in that direction. This suggests that the main point to first understand before attempting to actually physically do anything is that at no point should your overall center of gravity be coming towards the ball in your swing (something you do immediately after P2), ESPECIALLY in your backswing. The centrifugal force of swinging a heavy stick at something in front of you is already going to pull you towards the ball, so the foundation you need to be setting with your lower body going back needs to be braced to counter this force, not go along with it like you're currently doing. This means actively feeling like your lower half moves you away from the ball, more towards your right heel. This is WHY your right hip needs to move back, because your overall center of gravity needs to stay back as well. 

You'll want to do both mirror drills to get your hands up and spot when you're doing that destructive deepening move with your hands at the top and rotation drills to feel how the hips are supposed to work. Tons of things to do for that, but i'd suggest either half swings with an emphasis keeping your weight back (OFF your toes) or even better the "feet together" drill. I do this one every time I go to the range when warming up; put your together and flare out our left foot towards the target and place the ball in the middle is this miniature "stance". From this position start with PW chip shots and work up to half swings and then 3/4 swings, increasing speed as you go. You WILL start to fall over as you increase your speed and that is the immediate feedback that you aren't moving your lower half correctly. Feet together forces you to keep your butt back to maintain balance with the goal being to work up to full speed shots where you don't tip over. The moment to get up towards your toes you will lose your balance, that's when you know to slow down.

Gives those a shot and report back.

[mfsmoonshine]

@Valtiel Over the last couple weeks of analyzing my swing I’ve made some changes. 
1. I had too strong of a grip and the club face was pretty closed at top. I now have a more neutral grip which allows me to cast the club more easily in the downswing. 
2. I started to set my wrists earlier in the backswing. My problem is that I almost force too big of a hip/body turn because that is what everyone thinks they want to achieve to better rotate. This shortens my backswing a bit to prevent over rotating and getting my hands too far behind. 

I still for the life of me cannot figure out how to stop dumping my hands at the start of the downswing. Is my transition too quick? Should I try to feel as if I am trying to come over the top?

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, mfsmoonshine said:

@Valtiel Over the last couple weeks of analyzing my swing I’ve made some changes. 
1. I had too strong of a grip and the club face was pretty closed at top. I now have a more neutral grip which allows me to cast the club more easily in the downswing. 
2. I started to set my wrists earlier in the backswing. My problem is that I almost force too big of a hip/body turn because that is what everyone thinks they want to achieve to better rotate. This shortens my backswing a bit to prevent over rotating and getting my hands too far behind. 

I still for the life of me cannot figure out how to stop dumping my hands at the start of the downswing. Is my transition too quick? Should I try to feel as if I am trying to come over the top?

If the feeling that you're coming over the top stops you from doing this huge exaggerate loop then that could be something to focus on:



This entire move is poison because you're moving the club from being somewhat in front of you and connected to disconnected and stuck behind you. Doing anything else in the downswing correctly after this point is almost impossible because you're dumping the club into a place it needs to then be rescued from. The only thing this sort of path/position is good for is trying to hit a snap hook around something. If you can't feel that your hands are doing this big loopty-loop at the top of the swing then you'll need to work on gaining that awareness. Also a rule of thumb; if you feel like you can't stop yourself from doing something (in this case the dumping hands feeling) it is virtually always because you are putting yourself in a position where that thing *needs* to happen. Its your brain saying "we have to do this thing to hit the ball" and overriding whatever conscious efforts you were intending to make.

If you can, take some videos of what you feel like is an over the top swing and we'll see where feel and real intersect.

[mfsmoonshine]

@Valtiel I set up an alignment stick inside a basket with the aim of keeping the club above the stick to prevent being too inside. At the top of my transition, the dropping of the hands still happens but it is not as exaggerated as before. The result of this is a big pull left but I’m not too worried about ball flight, my focus is on the mechanics. 

[Valtiel]

8 hours ago, mfsmoonshine said:

@Valtiel I set up an alignment stick inside a basket with the aim of keeping the club above the stick to prevent being too inside. At the top of my transition, the dropping of the hands still happens but it is not as exaggerated as before. The result of this is a big pull left but I’m not too worried about ball flight, my focus is on the mechanics. 

The loop definitely looks more manageable here, but I want to address this "my focus is on the mechanics".

Focusing on reducing this forced loop move in the backswing is good, and you've gotten your hands into a better position than when you started, but the more you're focusing on manipulating your hands/arms the more your other mechanics are struggling.



Initial takeaway is alright in terms of hands/arms, but you're again only rotating via swinging your left hip towards the ball with an almost completely stationary right side...



...which is still leading to you then extending towards the ball by shifting up towards your toes...



...and you're still failing to engage your lower half in transition and are instead leading everything with your arms which is why both a month ago and now your miss is left.

Last month I said:
 

Quote

"As for the lower body stuff, that might be a chicken/egg issue with what your arms are doing, but fixing the arms likely won't solve everything because you're starting to shift your weight towards your toes in the backswing before any other forces are pulling you in that direction. This suggests that the main point to first understand before attempting to actually physically do anything is that at no point should your overall center of gravity be coming towards the ball in your swing (something you do immediately after P2), ESPECIALLY in your backswing."

and...
 

Quote

...but i'd suggest either half swings with an emphasis keeping your weight back (OFF your toes) or even better the "feet together" drill.

The uncomfortable reality is that you will likely need to spend a lot of dedicated time on partial swings (preferably with hands-on instruction) because the swings you have shared up until now show that you aren't able to change what your body is doing when swinging full speed. That is fairly common as most people will struggle with changing anything at that speed, but I just wanted to set the expectation that in order to make any real tangible improvements that you're going to have to commit to learning new movement patterns very slowly for probably way longer than will be any fun. If you want to post some videos of half swings per what I suggested last month then I would be happy to help you from that point, but i'm afraid that continuing to go back on forth on anything full swing won't be a good use of either of our time at this stage.