Do Not Pull On the Club from the Top of the Backswing...Stop the Handle Late In Downswing.

[Hidraw]

1 hour ago, virtuoso said:

That’s where you and I differ though. Bio-mechanically, I think how the left and right arm work by themselves tells us very little about how they work together.

 

You might be able to make an argument that the trail hand only can replicate a similar sequence and pull slack out of the system similar to both hands, but the lead hand by itself is utterly useless as a training tool. It can be made to work but it would mislead you as too what should happen with both hands attached.

14 hours ago, Zitlow said:

The club catches her left arm at impact. If she casted the club it would be out of sequence and it would catch up before impact which is no bueno. 

 

The club is being thrown from via her right shoulder, arm and hand from the ground up. Her right elbow unfolding works like a differential in a car accelerating the clubhead. 

 

Tension in her shoulders, arms or hands would block the flow of energy to the clubhead. 

 

 

 

The downswing is set up by the backswing and is basically a shift, turn and throw. The lower body brings the upper body, the upper body brings the right shoulder, the right shoulder brings the arm and the arm brings the hand. 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Coaches,
 

Yes, just try it in the lab (backyard net :)) and here is my report.

The same mechanical princible is applicable to the right-side swing!
Here, unlike the left arm as a lever in the left-side swing, the lever of the right-side swing is difficult to identify.  But with a little bit of imagination, it imust be the line from the left hip to the hands.  External rotation of the right arm during transistion lengthens this lever.

Clearing the left hip, my foot, as if the left hip is in the way.  In fact, the propulsion of the left hip up and away from the target line is indeed a power move creating a g force that leverage the lever of the right-side.  I used to think wrongly that the lumbar spine is the fulcrum for the lower lever, but I now change my mind and view the left hip as a hinge for the right-side lever as it is being propelled.

The motion of the left shoulder and the motion of the left hip, each defines a force plane, an upper plane and a lower plane sharing the target line, the hands and the club are stabilized within this two planes by opposing moments.  The low point of the clubhead on the target line is the common point from where I aim to propel my left shoulder and left hip away.

That is my current best basic functional model of a golf swing.


 

[virtuoso]

4 hours ago, Hidraw said:

 

Thanks, Coaches,
 

Yes, just try it in the lab (backyard net :)) and here is my report.

The same mechanical princible is applicable to the right-side swing!
Here, unlike the left arm as a lever in the left-side swing, the lever of the right-side swing is difficult to identify.  But with a little bit of imagination, it imust be the line from the left hip to the hands.  External rotation of the right arm during transistion lengthens this lever.

Clearing the left hip, my foot, as if the left hip is in the way.  In fact, the propulsion of the left hip up and away from the target line is indeed a power move creating a g force that leverage the lever of the right-side.  I used to think wrongly that the lumbar spine is the fulcrum for the lower lever, but I now change my mind and view the left hip as a hinge for the right-side lever as it is being propelled.

The motion of the left shoulder and the motion of the left hip, each defines a force plane, an upper plane and a lower plane sharing the target line, the hands and the club are stabilized within this two planes by opposing moments.  The low point of the clubhead on the target line is the common point from where I aim to propel my left shoulder and left hip away.

That is my current best basic functional model of a golf swing.


 

Hidraw, once again, I disagree with the parts above that I think I understand. If you try to swing with the trail hand only and use the left hip to spin it forward, you will not make contact with the ball.

 

However, I am very grateful and flattered that you mentioned me in the same breath as Zitlow, which is the highest compliment that can be given on these forums.

Edited January 19 by virtuoso

[iacas]

7 hours ago, Hidraw said:

The days of conflict management, tribal (departmental) wars, are over for me.

 

For that to truly be true, you wouldn't post at all, and you wouldn't say disagreeable things with subtle little slams in them, like:

 

7 hours ago, Hidraw said:

I am seeking for fundamentals as opposed to minutiaes that promoted for marketing purpose.

 

Also, you don't have a lab.

 

4 hours ago, Hidraw said:

Here, unlike the left arm as a lever in the left-side swing, the lever of the right-side swing is difficult to identify.  But with a little bit of imagination, it imust be the line from the left hip to the hands.  External rotation of the right arm during transistion lengthens this lever.

Clearing the left hip, my foot, as if the left hip is in the way.  In fact, the propulsion of the left hip up and away from the target line is indeed a power move creating a g force that leverage the lever of the right-side.  I used to think wrongly that the lumbar spine is the fulcrum for the lower lever, but I now change my mind and view the left hip as a hinge for the right-side lever as it is being propelled.

The motion of the left shoulder and the motion of the left hip, each defines a force plane, an upper plane and a lower plane sharing the target line, the hands and the club are stabilized within this two planes by opposing moments.  The low point of the clubhead on the target line is the common point from where I aim to propel my left shoulder and left hip away.

That is my current best basic functional model of a golf swing.

 

Yeah… so… I'm with @virtuoso on all of that. #FeelAintReal

[MPStrat]

@Hidraw

 

Just be man enough to admit that you don’t have a lab. You probably don’t even own a lab coat. Don’t even think about going to see Dr Kwon either. We were told by Dr iacas that he can’t hit a low spinner. 
 

 

[Hidraw]

1 hour ago, virtuoso said:

Hidraw, once again, I disagree with the parts above that I think I understand. If you try to swing with the trail hand only and use the left hip to spin it forward, you will not make contact with the ball.

 

However, I am very grateful and flattered that you mentioned me in the same breath as Zitlow, which is the highest compliment that can be given on these forums.

Truly thank you @virtuoso.
Can we not spin the pelvis in a tilt, left hip higher, right hip lower?
 

[Hidraw]

3 minutes ago, MPStrat said:

@Hidraw

 

Just be man enough to admit that you don’t have a lab. You probably don’t even own a lab coat. Don’t even think about going to see Dr Kwon either. We were told by Dr iacas that he can’t hit a low spinner. 
 

 

You people are too serious.  It is my backyard net that I experiment with my swing that I joking call my lab to my friends. Quite a few shanks there in fact.

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, Hidraw said:

You people are too serious.  It is my backyard net that I experiment with my swing that I joking call my lab to my friends. Quite a few shanks there in fact.

We get that. But you’re favoring your feels over measured data, biomechanics/physics, etc.

 

Feels are very real to the golfer and often quite strange compared to what is actually occurring. But they have little place in online discussions unless specifically called out as feels. Nobody else can get in your “feel suit.”

[MPStrat]

18 minutes ago, Hidraw said:

You people are too serious.  It is my backyard net that I experiment with my swing that I joking call my lab to my friends. Quite a few shanks there in fact.

Ya I was just joking. I could not care less about you having a lab and it’s hilarious that it was even mentioned. I laughed out loud when I read the criticism that you don’t have a lab. 

Edited January 19 by MPStrat

[Hidraw]

25 minutes ago, Hidraw said:

Truly thank you @virtuoso.
Can we not spin the pelvis in a tilt, left hip higher, right hip lower?
 

Or I cannot tilt to that low.  Maybe, I do need an active extension of my right arm to lower the right forearm.

[virtuoso]

22 minutes ago, Hidraw said:

Truly thank you @virtuoso.
Can we not spin the pelvis in a tilt, left hip higher, right hip lower?
 

You absolutely can, but that’s not what you said. Hidraw, here is my theory. Trying to turn the golf swing into a simple mechanical assembly of hinges and levers and planes has already been done…..and needn’t be done again. I think if we view the golf swing too much like a mechanical operation instead of a biological operation, we run the risk of missing valuable insights about its true nature.

[Hidraw]

20 minutes ago, iacas said:

We get that. But you’re favoring your feels over measured data, biomechanics/physics, etc.

 

Feels are very real to the golfer and often quite strange compared to what is actually occurring. But they have little place in online discussions unless specifically called out as feels. Nobody else can get in your “feel suit.”

That is a cli·ché, my friend.

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, Hidraw said:

That is a cli·ché, my friend.

Whatever it is it’s not inaccurate.

 

Feels have no almost no place in discussions about what actually occurs.

[Hidraw]

1 minute ago, virtuoso said:

You absolutely can, but that’s not what you said. Hidraw, here is my theory. Trying to turn the golf swing into a simple mechanical assembly of hinges and levers and planes has already been done…..and needn’t be done again. I think if we view the golf swing too much like a mechanical operation instead of a biological operation, we run the risk of missing valuable insights about its true nature.

I agree completely, coach.
The best is to seek congruency between the mental world, the physical world, the theoretical world.
The mental world includes intents, feels, builtin actions like walking and throwing.  
I am still far from that congruency.

[getitdaily]

23 minutes ago, iacas said:

Whatever it is it’s not inaccurate.

 

Feels have no almost no place in discussions about what actually occurs.

I think you need to qualify this statement a bit more. 

 

We don't play with data. Hardly any of us practice with gears type data. 

 

We play with feels. We try to perform what the data says by using feels. 

 

Feels aren't universal. But neither is a singular position in gears. There are desired ranges for the body and club to be in at given stages of the swing. But to say feels have almost no place in discussions about what actually occurs is a bit obtuse...or st least myopic from a viewpoint of someone who has easy access to the data.

 

Heck, even changing a position or pattern to achieve better data is almost always about feels....finding the one that works.

[iacas]

46 minutes ago, getitdaily said:

I think you need to qualify this statement a bit more.

 

I have already.

 

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Feels are very real to the golfer and often quite strange compared to what is actually occurring. But they have little place in online discussions unless specifically called out as feels. Nobody else can get in your “feel suit.”

 

Feels are of essentially no use in a broader discussion involving multiple people and what golfers actually do in the golf swing. Nobody has the same feels, feels within yourself don't even remain the same forever… and everyone has a different history, etc.

 

I taught a student recently (and I have to do some of this myself) to feel like they palmar flex their TRAIL wrist on the backswing and super extend their lead wrist.

 

That's not what you actually do in a golf swing, but imagine how people would (rightfully) react if I came on here to talk about how golfers should "extend their lead wrist and palmar flex their trail wrist so much it was 30° arched." Everyone here would (correctly) point out that such a thing is nowhere near the normal ranges seen from good players.

 

For that student (and a bit so for me), that feel is very real. Feels are of extremely limited use when talking to a broad audience.

 

(That student also knows that we don't actually want to do that, and as he gets better at it, he'll want to back off that feel lest he start actually doing it.)

 

The majority of arguments that occur in "swing theory" type discussions seem to stem from people arguing about feels versus what actually occurs. It's a waste of time. Feels are how virtually every teacher teaches, because human beings are not robots with dials and switches, but conveying your own feels through words is almost entirely pointless. About the only time it matters is when it's clear that it's "your" feel only and that it seems to produce the results that it does right now.

 

Often I'll have a student say "that felt effortless" and you damn well know that moving a 7I 92 MPH requires effort, but you can't go online and say "expend no effort, because that's what Ernie Els swing looks like to me on video and I had a student say that once when he was breaking 80 for the first time, so… yeah! That!"

 

 

The GIF doesn't quite fit but it sprung to mind writing the last sentence and I always chuckle when I see it, so… there it is.

 

Edited January 19 by iacas

[Zitlow]

11 hours ago, virtuoso said:

Hidraw, once again, I disagree with the parts above that I think I understand. If you try to swing with the trail hand only and use the left hip to spin it forward, you will not make contact with the ball.

 

However, I am very grateful and flattered that you mentioned me in the same breath as Zitlow, which is the highest compliment that can be given on these forums.

 

I appreciate that but I didn't come up with these concepts on my own. I'm just sharing some of what I learned from Mike Austin and Mike Dunaway.

 

Mostly Dunaway who condensed Austin's swing down for me into two small specific points on the anatomy. One to trigger the backswing momentum and one to trigger the downswing momentum. 

 

Edited January 20 by Zitlow

[MonteScheinblum]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2NATVGLbv8/?igsh=NzBmMjdhZWRiYQ==

[GoGoErky]

46 minutes ago, MonteScheinblum said:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2NATVGLbv8/?igsh=NzBmMjdhZWRiYQ==

Some slow motion swings to train a movement that’s not natural? 😃

 

 

[MK7Golf21]

feels vs. real. I appreciate the talk of what really happens in the swing and agree feels are the basis for most the arguments on the swing. Got instructors saying leave the hands up and don't pull down to a mass audience and you've got instructors saying to keep the hips passive and throw the club from the top to mass audience. At least that is the main disagreement I see nowadays. Opposite ends of the spectrum in feels.

[MonteScheinblum]

4 minutes ago, MK7Golf21 said:

feels vs. real. I appreciate the talk of what really happens in the swing and agree feels are the basis for most the arguments on the swing. Got instructors saying leave the hands up and don't pull down to a mass audience and you've got instructors saying to keep the hips passive and throw the club from the top to mass audience. At least that is the main disagreement I see nowadays. Opposite ends of the spectrum in feels.

A few comments

 

 Leaving arms up is a feel.  
 

No one that I know of says passive hips, it’s delayed hips.  Two completely different things   Also feels 

 

I say that a lot.  I also say the left hip has to pull back. 

 

It’s not contradictory it’s different people need different  feels to get there.  
 

Different instructors have different approaches to get there.  
 

You’re in a parking lot.  You back out of the space.  You can go left or right, then at the end of the aisle go right or left respectively.  
 

Seems opposite and contradictory, but you end up in the same exit of the parking lot.

 

As opposed to putting it in drive and slamming the gas and going straight because that’s where the exit is and you crash into the car parked nose to nose with you. 

 

 

[MK7Golf21]

14 minutes ago, MonteScheinblum said:

A few comments

 

 Leaving arms up is a feel.  
 

No one that I know of says passive hips, it’s delayed hips.  Two completely different things   Also feels 

 

I say that a lot.  I also say the left hip has to pull back. 

 

It’s not contradictory it’s different people need different  feels to get there.  
 

Different instructors have different approaches to get there.  
 

You’re in a parking lot.  You back out of the space.  You can go left or right, then at the end of the aisle go right or left respectively.  
 

Seems opposite and contradictory, but you end up in the same exit of the parking lot.

 

As opposed to putting it in drive and slamming the gas and going straight because that’s where the exit is and you crash into the car parked nose to nose with you. 

 

 

 

yea I agree. Tiger in that famous Butch video did say he felt like he swung his arms down and his hips didn't move. He also said that he felt the bottom of the arc at the ball, not before it or after which is another unique feel to him. They did say in the video say numerous times it was just feels and not reality though both Butch and Tiger.

[MonteScheinblum]

4 minutes ago, MK7Golf21 said:

 

yea I agree. Tiger in that famous Butch video did say he felt like he swung his arms down and his hips didn't move. He also said that he felt the bottom of the arc at the ball, not before it or after which is another unique feel to him. They did say in the video say numerous times it was just feels and not reality though both Butch and Tiger.

Yep

 

In addition when the data, the feels from great players and results on the lesson tee all align…it’s probably a pretty good idea.

[getitdaily]

 

 

[Hilts1969]

18 hours ago, iacas said:

We get that. But you’re favoring your feels over measured data, biomechanics/physics, etc.

 

Feels are very real to the golfer and often quite strange compared to what is actually occurring. But they have little place in online discussions unless specifically called out as feels. Nobody else can get in your “feel suit.”

 

Has he put on a little Xmas weight? 

[golf-RN]

19 hours ago, iacas said:

 

I have already.

 

 

Feels are of essentially no use in a broader discussion involving multiple people and what golfers actually do in the golf swing. Nobody has the same feels, feels within yourself don't even remain the same forever… and everyone has a different history, etc.

 

I taught a student recently (and I have to do some of this myself) to feel like they palmar flex their TRAIL wrist on the backswing and super extend their lead wrist.

 

That's not what you actually do in a golf swing, but imagine how people would (rightfully) react if I came on here to talk about how golfers should "extend their lead wrist and palmar flex their trail wrist so much it was 30° arched." Everyone here would (correctly) point out that such a thing is nowhere near the normal ranges seen from good players.

 

For that student (and a bit so for me), that feel is very real. Feels are of extremely limited use when talking to a broad audience.

 

(That student also knows that we don't actually want to do that, and as he gets better at it, he'll want to back off that feel lest he start actually doing it.)

 

The majority of arguments that occur in "swing theory" type discussions seem to stem from people arguing about feels versus what actually occurs. It's a waste of time. Feels are how virtually every teacher teaches, because human beings are not robots with dials and switches, but conveying your own feels through words is almost entirely pointless. About the only time it matters is when it's clear that it's "your" feel only and that it seems to produce the results that it does right now.

 

Often I'll have a student say "that felt effortless" and you damn well know that moving a 7I 92 MPH requires effort, but you can't go online and say "expend no effort, because that's what Ernie Els swing looks like to me on video and I had a student say that once when he was breaking 80 for the first time, so… yeah! That!"

 

 

The GIF doesn't quite fit but it sprung to mind writing the last sentence and I always chuckle when I see it, so… there it is.

 

Very well said!

[MK7Golf21]

21 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Yep

 

In addition when the data, the feels from great players and results on the lesson tee all align…it’s probably a pretty good idea.

I like hearing about feels as well, can’t really make changes in the swing without extreme feels most of the time, at least initially. It’s just mistaking feels for what everyone should do which is what I see in this thread. 
 

I remember when I got back into the game years back, was like 2010. I was hitting pushes as my miss because I caught onto the whole swing out to right field thing. Went to an instructor who was a John Jacob’s guy and I showed him my miss. He told me to leave my arms up and turn into the shot. The next balls were penetrating and perfectly straight. What it did was shift my hands more out and brought the path more left. 
 

I don’t use those feels anymore because I don’t hit it right but it did help me at the time. I tend to lean towards tigers feel of more arms now for various reasons in my swing. 

[Hidraw]

On 1/18/2024 at 8:48 AM, Hidraw said:

I know, I know.  Acceleration vectors are difficult to see.  But ton of poor, irrelevant and harmful conclusions can be reached by analyzing data too.

I like this research paper a lot 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761476/

It is stated there that the instantaneous radius of curvature of the hub path (hand path) is minimum at impact.
How do you conclude from that data?

 

Before the thread dies, I just want to wrapup an open issue of the "feel" of @Righty to Lefty about stopping the handle late in the downswing and the reality of what "really" happened according to research data in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761476/




The authors derived force, acceleration, velocity at the hands from sequences of snapshots in the downswing of 4 golfers of varying handicap.  Their Figure 6 as depicted above shows the tangential force (along the hand path) and normal force (perpendicular to the hand path).  We could observe near impact that there is and abrupt action that diminishes the tangential force to zero and increase the normal force to peaks.  @Righty to Lefty may interpret this as stop the handle, but in fact the handle still moving while the direction of acceleration changes.

 

[Hidraw]

On 1/19/2024 at 9:43 PM, virtuoso said:

You absolutely can, but that’s not what you said. Hidraw, here is my theory. Trying to turn the golf swing into a simple mechanical assembly of hinges and levers and planes has already been done…..and needn’t be done again. I think if we view the golf swing too much like a mechanical operation instead of a biological operation, we run the risk of missing valuable insights about its true nature.

This is to continue on @virtuoso's valuable comment about how I should organize my swing thoughts.  
 

As a passenger in an airliner, I certainly want the pilots in the cockpit to focus on high-level intent - go up, down, left, right, etc…. instead of mechanical minutiae like the motion of rudders, ailerons, horizontal stabilizers, etc.  Whereas an action like turning the airliner left may involve coordinated movement of several mechanical control surfaces that are accomplished by mechanical or electronic circuitry and should be encapsulated or shielded from the thoughts of the pilots so that they can focus on pertinent  and very critical tasks, like making sure that the passengers can breath,  that are still quite complicated requiring rigorous training scheme.
 

This should be applicable for developing golfers in learning golf swing.  Where advanced golfers may have a complete abstraction for a golf swing to “ just hit the ball”, a developing golfer may need to go down below an encapsulating level to monitor and refine the necessary sequence of actions but should not go too deep to the level of various minute actions of body components.  That lowest  biomechanical level should be the concerns of mechanics for an airliner or golf teaching professionals for golf swing.
 

My previous traditional swing thought was that the downswing consisted of two phases - transition and release.  But from this research paper, there are actually three phases for a downswing of a proficient golfer as differentiated from the different trajectories of the center of curvature of the hub path as shown in the copied picture from the paper below.
 

Now that requires a bit of thinking and data analysis to derive to a golfer thoughts and succinct actions.  Of course, details are omitted such as not allowing slack in the system, etc. But let’s have a good sketch first before further refining.  My rough sketch consist of three sequential actions

Golf Swing
= Swing the Torso → Swing the Arms → Swing the Club
= TILT → TUG → THROW
=  ?..….?

Now, I think this should be a good basis for discussions and suggestions.

I do not know about the TILT but to me the TUG and THROW surely invoke intrinsic capabilities and actions of a human being in dealing with external objects.  Or the TILT is just tug backward  like we could do to a tree branch over our back, and where the TUG is to tug downward and forward.  Come to think of it, THROW here is to tug upward, so we are tugging the club all the way in our downswing but there are certainly three distinct phases of tugging.

(Sorry for the change in fonts, I compose the post offline and do not know how to fix the fonts)

Edited January 22 by Hidraw

[iacas]

7 hours ago, Hidraw said:

Their Figure 6 as depicted above shows the tangential force (along the hand path) and normal force (perpendicular to the hand path).  We could observe near impact that there is and abrupt action that diminishes the tangential force to zero and increase the normal force to peaks.  @Righty to Lefty may interpret this as stop the handle, but in fact the handle still moving while the direction of acceleration changes.

 

The "abrupt" action is the clubhead kicking out, and the golfer remaining to hold onto the grip of the club. This is the same thing that we saw years ago (maybe around the time of this paper by Nesbit) when golfers were being told by several golf instructors to "go normal" or to "try to pull the grip off the club." They mistook literally holding onto the grip of the club strongly enough to counter-act the outward pulling force of the club's COG with the golfer actively pulling inward (they are, so much as their arms remain in their shoulder sockets and their grip on the club doesn't slip).

 

It's not really like a "braking" in the opposite direction, nor is it something you're consciously doing, what, less than 0.03 seconds before impact.

 

I wrote earlier about the pointless nature of trying to discuss "feels" in a world where we can measure and do other things. So, I'm not going to get into that. Problems arise when others try to communicate their feels as if they're reality… like with this topic. The arms do not drop with gravity, and you aren't trying to "brake" the club. You may feel as if you do, and if that improves things for your swing at this moment, great. But we can't get into your "feel suit" to see what that does, so… it ends up being pointless in the best scenarios.

[Zitlow]

8 hours ago, Hidraw said:

Before the thread dies, I just want to wrapup an open issue of the "feel" of @Righty to Lefty about stopping the handle late in the downswing and the reality of what "really" happened according to research data in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761476/




The authors derived force, acceleration, velocity at the hands from sequences of snapshots in the downswing of 4 golfers of varying handicap.  Their Figure 6 as depicted above shows the tangential force (along the hand path) and normal force (perpendicular to the hand path).  We could observe near impact that there is and abrupt action that diminishes the tangential force to zero and increase the normal force to peaks.  @Righty to Lefty may interpret this as stop the handle, but in fact the handle still moving while the direction of acceleration changes.

 

 

Don't send that to Dustin Johnson.