Swing 5.1: Lag and major breakthrough

Well tried to work on lag and wasn't happening.  So instead I just figured I'd try to work on correct positioning after swing and the lag would eventually come.  So tried to really cross arms and have lateral bend.

Then today for some reason while hitting balls with my son and while working on rhythm I just imagined dragging my right palm on the mat to the left of the ball.  This somehow worked for me and immediately my ball flight was higher straighter and the sound at contact was better.  My shots were much more consistent.

This was confirmed by video and for the first time I actually had lag and my hands were in front of the clubhead at impact.

hands and shoulders at same level.  Wrists still too active at this point.

Club parallel to ground lag is real good.

Hands in front of clubhead.  Head not coming up as much.  Hips should be turned more.

Need more release and hips should be turned more.

Hips are still not turned and release is not as good so lateral bend is bad so slight chicken wing.

So I gave up the release and lateral bend for better lag.  Well I can only concentrate on one thing at a time but the ball flight was much straighter and swing is more powerful with less effort.  Ball wasn't going as far and stopped drawing.  I had a slight fade in fact.  But was very straight.  I did loose some distance but it might have been because of the wind or that I wasn't swinging as hard since I was trying to groove the new feeling.  Next step is to combine lag, release, and lateral bend.

Swing 5.0 beta: Lag

Read Kelvin's series about lag (http://www.aroundhawaii.com/lifestyle/health_and_fitness/2011-10-pga-tour-clubhead-lag-part-1.html).  Thought about right elbow positioning and being behind or in front of the right hip.  Mine was definitely behind so I'm thinking about getting the elbow into my stomach and not my side.  Going to try this on the range tomorrow.

Swing 5.0 beta: Right hand position right after impact

My swing is slowly coming together piece by piece.

• Chicken wings are gone!  This was mainly a rhythm problem and not a try to keep your arms straight problem.  Shorter backswing and then really accelerate after impact cured this.
• Spine angle getting better.  My head is still coming up at impact but bending knees through impact helps get my hips out of the way so I can bend my spine sideways.
• Casting.  Lag is getting better because of better rhythm.  Starting to really feel the whip and acceleration of the club.

Then I watched more videos of Tiger and Angel Cabrerra and all the other pros swings and they all had a right hand turned over and released after impact.  Mine wasn't as released.  So this is the next piece of the puzzle that I'm working on.

Right hand cupped

Right hand more turned over, arms straight, shoulders not hunched

This just looks ugly

Finally starting to look like a real follow through

My shoulders are more inclined so that means that my spine angle is conserved.  Wrists are fully crossed.  It's amazing how just a slight change can make the swing look correct or completely lame.  Best part about this is that ball flight was also good nice high slight draw.


Current swing thought to get swing grooved:

• Swing with the legs, relaxing arms try to feel acceleration and whip with rotating hips and lagging arms, quiet wrists.
• then introduce head and side bend at impact
• then introduce release with crossing wrists after impact

Don't forget on backswing to keep hands low and wrists quiet.

I'm slowly bringing this swing home.  Feels really good to finally have something that looks correct.  The only way I could have gotten here was with lots of video and experimentation, and of course lessons when I get stuck.

Next thing to work on is lag.  Research to do:  getting right elbow tucked in more, which will hopefully also allow me to maintain my spine angle.

Rhythm

Saw a great video of Tiger Woods practicing in 2000.  His rhythm is amazing!  I need to copy this.  Just slow backswing, downswing and then acceleration at impact and follow through.  I’m going to keep this in the camera to look at the range!

Bent knees

Well the lesson got my swing going in the right direction but my spine angle was still a problem at impact, I was standing up and pulling my hips in.  So then I started to push my butt out at impact which looked more correct but felt weird.  And then I thought that I should try bending my knees more or just squatting down like how most of the pros do it.  I tried it and it helped a lot because with my knees bent at impact it allows my hips to get out of the way more and I can better maintain my spine angle.  But I’m so used to thrusting up with my hips at impact.  This is wrong now that I look at it and I’ve been trying to retrain my body to keep my left hip down and my left leg bent at impact.  I need to work more on the spine angle but this has really helped.  Ball flight is also really nice.  More like Mathias’ ball flight nice high slight draws that go far.  Swing feels very different.  I’m slowly working on each piece and learning how they all fit together.  It’s funny how you have to at some point look at each part of the body and see if it’s doing the right thing.  Then you start all over again.  But swing looking much more powerful and finally on the way to being correct….I hope!

Swing 5.0 alpha: Lesson

Turns out that my 4.0 swing was a completely false.  Basically I found out through extensive video analysis that swinging with and without a ball changes your swing completely.  My no ball swing looked pretty good but I couldn't hit a ball that way.  The clubface was way too open at impact.  So the swing was fundamentally wrong.  So I was out of ideas and took a lesson with Julien to look for new ideas.

Lesson
He told me that I was keeping my weight on the right side much at impact which is why my ball pushed to the right.  I needed to shift my weight more to my left side.  Well I was originally doing this to get in the right impact position, head back.  He had me hit leaning downhill and just turn my shoulders.  He had me look at Tom Watson’s DVD.  This didn’t make too much sense to me at first but then eventually I saw my swing change for the better.  I’m not sure how this worked but my impact position was better.  The other big change he made was on my back swing and de activating my wrists.  They were way too active.  So my back swing is much shorter and larger.  I almost feel like I’m not even breaking my wrists on the back swing but when I look at video I am even more than 90 degrees.  Video just doesn’t lie.  What this also did was force me to accelerate through my swing and get me my arms straight with the club during follow through.  Chicken wing is disappearing!  He also had my backswing more around my body instead of straight up.  So swing changed for the better.  A lesson really helped me with the breakthrough even though right after the lesson it didn’t seem like it.

Before                                                                         After

wrists way too active and too close in to body

wrists less active and farther away from body

Not too much difference here

Impact

Also almost identical

A little chicken  wing

Little less chicken wing

And even more chicken wing and weight on the right side

Less chicken wing and more on the left side