Monte Scheinblum is a golf instructor. He's had some fame in the long driving world and has some interesting videos on YouTube and Instagram. Worth a look if you golf.
One of his drills is called the "Hinge, no turn and cast drill." To perform this you try to cock/hinge your wrists without taking the club back and then try to cast, which is to open the wrist angle as hard as you can.
What actually happens is that you will make a full shoulder turn by just cocking the wrists and when you try to cast, you will end up in the perfect impact position.
Monte's point in this and other things is that the body is incredibly reactive. It will do things to make sure we don't fall over (most of the time!) and get a club on a golf ball from very strange starting points. You can't anticipate what is going to happen, it just does what it needs to.
I've mentioned what 88% of the brain is doing while we think with the 12% left over, and it's how to do things very automatically. It's learned. Watch a two month old whose hands are all over the map as he learns to control them. It is not long and he will be able to grab and hold and reach and all that good stuff. But initially it's all training.
But early development is not high on my list of things to think about. Side note: an agendum is a list of things to do. Agenda is plural! Multiple lists as it were. Is there a Latin word for a list of things to think about?
So, back to golf. If we want to have a better swing then I think (and Monte thinks) we can't worry about the end positions. We want to learn the things that will make the body react to get us to the proper impact position. With this in mind we have the drill mentioned above.
I can attest that it works quite well. But it's not perfect. It's fine for irons, but the driver is still not where I want it to be. So let me dwell on that a moment.
The drill does a couple of things. By trying to cast the club we put a lot of effort into accelerating the right hand. That causes the body to brace against this. The arms move against the brace and we arrive at impact. The stress on using early movement of the arms is promoted by others instructors and I think the foundation for it is accurate. The body has actually started to move a bit too, but the reaction is due to arm movement and that provides the majority of the total reaction. And as I said, this gets you to a nice place with the arms and body synced up and happy and the ball is well launched.
I've just been in the backyard doing some experiments. With a sand wedge I can easily move the arms fast enough that my body can't get ahead of it. This is what I want.
In the drill it seems that there is a large component of moving the club down and not forwards. This also does not require the body to move forward, but maintains a balance. Trying to move the club towards the ball or target seems to activate the body to move in those directions and then we are out of sync.
What I suspect I do with the driver is not move the arms forward, but I'm trying to move the club head around. When I do this the body can get ahead and sometimes to the right and now I am doomed. Moving the club head and not the arms is not what I want to do. I want to move the arms and leave the club behind. That should freeze the body and allow me to be in position at impact.
I tried this in front of my swing mirror and it seems to work.
If my arms weigh 20 pounds and the body 200, then I can be in balance if the arms are moving 10 times the body speed; we have mass * speed to be equal for both parts. If there is an imbalance what will happen? Will the body get in front and keep going? We then stagger towards the fairway. If the arms are too fast, then the body falls backwards? I'm not sure about this stuff. I'll have to try somethings.
However from all of the above, I don't think the model of the body pulling the arms around is correct. We want to launch the arms just a bit ahead of the direction change by the body. The arm movement will force the body to brace and become stable. There will not be a lot of twist provided by the lower body.
There was a drill to hit balls with your feet together. That makes some sense as we want balanced forces. Trying this with irons and driver ought to point out some answers to me. Of course it's not that simple as the swing for an iron and one for the driver are quite different... Sheesh, this is getting complex. But let me try this.
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After Monday's round: using the wrist cock to get to a full swing position. Then casting with the hands. Feeling the pressure shift to right foot on back swing and left foot early in forward swing. Trying to take as much or more time with the long clubs as with the short ones. Best ball striking in a long time -- maybe forever. Long and straight.
Curious about if the hips are staying level or going up in back swing and then falling forward to left in downswing. See Athletic Motion Golf video on "stop slide part 1".
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Tuesday:
Trying to make a short backswing. That is, when the shoulders stop moving, the arms do too. Hit three shots like this and very happy with the solidity of them.
Wednesday:
Shot continue to be very good. Scoring ok, putts are not dropping, but there are a lot of easy pars to be had.
I find another Monte video where he talks about the drill for the driver. In this we can cock the wrists to get the backswing, but instead of trying to cast, we try to move the arm off the chest. We need to get the arms moving fast as we have to catch the hips. If the hips are too far in front of them, then we will have to slow them (stall) to wait for the arms to show up. It's not wrong to be slow with the hips and think about being fast with the arms.
I was at the range today. The object was to use the wrist cock and cast motion for all the irons up to the 7 iron, then use the "get the arm off the chest" drill for longer clubs. I'm also making sure that when the shoulders stop moving that the arms stop too.
Ball contact was very good and ball height was a lot higher. No more low 4 woods, everything towered.
I went to the course and played the par three course. This was all irons. The only greens I missed were due to hitting it over greens. I was very accurate and shot shape was excellent. Club ball interactions was of the highest order. Even the divots were objects of wonder.
I saw a graph today of the various parts of the body and how and when they move. The pro didn't more hips or torso or arms faster than the amateurs. His club head speed was 30% faster, but it came later in the swing and the highest speed was at impact. Both of the amateurs were slowing down at impact.
Interesting the amateurs' torsos and hips continued to move after impact while the pro was happy to stop them. The hips stopped first, then torso and then the arms whipped through. Also of note is that the arms and torso speeds were identical until the arms slowed and the club head kept getting faster.
I may play late tomorrow and see if I can take this to the course. Updates soon!
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