Top of my swing

[infinii]

Note how at the top of my swing, there is a last second jerk which points the club to the right. What am I doing wrong?

 

Second question, is my swing tempo considered smooth or aggressive? Trying to pick up a used shaft and there aren't any fitters around me.

 

Thanks!!

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by infinii
fixed video attachments

[ac6]

To me the shaft wobble is just a compensation for your early extension that you're setting up even during the backswing. Watch your head position in the DTL shot--that light at the end of the range is visible at address, and then your head completely covers it at the top of your backswing. at this point the distance between your right hip and the ball has not moved much, but your left hip has gotten closer. If you were to stay there and simply attempt to fire through toward the target, you'd likely fall over your toes, so you compensate by rerouting and extending early to get the club into hitting position (that's what causes that change in shaft direction). Others can chime in with some illustrations of what this should look like and there's tons of drills out there that could work to get the feel of the correct motion. 

[Aspiring-Coach]

On 10/5/2022 at 10:22 AM, infinii said:

Note how at the top of my swing, there is a last second jerk which points the club to the right. What am I doing wrong?

 

Second question, is my swing tempo considered smooth or aggressive? Trying to pick up a used shaft and there aren't any fitters around me.

 

Thanks!!

 

 

They say "if you can't feel it, you can't heal it" - and one of the things you brought up is tempo. What are you feeling in your body that's having you question your tempo?

[infinii]

2 hours ago, Aspiring-Coach said:

 

They say "if you can't feel it, you can't heal it" - and one of the things you brought up is tempo. What are you feeling in your body that's having you question your tempo?

Regarding the tempo question, I'm only asking to get an idea of what type of shaft profiles to consider.

[Aspiring-Coach]

7 hours ago, infinii said:

Regarding the tempo question, I'm only asking to get an idea of what type of shaft profiles to consider.

 

Ah got it! I think I misread that the first time - thanks for clarifying. From those couple swings I'd say your tempo is medium, leaning to the slower side. But I am curious how you'd measure being able to feel the head of the club through your swing on a scale of 1 - 10. 1 being that you never feel it and 10 being that you know where the head is in space at any given moment.

 

I ask because those who tend to have a more aggressive or faster tempo tend to need more weight so they can better feel the club head through the swing. So I'm wondering what my assessment of your tempo is vs what your feel is. 

[infinii]

1 hour ago, Aspiring-Coach said:

 

Ah got it! I think I misread that the first time - thanks for clarifying. From those couple swings I'd say your tempo is medium, leaning to the slower side. But I am curious how you'd measure being able to feel the head of the club through your swing on a scale of 1 - 10. 1 being that you never feel it and 10 being that you know where the head is in space at any given moment.

 

I ask because those who tend to have a more aggressive or faster tempo tend to need more weight so they can better feel the club head through the swing. So I'm wondering what my assessment of your tempo is vs what your feel is. 

 

Good question and one that always perplexed me when I would hear people talk about knowing where their club was or whether the face was open or closed at points in their swing. I am conscious of where the head is on the backswing but once I start my downswing, it's like a split second where I know nothing because it seems to happen so fast. The only thing I feel on the downswing is whether I've rotated my right hand too much thus closing the face too much.

[Valtiel]

11 minutes ago, infinii said:

 

I am conscious of where the head is on the backswing but once I start my downswing, it's like a split second where I know nothing because it seems to happen so fast.

And there is a very good reason for that because the more out of position you are at the top of the swing, the more your subconscious takes the wheel to get you to impact which functionally means you're consciously "blacking out" so to speak in the downswing. We can't consciously process compensations beyond a certain point in the 1/4 of a second we have in the downswing, so the more problems we set up the less awareness we'll tend to have in the downswing, and unfortunately you have several severe issues relating to sequencing and club path:



Starting with your down the line view to highlight arm/path stuff. Your first move is an overly arm driven "picking up" of the club with your right elbow folding very early with minimal lower body movement. This is going to setup a severe sequencing issue that i'll touch on in the face on gifs. For now though, understand that this combination of moves if the foundation for trouble later in the swing. The club is very narrow as a result of this early right arm folding and what little lower body movement you have here is being driven by your left hip, which is backwards from what you want. This is all pulling you closer to the ball as we can see by your head movement (again backwards from what we want) at a point when you need to maintaining or even increasing your distance from the ball via correct pelvic rotation (more on that below).



Up to the top of the swing we see your head coming further forward and your hips finally start to engage (more on this in the face on view). The problem is that the lower body stuff is happening very late and you're sending the club across the line with the excess right arm folding. You could STILL make a good downswing from this position, but it would require a specific set of quick and aggressive compensations to counter the forces you've set up here. You're about to start your downswing which is going to create a lot of force pulling you towards the ball and since you're already leaning in towards it at the same time, that is a problem that will lead to early extension without the right moves in transition, those moves being an aggressive reroute of the club into a more shallow, on plane position and an equally aggressive move AWAY from the ball with the lower body...



....and unfortunately you do the opposite with both of those things, which means we can treat everything related to your backswing and club position at the top as a problem to be fixed and not an inherent part of your swing to work around. You deepen your hands (move them away from the ball) and steepen the shaft plane while your lower body starts working towards the ball, and a "good" downswing is no longer possible at this point. You're headed towards severe posture loss and early extension to make contact now which is what we see next:



Your lower body swings towards the ball like a gate and all your spine angle disappears as a means to get the club back on plane to make contact. Part of this is due to the club path issues going back, but a bigger part is how you're using your lower body:



This is a pretty good setup from this angle, and this little "bump" move you do as a trigger is good as well, lots of pros do this.



Unfortunately after that "bump" you take the club back basically with just your arms with only a tiny bit of pressure shift into your back foot. Important note #1, most pros are either almost or completely maxed out at this point e.g. the most pressure on their trail foot near P2 (club parallel to the ground, the end of this gif) whereas you basically haven't even started that process yet. This is the big sequencing issue I alluded to earlier.



As you work to the top of the swing you get to that maxed out position, but its WAYYY late. By the time you're fully loaded on that trail leg at the top, the pros are already working back the other way. Important note #2, the lower body starts shifting back towards the target BEFORE the backswing is completed, and here we see you're still shifting away from it at that point. Most pros are actually quite close to 50/50 weight distribution between their feet by the time the backswing completes so that lack of being in that "ready" position combined with the top of your backswing being off plane creates all the weirdness that then needs to happen in the downswing to make contact. 

How you go about addressing all this is hard because it's all interconnected. Address one issue and the other will try to spoil things, address them at the same time and you'll likely struggle with too much change all at once. This is why most people struggle to improve and why the actual path to improvement is so tough because it involves getting really "small" and staying there for a long time, doing things like half swing pelvic punch drills for weeks or months to ingrain proper lower body mechanics and then doing mirror or video work to ingrain positions in the backswing and how to change them. A good hands on instructor would be preferable, but they can be hard to find. Have you ever seen anyone in your area for that kind of thing?

 

[infinii]

@ValtielThank you so much for the detailed analysis. There's a lot to digest and I'll need to go back and re-read it several times when I get home. I've always been aware of the fault of lifting my arms and not rotating my shoulders enough but all the points about my lower body is new to me.

[Valtiel]

11 minutes ago, infinii said:

@ValtielThank you so much for the detailed analysis. There's a lot to digest and I'll need to go back and re-read it several times when I get home. I've always been aware of the fault of lifting my arms and not rotating my shoulders enough but all the points about my lower body is new to me.

No problem, and it's not surprising that the lower body stuff is new seeing as how it tends to be the most often overlooked. Upper body stuff tends to be pretty obvious and in our face, but the lower body stuff is more subtle until you know what to look for. It's origins can also be complicated. Most people simply never learn (or are properly taught) what you're supposed to do with your lower half, and why. The forces you're supposed to create and when you create them are not intuitive, I don't know of a case where anyone does it correctly without guidance. Apparently many South Korean instructors will have young students focus solely on lower body action/pivot for months before even letting them swing a club or hit a ball. 

If you think you're up to taking on the changes on your own then i'd be happy to follow up with comps from pro swings showing the kinds things you should be doing, fundamentally speaking. Let me know after you've had a chance to digest and I can put that together. 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Valtiel