Winter Golf Plan – Swing vs Fitness Improvement

| November 12, 2012

Winter Golf Plan – swing vs fitness improvement

The ‘typical’ golf swing requires you to shift weight over the back leg and rotate, and then shift weight to the front leg and rotate. While you do this your spine must not straighten out from its forward bend, nor fall back towards target going back or away from target going through. Your wrists should be able to set an angle and maintain it until impact, and your shaft should be on or slightly under the shaft plane at least from halfway down until impact.

Now if you cannot do all of this, you have fitness/restriction issues and should spend hour upon hour in the gym – or so the folks at TPI and other golf fitness organizations will tell us.

But here are the ACTUAL PROBLEMS:

Suppose you shift a bit too much before starting to turn/rotate? ‘They’ll’ say you swayed! Same move on the downswing – a slide! Wouldn’t you be able to calibrate your backswingshift-and-turn amount more accurately if it was completed during the set-up phase?

If you lift your upper body on the downswing, you’ve ‘early extended’ and apparently 75% of golfers do it! ‘They’ claim it’s because you cannot do a ‘deep overhead squat’ (ie your legs are not strong enough). MGSS says naturally if you tilt your left/lead shoulder going back (which ‘they’ want – dire things can happen if your shoulder plane is shallow), your body HAS to find a way for the trail shoulder to drop down during the downswing, so your spine might have to straighten up! AND, if your right/trail side is lower at address and at impact, why raise it at all and then have to rely on perfect timing to drop it precisely!

AS to the ‘wrist angle’ requirement? It’s just asking for trouble. Why bother with wrist set going back? Do you hit the ball on the backswing? What if the wrists could set NATURALLY, WHEN REQUIRED, during the downswing?

Finally, what is the guarantee that after one became loose in the tight muscles and strong in the weak ones, worked on power and speed, one would be able to deliver the club to the correct spot on the ball at the correct time?

So, it’d be nice if half the visitors to this blog worked on fitness and the other half on making a good MGSS full-swing, and we could compare notes at the beginning of the summer of 2013!

Details of the ‘twelve most common swing faults’ in the new ‘fitness’ section of this blog.

Giving a Golf Lesson – the danger of partial solutions

| November 12, 2012

Giving a Golf Lesson – the danger of partial solutions

Recently observed a friend and fellow golf-instructor give a golf lesson. The student said that recently his ball striking was all over the place. The instructor said, “I will give you one simple solution that’ll instantly bring the joy back into your game.” The student was using a 6 iron, and lo and behold, all 3 shots he hit after making a simple set-up change were great.

The solution? The instructor said, “You have a weak posture.” (Similar to the picture below). He had the student bend forward from the hips more, without a slump in the spine, and bend the knees less – instantly better ball flight!

What happened was that the golfer’s spine now suddenly began moving on a more vertical plane (as his upper body bent forward more), so naturally his arms and shaft approached the ball at a steeper angle and could lift the ball off the ground with greater ease.

However, what about when the golfer uses a longer club when excessive steepness will not help? How about when swing timing gets messed up as it often does when there is only one opportunity to get it right, as on the golf course?

The golfer’s backswing looked like the picture below in terms of the left side of his body being lower than the right, and his right wrist and elbow being bent so that they cannot easily straighten out while still allowing the club to arrive at the ball FROM THE INSIDE.

Moral: partial solutions work for some people some of the time in some situations.

The Minimalist Golf Swing System – have you GOT IT?

| November 3, 2012

MGSS – have you GOT IT? Many people get into a slightly closed set-up and think they’ve GOT IT!

NOT SO. There is much more to MGSS, and the RIGHT-SIDE-DOWN of the backswing is as – important as – or more important than – the SPINAL ROTATION of the set-up.

Sometimes making all the same movements while standing nearer – as one does for the pitch shot – is a good way to make sure you GET all the elements of the MGSS full-swing, without leaving anything out.

See the video ‘It’s NOT MGSS – The Pitch Shot’ in the golf videos section of this blog to understand it a bit better.

If a golfer does not follow the few basic must-haves of the MGSS, she/he easily reverts to old bad habits. In the case of the golfer below, the old habit is to start with a backward bend of the right wrist along with a drop down of the left side of the body.

This drop-down of the left side allows the right side to lift, and allows the right elbow to bend pointing backwards (instead of down). Now the right elbow cannot straighten out – FROM THE INSIDE – in time for the downswing, and the golfer arrives at the ball from the OUTSIDE, and OVER-THE-TOP.

The moral: TWIST enough for the shot to be made, keep the right side DOWN throughout the backswing, and start the backswing from the top of the left arm!

The Ubiquitous Over-the-Top Swing – even the Pros make it!

| October 28, 2012

The Ubiquitous Over-the-Top Swing

While in the process of compiling the Titleist Performance Institute’s 12 most common swing faults for a blog post, decided to discuss the over-the-top subject first, simply because TPI claims that most amateurs have it, and that’s what differentiates the good golfers from the not-so-good.

The TPI definition (one of 12 definitions for OTT, apparently), from their Level 1 course is, “the club is thrown outside of the intended swing plane, with the club head approaching the ball in an out-to-in motion”.

So, as the MGSSystem believes that for every un-desired club position exists a body-position presenting the club incorrectly, the OTT position should be seen just pre-impact, at which stage it becomes apparent that OTT is indeed a universal disease, not one which is biased and afflicts only us ‘lesser’ mortals. The professionals may not be as overtly OTT as others, and definitely not early in their downswings, but they are OTT too.

If you go by the MGSS definition of OTT, which requires the club to be on the lead/left arm plane and both the trail/right thigh and shoulder to be behind the lead/left one.

Look at how the pros leave themselves no room to straighten out the right arm, leave alone let it roll over for that baby draw. It’s only that they have quick (and not always reliable) last-minute reflexes to change club path with ‘feel’, and enough strength to bludgeon the ball into submission and so not realize they could be consistently better.

Now look at the picture below with club on ‘left arm plane’, and both right thigh and shoulder ‘behind’ left (the right thigh could be slightly further behind). All of this HAPPENS without the golfer’s awareness, just by making the MGS full-swing set-up and backswing.

Club Positions vs Body Positions – The age-old debate

| October 27, 2012

Club Positions vs Body Positions – The age-old debate

When assessing a golf swing, should one look at club positions or body positions? This is a battle that has been raging for as long as people have been swinging!

‘Swing the clubhead’, ‘swing on the shaft plane’, ‘don’t let the shaft be laid-off or across’, ‘make sure the clubface is square at the top’ are all club-positions thoughts a golfer might use.

‘Shift weight’, ‘rotate your spine’ ‘rotate your lead forearm’, ‘don’t have a flat shoulder plane’, ‘the spine should not early-extend on the downswing’ are some of the many body-position swing ideas that are commonly used.

Many teachers and players mix-and-match the two groups at will, usually based on subjective experience.

If one understands that all body movement takes place at the ‘joints’, and only a combination of body movements can position the club in space, one will never ever use club-position descriptions again. A ‘joint’, incidentally, is a place where 2 bones meet, and movement ONLY takes place at the joints. The important joints of the golf swing are the shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, hip, knee and ankle.

A case in point: a student recently said, “Whichever method I follow, yours or any other, I am always laid-off half-way to the top.”

Hellooo! The MGSS never uses such loose language as ‘laid off’. In anatomy it is called a medial rotation of the left (lead) arm, and is caused ONLY because the golfer had no MGS ‘twist’ at the start of the backswing, so had no room for the left arm to lift up (of its own volition, with no help from the golfer) inside (green lines second pic from left) the target line! The shaft lifts up ‘outside’ the target line, and so the lead/left arm must do something to bring the club back into what the brain senses is the approximately correct direction for a reasonable attempt at connecting with the ball!

From short fade to long baby-draw – Case Study for teachers and players

| October 17, 2012

From short fade to long baby-draw a Case Study for teachers and players.

See the youtube video with the same title for details. Also on this blog in the ‘golf videos’ section.

Posted this series of pictures on two professional teachers blogs asking members to comment on what this student should do to go from his current situation where he consistently slices the ball with a big loss of distance to a long, superb trajectory, minimally curving back baby-draw.

The only five responses from two facebook-pages of golf-teachers-organizations were:

1. Check the fundamentals – grip, ball-position, alignment. Are they weak, strong, open, closed. Set up for a draw and have the student hit short shots off a tee. The student should feel,, see and expect something different.

2. Weight forward, handle forward, clubface open to target and closed to path.

3. The body is spinning on the back leg which has become the axis of rotation, with weight falling through that back leg and, as that happens, the club face opens causing a fade. You can see this in the 3rd pic. Get him to move the weight forward creating a better axis of rotation.

4. I would work on face position at impact which is related to the players present grip positions, and work on a shallower swing plane to change the path.

5. Have you done a KCA for this player to see if he has any physical limitations which prevent him from moving onto the left side. Could be he has a problem with his thoracic spine which prevents him from loading up in the backswing thus causing him to fall back through impact.

MGSS responses:

  1. Just as knowing one’s A, B, C’s does not convert to writing an essay in Newsweek or The Economist, the set-up or ‘fundamentals’ are only the starting point and do not convert to ‘poetry in motion’ in the golf swing – many things can go wrong in-swing, despite perfect starting positions, and the fundamentals are only the tip of the iceberg.
  2. Weight forward, handle forward to my mind is a delofting of a club – why then bother to carry 14? It’s ‘settling’ and will not always work if joint positions at the top still force the golfer to come over the top, spin around on the trail leg and have a clubface that is opening (present continuous tense) through the impact area.
  3. This analysis is great but once again, the golfer would surely ‘load’ through if they could. They usually cannot because their typical or traditional golf backswing has made the right side of their trunk higher and rotated away from target. Now the golfer has to make 3 independent moves in quick succession (rotate trunk forward, drop trail side down, drop arms down) and when there is no time the poor golfer can but come ‘over-the-top and spin around on the back leg!
  4. We all want to work on face position at impact – how? even with a strong grip and a decent swing plane (as the golfer in the picture has) it is possible to slice the ball
  5. The Titleist performance Institute lists as the top 4 most commonly seen swing ‘faults’ – early spinal extension, swinging over-the-top, and casting/early release during the backswing, and sway. These, they say are all muscular imbalances. While it is important to be able to assess such imbalances, a set-up and backswing with better positioned body joints can cure all of these 4 faults. So, the golfer must decide – work out every day forever or spend a week learning a more efficient swing!

CONCLUSION – the MGSS does not look at set-up or swing faults at all. Whatever they may be they get sorted out simply with better joint positions.

Ryder Cup 2012 – Forgotten and Forgettable except for the Lesson given to Tiger

| October 17, 2012

The Ryder Cup 2012 – Forgotten and Forgettable

Who are the 45,000 masochists who want to stand frozen in place (no room to even raise an arm), for a couple of hours, on one of only four fairways, to be able to see a maximum of maybe 16 shots hit from that area!

Especially those masochists who are not a minimum of 6’ 5” tall and can thus at least see clearly over the heads of people standing 10 rows deep all around the limited fairways-in-play

Of course, the ambience of a Ryder Cup is awe-inspiring and the approximately 3500 volunteers make moving crowds into a logistical marvel. The Middle-Eastern-inspired club-house architecture is a sight to behold (huge dome, minarets and the name ‘Medinah’ – albeit pronounced differently!). And the ’mums in all their resplendent Fall glory were everywhere, as were the giant old trees in shades of yellow and red.

However, the 2012 Ryder Cup was forgettable and is, by now, surely forgotten.

The most standing-out factor was how Tiger, once again, was a mess. My personal highlight was getting my picture taken next to ‘him’ and telling him not to be so over-the-top with his right shoulder – he always is, and the MGSS philosophy explains that that is the fault of important body-joints not being in good positions at the top!

 

Typical and Atypical situations with respect to the MGSS

| September 24, 2012

Typical and Atypical situations with respect to the MGSS

All ‘typical’ MGSS shots (ie full-swing, pitch/bunker, chip and putt shots) are designed to give a golfer an inside path and wide arc (of both the lead as well as trail arms) during the backswing. Both inside path and width during backswing are concepts based on my years of research which have proved scientifically that these two aspects are important.

So, when a narrower arc is required, in order for the club to arrive steeply at the ball and thus ‘pinch’ the ball, a few minor adjustments must be made.

These are described in the video MGS from Awkward/Unusual Lies in the ‘golf videos’ section of this blog.

The bunker/pitch shot used by the MGSS provides a soft-landing, high shot without significant narrowing of the backswing arc. It may therefore be considered a ‘typical’ MGSS shot. It remains basically the same movement as the full-swing, except that it has reduced distance by cutting out the full-swing downswing body-rotation. It is able to achieve that by having the golfer stand closer to the ball.

With typical MGSS movements and not being required to ‘finish’ (stand-up-and-turn-to-face-target through impact), the chances of hitting a ‘fat’ or ‘skulled’ shot are fairly non-existent.

A video for this has also been posted in the ‘golf videos’ section.

Finally, as of November 2012 you can get an on-line video analysis to see how your MGSS is progressing, PLUS new information, not available in the ebook or website or blog. Email for details/suggestions/questions.

Stack and Tilt and Sergio Garcia’s swing

| September 24, 2012

Stack and Tilt and Sergio Garcia’s swing

The S&T folks named Sergio as someone who exemplifies what S&T is all about, (they show pictures of Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Johnny Miller in their backswings and all of them too have an S&T position halfway or so into their backswings). Even though those golfers did not know they had an S&T position, they all did.

So, Here are some screen shots from a youtube video. Any comments on Sergio’s positions? Let’s see what everyone seeing this has to say? From a swing-plane or joint-position or even color-of-his-apparel perspective!

Stack and Tilt – the good and the not-so-good – In Anatomy

| September 23, 2012

Stack and Tilt – the good and the not-so-good – In Anatomy

A fellow- LPGA Pro who knows of my interest and research in anatomy and golf-specific-biomechanics recently said, “You must see the Charlie Rose interview of the Stack and Tilt guys”.

Also, I’d asked for and received some information from S&T because they are now an LPGA-approved certification provider.

The basic backswing moves of S&T are a ‘extension, a left tilt and rotation of the spine’.

In strictly anatomical terms this means:

  1. The spine is ‘extended’ or straightened backwards (away from the ball/straightened up compared to the forward posture of address)
  2. The trunk/spine is in left lateral flexion (bending sideways towards the left)
  3. The spine is rotated – mainly thoracic and lumbar (because S&T requires a steady head)

S&T have many things absolutely correct, and some quotes from the Charlie Rose interview of 2009:

  1. Shifting weight makes the process more chaotic
  2. S&T makes the clubhead hit the same spot repeatedly
  3. No players have injured themselves in the lower back with S&T
  4. The good players do not like to make swing change, practice what they have and simply throw out the bad shots to chance

The best thing about S&T is the lack of side-to-side movement – even if it looks like a reverse weight shift – which always results in much more solid contact. Another point in the method’s favor is that because of the inside backswing path generated, it is difficult to come over-the-top with the upper body, and thus many injuries are, indeed, prevented. As body-weight stays predominantly on the target side, the club rarely connects the ball on the upswing, thus making crisp contact.

The not-good-in-anatomy factors are that the advocated backswing ‘side-bend’ requires a lateral trunk flexion with the back straightening out of posture. Then at half-way down the golfer should be back in the spinal flexion of address, before once more straightening the back past impact, at the risk of hitting the ground if the second straightening out does not happen in time.

Two factors prevent S&T from being a superior movement:

  1. It is very timing-dependent
  2. It requires a lot of re-routing of several joints. Split second re-routing! The most important ‘joint’ being the spine, which must go from a bend of the left side to a bend of the right at impact. EVERY golfer of the world has to hit the ball with the trail (in this case right) side lower, simply because the right hand is lower at address! A lot of other joints must simultaneously re-route along with the spine when going from one side low to the other side low.

See a screen-shot from the Charlie Rose interview of a former S&T user, which shows how he will require to re-route his right wrist, forearm and upper-arm.

The Minimalist Golf Swing on the other hand, places all major joints in positions from which they need no re-routing to drop the club down correctly for ideal impact.