Caught between two swings and not sure what to focus on

[Righty to Lefty]

Luckydutch do you know / understand the ball flight laws, d-plane, and how to set the low point of your swing arc?  I say that because your issue sits in plain sight if you understand those principles. 

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Righty to Lefty

[Valtiel]

29 minutes ago, Luckydutch said:

Damn! I hadn’t noticed how different the backswing positions were until you pointed it out. That was NOT deliberate.

That is good to know, something to think about with regards to the "why". 
 

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The only things I were consciously working on in that session were trying to keep my lower body moving away from the ball and trying to force myself to swing more from the inside then trying to find some balance between the two since they seem diametrically opposed.

On your point about dumping the club etc. I was working on that because it feels like I need to make very drastic moves in order to keep the club working from the inside. I don’t feel like I do a big over-the-top re-routing of the club anymore but unless I do a pretty exaggerated move to shallow it out or drop it down in the transition, my fast lower body rotation will force me into a position where the club head is out ahead of the hands too early in the swing and a pull or slice is inevitable.

If I try something smaller, once I add the lower body rotation back in at speed, the rotational forces pulling everything left will just out-pace any shallowing moves happening with the upper. Pull. Penalty. Re-tee.

 
This is an interesting point because on one hand you're wrong, these things are not only NOT diametrically opposed but are actually supportive of each other, but on the other hand you're clearly feeling something valid with your attempted implementation given what you're struggling with. IMO that is combined with this: 
 

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Question about the swings themselves: why was the shank a shank? To me, that looks like by far the most controlled, on-plane swing out of the bunch but obviously the outcome is the worst of all.

Swing plane is irrelevant if you aren't sequencing properly, and these swings where you're pausing for ages at the top are adding to a sequencing problem you already have. Face on video would help, but from down the line it appears your fixation in trying to control swing plane is causing you overlook proper lower body sequencing. I think you were doing it better almost by accident when you had the longer backswing, the basic rule of thumb is:

1) Pressure on the rear leg is close to if not maxed out (the most pressure you're going to put on it) at P2 (club parallel to the ground in the backswing). It can wonder towards max slightly after, but that's basically it. 
2) From P2 up to the top of the backswing your pressure should not increase on this rear leg. It can waver a little but if anything it should stay consistent and even start *decreasing* as you reach the top of the backswing. 
3) Prior to completing your backswing your lower body should already start "recentering" towards 50/50 with the target being somewhere around that even split by the time your backswing completes. 
4) In the moments of transition where your arms start down you should have already start the process of loading up your lead side, 80/20 or thereabouts at what is functionally the beginning of your downswing. You use that pressure on the lead side to start driving your lead leg back while your trail leg is comparatively weightless and simply turns in towards your lead leg. 

If we put you on a pressure mat to measure where your force is I can guarantee you aren't really close to this yet, and if anything you've gone backwards a bit. The more you're focusing on your swing plane the more it seems you linearly increase the amount of load on your back leg all the way to the top of the backswing, don't make any move to recenter, then try to fire it all at the same time which perfectly explains both your strike inconsistencies AND the fat shots. It's almost impossible to hit the ball fat when you sequence properly because with a majority of your pressure on your front side you would have to TRY to put the club in the ground behind the ball. So the fact that you're hitting a bunch of shots fat when you're off which in turn causes you to incorrectly start focusing on your swing plane which makes your sequencing, the cause of the problem to begin with, even worse, explains the issues that you're having. Combine that with the fact that you thought one of your worst sequenced swings was your best one because of it's swing plane means you aren't seeing the problems. The results do NOT lie, and like I said earlier:

 

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An important thing to take away from this; when you're in a fundamentally neutral position at the top of the swing but you aren't striking the ball well, the position isn't the problem

 

And when you're hitting the ball fat, 99% it's because your sequence was off.



Notice Adam's lower half and how his move back is basically done at P2 and in the last frame and his hips bump TOWARDS the target. This is before the downswing has even started and his lower body is already starting the downswing. All great players do a version of this (yes even the ones with pauses at the top) and i've never seen a weekend hacker do it. And again the problem is you've come to your own conclusion about the problems you think this causes and continued used that conclusion to continue focusing on the wrong stuff. You DID have swing plane problems last year which you've largely neutralized and now you need to focus on the lower body stuff. The next thought you have about plane or "hitting it from the inside" needs to be your last if you want to move on because not only does it cause all the issues already covered, but doing this lower body stuff correctly takes care of MOST basic plane issues automatically. When you properly recenter and get your left side loaded and working back to kick off the downswing, the following will want to happen without you having to try:

1) Your low point moves forward, no more fat shots
2) You will be naturally pulled down into some degree of side bend since you no longer have to straighten your spine angle to control low point (also good for fat/thin shot prevention)
3) The club will want to work back out in front of you, it won't be thrown out over the top
4) Weight on your front side means weight OFF your trail side, which prevent your right side from kicking out towards the ball

Focusing on understanding this overall concept and implementing it correctly will clear up most of your strike and path related issues so long as you don't attempt to introduce your own hand/arm manipulations to put the club where you think it should be, which btw in the videos above resulted in most of your worst downswing positions. This lower body sequencing stuff is easier to feel and do correctly with those shorter swings, hence my preference for them. You'll know when you're doing it right because you'll be compressing the ball and finishing in balance positions. 

[Luckydutch]

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Luckydutch do you know / understand the ball flight laws, d-plane, and how to set the low point of your swing arc?  I say that because your issue sits in plain sight if you understand those principles. 

 

 

I thought I did but clearly I don't since I've been stuck on some variant of this issue pretty much since I started golf! 😔

[Luckydutch]

 

 

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

This is an interesting point because on one hand you're wrong, these things are not only NOT diametrically opposed but are actually supportive of each other, but on the other hand you're clearly feeling something valid with your attempted implementation given what you're struggling with. IMO that is combined with this: 

 

This has been my frustration ever since I started golf. The advice for OTT is to turn the hips more or lead with the lower body and I've always felt like the more I focus on lower body, the faster my hips go and I am dragged into an OTT position. I've actually played my best golf when I've quietened-down my lower body and core rotation and tried to swing more through the shoulders. It's wrong and not a long-term solution which is why I keep coming back to this issue but I've never been able to solve why I feel like my lower body makes matters worse. Went through a lot of expensive lessons and made zero progress.

 

It may be easier to show rather than articulate so here is my best attempt at demonstrating what it FEELS like is happening. It feels like when I focus on lower body, I am rotated into a position where the only thing that can happen is to slice the club across the ball out-to-in. In this video I do only lower body rotation at first then show what it feels like when I release the arms:

 

 

 

You can probably understand now why you always see me attempting drastic moves to try and get the club/hands DOWN behind my right side - it feels like if I don't get them down really fast, the only release possible will be out-to-in.

 

I've seen videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pswNDRnvy2U and am trying to do the same. Although, to your point about sequencing, I'm doing it wrong by pausing and not flowing correctly.

 

 

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

Face on video would help

 

 

Agree, I'll try to take a face-on video next time I go to the simulator. I *think* I do have that hip bump you describe because I have worked on it before but I'll be interested to see whether you say I in fact do or not.

 

Next time I go to practice, I can say I will be doing nothing but shorter, slower swings trying to get this sequencing and impact conditions correct. The holding the swing at the top is because I am thinking about how to shallow it before my hips explode open but I see your point about how it messes up any possibility of good sequencing. Half swings, slow but smooth tempo.

 

Just circling back to the shank. I was reading back through this thread and re-watching the videos of tiger and noticed something that might be key.

 

His hands are actually moving left, away from the ball, long before impact. His hand path is exiting low-left from about shaft parallel but his club path is still inside-out because he is sweeping the club through to square the face

 

 

Red circle being where his hands are in the first image. Definitely going left before impact.

 

I've been so fixated on trying to cure OTT and get an in-to-out path and I am wondering whether in doing so, I have been (without realizing it) attempting to deliver the club with an in-to-out hand-path which would be quite different to the above. I would assume that could cause a shank too right? If the hands are moving straight or even right rather than left through the impact zone, the club handle would be further away from me at impact which either means a shank if it is shallow or the club comes down steep and potentially out-to-in as a compensation?

 

Again, it may be easier to demonstrate rather than articulate:

 

 

 

Could this be part of my issue. Not at all trying to diminish your important point around sequencing but this could be a contributing/exacerbating issue?

 

 

[Valtiel]

15 minutes ago, Luckydutch said:

I've actually played my best golf when I've quietened-down my lower body and core rotation and tried to swing more through the shoulders. It's wrong and not a long-term solution which is why I keep coming back to this issue but I've never been able to solve why I feel like my lower body makes matters worse. Went through a lot of expensive lessons and made zero progress.

There is a fair to good chance that other things changed when you did this without you realizing and THOSE were what produced the better results. Either that or you simply lessened whatever your main problem area was by slowing down. Most people get into trouble via whatever thing they are applying force to create speed/power. "Quieting things down" therefore reduces the thing causing problems and thus, fewer problems and better results.

Case in point for me, like a lot of people I had that confusing realization at some point that smooth swings go as far or farther than my hard swings. Everyone has had that at one point or another, and IMO it's simply due to incorrectly applied effort for the "harder" swings. For me it was my right side (common), I would fire IT too hard and too much towards the ball which would upset my club path (pushing it out) and the last second compensations for that created face control issues. Dialing back and swinging smoother had me applying less effort to my right side and thus creating fewer path and contact issues. The other downstream effect was that in order to fire your right side you need weight on it, so when swinging harder I would, without realizing it, leave weight back a little longer so I could feel like my right side was more loaded and "fireable". This messed up my sequencing because my weight wasn't getting forward soon enough which caused low point control issues which again, poor face contact. In only just "trying to swing smoother" I triggered a domino effect that touched problem areas I didn't even understand yet.

Accidental fixes can be nice, but they almost always fade away because we don't operate on "don't dos", we need things to focus on and actively "do". "Swing smoother" can work for some people as a "do", but at some point you're going to look for the thing to apply effort/force to and if all of your ideas are to not do certain things or do "less" of other things then you're going to collapse under pressure. The key, like in my case above, is to learn what the "don't do" is *actually* accomplishing, get your head around that thing, then actively apply the thing you SHOULD be doing that the "don't do" was either revealing or interrupting. In my case it was the reveal that conscious effort was leading to the wrong movement, then consciously swapping that applied effort in the downswing from my right leg to my left, unweighting the former so I could apply power with the latter. The pelvic punch drills helped ingrain the feeling of how to position and use my left side to create power in the downswing and then half swing practice helped it scale to a longer swing. And so on and so on until i'm at my longest, fastest swings. If it any point it started to falter, dial back to a lower intensity and start over. The lower body is the engine of the golf swing and to continually try to do *less* with it because you haven't figured out why your *more* is causing problems is to invite this level of consistency and frustration. 

 

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You can probably understand now why you always see me attempting drastic moves to try and get the club/hands DOWN behind my right side - it feels like if I don't get them down really fast, the only release possible will be out-to-in.

 

I've seen videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pswNDRnvy2U and am trying to do the same. Although, to your point about sequencing, I'm doing it wrong by pausing and not flowing correctly.

 

Yeah I understand that, but just a quick rant about Larrey Cheung that doesn't involve his occasionally dopey hair and ill fitting pants. He seems like a nice guy, but I really dislike a lot of his swing philosophies. He is doing the thing that a lot of instructors do where they teach exaggerated movements/positions without either realizing or properly disclosing HOW this type of instruction is supposed to work. You aren't *actually* supposed to hit the positions he is talking about. To get your arms as stuck behind you as he is showing is a terrible position for 99% of players. The reason this type of approach can get a lot of love and work for many is that they can't actually get into these positions because they are so far in the opposite direction. BECAUSE they are that extreme, doing an equally extreme thing in the opposite direction can land them somewhere in the middle, which is actually the goal. The super OTT slicer that tries to drop his hands behind him like Larry is doing likely will never get close to that position, but because he is so used to throwing his hands OUT towards the ball, attempting to drop them down behind him actually results in them coming down more neutral. You'll see lots of people in the comments talking about how much better their swing is now and how much this helped immediately, but i'd like to hear from them in 3 months to see how many saw sustained improvement.

The problem comes when people actually CAN physically reach these exaggerated positions that they should never have gotten to in the first place, like you're doing in several examples above. Some of those more "from the inside" swings are WAY too far inside and are equally as problematic as the over the top swings you're scared of. And to correct what I think is a misunderstanding, very little of anything that you've called "OTT" recently actually is. You're focusing on hand path and hand direction and ignoring shaft plane, which is ACTUALLY the concern. Your first video is showing what textbook "shallowing" is supposed to look like, because once speed and force is applied to that foundation the club will drag the hands down from that higher position. Think about this physiologically so you can understand why your feeling about "hip rotation causing OTT" is wrong. If your arms are boneless noodles then all rotation is going to do is create the centrifugal force that pushes them in a straight line away from where they are attached. And since what they are attached to is leaning towards the ball, the force throws your noodle arms out in front of you towards the ball. Not over the top, and definitely not down behind you like you're trying to manipulate them into now, just out in front of you. 

This lines up with what you're observing with Tiger woods because YES, your hands do NOT work from the inside out towards the ball...
 

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I've been so fixated on trying to cure OTT and get an in-to-out path and I am wondering whether in doing so, I have been (without realizing it) attempting to deliver the club with an in-to-out hand-path which would be quite different to the above. I would assume that could cause a shank too right? If the hands are moving straight or even right rather than left through the impact zone, the club handle would be further away from me at impact which either means a shank if it is shallow or the club comes down steep and potentially out-to-in as a compensation?

...and 100% to all of the above. One of the most common first traps that OTT suffers fall into is going to the opposite extreme and sticking their hands behind them to manufacture an inside out path which leads to terrible low point control and shanks for the exact reason you mentioned. Hand path ALWAYS exits left with how hard and how low depending on the player, their rotation, and how they release their arms. And when it comes to club path itself, 99% of pros live within a 3* window in either direction (out to in or in to out) throughout the entire bag, with that window being tighter for many. Andrew Landry is probably the most "from the inside" player out there who swings as close to the Larry Cheung drills as you probably can, and he'll only get to 4* from the inside. Look at how low and hard left his hands exit.

Your "hands inside stuck behind" drills and swings probably have you at twice that, hence the blocks, shanks, and dropkicks. You can't consistently manage a path that is extreme in either direction. 

[Luckydutch]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

Accidental fixes can be nice, but they almost always fade away because we don't operate on "don't dos", we need things to focus on and actively "do".

 

I understand. This is why I persist with trying to get this lower body turn right. I don't want to play forever with bandaid fix. I want to get good.

 

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

The problem comes when people actually CAN physically reach these exaggerated positions that they should never have gotten to in the first place, like you're doing in several examples above. Some of those more "from the inside" swings are WAY too far inside and are equally as problematic as the over the top swings you're scared of.

 

Fair

 

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

Your first video is showing what textbook "shallowing" is supposed to look like, because once speed and force is applied to that foundation the club will drag the hands down from that higher position.

 

I struggle to understand that. From that shallowing position that I paused at before showing the release, I don't understand how to get the club down and inside from there. My shoulder/elbow orientation from there means the most natural thing for me to do from that position is throw the club out ahead of me.

 

Video from Saturday below. I have sort of managed to shallow in the practice swing but this is not just hip rotation, this is lower body rotation paired with quite a deliberate attempt to suck the right arm and hands down behind my right side to keep the club back behind me longer into the downswing. It's not quite a big dumping of the club that you saw in a previous video but it isn't letting he arms swing naturally either. 

 

 

To be fair, the practice swing looks decent. 

 

The swing with the ball didn't quite work though. The club does tip too much out in front of me in the downswing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty big difference in where the shaft is at just past parallel.

 

Left would have been a great shot had there been a ball there. Right ended up being a weak, glancing fade. If the face was squarer to the path it would have been a strong pull that went miles but also miles left of target.

 

If I could get into the delivery position on the left there whilst focusing on this lower body stuff, I would be DELIGHTED.

 

[Dufferonius]

14 hours ago, Valtiel said:

 2) The drills where you pause for longer and longer periods of time at the top of the swing should stop. Not only are they terrible for sequencing since the lower body should be shifting and recentering at the top of the backswing which is completely cutoff with this type of drill, ...

This is something that's going to end-up causing me additional swing training time.  I pause for an inordinately long time at the top of my back-swing in my current training.

 

I know it's not optimal, but I've really no choice, at present.  Initiating the down-swing with my feet, legs, and hips, and getting the proper shallow in the pivot-down, is so unlike what seems "natural" to me and what I had been doing, I literally have to stop at the top to give my conscious mind time to tell my intuitive mind "Ok, this is what we're going to do," and feel it's sunk in.

 

Eventually, when I've got this motion consistent and repeatable, and I begin to feel it's become (somewhat) natural and automatic, I'll gradually reduce that pause.  Perhaps even eliminate it entirely.  We'll see.

 

14 hours ago, Valtiel said:

You're doing what every weekend hacker that tries to improve as fast as possible does which is rush ...

BTDT.  It never worked.  In learning a new motion, particularly when you're trying to replace an old, ingrained motion, you just have to pay your dues grinding it out.

 

Season's essentially over, for us here in the north, so the pressure's off, for me.  I've all winter long to take my time to get it right.

 

(Not trying to turn @Luckydutch's thread into something about me.  Just trying to let him know he's not alone in this 🙂  I'm going through much the same thing.)

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Dufferonius

[ShortGolfer]

When I was learning to hit driver I found it very helpful to take short backswings.

It also helped to be properly fitted.  If a club is too heavy that rushes my swing.  A shorter club is much easier for me to  swing.

 

I found it very useful to experiment and practice in my back yard with foam golf balls.  I could try different things to see what made the ball go farther and watch  the ball flight.

 

Body rotation and a good tempo works well for me.  I can get a little more by swinging harder and adding weight shift but that is a lot more work to for me to do consistently.

 

 

[Righty to Lefty]

19 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

 

I thought I did but clearly I don't since I've been stuck on some variant of this issue pretty much since I started golf! 😔

I tagged you in a post that will get you pointed in the right direction I assure you and I will also point out a few things here to demonstrate how your being out of position to the ball is wrecking the best of intentions.  This will become clearer after you see that other post but I don't want to overload you with info that you are likely not ready to interpret just yet but I will use you as the lab rat in comparison with Tiger but I am not concerned with your swing motion as much as I am concerned with your location in relation to the ball. You are actually much closer than you realize to striking the ball with leverage than you realize but you not fully understanding impact and what is supposed to happen is killing you.  

 

This is Tiger striking a ball with leverage and a negative AoA and if I had the still photo of his setup I assure you that it would look very similar to yours in relation to his plane / shoulder line. For reference I will say that his target is the top section of the roof of the clubhouse because the photo isn't wide enough for me to tell what his actual target was but that isn't most important because I am  using your shot that you hit for a target line reference: 

 

Note where the ball took off though, well right of the top section of the house, and it looks like a push because he is hitting this shot with a negative AoA as he should be: 

 

Model representation of the shot Tiger hit where he levered the ball but missed the target line we set for him well to the right where the pencil represents the club face at impact and the pencil mark on the trash can denotes low point of the swing arc meaning that he hit the shot with a negative AoA as he should: 

 

Bear with me as things will become more clear hopefully in just a moment and come full circle. 

 

This is your setup and just imagine it overlaid into the photo of Tigers on the range: 

 

 

And this is your impact, which is not a levered strike for two reasons, first you hit the ball off the toe of the club, and second you hit the ball along your shoulder line which is no good so that means that you are striking the ball very close to the low point of your swing arc. From your setup a levered strike should have been hit at the dark post in the background on the right side of the range but your shot travels well left of that telling me that it was not a levered strike.  

 

This is a model representation of the shot you hit. Notice how the shoulder plane is parallel to the target line just like yours is, and also that the pencil representing the club face at impact is sitting over the top of the low point which is not good because no golf shot should be struck at low point of the swing arc: 

 

Now then how would you correct it? You must move in a semicircle around the ball to set your low point of your swing arc in front of the ball because it is being hit off the ground and this will also move your plane angle / shoulder line left of the target.... That's it! The model representation will look like this. This adjustment alone will have you and Tiger both hitting the shot at the top section of the roof of the house on that driving range. Tiger would just have to re aim his already levered strike but your fix will be two fold because will gain a levered strike and also adjust your aim to put in onto the target: 

 

From this set up your shots should be hitting the right side of the simulator screen where that overlay is just like how Tiger's shot is exiting the photo well out to the right.

 

But your are our of position in relation to the ball so your shot is traveling well left of where it should be to be struck with leverage:

 

Given your setup, believe it or not but the shank you hit actually traveled down the correct starting line because you were in a much better position in relation to the ball but you just didn't realize it because you are so focused on your swing motion and believing that it is the primary source or your issue when it is actually your understanding of impact and knowing what should happen prior to hitting a given shot: 

 

 

 

The more you digest this information and go out and test and come back with your questions I assure you that things will become clearer.  If I were you the first thing I would do is disregard swing motion thoughts and trying to hit at a specific target for now and go find leverage.  A levered strike is first and foremost and you can't even begin to analyze a given shot until you accomplish a levered strike.  Calibrating aim is easy but first you must learn how to set your low point of your swing arc in relation to your intentions as this is at least 90 - 95% of the game. Sur later on you may need to make swing motion refinements but you must understand how to get your low point of your swing arc set in the correct location in relation to the ball and many of your "flaws" will go away in time as you truly begin to know and trust that you are in the correct location in relation to the ball.  R to L  

[Valtiel]

16 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

 

 

Pretty big difference in where the shaft is at just past parallel.

 

Left would have been a great shot had there been a ball there. Right ended up being a weak, glancing fade. If the face was squarer to the path it would have been a strong pull that went miles but also miles left of target.

 

If I could get into the delivery position on the left there whilst focusing on this lower body stuff, I would be DELIGHTED.

 

Both of these positions are still completely stuck, with the one you want being the worst of the two. So no, you wouldn't be hitting any kind of good shot consistently from either position:



Notice how much further behind you your right arm is and how much higher (relative to the ground) your hands are, this is completely out of sequence and stuck which requires a lot of flip and hand action from here down to impact. Again, hip speed, your hips are firing too fast in transition and you're skipping straight to the "firing" without recentering first. You will end up stuck and out of sequence without either lightning fast hands or a SUPER short backswing if you keep using your hips like this. Face on video would be able to show this better. 
 

[Luckydutch]

6 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Both of these positions are still completely stuck, with the one you want being the worst of the two. So no, you wouldn't be hitting any kind of good shot consistently from either position:



Notice how much further behind you your right arm is and how much higher (relative to the ground) your hands are, this is completely out of sequence and stuck which requires a lot of flip and hand action from here down to impact. Again, hip speed, your hips are firing too fast in transition and you're skipping straight to the "firing" without recentering first. You will end up stuck and out of sequence without either lightning fast hands or a SUPER short backswing if you keep using your hips like this. Face on video would be able to show this better. 
 

 

 

God damn it. I just do not get how you can get the club so low without a) the club head flying way out in front of the hands and b) driving the club into the ground and taking a divot the size of the grand canyon.

 

Anyway, I had a decent-ish practice today. I think it represents progress.

 

I was very disciplined and spent a whole 45 minutes on just 2/3 swings with a slow, steady tempo and a focus on lower body movement.

 

I was hitting a lot of straight-draws and pull-draws but the contact was OK and I was pleased with how the lower body looked except for the fact that I noticed the legs weren't straightening after they re-centred:

 

 

 

Took a video from the front after when trying to add-back some straightening of the left leg through impact and I think its OK?

 

 

 

It translated reasonably well to irons. Still everything was going a bit left but playable. Slight weakening of the grip with no other changes brought the dispersion closer to target:

 

 

 

Throughout this early part of the session the main miss was a sort of chunked hook. I think the club was just coming in too flat and the heel was digging into the mat maybe?

 

 

 

 

For the last 15 minutes I went through my irons and allowed myself a bit more speed in the swing but still kept the backswing shorter than previous. Hit a nice shot with the 5i but I feel like in almost all the ones where I added speed, I look quite cramped in the follow-through and it looks like maybe I am straightening the arms too much or too early?

 

 

 

I did at the very end try a bit of a steeper backswing with that hip-driven shallowing move you mentioned as being good in an earlier post. It was... a complete disaster... as evidenced by the below sequence. Not ready for that yet.

 

 

 

Overall, this sort of felt like a productive session. I'm reasonably pleased with how the 2/3 swings were looking in terms of lower body movement and lateral hip-bump. I still definitely have some swing plane issues when I increase the speed, though. If I played a round tomorrow and made full-speed swings, I would probably lose a full box of balls! 😅

 

[Valtiel]

@Luckydutch Ok, the face on camera is doing a lot of work here so that is what I want to focus on. Wish I asked you to do these sooner as it would have saved some back and forth and revealed more clearly where your big sequencing issues are coming from:



Even on slow 1/2 to 3/4 swings, look at how monumentally high and stuck your hands are behind you and how closed your shoulders are. This is the issue that is plaguing everything in your full swing because your arms are so far behind your lower body turn that you're never coming close to being in sequence no matter what you're trying. Mostly because your lower body is fast but also because you're using at the wrong times while still consciously trying to put your arms in a specific place which IMO is causing you to slow them down way too much for fear that not "controlling" them is going to send them in the wrong direction. It won't, but we'll get to that.



Right from the very beginning we see the start of the issue. You're way too focused on making some big, wide, one piece takeaway that you're not only overly rigid in the upper half, but your lower half is basically stationary. Not a huge deal in isolation, but it speaks to the broader sequence issue we'll see next. Notice how Adam makes a noticeable little bump into his trail side, that is a meaningful pressure shift that makes a difference in what comes next:



NOW you do that same pressure shift that Adam did initially, but one step later in the sequence. Meanwhile Adam is basically maxed out on his trail leg already at this point. Also again, too stiff and rigid in how you're taking the club away, that's a driver backswing with a club you're intending to punch 100y. You're somewhat artificially restricting your right hand. A bit of radial deviation (bending your right wrist up towards you to tip the club up) is what is missing that we see Adam doing here.

Now if you didn't continue loading into your rear leg after this you would be ok, however...



...You make a BIG move here into your trail leg which is WAY too much WAY too late. Arguably you're already in big trouble at this point because your lower body needs to be positioning itself to start moving the other way and it's doing the opposite. You could argue that Adam is applying a *little* more pressure on this trail leg at this stage, but very minimal, and it's mostly turning behind him at this point getting ready to re-center.



Now the re-centering starts on Adam's side as you can see both left and right hip shifting *slightly* back towards the target. Meanwhile you're doubling down on being stacked on your trail leg with no energy or momentum starting towards the target. If you were arguably in big trouble before, you definitely are now.



One more frame showing the lack of proper re-centering happen. That is a big bump on Adam's side towards his lead leg as he reaches the top of his backswing, and critically we see you completely neglecting any of this shifting as you look to be priming yourself to completely bypass it and start firing your lead side, which is what you do next. Adam is pretty close to 50/50 weight distribution at this stage whereas you're likely close to 80/20. 



If the general lower body weight sequencing is major flaw #1, this is #2. Without any sort of move to shift into your front side to stably and smoothly fire your front hip back in sequence you simply start ripping it open as hard and fast as you can. The fact that you're doing this completely independent of any weight shift or sequence is causing massive problems. You're bypassing two whole lower body sequences here and its throwing you massively out of sync. You're still even now firmly planted on your trail leg, something that should have reversed ages ago, and now you're creating a ton of force way too early in the downswing that is only going to unbalance you and create havoc downstream. The move you're making now we won't see Adam do until two gifs later.



Now halfway into the downswing you finally start actually shifting into your lead side, but this all several steps too late. And since you've already fired your lead hip super early in transition you're now in rescue mode trying to get your hands back out in front of you, complicated by the fact you're hung up on *actually* doing the opposite by trying that Larry Cheung drill of dropping your hands behind you. If you went to him for a lesson btw, he would having you doing almost the opposite of what he his suggesting in his drills because of how much you're overdoing it.



And now because you already fired your left side several stages too early, your right side starts firing because it's all you have left which further exacerbates how stuck your hands are.

Major elements of this entire lower body sequence need to change, and because they are so badly out of sync with even short smooth swings we can safely say that until you get it right here, you won't have a chance with full ones.

The main thing to get your head around is something that Monte here has said previously (paraphrasing). "For most am's that struggle with what you're dealing with here, a "correct" sequence of the lower body will likely feel like a reverse pivot". Which is to say that what is right will likely feel pretty wrong initially because you need to be getting up towards your lead side WAY earlier than you are now or think you should be, and i'd much rather see you overdo this initially. Combine thatwith also getting your head around the fact that you can NOT keep dumping your arms behind you like you are because that is only f****** everything up downstream. Your feeling of pelvic rotation creating problems with your club path is because your pelvic rotation is extremely out of whack. Ripping your left hip open that fast that early without properly shifting into your lead side will indeed create a sympathetic response you don't want of your hands coming out and over, but that isn't a hand path problem that you should be solving with hand/arm manipulations, it's a sequencing problem. Study the differences between you and Adam and focus on what his doing here, it is a VERY basic version of neutral "good" lower body sequence.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Valtiel

[Luckydutch]

4 hours ago, Valtiel said:

@Luckydutch Ok, the face on camera is doing a lot of work here so that is what I want to focus on. Wish I asked you to do these sooner as it would have saved some back and forth and revealed more clearly where your big sequencing issues are coming from:



Even on slow 1/2 to 3/4 swings, look at how monumentally high and stuck your hands are behind you and how closed your shoulders are. This is the issue that is plaguing everything in your full swing because your arms are so far behind your lower body turn that you're never coming close to being in sequence no matter what you're trying. Mostly because your lower body is fast but also because you're using at the wrong times while still consciously trying to put your arms in a specific place which IMO is causing you to slow them down way too much for fear that not "controlling" them is going to send them in the wrong direction. It won't, but we'll get to that.



Right from the very beginning we see that start of the issue. You're way too focused on making some big, wide, one piece takeaway that you're not only overly rigid in the upper half, but your lower half is basically stationary. Not a huge deal in isolation, but it speaks to the broader sequence issue we'll see next. Notice makes a noticeable little bump into his trail side, that is a meaningful pressure shift that makes a difference in what comes next:



NOW you do that same pressure shift that Adam did initially, but one step later in the sequence. Meanwhile Adam is basically maxed out on his trail leg already at this point. Also again, too stiff and rigid in how you're taking the club away, that's a driver backswing with a club you're intending to punch 100y. You're somewhat artificially restricting your right hand. A bit of radial deviation (bending your right wrist up towards you to tip the club up) is what is missing that we see Adam doing here.

Now if you didn't continue loading into your rear leg after this you would be ok, however...



...You make a BIG move here into your trail leg which is WAY too much WAY too late. Arguably you're already in big trouble at this point because your lower body needs to be positioning itself to start moving the other way and it's doing the opposite. You could argue that Adam is applying a *little* more pressure on this trail leg at this stage, but very minimal, and it's mostly turning behind him at this point getting ready to re-center.



Now the re-centering starts on Adam's side as you can see both left and right hip shifting *slightly* back towards the target. Meanwhile you're doubling down on being stacked on your trail leg with no energy or momentum starting towards the target. If you are arguably in big trouble before, you definitely are now.



One more frame showing the lack of proper re-centering happen. That is a big bump on Adam's side towards his lead leg as he reaches the top of his backswing, and critically we see you completely neglecting any of this shifting as you look to be priming yourself to completely bypass it and start firing your lead side, which is what you do next. Adam is pretty close to 50/50 weight distribution at this stage whereas you're likely close to 80/20. 



If the general lower body weight sequencing is major flaw #1, this is #2. Without any sort of move to shift into your front side to stably and smoothly fire your front hip back in sequence you simply start ripping it open as hard and fast as you can. The fact that you're doing this completely independent of any weight shift or sequence is causing massive problems. You're bypassing two whole lower body sequences here and is throwing you massively out of sync. You're still even now firmly planted on your trail leg, something that should have reversed ages ago, and now you're creating a ton of force way too early in the downswing that is only going to unbalance you and create havoc downstream. The move you're making now we won't see Adam do until two gifs later.



Now halfway into the downswing you finally start actually shifting into your lead side, but this all several steps too late. And since you've already fired your lead hip super early in transition you're now in rescue mode trying to get your hands back out in front of you, complicated by the fact you're hung up on *actually* doing the opposite by trying that Larry Cheung drill of dropping your hands behind you. If you went to him for a lesson btw, he would having you doing almost the opposite of what he his suggesting in his drills because of how much you're overdoing it.



And now because you already fired your left side several stages too early, your right side starts firing because it's all you have left which further exacerbates how stuck your hands are.

Major elements of this entire lower body sequence need to change, and because they are so badly out of sync with even short smooth swings we can safely say that until you get it right here, you won't have a chance with full ones.

The main thing to get your head around is something that Monte here has said previously (paraphrasing). "For most am's that struggle with what you're dealing with here, a "correct" sequence of the lower body will likely feel like a reverse pivot". Which is to say that what is right will likely feel pretty wrong initially because you need to be getting up towards your lead side WAY earlier than you are now or think you should be, and i'd much rather see you overdo this initially. COmbine with also getting your head around the fact that you can NOT keep dumping your arms behind you like you are because that is only f****** everything up downstream. Your feeling of pelvic rotation creating problems with your club path is because your pelvic rotation is extremely out of whack. Ripping your left hip open that fast that early without properly shifting into your lead side will indeed create a sympathetic response you don't want of your hands coming out and over, but that isn't a hand path problem that you should be solving with hand/arm manipulations, it's a sequencing problem. Study the differences between you and Adam and focus on what his doing here, it is a VERY basic version of neutral "good" lower body sequence.

 

I can totally see the difference. I thought I was doing a good job of sequencing there because my hips start to move back the opposite direction before reaching the top of the backswing but they’re opening and not weight shifting.

 

The problem I experience when trying to make a lateral weight shift/slide is in the trail leg. When I watch slow motion videos of the pros that trail leg does seem to re-bend in the early part of downswing before straightening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I try to do the hip bump, my trail leg straightens in the backswing (not 100% but straighter than address) and then to perform the hip bump, I push off that trail leg into the lead side and it just remains straight all the way through the downswing. It also feels like, although much of my weight shifts into the lead side, what weight remains in trail leg is balanced on the heel, not the toes. Makes it harder to turn as I feel planted on my heels.

 

I don’t know whether this squatting move is important? 

 

I will persist with the 2/3 swings for the majority of my next session and try to focus on my of a weight shift and earlier.

 

The club dumping here isn’t deliberate. I think it’s just a product of flat backswing and not much downswing force letting the arms drop naturally. I wasn’t thinking about them at all. I think maybe the backswing was a bit too flat? In order to do what felt like a 2/3 swing, I was just rotating the hips/torso and wasn’t really bending/raising the arms or hinging the wrists at all. My normal backswing sequence has tended to be turn then left/hinge so I just left the latter part out.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Luckydutch

[Righty to Lefty]

17 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

 

 

God damn it. I just do not get how you can get the club so low without a) the club head flying way out in front of the hands and b) driving the club into the ground and taking a divot the size of the grand canyon.

 

Anyway, I had a decent-ish practice today. I think it represents progress.

 

I was very disciplined and spent a whole 45 minutes on just 2/3 swings with a slow, steady tempo and a focus on lower body movement.

 

I was hitting a lot of straight-draws and pull-draws but the contact was OK and I was pleased with how the lower body looked except for the fact that I noticed the legs weren't straightening after they re-centred:

 

 

 

Took a video from the front after when trying to add-back some straightening of the left leg through impact and I think its OK?

 

 

 

It translated reasonably well to irons. Still everything was going a bit left but playable. Slight weakening of the grip with no other changes brought the dispersion closer to target:

 

 

 

Throughout this early part of the session the main miss was a sort of chunked hook. I think the club was just coming in too flat and the heel was digging into the mat maybe?

 

 

 

 

For the last 15 minutes I went through my irons and allowed myself a bit more speed in the swing but still kept the backswing shorter than previous. Hit a nice shot with the 5i but I feel like in almost all the ones where I added speed, I look quite cramped in the follow-through and it looks like maybe I am straightening the arms too much or too early?

 

 

 

I did at the very end try a bit of a steeper backswing with that hip-driven shallowing move you mentioned as being good in an earlier post. It was... a complete disaster... as evidenced by the below sequence. Not ready for that yet.

 

 

 

Overall, this sort of felt like a productive session. I'm reasonably pleased with how the 2/3 swings were looking in terms of lower body movement and lateral hip-bump. I still definitely have some swing plane issues when I increase the speed, though. If I played a round tomorrow and made full-speed swings, I would probably lose a full box of balls! 😅

 

YOU ARE HITTING THE BALL AT LOW POINT OF YOUR SWING ARC WHICH IS NOT GOOD AND YOU ARE OUT OF POSITION IN RELATION TO THE BALL! Your trail arm is fully extending prior to striking the ball so you are basically hitting a flop shot. 

 

This location is better on this shot as notice that the ball actually is starting to the right of the line on the sim as it should due to your setup alignments: 

 

Ball too far forward in the swing arc thus a big pull

 

Simulator misread as this ball did not travel down the target line and was also a pull

 

Even in slow motion your trail arm is still full extending right at or just prior to impact. You are out of position to the ball and it is too far forward along your swing arc. The position that you are in in that still frame where the trail arm is fully extended shouldn't occur until the club head has traveled roughly another 2 to 3 feet along your swing arc.    

Edited October 19, 2022 by Righty to Lefty

[Valtiel]

2 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

When I try to do the hip bump, my trail leg straightens in the backswing (not 100% but straighter than address) and then to perform the hip bump, I push off that trail leg into the lead side and it just remains straight all the way through the downswing. It also feels like, although much of my weight shifts into the lead side, what weight remains in trail leg is balanced on the heel, not the toes. Makes it harder to turn as I feel planted on my heels.

 

I don’t know whether this squatting move is important? 

This is very likely due to everything that is happening prior as I detailed. To continue loading back further and further into your rear leg after P2 and waiting until your backswing stops before you try to turn it back around is way too late and takes too much force, likely what you were feeling. This is why you start drifting back towards 50/50 much earlier in the backswing, or at the very least STOP loading further into your trail leg.

I wouldn't be surprised if you've always had this problem so don't be quick to try to poke holes in a "yeah but!" way here because the problem is super clear and absolutely why you hit so many fat shots as well. Think about it logically, if you're already starting to drift back towards your lead side in the backswing and then add a little lateral bump right at the beginning of your transition then you need *very* little force from your trail side to get to your front side, just a nudge really. Now if you're stacked on that rear leg all the way until the top of the backswing then of course you're going to need to do a bunch of s*** with your rear leg to save it now. You should never feel like you have to "push" off your rear leg btw, because pushing requires pressure and if you leave enough pressure back there to do that in transition then you've already screwed yourself because it's too late. Instead simply think of unweighting your rear leg, getting off of it and into your front side, and EARLY. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Valtiel

[Luckydutch]

18 minutes ago, Righty to Lefty said:

YOU ARE HITTING THE BALL AT LOW POINT OF YOUR SWING ARC WHICH IS NOT GOOD AND YOU ARE OUT OF POSITION IN RELATION TO THE BALL! Your trail arm is fully extending prior to striking the ball so you are basically hitting a flop shot. 

 

This location is better on this shot as notice that the ball actually is starting to the right of the line on the sim as it should due to your setup alignments: 

 

Ball too far forward in the swing arc thus a big pull

 

Simulator misread as this ball did not travel down the target line and was also a pull

 

Even in slow motion your trail arm is still full extending right at or just prior to impact. You are out of position to the ball and it is too far forward along your swing arc. The position that you are in in that still frame where the trail arm is fully extended shouldn't occur until the club head has traveled roughly another 2 to 3 feet along your swing arc.    

 

Yeah, that’s what I meant in the previous post when I said I feel like I am, in addition to other faults, releasing the arms too much or too early.

 

Pretty sure the ball position is broadly correct but the low point of my swing is too far back, for sure. Really hard to keep the arms bent for longer, though. Particularly at speed.

[Luckydutch]

33 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

This is very likely due to everything that is happening prior as I detailed. To continue loading back further and further into your rear leg after P2 and waiting until your backswing stops before you try to turn it back around is way too late and takes too much force, likely what you were feeling. This is why you start drifting back towards 50/50 much earlier in the backswing, or at the very least STOP loading further into your trail leg.

I wouldn't be surprised if you've always had this problem so don't be quick to try to poke holes in a "yeah but!" way here because the problem is super clear and absolutely why you hit so many fat shots as well. Think about it logically, if you're already starting to drift back towards your lead side in the backswing and then add a little lateral bump right at the beginning of your transition then you need *very* little force from your trail side to get to your front side, just a nudge really. Now if you're stacked on that rear leg all the way until the top of the backswing then of course you're going to need to do a bunch of s*** with your rear leg to save it now. You should never feel like you have to "push" off your rear leg btw, because pushing requires pressure and if you leave enough pressure back there to do that in transition then you've already screwed yourself because it's too late. Instead simply think of unweighting your rear leg, getting off of it and into your front side, and EARLY. 

To clarify what I mean:

 

If I maintain relatively neutral balance through my feet (so stood facing forwards, centre of gravity running down through the middle of my feet), I can do a slight bump into the trail side, then a big bump left and rotate to finish. It all feels fine, natural and something I could work on.

 

Where I get a bit unstuck is when I try to combine that with more hip depth and what you said earlier in the thread about the lower body moving away from the ball in the downswing.

 

If my weight is 55:45 into my trail side and I want to shift it to say, 70:30 in favor of the lead BUT I need to do this while keeping the pelvis back away from the ball, it feels like the only way to do this is to straighten that trail leg and push diagonally in the direction of the lead buttock. Ultimately, if my lower body is moving left and backwards, the distance between my right toes and the pelvis is going to increase, right? The leg has to straighten in this case? With that straight trail leg it becomes hard to turn and puts more twist on my knees, even in practice swings without a club in hand.

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Luckydutch

[Righty to Lefty]

16 minutes ago, Luckydutch said:

 

Yeah, that’s what I meant in the previous post when I said I feel like I am, in addition to other faults, releasing the arms too much or too early.

 

Pretty sure the ball position is broadly correct but the low point of my swing is too far back, for sure. Really hard to keep the arms bent for longer, though. Particularly at speed.

Your ball position cannot be "broadly correct" it MUST be precisely in the location that works for how you are built and your current flexibility and there is no such standard for ball position and for you to continue to put the ball in a location that is incorrect and believe that the result will change is the very definition of insanity Luckydutch!  What does it hurt to move the ball to a different location and test out what I am saying to you and report back. I literally showed your strike in comparison to Tiger's so that you could see it for yourself and that should have been very eye opening to see that the shank that you hit actually was the closest shot to the correct start line that I have seen you hit.  The second that you get in to the right location to the ball and lever one you will realize just how weak your impact was and you will never be the same I'm telling you as I've seen it happen more times than I can count.  It is really hard to keep your trail arm bent because you are not physically capable of hitting the ball with leverage from it's current location without manipulation, so why would you keep putting it there and believing that things will change? Move the ball to where it needs to be for you, find leverage, and then learn to aim it at a target...period...or continue to get poor results.  Sure you can refine your swing motion later on, but not until you are in the correct location in relation to the ball and fully trust it.  I encourage you to go out and test and report back with your observations and questions and I will gladly clarify further.  R to L

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, Luckydutch said:

To clarify what I mean:

 

If I maintain relatively neutral balance through my feet (so stood facing forwards, centre of gravity running down through the middle of my feet), I can do a slight bump into the trail side, then a big bump left and rotate to finish. It all feels fine, natural and something I could work on.

 

Where I get a bit unstuck is when I try to combine that with more hip depth and what you said earlier in the thread about the lower body moving away from the ball in the downswing.

 

If my weight is 55:45 into my trail side and I want to shift it to say, 70:30 in favor of the lead BUT I need to do this while keeping the pelvis back away from the ball, it feels like the only way to do this is to straighten that trail leg and push diagonally in the direction of the lead buttock. Ultimately, if my lower body is moving left and backwards, the distance between my right toes and the pelvis is going to increase, right? The leg has to straighten in this case? With that straight trail leg it becomes hard to turn and puts more twist on my knees, even in practice swings without a club in hand.

 

Worry about the sequencing first and don't get hung up on hip depth stuff for now. 

As for the second part, you're describing a problem that is based on the only way you've done it up until now. If you've always been way too deep into your trail side and out of sequence with your lower body in your backswing then all you've ever known is what you've tried to do from a bad position. Basically no one can effectively and consistently get into their lead side properly if they start their downswing on their trail leg, so your observations about what is and isn't possible . I'll suggest a shift in thinking on this stuff as well because every counter you've given in a "I can't do X because of Y" or "this happens when I do this" has been either incorrect or based on a misunderstanding of what you're actually doing, or supposed to be doing. This stuff is hard so I get it, but what it sounds like you're arguing above is that you can't get into your lead side and maintain hip depth at the same time without doing something extreme with your trail leg despite that fact it is a basic fundamental that even 60-somethings on the Champions tour have no issue doing. And i'd assume that you haven't even tried anything yet based on my previous post so i'd recommend spending some time with that first before you think there is something you can't do. Furthermore, almost every initial negative observation you're going to make about a new mechanic is going to be wrong, or at best misleading (this is true for most, not picking on you). You're attempting to program new movement patterns so I recommend spending less time trying to intellectualize them on paper and more time trying them out.
 

Quote

it feels like the only way to do this is to straighten that trail leg and push diagonally in the direction of the lead buttock

If this thought is only based on your previous experience then don't worry about it for now and simply focus on getting your lower body sequencing and weight distribution correct first, because I have a hard time believing that your feeling you need to do some radical push off your trail leg to get to your lead side isn't based on the fact you've likely spent your entire golfing life up to the point way out of balance in your backswing. And since your lower body will already be shifting towards your lead side, momentum is carrying you in that direction combined with the force created by your downswing further pushing you forward as well. You don't need some jump off your rear leg to do anything, ESPECIALLY not on some 3/4 swing punch shot. 

[Luckydutch]

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Your ball position cannot be "broadly correct" it MUST be precisely in the location that works for how you are built and your current flexibility and there is no such standard for ball position and for you to continue to put the ball in a location that is incorrect and believe that the result will change is the very definition of insanity Luckydutch!  What does it hurt to move the ball to a different location and test out what I am saying to you and report back. I literally showed your strike in comparison to Tiger's so that you could see it for yourself and that should have been very eye opening to see that the shank that you hit actually was the closest shot to the correct start line that I have seen you hit.  The second that you get in to the right location to the ball and lever one you will realize just how weak your impact was and you will never be the same I'm telling you as I've seen it happen more times than I can count.  It is really hard to keep your trail arm bent because you are not physically capable of hitting the ball with leverage from it's current location without manipulation, so why would you keep putting it there and believing that things will change? Move the ball to where it needs to be for you, find leverage, and then learn to aim it at a target...period...or continue to get poor results.  Sure you can refine your swing motion later on, but not until you are in the correct location in relation to the ball and fully trust it.  I encourage you to go out and test and report back with your observations and questions and I will gladly clarify further.  R to L

I’m up for trying anything at this point so why not? I’ll try moving the ball back a bit.

 

I’ve just had it drilled into me that ball position is central for scoring clubs then incrementally forward of centre as clubs get longer. Circa half a ball forward of centre for a 7 iron, a full ball forward for 5 iron etc.

 

It does make sense that the ball back half an inch or so would create a more descending and in-to-out blow, all other things being equal.

[Luckydutch]

29 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

Worry about the sequencing first and don't get hung up on hip depth stuff for now. 

As for the second part, you're describing a problem that is based on the only way you've done it up until now. If you've always been way too deep into your trail side and out of sequence with your lower body in your backswing then all you've ever known is what you've tried to do from a bad position. Basically no one can effectively and consistently get into their lead side properly if they start their downswing on their trail leg, so your observations about what is and isn't possible . I'll suggest a shift in thinking on this stuff as well because every counter you've given in a "I can't do X because of Y" or "this happens when I do this" has been either incorrect or based on a misunderstanding of what you're actually doing, or supposed to be doing. This stuff is hard so I get it, but what it sounds like you're arguing above is that you can't get into your lead side and maintain hip depth at the same time without doing something extreme with your trail leg despite that fact it is a basic fundamental that even 60-somethings on the Champions tour have no issue doing. And i'd assume that you haven't even tried anything yet based on my previous post so i'd recommend spending some time with that first before you think there is something you can't do. Furthermore, almost every initial negative observation you're going to make about a new mechanic is going to be wrong, or at best misleading (this is true for most, not picking on you). You're attempting to program new movement patterns so I recommend spending less time trying to intellectualize them on paper and more time trying them out.
 

If this thought is only based on your previous experience then don't worry about it for now and simply focus on getting your lower body sequencing and weight distribution correct first, because I have a hard time believing that your feeling you need to do some radical push off your trail leg to get to your lead side isn't based on the fact you've likely spent your entire golfing life up to the point way out of balance in your backswing. And since your lower body will already be shifting towards your lead side, momentum is carrying you in that direction combined with the force created by your downswing further pushing you forward as well. You don't need some jump off your rear leg to do anything, ESPECIALLY not on some 3/4 swing punch shot. 

I get it. I’m cognizant that movements that feel difficult/impossible for me are so because of other issues.

 

I’ll focus more on pressure shift in the next session rather than depth and see what it looks like. Will try to get a front-on and pelvis-level angle.

 

One thing that does make sense for me is that if I shift the hips and body left, it creates space for the club to fall down more to the right side without tipping out in front of me.

 

Going back to this image and me not understanding how the hands can get so low without the club tipping out:

 

 

 

Maybe that’s why? I need to move left out of the way first.

 

I’ll toy around with these feels in front of a mirror and then send some videos of my practice session on Thursday.

[Luckydutch]

One step forward. Two steps back. The theme of this thread, it seems.

 

I started out the session focusing on the pressure shift and sequencing. Was reasonably pleased with how easy and comfortable it felt to shift a bit into the trail side then a lot into the lead side before finishing the backswing. It creates rhythm to the swing too which felt nice.

 

 

 

 

I couldn't actually hit a decent shot with anything longer than a wedge however, because I was instantly back to being wildly over-the-top and throwing the club way out in front of me early in the downswing.

 

 

 

 

 

I thought I would try the shallowing move discussed earlier in the thread where you pull the trail elbow towards the lead one and externally rotate the trail shoulder. It was a disaster. With both shorter and longer backswings I couldn't hit a ball cleanly to save my life 

 

 

 

Really frustrating. Even the balls that I did actually hit with the middle-ish of the face were weak, slicey shots.

 

Eventually I gave-up on that. Conscious that I have a round at the weekend and need to actually be able to strike a ball, I just reverted to this strategy of getting deliberately 'stuck'. Drop the arms down low behind the trail hip and just use rotation to square the face. Only hit about 10 balls like that but was actually playing good golf, finally.

 

 

 

I know I have an issue with sequencing but I think my biggest issue is actually path/shallowing. It's difficult for me to dedicate entire sessions to sequencing when my path is SO bad.

 

I either need to focus on path for a bit OR stick to this deliberately stuck swing and use that while working on sequencing, eventually coming back to shallowing at a later date.

[Valtiel]

14 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

One step forward. Two steps back. The theme of this thread, it seems.

 

I started out the session focusing on the pressure shift and sequencing. Was reasonably pleased with how easy and comfortable it felt to shift a bit into the trail side then a lot into the lead side before finishing the backswing. It creates rhythm to the swing too which felt nice.

 

 

Apologies if this comes across as a bit short, but after what I thought was a pretty well laid out explanation of why getting too deep into your trail side is causing problems:



Your next attempt was this:



It's almost like you're trolling me at this point, lol. This is so markedly the opposite of what we discussed. You've swayed massively off the ball and gotten 100% MORE stuck on your trail side in the exact same late sequence as before. You didn't fire your left hip early/excessively this time which is a plus, but everything else is far worse than before to such an extent that I really think attempting to translate written instructions maybe just isn't how you're able to absorb this stuff, and I don't want to keep giving direction for it to get reversed like this because it's just going hurt your game. I'll leave you with one last visual I was thinking about last night that I didn't get around to finishing, but IMO you're going to need someone that can correct you on the fly in person when it comes to this stuff because there is clearly too large of a disconnect between what is said and how you're interpreting that and putting it into motion.

On the topic of how your hips move, lets look at it from an aerial view:



Red is backswing, orange is downswing. For those that really attempt to "use" their hips, many do some version of this where they shift laterally away from the target them attempt to reverse back towards the target in transition. This is what you did in the follow up video to a pretty extreme degree and its what gives people fits with regards to stability and low point control. Correct pelvic rotation, especially with shorter clubs, is FAR more centered as you can see with Adam in the gifs above. No one leaves the "box" I drew in the gifs with short irons, a vast majority don't with mid irons, it's probably pretty 50/50 with longer irons with some moving out of the box, but only very slightly, and the same for the longer clubs with only a few moving noticeably out of it (still less than you did above with a short iron though). And it should be noted the ones that DO move out of the box noticeably trend towards being less accurate off the tee on average.

So when "depth" is discussed in terms of hip rotation and people are told to get their right hip further back, often they do this:



They still sway and get too far off the ball and have to rescue it in transition, but they simply do it on more of an angle so it *looks* like they increase depth from down the line, but in reality they're often just leaning back away from the ball on angle which often simply reverses in transition and can cause worse early extension issues as the hips reverse and work back towards the ball.



THIS is the actual feel you want a version of. It is massively different from what most people's intuitive understanding of hip movement is and involves so much less lateral shifting than most people have. You can't see this movement from down the line, and you can only start to spot it from face on when you know what to look for, but if you saw all the pro's swings from above it would be a version of this.

I'll leave you with this clip showing a bit of that and take note of the complete lack of lateral shift in the right side:
 

 

[Luckydutch]

44 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

Apologies if this comes across as a bit short, but after what I thought was a pretty well laid out explanation of why getting too deep into your trail side is causing problems:



Your next attempt was this:



It's almost like you're trolling me at this point, lol. This is so markedly the opposite of what we discussed. You've swayed massively off the ball and gotten 100% MORE stuck on your trail side in the exact same late sequence as before. You didn't fire your left hip early/excessively this time which is a plus, but everything else is far worse than before to such an extent that I really think attempting to translate written instructions maybe just isn't how you're able to absorb this stuff, and I don't want to keep giving direction for it to get reversed like this because it's just going hurt your game. I'll leave you with one last visual I was thinking about last night that I didn't get around to finishing, but IMO you're going to need someone that can correct you on the fly in person when it comes to this stuff because there is clearly too large of a disconnect between what is said and how you're interpreting that and putting it into motion.

On the topic of how your hips move, lets look at it from an aerial view:



Red is backswing, orange is downswing. For those that really attempt to "use" their hips, many do some version of this where they shift laterally away from the target them attempt to reverse back towards the target in transition. This is what you did in the follow up video to a pretty extreme degree and its what gives people fits with regards to stability and low point control. Correct pelvic rotation, especially with shorter clubs, is FAR more centered as you can see with Adam in the gifs above. No one leaves the "box" I drew in the gifs with short irons, a vast majority don't with mid irons, it's probably pretty 50/50 with longer irons with some moving out of the box, but only very slightly, and the same for the longer clubs with only a few moving noticeably out of it (still less than you did above with a short iron though). And it should be noted the ones that DO move out of the box noticeably trend towards being less accurate off the tee on average.

So when "depth" is discussed in terms of hip rotation and people are told to get their right hip further back, often they do this:



They still sway and get too far off the ball and have to rescue it in transition, but they simply do it on more of an angle so it *looks* like they increase depth from down the line, but in reality they're often just leaning back away from the ball on angle which often simply reverses in transition and can cause worse early extension issues as the hips reverse and work back towards the ball.



THIS is the actual feel you want a version of. It is massively different from what most people's intuitive understanding of hip movement is and involves so much less lateral shifting than most people have. You can't see this movement from down the line, and you can only start to spot it from face on when you know what to look for, but if you saw all the pro's swings from above it would be a version of this.

I'll leave you with this clip showing a bit of that and take note of the complete lack of lateral shift in the right side:
 

 

 

 

Aww crap! I promise I am not trolling you, I am just TERRIBLE at golf. Specifically, I am terrible at translating feel to real.

 

In this case, I was picking-up on this from earlier:

 

"Right from the very beginning we see the start of the issue. You're way too focused on making some big, wide, one piece takeaway that you're not only overly rigid in the upper half, but your lower half is basically stationary. Not a huge deal in isolation, but it speaks to the broader sequence issue we'll see next. Notice how Adam makes a noticeable little bump into his trail side, that is a meaningful pressure shift that makes a difference in what comes next"

 

Trying to do a little bump into the trail side before moving into the lead side. I can see now that I have massively over-done it. I can also see that I allowed the hips to rotate too much in the backswing. This is what I meant before when I said I have played better golf when trying to rotate through the shoulders and keep the core/lower quiet. When I feel like I'm not rotating the hips at all, they're probably still rotating loads.

 

What's disappointing is I thought I had at least done a better job at starting to re-centre earlier. I am making a conscious effort to re-centre before my backswing is finished. Maybe it's not visible?

 

One thing I still don't understand after your explanation is how the trail leg works here. Always I see people shift their pressure into the lead side and the trail leg starts to bend. If I try to shift my pressure into the lead side WITHOUT ripping the hips open, my trail leg just straightens and I get all straight-legged in the downswing.

 

Below is an example. I am trying to keep the hips quiet in the backswing with rotation feeling like it's just the shoulders, then I try to shift pressure into the lead side without ripping the hips open. I've exaggerated how much of a shift left to illustrate the point but you should see my trail leg just goes straight.

 

 

 

 

Last question: while working on this, what should I do with the upper? Is it OK to do the drop and turn 'stuck' move that let's me at least play reasonable golf in the short-term whilst I focus on getting this sequencing right? As you saw in the videos above, any attempts to do the correct shallowing move with external shoulder rotation make me unable to even strike the face of the club.

[AimingAtHazards]

2 hours ago, Valtiel said:

No one leaves the "box" I drew in the gifs with short irons, a vast majority don't with mid irons, it's probably pretty 50/50 with longer irons with some moving out of the box, but only very slightly, and the same for the longer clubs with only a few moving noticeably out of it (still less than you did above with a short iron though).

@Valtiel thank you so much, learning a lot on these threads (what to do and not do). I’ve been struggling a bit recently trying to apply the same shift across the bag and this is a great reminder to temper that for the short and mid irons. Been watching too much Dr. Kwon videos recently.

The overhead visual of the pelvic rotation is great image.

 

[Dufferonius]

4 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

Aww crap! I promise I am not trolling you, I am just TERRIBLE at golf. Specifically, I am terrible at translating feel to real.

This is why, when learning a new motion, or to replace a bad motion with a good one, you need to practice the new motion slowly and review in video (because video will show you things even a mirror will not--ask me how I know).  Then, once you've got it, do piles and piles of reps repeating that motion in good form every time, before you can begin to start doing it at speed.

 

See my earlier comments about how I'm doing a wrong thing at the top of my back-swing (massive pause) in order to get my pivot-down and shallow right.

 

4 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

One thing I still don't understand after your explanation is how the trail leg works here. Always I see people shift their pressure into the lead side and the trail leg starts to bend.

At the start of the back-swing?  Uhm... no.  Pressure shifts to the trail side.  But that's pressure.  There will be a weight shift, but it's not nearly as much as the shift to the left side at or just prior to transition.  No lateral move at all.

 

4 hours ago, Luckydutch said:

Below is an example. I am trying to keep the hips quiet in the backswing with rotation feeling like it's just the shoulders, 

No.  You cannot achieve good rotation on the back-swing without pivoting the hips away from the target.  At least most people cannot.  Assuming a 90° turn (some turn more, some less): About 45° of that turn is in the hips.

 

Your problem isn't using your hips, your problem is you're swaying away from the target on your back-swing.  You should be centered and balanced (both left and right, forward and back) throughout the back-swing.

 

Your nose may, probably will, move off the ball, because few people can point their noses directly over a shoulder.  Mine does.  But still you should be centered throughout the back-swing.

 

Except... The most effective swings actually begin the target-wards shift of the hips just before the top of the back-swing.  This provides the coiling power to accelerate the upper body and club through the downswing.  It's like coiling a garage door spring.

 

[Luckydutch]

5 minutes ago, Dufferonius said:

No.  You cannot achieve good rotation on the back-swing without pivoting the hips away from the target.  At least most people cannot.  Assuming a 90° turn (some turn more, some less): About 45° of that turn is in the hips.

 

I'm not actually doing it without any hip turn. That's just the feel. If you watch the video there, you see the hips do still turn a bit in the backswing just WAY less than I normally do. I'm beyond a 90 degree turn there and that was barely a stretch. I could do another 45 degrees easily without completely opening up the hips to do so.

[Dufferonius]

Ok, I was responding to what you wrote, not your video.

 

Speaking of your video: You got some serious slide/sway going on there in the downswing.  You want to shift your hips a bit target-wards as you begin your pivot-down (or, as I said, just at the top of your back-swing), but your head should stay roughly over the ball until impact.

 

As, or just before, you hit the top of your back-swing, shift the hips slightly target-wards, getting both pressure and weight over the lead leg, and begin pushing the lead side hip back and around, keeping your head centered on the ball.  As you're doing that, the club should go from where it was at the top of your back-swing to 90° to your spine (or flatter, as seen from down-line).  Your lead arm still straight.  Trailing elbow inside the seam line of your trail side, hands still high.  (That's the shallowing move.)

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Dufferonius

[Dufferonius]

@Luckydutch, I just sent down-line and face-on swing videos to my coach.  I think they're pretty good.  If he agrees, I'll post them to show you some of what I mean.

 

ETA: Nope.  Close, but no cigar 🙂  Maybe tomorrow or something?

Edited October 21, 2022 by Dufferonius
Added update

[Luckydutch]

There was a bit of a social at the simulator place last night and the lad who won the longest drive was smashing 330 yard drives consistently and nearly as straight as the two PGA pros that run the place.

 

Overheard him explaining to one of the guys that he gets his power (apart from being a 6ft6 beast) by pushing into his lead toes and then springing back into the heel from there to get power and also clear the hips.

 

This got me thinking… I’ve consistently complained that it feels like the more I try to lead the turn with my lower body, the harder it becomes to avoid throwing the club out in front of me early in the downswing. As I load into my trail side, my weight is mostly in the trail heel but when I try to shift pressure from my trail heal directly into my lead heel it feels like I either rip the hips open or do too much of a slide and straighten the trail leg (remember I said earlier that I don’t get how people sequence and shift pressure into the lead side whilst also re-bending the trail leg). It makes me want to open up my body to the target line too.

 

Now, when I just stand in front of a mirror and shift from my trail heel into my trail toes I can feel my weight re-centre but there isn’t this pull to open-up my body really early in the transition. Then when I push off the toes into my heel, the hips open and pull the body along with them. However, this is now later in the swing.

 

Wondering whether attempts to avoid early extension and maintain hip depth are stopping me from moving my pressure around properly and forcing my hips/body open too early in the swing.

 

Is this a productive line of thinking?

 

Pressure moving from rear heal, re-centering and moving into the lead toes a bit before reaching the top of the backswing then pushing off the lead toes into the lead heel to square everything up through impact?

 

Also wondering whether chasing a low-and-left finish is causing me more harm than good. A lot of the guys last night had quite high, extended finishing positions and were hitting great drives. I find it very hard to shallow and get the club exiting low-left without hitting a big pull so perhaps I should just embrace a higher finish, even if it does look a bit more chicken-wing.