I just reviewed my earlier thoughts on planes and it looks like I had most of it wrong.
I was watching a couple of videos by Athletic Motion Golf and they measure pros and amateurs and take a look at the differences between the two. And there are differences.
Let me go back to the the various planes. We have the shoulders that swing at a plane that basically intersects the ball. It's inclined to the ground. This angle is important. Too flat or too upright and you have issues getting your hands back to the ball. Oh, you'll do it, but the ball direction and speed will not be optimal. More on this in a moment.
In the prior post on planes I said that the arms which are below the shoulder plane will move up to join this plane and will follow it down as the down swing occurs.
That is not correct.
What Athletic Motion Golf (AMG) says is happening is that the arms will stay in their plane. It is more vertical that the shoulder plane. And it will cross the shoulder plane going back and coming down.
The cross occurs as the arms get over your shoulder on the backswing.
Now the next point is quite interesting. At the start of the down swing we have some minor lower body movement, then the arms will cross back under the shoulder plane. The shoulders will not move much until the arms are moving pretty good.
When the shoulders have rotated back to the setup position the hands will be close to the right thigh and moving into the hitting area. Basically the hands are close to their lowest point to the ground.
But note that the arms are well below the shoulder plane.
One more word on this. Since we are for the most part just moving arms, we can do it briskly, develop some speed (see next post!) and keep the body as a solid support structure to the arms.
The arms drop vertically and by that I mean straight down. There is very little angle towards the ball initially. There does seems to be a "corner" that aligns the arms to the ball. Remember that the club face is going to rotate at impact and the club has to be a bit below the impact plane. If it's not, then an adjustment will be made and inconsistencies will occur!
The hips and such will not be leading the arms through the hitting area. They are turning as the hands go by.
AMG shows that this is what the pros do. Amateurs on the other hand do other things. For example let me talk about a guy I play with a lot.
He lines up the shoulder and arm planes and keeps them together. As he comes down, the shoulders drive the direction of the arms. He hits a very consistent left to right ball flight. The shoulders drive the arms above the proper plane and leave the club face open. So the ball starts left as a pull, then the ball curves back to the right due to the club face.
If he would move the arms first, then shoulders this may all change. I think he'd hit everything straight.
One more example is another friend who has a shoulder plane that in the backswing flattens to become almost parallel to the ground. It is almost as if he has stood up straight and lost all of his initial posture.
Now what does he do to get back to the ball? He has a big problem and it is resolved into a characteristic dance of adjustments to get the club on the ball. It's costing him a lot of club speed. His dance is required to get his body out of the path to the ball.
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Ok, I'm playing with this in the backyard. Note to self, it's really easy to get winded by swinging at top speed 20 times! It's very difficult to drop the arms. I'll have to try it at the range.
The other issue is to see impact as a dandelion head. If I do this, there is a lot less club manipulation and the speed seems to go up. I'm encouraged about this aspect.
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This is long enough and we will see what happens when it's put into practice.
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