Chisag's Tip Of The Day #24

[chisag]

#20 It’s How You Start Your Swing

… I am a firm believer that the golf swing is an active athletic movement. While there are certainly elements of the swing that can be broken down into positions and it can be helpful for beginners without other sports growing up to fall back on positions, concentrating on the swing as a whole is usually much better for most players. So that out of the way I want to break down the beginning of a swing and how it effects the swing as a whole.

… Most understand if you address the ball with an open stance you have a very good chance of hitting a fade or a slice because you have put your body in a position to cut across the ball at impact. But you find less information on how you start to take the club away from the ball and how much of an effect it has on how you make contact. An athletic swing takes advantage of the levers in the wrist and the body putting those levers in a position to release through impact. There is no body on an Iron Byron robot, just a hinging of the levers. Of course we are not machines and most cannot generate the kind of speed an Iron Byron can so we need some help from the body. “Some” help is the operative word because so many over use their bodies in an attempt to create power.

… Blending your movements with the hands/wrists, arms, shoulders, hips and feet are key to all athletic speed movements like pitching, hitting, throwing a football or serving a tennis ball. If you just lift the club with your hands and wrists without any body support, you will just be slapping at the ball with little power and timing becomes the primary factor in contact and accuraccy. If you just turn your body and take the hands/wrists along for the ride without loading those levers or blending their loading with the movement of the body you will not take advantage of the levers/speed the hands/wrists can produce.

… If you get down on one knee with your body facing the target and without turning your body attempt to throw a golf ball as far as you can, you will get some whip from the levers but full speed is limited. If you pre cock your wrists and hands and then just turn your body and attempt to throw a golf ball like a Shot Put without any use of the wrists/hands you will lose the whip and produce an even weaker throw. Now blending the two together and turning your body and cocking your hands/wrists you will have your longest and most accurate throw. QB’s use this kneeling drill often to make sure their hand/wrist/body sequence is working together.

… How you begin your takeaway determines how your club head will be moving at impact. It would be too long a post to address both extremes and to be honest I would rather see someone just lifting and slapping with decent use of their hand/wrists levers so I am gonna concentrate on dragging the club away with the body and attempting to generate speed through a big turn back and through without ever using the levers Iron Byron uses in your hands/wrists. I never like telling someone when to start hinging their wrists in their backswing, as long as they do it naturally for their particular swing. So here is a drill for the player that has never felt that “effortless power” they see from an Amy Yang (video below). Notice how she releases her hand/wrist levers just after impact. Some might call this flipping the club which isn’t really a bad thing if it happens after impact.

Using a mid iron, pick your target and take your normal stance … but then turn your feet a full 45* away from the target. Now address the ball and don’t worry about hip or shoulders positions as you will have to turn back unnaturally to address the ball. Now just swing the club back and try and hit the ball at your target keeping your balance to the finish. You will have very limited use of your body and it should feel like you hinging and unhinging your hands/wrists and flipping, so for some it will be the first time you will feel what actually releasing the club is like. I had students describe the feeling as very scary because the felt like they had no control and the club was moving too fast to which I relied “Welcome to a golf swing”!

… Even if you are relatively happy with your swing it ain’t a bad drill to make sure you are using your speed producing levers correctly. Give it a try and let me know if it helped you.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1s-VR1kXFc