Further. Straighter. Higher.
Consistently.
One more swing to analyze. Another well-known Indian golfer who has had many victories over the last couple of decades.
See Gaurav Ghei’s swing and rate its efficiency, as an exercise in understanding what makes a golf swing more- or less- prone to inefficiency and, thus, simultaneously to injury.
Click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5lRw-nZl7U
The 50th Hero Indian Open and the swings of the famous golfers who participated in it
This event is one of the major’s of the now very busy and heavy-weight Professional Golf Tour of India. The 50th anniversary saw every leading Indian player participate (except Jeev Milkha Singh). The stars included Arjun Atwal, Shiv Kapur, Daniel Chopra, Anirban Lahiri, Jyoti Randhawa and lots of American, British, Australian and other professionals too.
Watch the first video to get a brief glimpse into the charm of an event at Delhi Golf Club during the winter. Then watch the second to see the swing of Arjun Atwal, India’s only Professional to have won on the US PGA Tour. Learn how to rate a swing for efficiency and to decide whether the swing could have won this week.
How Phil Mickelson- and YOU – can get more consistency
Recently saw a very nice interview with the fitness coach, Sean Cochran, of Phil Mickelson, The Open Championship 2013 winner. [http://www.travelgolf.com/departments/clubhouse/sean-cochran-mickelsons-trainer-qa-1302.htm]
So, wondered if his swing lives up to the fitness improvements his coach has made on him.
Then needed the perfect illustration to explain Phil’s swing – and found it in Phil’s (Cheetham’s, this time!) very simply explained article on the kinematic sequence (a term he has coined) which is more commonly known as the sequential summation of forces (SSF). [http://www.amm3d.com/Portals/0/ArticlesVideos/KinematicSequenceStretchingRidingFanningFinal.pdf]
The world of biomechanists have probably discovered all the MAIN forces that make up a good impact (based on a study of the downswing movement patterns of the best players), but now it’s high time to move on from ‘mechanics’ to ‘bio’ – folks, there is a reason ‘bio’ precedes ‘mechanics’ in the word biomechanics.
So, if you read Phil Cheetham’s article (link above) on ‘stretching’, ‘riding’ and ‘fanning’ (the latter a poor quality sequence), you know that the ‘stretching’ downswing sequence (hips starting before torso) gives the most DISTANCE (ie clubhead speed), followed by ‘riding’ (hips and torso move together at start of downswing). What he did not add is the equally important factor of DIRECTION in the swing, which can only happen with the ‘stretching’ style of downswing.
To know more about which factors have been proven so far to produce distance (clubspeed) and direction (only the SSF) in the golf swing, see this systematic review (Patria Hume et al., Newzealand) [http://coewww.rutgers.edu/classes/mae/mae473/golf_biomechanics.pdf]
Now to go back to Phil Mickelson’s swing. Without looking at his swing-sequence graph, one can tell he has the what I call a ‘shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’ type swing. The ‘horse’ being, of course, MAXIMAL power (based on Phil Cheetham’s stretching style downswing sequence), and with it, correct direction!
If you look at his top-of-backswing (above), think of his upper body looking like a ‘door’ facing you, the viewer. His trail (left) elbow is behind his neck, and now all the upper body can do is drop down and forward, NOT rotate, and certainly not AFTER the lower body. This is especially so as he needs to drop his trail (left) side down, because, for any left-handed golfer, with left hand lower on the grip, the left side must always be lower at impact (and at address!). See how much ‘shorter’ he is at impact (2 pics below).
Why can the lower body not simply speed away ahead of his upper body? Especially as his coach does so much rotary fitness work with him? Because at the top of his backswing (see pic. below), his trail hip (femur/thigh) has straightened out (extended) and his lead knee had bent forward (flexed) and his lower body has to waste time straightening out these two joints from their forwards-backwards (sagittal plane) direction of bend, before they can join in the rotation that the upper body is trying desperately – as it simultaneously drops down – to make.
So, now, despite years of practice and ‘hard-wiring’ because Phil has to make so very many independent moves at many joints, when his timing changes just the tiniest bit, his brain says ‘no time, no time, all joints aboard, the trail side is leaving, lets just GO, all together, in whichever direction we can (forwards-backwards or side-to-side or by rotating). The result – less than MAXIMAL POSSIBLE distance. MAXIMAL distance may not be that important for Phil, because his ‘riding’ style swing can produce some power (powered by muscles strengthened for him by his fitness coach!) BUT DIRECTION can never be consistent, because with such a swing the golfer must rely on last-minute hand position changes to hit the ball straight. The golfer must either ‘block’ or ‘roll-over’ with the hands at the last minute and hope it works.
So, if Phil Mickelson were to wish to get MAXIMAL distance ALONG WITH great DIRECTION and TRAJECTORY, his knee, hip and trunk should be positioned so they have ONLY rotational movement (on a horizontal/transverse plane, NO forward-backward or side-to-side-rocking moves) and his trail arm should be positioned so it does not interfere with the purely ferris-wheel (frontal plane) movement of the lead arm.
The only way for a golfer to get IDEAL ball-flight – maximal distance, straight (or baby-draw) direction and ideal trajectory is for the club to connect the ball on its lower inside quadrant. And that can only happen – on a consistent basis – when NO JOINT REQUIRES a CHANGE OF DIRECTION WHEN STARTING THE DOWNSWING.
The same not-ideally-positioned joints which reduce ball-striking efficiency also result, eventually, in injury. The next post will be on ‘predictions for future Phil injuries’.
Debunking Golf Myths 1 – The X-Factor
ALL HUMAN MOVEMENT takes place when muscles act across joints to move skeletal segments (ie bones).
A simple example – the bicep (brachii) muscle lies on either end of your elbow. When (via signals from the brain) the bicep muscles contract or shorten, they pull the forearm bones towards the upper arm bone, creating a bend in your elbow joint.
Is the golf swing a HUMAN MOVEMENT? YES.
Then the main thing we need to understand is which muscles act to move joints in which directions.
EVERYTHING ELSE (swing plane, across the line shaft, open clubface – even the gripping of the club’s handle) can be boiled down to what HUMAN MOVEMENT caused the club to get into which position – it’s not some magical fairy wand that can move about all by itself!
In 1992, George Peper, longtime editor of Golf Magazine revealed The X-Factor to a golf world hungry for ball-striking improvement, and said, “Millions of words have been written about how to hit a golf ball. It’s rare, therefore, to come across a completely original contribution to the wisdom of instruction, but that is exactly what Jim McLean has produced in the X-factor. With the assistance of Sportsense swing computers, McLean has done beyond mere theory and shown actual proof of a more powerful way to swing.” [see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE8ODf3IeAU]
What is the X-Factor? In the words of discoverer Jim McLean (according to the video link pasted above) it is the ‘gap’ or ‘differential’ between hip and shoulder turn at the top of the backswing. It ‘creates explosion going forward’.
The discovery was based on the fact that the 5 longest hitters on the PGA Tour have a much greater X-factor than the 5 shortest hitters.
The golf world fell all over itself trying to facilitate this concept by one of golf’s most famous teachers. The famous fitness people began to talk of thoracic-lumbar dis-association, and how they could help golfers to achieve it. Tons of research dollars were spent studying the X-Factor. To read about the numbers of scientists who have conducted research on the subject, and finally Professor Kwon’s (head-biomechanist at Texas Woman’s University) study (and debunking) of the subject, see http://50.87.35.246/~chriscq7/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/X-Factor-paper.pdf
Why did no-one assess it based on simple BODY MOVEMENT capabilities and basic physics principles first? IS the movement a true differential between hips and shoulders? Is it desirable for golfers to make this move from both an efficiency and injury stand-point? Could anything else be used instead?
Did anyone wonder whether the X-factor was correlation or causation? In other words, was it a mere co-incidence that those long hitters hit the ball much further (for instance that they had better over-all flexibility) or was the X-factor the CAUSE of the longer hitting.
Does anyone care that the movements the PGA Tour players make are not necessarily the most efficient HUMAN MOVEMENTS to make, just a serendipitous way their brains and bodies have found to arrive at the ball correctly despite non-ideal backswing joint placements?
YOU can get into X-FACTOR position as easily as John Daly who has the biggest X-factor, as follows (although you may not wish to by the end of this article):
The TPI, among other golf fitness expert groups, recommends alternate joints to be stable and mobile for good golf performance. It calls the thoracic spine an area of the body that must be made (via fitness or other physical interventions) into a ‘mobile’ segment of the body, with the segments directly above and below being considered ‘stable’. These ‘stable‘ joints would be the lumbar and cervical spines. Ironically, the neck (cervical spine) has the most muscles which can facilitate the maximum range of motion in many directions, while the thoracic spine is meant to be a rigid area of the body with a giant rib-cage attached. Which fundamental HUMAN MOVEMENT requires the cumbersome ribcage joints to rotate, while keeping the neck and lower-back stable?
Also, imagine trying to rotate one segment of the spine against another. The spine has very small rotational muscles, and most global rotation of the body comes from the abdominal muscles, which cannot not be called upon to rotate only vertebrae number 8 to 19 from the top, and no other!
Expect INEFFICIENCY of ball striking and a greater scope for INJURY!
Bottom line, to make an efficient ‘coil’ during the backswing, the entire body – from ankles to top of the head – must rotate as one unit. As the neck-and-shoulder area of the spine has much more mobility than the hips or legs, especially when the feet are planted on the ground, the proportions of shoulder:hip rotation will be maintained, especially if the golfer were to make a Minimalist Golf Swing, which cuts out the HUMAN BODY’s ability to over-or-under-twist any part of the body during the backswing. (It does that by completing required rotation pre-swing, so that there is NO confounding rotation – correct or incorrect – during the backswing).
Now-the X-Factor-Stretch, is a whole ‘nother animal – powerful and easy to acquire, with no need for the X-Factor. It is created simply – for any skill level of golfer – using the Minimalist Golf Swing!
Suzann Pettersen – Solheim Cup Star – uses The Minimalist Golf Swing (eventually)
As Suzann Pettersen plays a practice round in preparation for the 2013 Solheim Cup, it is obvious from her swing that it is not co-incidence that she is the highest ranked European player – her swing is a completely Minimalist Golf Swing (MGS)move – two frames down from the top!
From the top of her backswing, her first move down is a drop of her right side. Ha! The MGS would have had her there at the top itself, thus avoiding a lot of excess action (hence Minimalist) and re-routing that she does for two video frames from the top.
Basically, the top of the Minimalist Golf Swing (MGS) is a position in which all the body’s joints are positioned so they can start the downswing WITHOUT A CHANGE OF DIRECTION! That is what makes the MGS less timing-dependent.
With her current top-of-backswing position she has to start her downswing by dropping her right side to a position lower than the left, and while it may look simple, it involves a lot of inconsistency as the spine – vertebra by vertebra – must re-position itself correctly every time (even when the golfer is under ‘pressure’ and might rush or slow-down the downswing!).
And at the end of two frames down from the top of her backswing? She is in perfect position to let gravity drop her arms down, as her lower body unwinds before her upper body. Ironically, the very same position a talented Legends’ Tour player, 25 years her senior is getting into at her actual top of backswing – why do the extra stuff!
Halfway down, forget about swing-plane and all that junk. It’s about the position of the right shoulder (which is attached to the right elbow) being well behind the left one. That’s the only important sign that the club will arrive at the ball from inside enough. When the right shoulder is not sufficiently behind the left (see picture on extreme right), the right elbow (the final opportunity to make good impact) must un-bend in a plane (frontal) that it is not designed to, resulting in less-than-efficient ball-striking and eventually injury too.
Look at the un-intentional and intentional MGS swingers. GREAT half-way down positions. The only difference? Suzann has a lot of wrist lag – intentional as the world of golf insists it matters. How much power can an abducted wrist (cocked) give when it straightens by a couple of inches? Not much. Why then lag excessively, only to risk a too-early or too-late release as the right elbow straightens out? Why risk injury too? With the MGSS, as there is no intentional backswing lag, the wrists lag as the right elbow ‘drops into its slot’ giving perfectly timed release – which should really refer only to right arm pronation – for power-delivery plus less scope for injury.
Congratulations, MGS user, your swing is brilliant – anatomically efficient and thus powerful!
What will Tiger do next?
What he will do next we do not know.
What he should do, is first sue Butch Harmon.
Then sue Sean Foley.
Butch should be held responsible for the exacerbation of his knee injury (see knee injury in the ‘walking the talk’ section of this blog). Sean for his recent elbow injury.
Incidentally, Sean is completely correct about not moving so much – it reduces a golfer’s margin for error. Weight shift, folks, is passe. See how Tiger Woods’ swing has evolved from that of his early coaches’ to the present one. He has successfully cut out too much lateral movement – which is good. He has done so, however, without correct top-of-backswing joint positions – which is bad. A compact swing is truly ‘economy in motion’ as Bruce Lee might say – very important for an explosive power move. However, the more compact the moves, the less room there is for the poor-joint-position-compensatory-moves to be made!
So, Sean Foley is right in theory, but wrong in practice. Here’s why:
From the top of this position, he must drop down (laterally flex) the entire trunk – vertebra by vertebra (a frontal plane move), while at the same time straightening his knee (a sagittal plane move), as he tries to rotate his body – lower body first, to produce speed and deliver the club to the ball from the inside. Not to mention that his right wrist extension (backward bend) will have put his right arm into internal rotation, which he will have to put into external rotation (so as to save his elbow) along the way.
Now, he has to do all this in the 2/100th of a second he himself says the golf swing takes. EVERY move made from his top of backswing position onwards is his brain’s own way of finding a compensatory method for all these multiple joints to all untwist and un-bend, all together, in synchronization, and in the limited time of the downswing, to present the club to the ball at maximum speed and from the inside.
So, Sean’s brain has found a unique way to undo all the very many backswing moves he has made. Imagine his brain thinking, “I should drop the body down two and a half inches to bring the right side down, then I must make the hips rotate first, the shoulders next, I must make sure the wrists remain maximally lagged, and also I should try to put get right shoulder into external rotation so the right elbow does not arrive at the ball in a manner it cannot act efficiently from (ie a ‘valgus’ position).
Sean’s student Tiger’s brain, has found its own unique compensatory mechanism to reverse all his less-than-ideal top-of-backswing positions, most especially the lifted right trunk. His brain drops his entire body vertically downwards. To compound this problem, the world of golf claims that such a movement is good, because it is like the counter-move-jump you might see a basketball player do. After you squat you can jump up higher, because as you squat your thigh muscles stretch, then can contract more powerfully while pushing up.
In my opinion, the golf swing should have neither side-to-side movements (eg weight shift) nor up-and-down movements, they simply reduce the time within which a golfer must unbend and untwist a lot of stuff, while trying to make a merry-go-round-like pure transverse-plane body rotation.
When you’re injury-riddled beyond bearing, and you’re embarrassed to be hoping to win more majors than Jack Nicklaus while being the wimp your unknowing former pros have made you into – unable to use a driver – consider the Minimalist Golf Swing, Tiger.
When does GOLF become G.O.L.F?
What makes GOLF into G.O.L.F – a Game Of Limitless Frustration?
When you, as a golfer, have a muscle called the Latissimus Dorsi (LD – which sadly, you do).
The LD has also been nicknamed the ‘ass wiper’ muscle. If you stand upright and put your arm behind your back to touch your spine at it’s base, you’ll see what basic movements it is designed to manage.
It is a large sheet of muscle starting at the middle and lower spine, and then its fibers all climb diagonally up and bundle together, so as to insert into a tiny area in the front of the upper arm!
So, here’s the problem. If you start your backswing as a ‘wide arms triangle’ and then try to rotate your body, the origin and insertion of the Lats get spread apart, so that later rotation does not happen in synchronization with the arms movement, and the arms and body no longer move at the same pace.
Similarly, if your body starts with a rotation, the right arm tends to get pulled along with the rotation too, so that if you now try to raise your arms to prevent them from swinging too ‘flat’, once again the synchronization of body and arms is lost.
Bottom line, complete your body-rotation pre-swing, as the Minimalist Golf Swing requires, so that the origin and insertion of your right Latissimus Dorsi remain together. All that remains in-swing, because body-rotation is no longer required, is a simple abduction of the right arm, which the LD has enough flexibility to allow. Keep your Lats – especially the right one – well-stretched too!
Should Tiger be the Favorite for the 2013 Open Championship?
You be the judge:
Tiger played with pain in his elbow at Merion and will go into the Muirfield Open without having played much competitive golf in between. Can he win, should he be the favorite. YOU be the judge, with an informed opinion.
Below are screen shots from a three month old video. His right side drops so much (right trunk lateral flexion), that post-impact his left shoulder goes into internal rotation (a bit of a chicken-wing, one might say), which, because both hands are locked onto the club (closed kinetic chain) forces the left wrist into extension (bending backwards).
All of this conspires to put pressure on the outside (lateral side) of his left elbow – the muscles, tendons or ligaments can be subject to strain/sprain.
It is criminal how all of us golf teachers are let loose on the world with not one iota of human movement training. Someone should sue someone, seriously. (see my ‘walking the talk’ piece on knee injury and how Butch Harmon TOLD Tiger to quickly rotate his left knee out of the way and then straighten it up (or so I read in Hank Haney’s book)! In the same article see what Tom Watson tells people to do with the right knee – exactly the movement which caused Fred Funk’s right knee replacement from osteoarthritis of the outer (lateral) side of his right knee!
Golf Swing BIO-mechanics Explained
This post is dedicated to all the people I’m ‘meeting’ for the first time, via the newly-joined GOLF BIOMECHANISTS facebook group.
BIO-MECHANICS involves two parts – the biological system (in this case the human golfer) and the study of that system in terms of mechanics.
The whole golf world talks of the 9 ball-flights, the 5 ball flight laws, the 14 preferences and the infinite principles (within which it’d probably be possible even to stand on one’s head and still make a ‘conforming’ golf swing!)
Then we talk of kinematics and kinetics of whole-system movement – of the club (shaft plane or forces on it), of the body (swing-plane, centers of pressure and mass, sequential summation of forces, ground reaction forces and so on, ad nauseum).
However, amazingly, the whole world seems to believe that just by an understanding (and an ever more detailed study of) all of the above one can improve the ball-striking ability of golfers. Sorry, folks, not happening.
Think of all that you discuss as the EFFECT. Then think of the set-up and backswing as the CAUSE. Everything you do in the backswing, will have a downswing consequence.
OR think of the backswing as a collection of INDEPENDENT VARIABLES and the downswing as a (poor, helpless) bunch of DEPENDENT VARIABLES.
Truly, the only effect we need to know about is that the ball must be struck with maximum possible speed, on its inside right quadrant and below its equator. [ONLY if we want ideal impact – straight, far and high – of course!]
We also need to know that the only downswing body movement pattern that can help us do all of the above is what is known as a ‘sequential summation of forces’ (SSF) aka ‘kinematic sequence’.
That’s IT, folks. STOP wasting time (and perhaps university funding money) on effects, let’s discuss HOW we can get EVERY GOLFER from Tyro to Tiger to make that highly-sophisticated ‘from the ground up’ rotation of the body – SSF.
Bottom-line we need to understand where each of the major body joints needs to be at impact, then work backwards from there by placing every one of those joints in positions they can be most efficient from (in planes they are DESIGNED to work best in)!
So, here goes – at impact, positions (for the right handed golfer) should be (all major joints described as either ‘body’ or ‘arms’):
BODY:
Ankles, knees, hips, shoulders – as purely transverse plane as possible (the hip and shoulder rise is the ‘double dip’ EFFECT of having to drop the right side and then straighten the wrists).
Therefore, any sagittal plane backswing movement of body-parts (eg. knee in flexion with medial translation) or frontal plane backswing movement (eg. left lateral trunk flexion) hampers pure downswing SSF.
ARMS:
Right arm – as purely frontal plane as possible, allowing complete freedom of its scapulo-humeral rhythm (SHR), which, if impeded prevents the left arm from being the radius of the swing at impact.
Therefore any sagittal plane backswing movement of the arms (eg. right wrist extension) or transverse plane backswing movement of the arms (eg. right shoulder internal rotation), hampers pure downswing SHR of the right arm.
Now, we need a set-up and backswing which will allow all major joints to fall into their required impact positions as easily as possible.
Imagine this – if the trunk is in left lateral flexion (the silliest movement in the game of golf) at the top of the backswing, is it EASY for the body to laterally flex the right side, while trying to ‘uncoil’ from backswing torso rotation and simultaneously trying to extend the right elbow?
OR, if the right arm is internally rotated, has a pronated forearm and an extended wrist ……imagine all the joints where repositioning must take place.
ONLY one method has ever been developed which positions ALL joints so that they are in their most efficient positions at the top, and can thus deliver not only SSF but also GRF and X-Factor-Stretch – WITHOUT VOLITION.
Forget the further, straighter, higher requirements of the golf swing. Have any of you studied which positions can cause injury? Look at what Tom Watson is recommending in a 2008 Golf Digest Article (see Knee Injury in the ‘walking the talk’ section of this blog). Or understand John Daly’s sites of July 2013 injury (in the ‘injury’ section)
The highly evolved 2013 Minimalist Golf Swing separates the body’s requirement for transverse plane movement from the arms’ requirement for frontal plane movement by FINISHING body-rotation pre-swing. Then with the right trunk remaining in lateral flexion at all times, the upper body is unable to mis-cue the start of the downswing and SSF is easy. The right heel remains grounded for as long as possible, and body weight remains centrally positioned, so GRF is created in a meaningful direction.
Invite me to do a seminar for your golfers and see GOLF SWING MAGIC. Not only for highly athletic people but for ANY golfer. (ONLY a person with an eclectic Masters’ level education in anatomy, biomechanics and orthopedic physical assessment can conceive of all this!)
Tiger Woods Knee and now Elbow (or is it wrist) Injuries
See the post before this one first, please.
It is NOT about Tiger. He IS the most supreme athlete in the world, one whom a worthy coach could make into a super-human performer.
Worthy meaning one who has at least a basic understanding of every single topic related to golf – be in anatomy, biomechanics, injury causation, the psychology of sport or exercise physiology. Not to mention fitness and nutrition.
So, you’re asking, get to the point, WHAT ABOUT his knee and elbow/wrist?
Well, he has such a violent movement starting down (wasted, actually, as the golf swing is surely meant to be a back and through movement, propelling the ball target-ward, is it not?), that as his body is trying to rotate to produce maximum power from the ground up, his knees and wrists have to straighten out from awkward positions, at great speed, and when they cannot ALL unbend and untwist in time, WHAM, something gets left behind, or comes in the way, and he has injury.
SEE the two detailed analyses in the Walking the Talk section of this blog.
And yet the ‘experts’ (tom Watson included) among us say that his up and down movement is great (it’s called a countermove-jump and produces a lot of upward propulsion for basketballers) and other things about his movements are great too, and similarly look at other superior golfers to show us what we should be doing. Ironically the same movements that the pros might get away with for longer can create injury in slower-moving, less adept people in less time.
The moral of the story: this is the 21st century folks, get with it, get a swing which takes into account NOT ONLY how the club needs to be delivered for maximum power and straight direction BUT ALSO how the human body can do it best.
Further. Straighter. Higher.
Consistently.