Devongolfer,
I quickly put this quick video together to explain the roles of ground forces play in golfswing. I hope this gives you better insight and understanding.
Ground forces Roll In The Golf Swing

Zen,
many thanks for taking the time to put this together for me, I really appreciate it, especially since you are busy doing other things as well.

From your video, I took the following points

1: above all stability. As you crank up the effort, you will need counter balancing forces to maintain stability, otherwise you will create a slide or a turn. This means not only power from the right leg / foot creating the turn, but extra effort from the left leg / foot to constrain the movement to a pivot, not a slide.

2: what you want is a rapidly accelerating and then rapidly decelerating radial motion of the hips (give or take, about about a stable pivot point). I might come back on this as I think more about Hitting and Swinging, but I understood what you were saying in the video

3: there is not a lot of movement (distance moved) in the hips, it is more about power / thrust or torque. In other words it is not so much moving the hips as using the hips to create torque so that the upper body moves.

On this last point, I got something from raz’s and Dart’s comments on this thread, so I will add another comment on this in a separate section.

I think there is more in the video for me to, so I will come back to it in the future. Thanks again.

I saw raz’s and Dart’s comments about “dynamic connection” and “resistance” earlier. I felt that this was important, but was not sure what they meant. Then Zen posted his video about ground forces (not the same thing at all), and I thought, that’s it, I am off to the practice ground.

I am going to use the word “clench” as in clenching teeth or buttocks, I am sure there are better words, but this what I am going with just for the purposes of this post.

At set up, everything is relatively relaxed. As you start the turn, you brace the right knee and this restricts the right hip from moving back. If you keep going with the shoulders, you feel a stretch in the right side.

Now, I think I understood something important today, I’m posting, as usual, in case I have misunderstood and then someone can correct me.

You can create that stretch feeling in two ways, I found.

The way I assumed was meant, until today, was to turn until you could not physically turn any more.

The way I found, using Dart’s and raz’s comments as pointers, is that you can also “clench” the muscles in your core, including the right side. This tightens the connection between the hips and the shoulders. In this state, you cannot more the hips independently of the shoulders, they are locked together.

So, what I was doing was making a backswing and then clenching. This was not at the maximum possible rotation position. It was a full rotation, but not 100%, and then clench at this point and hold.

From here, I would drive the hips forward maintaining that feeling.

All the power and the acceleration from the hips is transmitted instantly to the upper body, there is no independent movement of the hips leaving the upper body behind.

I would worry about heaving my shoulders OTT, but I remembered Pete’s videos about the hip movement and made sure that the rotation in the hips was more about moving the left hip back than the right hip forward.

What this means is that the shoulders are still turned back relative to the hips all the way down through impact. You don’t ever unwind the torso, you just use the power of the hips and the right arm.

I can do this because I can feel it, it is not a thought.

From here, this developed into turn, clench, hit the heck out of the ball with the hips and the right arm and NOT with any relaxation of that clenched feeling and definitely NOT with any movement of the shoulders turning forwards relative to the hips.

It all got a bit PCH to start with, leaving the club behind. But once I started to work on HCP, but wanting that clenched feeling plus the power of the hips and right arm working together, I started to get the hang of it.

I think, and correct me if I am wrong, that the clenched feeling is what raz means by a dynamic connection as opposed to relaxed muscles that allow the hips to move independently of the upper body.

I think also that this creates the conditions needed for further effort on the ground forces to pay off, otherwise that effort would just go into moving the hips not the golf ball.

This felt very different. But it made sense and it seemed to work.

Am I heading in the correct direction with this, guys?

Hi Devon,
I quickly pieced another video together to answer the above post to clear a few things up for you.
What the body should do

Devon,
In summary the ground is king, homer 6-m-1 is a vital clue and 2-m-4.
Our focus is our feet, we connect with the ground effectively is what creates good lower body stability. How we push and pull against the ground is what produces lower body acceleration and stretch the muscles between the lower body and upper body.

The deceleration of the lower body allows us to contract the core muscles which have been stretched. Remember it’s about the amount of acceleration applied to the muscles being stretched. To generate the stretch/shorten cycle.In addition if we don’t generate deceleration patterns, our lower body we can not contract the core muscles effectively to accelerate the upper body. Lower body stabilization and bracing is crucial to producing lower body deceleration patterns. Again how we press forward and generate an equal opposite force reaction on the downswing phase, is equally important to stabilize the lower body so it can decelerate effectively so the core muscles can contract and the upper body accelerates.

In addition to this to pass speed to the next body segment it has to slow down. To transfer speed from the lower body to the upper body. The lower body must slow down. Conservation of momentum.

This is the same for upper and arms relationship. The upper body must slow down to pass energy to the arms. The arms must slow down so we can transfer energy out into the club. The whole body must brace at impact to ensure all the energy from the ground up is transfered out through the club and imparted onto the ball.

I hope this is starting to make sense ?

Zen,

OK, so clearly I have not got this right yet.

Based on the quick cycle of thinking I understood something and then you pointing out that I really did not, I think this is an area that I should leave alone until I get a chance to see your chum in the UK, Alex.

However, when I next get a chance to experiment on the practice ground, I think the thing I need to try and feel is that diagonal stretch across the front of the torso. And stay away from that feeling of stretch in the right side, I liked your illustration of how that is a sign that I might be moving the upper body incorrectly.

The great news is that you took the time to come back and correct me before I ruined a season based on getting something wrong. I have done that before!

Don’t worry about clenching buttocks, I did not mean that I was doing that, I was just trying to illustrate what I meant by the word clench. Bad writing in the post by me.

I really appreciate the effort and interest you have put into this.

Many thanks

Shanks,

thanks for the post. Yes, I saw your reference to the youtube, but it did not come up a link.

I just went back to check, then I searched for it, but quite a few came up.

Could you post a link here for me, please?

Many thanks

Type Sevam the move into google – first response 9.19 seconds of simple logic and part 2 is second video just below

Don’t want to hijack Zens thread

Devon,
Happy to help, keep on asking questions and happy to keep on helping you to understand. It’ is very complex and once you do understand it, you will understand why I bang on about why this all has to be trained.
I see so many theories out their and claims you just do this with your feet etc and walla you have ground forces. You quick know they don’t understand the full story what ground forces play. Ground forces are only one piece of the puzzle, although a very important piece though.

Same as Mike’s stuff ( Sevam ) it may work for him what he does although won’t work for others, these are his feels that he generates.
Although again he doesn’t quite do what Hogan does either, Mike loses connection with the ground in his downswing you can see his centre of mass drifting and going into extension at impact. His belt buckle drifts to right field(coaches call this air rooting). Hogan never did that. Hogan also never locked onto his left hips as indicate either, he internally rotated and his lower body braced at impact. Mike doesn’t do this.

Although what I do like is Mike bringing ground forces to the world’s attention, his message is a 100% right the secret is in the dirt, ground force are crucial. Hogan’s secret was how he connected with the ground and he had beautiful lower body mechanics.

How ever this was only part of the puzzle of what made Hogan great. He had a kinetic link was his real secret. A company processed his swing in 2D biomechanics the measurements showed a kinetic link sequence.

This is a great video to watch explaining why coordination has to be trained and the kinetic link has to be trained.
Back in the day our company us to only supply 3D data to coaches and health care professional, fitness trainers etc. What was founded is even though your improved people swing mechanics, physical limitation and fitness. When you re-tested them there was no changes in their coordination or swing sequence. People would also regress back to old habits and physical limitations or issues or issues. The reason for this is due to their Kinetic link not changing and due to break down in their coordination and movement patterns was the root causes to their physical limitations or issues and injuries.

How Progressive Skills Training come to be

Hey Scott,

Do many cricketers or footballers do this sort of stuff?
I was thinking about it today.

You see a lot of bowlers leak power through the delivery stride, and you can see great kickers of the footy who just can’t kick it long distances.

This cannot come down to muscle etc.

It’s a technique issue of course, but is it the lack of use of ground forces that restrict the power on release / impact?

Vinumcoupe,
I did a bunch of testing for an AFL club, what we did find between efficient kickers who kicked to the ball long and accurate in comparison to a short kicker. Is how efficiently they utilised all the power generated from the ground up and transferred all their speed into the football. The guys who kicked it long utilised majority of all their speed from the ground up. They had great connection with the ground and had an effective kinetic link.

Short kicker, break down in ground connection and stability, acceleration deceleration patterns were poor or break downs. Muscular loading or break downs in stretch shorten cycle of muscles in segments. Again they have a break down in their kinetic link to utilise speed and power at the point of impact.

What we have found short kickers or kickers have break downs in their kinetic link have a high rate of injuries. Mainly ACL’s, hamstring tears etc. This is due to create over acceleration speed of the kicking leg, producing superficial speed to over compensating for a break down in their link. This cause over extension of the knee and hip extension.

This is due to there aren’t using the stretch/shorten of the muscles to accelerate deceleration of each segment. Instead if the segment decelerating it kick on acceleration put velocity and force on their knee joint centres and muscles.

Again it’s the left leg, torso, right leg, knee extension, foot. Kinetic link.
The stretch shorten applies between each segment.

Bowling is similar to throwing a baseball really again same old same old again.

It’s all about coordination or the muscles and ground in any sport really once you have the basic understanding cycling, running, walking and kicking are a similar pattern in movement and coordination.
Any rotational sport like, tennis, baseball and golf again similar patterns in coordination and movement. The same principles apply.

Although when it comes to the sport at hand you have to train the coordination and movement specific to that activity. This is known as specific activity coordination. We Tailor Progressive Skills Training specific to that activity and custom built specific and individually for that athlete.

Nothing new in these sports or difference really Vin

There is talk of what Ben Hogan did and there is many misconceptions out there on what Hogan lower body did. A lot of these conceptions are based on visual conceptions based from video or pictures, which can be very deceiving.

This is a quick video we did to explain Ben’s lower body mechanics and the ground force applied.
Are our eyes deceiving us Ben Hogans Lower body Mechanics

Thanks Scott, just realised I put golfers instead of footballers but you worked it out !

This explains and gives us all a better inside what nueromechanics is about and how we go about training an athlete how to address break downs in movement and coordination or a break down in their Kinetic Link and how we go about training a new patterns.

The neuromechanics is part of biomechanics, the neural drive or nervous system sends signals or impulses to command the muscles to contract to move body segments.
In order to change a persons movement essentially you are retraining their brain sending signals and impulses to command the muscles . In order to change movement you have to train a new circuit to send signals or impulses to command the muscles to produce the new movement pattern. As you develop this circuit the pulses become faster.

As an example you start of with a basic movement you start of slow to develop a new circuit to send pulses to contract the muscles to coordinate this basic movement. As you repetitively do this basic movement around the circuit you start to develop Myelin. The Myelin develop sheaths which wraps around the circuit. The Myelin sheath it’s like fat, What the Myelin sheaths do is increase the charge to make the impulses or signals transmit faster.

When you can coordinate this movement slow , you slowly add speed to to the movement so the brain can learn to transmit the pulses or signals faster, to tell the muscles to contract faster. As you repetitively do this pattern with a little more speed you develop more myelin which enables the brain to transmit signals at this speed to coordinate the basic movement pattern. When you achieve this you keep on adding speed to it until you can do at the speed specific to activity you are doing.
Once you have basic movement you then add more complex movement patters to which every activity you are learning.

A baby learning to roll, than sit up, then crawl, then stand up, then take slow steps and finally walk at full speed, then learns to run. In a nutshell same again learning small basic movements and add more complex movements and progression as they develop coordination and myelin.

As you can understand why the mental side is important to make sure our heads don’t get in the way of our development. You don’t want to conscious interfering with the automatic process.

I hope this all makes sense.

What we do is we test an athlete and we used force plates software to measure the interaction with the ground. We used EMG software which measures the muscles and biomechanics to measure the movement or movement patterns.
.
The Progressive Skills training we custom built for each individual athlete again each exercise was researched and tested using force plates, emg and biomechanics software. So when we look at the data and see certain break downs we know what drills to give to them which will address that break down, retrain and develop a new pattern.
The same for the functional programs, the engineers tested certain gym exercises to find out what patterns they can train or what negative impacts they have. How can certain exercise either increase strength to increase power out of the muscles and also train certain movement patterns.
When we re-test this tells us how people are progressing and the changes in movement, it also gives us a road map to what is the next phase of drills and exercises they need to keep on developing their new patterns.

Everything we do we research and test, the more people you test see patterns and trends for certain break downs, It’s like lower body mechanics there is three distinct breakdowns. From these certain break downs you see many different causes and effects how the rest of the body moves. Over 25 years of testing you have a mountain of data to cross reference to see patterns and trends. So when you test someone and see a certain pattern you know these set drills that we have researched and tested will address these breakdowns and develop new patterns of movement.

We know providing all the other facets are covered and providing people doing their training as instructed they will improve and get results.
It has taken our engineers 25 years of research to develop what ZenoLink is today.

For the athlete they are given the drills and by doing the drills this trains their body how to develop and kinetic link improve their coordination to swing a golf club.

Below is a video explaining a very common “visual” swing fault is the arms being stuck to the body or pinned to the torso and not properly releasing into impact. It is almost always mis-diagnosed as the body moving too fast for the arms as a result the remedy revolves around the body – hips/torso being too fast and the arms being too slow. In fact the issue is almost always the arms being too fast or too quick to accelerate. The arms initiate the downswing rather than the lower body and disrupt the kinetic link sequence. The torso then accelerates late in the swing, out of sequence, giving the appearance of the arms being trapped behind the body. This video explores the cause of the issue on a biomechanics or sequence/coordination level and how to approach resolving the swing fault.

Arms Pinned Behind The Body The Real Cause

Below is a video explaining a very common “visual” swing fault is the arms being stuck to the body or pinned to the torso and not properly releasing into impact. It is almost always mis-diagnosed as the body moving too fast for the arms as a result the remedy revolves around the body – hips/torso being too fast and the arms being too slow. In fact the issue is almost always the arms being too fast or too quick to accelerate. The arms initiate the downswing rather than the lower body and disrupt the kinetic link sequence. The torso then accelerates late in the swing, out of sequence, giving the appearance of the arms being trapped behind the body. This video explores the cause of the issue on a biomechanics or sequence/coordination level and how to approach resolving the swing fault.

Arms Pinned Behind The Body The Real Cause

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Core Health first 3D gym in the world. 1 Golf Links Road, Frankston South

Makes you think. He did.

Recently there has been discussion on how does the club load or how do we create lag. So how do tour player load or create lag of the golf club here is the truth how they do it.

here is the real truth how tour players load the club.

In the golf swing is composed of four components and three links

. The components are the hips, shoulders, arms and club shaft. The links are the musculature connection for each component.
As the golfer begins the back swing, the components rotate in a clockwise fashion around the spine. This then begins to lengthen the muscles and pre-loads or stretches each link. (The muscles between the Lower body and upper body. The muscles between upper body and arms. )

Before the club and shoulders reach maximum rotation on the back swing, the hips begin to transition; changing direction and rotating in an anti-clockwise acceleration towards impact with the ball. Note that this occurs while the shoulders, arms and club continue in their clockwise direction, thus creating muscular pre-load or stretch between the lower and upper body.

When the muscles are pre-loaded or stretched the muscles contract and cause the shoulders to then begin their transition, changing direction (following the lead of the hips) in an anti-clockwise acceleration towards impact while the arms and club are still in a clockwise direction the muscles are pre-loading between the upper body and arm. Once pre-loaded occurs the muscles between the upper body and arms contract causing the arms to change direction and accelerate toward impact. This sudden change of direction cause the arms and club to pre-load the muscles of the wrist and forearm, the club begins to load or the angle between the right wrist and the club increases as the arms and wrist accelerate into impact.

Once all of the components are accelerating in an anti-clockwise direction towards impact of the ball, the body uses both physics and physiology to most efficiently create club head speed. The hips are the first to reach maximum rotational speed. Like a whip, once a maximum speed is reached, the segment then decelerates, “passing” the momentum (speed) to the shoulder segment. Both the passing of momentum and the stretch and shortening of the muscles between hips and shoulders accelerate the shoulder segment to a maximum speed twice that of the hips.

The shoulders, having reached the maximum rotational speed, now decelerate and “pass” their momentum to the arms to a maximum speed twice that of the shoulders.

Finally, the arms — in the same manner as the hips and shoulders – decelerate, passing energy to the club, thereby doubling the momentum yet again. The club then uncocks and accelerates into impact with the ball with both maximum linear and angular speed, creating optimum speed and power at the point of impact.

The above is quite a skin full to wrap our heads around although in a nut shell all this means is :

What causes the club to load is when the lower body accelerating towards impact followed by the upper body accelerating to wards impact applies speed or velocity to the arms whilst they are still going back to complete their back swing. The rotational speed of the lower body and upper body accelerating towards impact, forces the arms to change direction and load the club creating the angle between the right wrist and the shaft. As the arms continues to accelerate towards impact this angle continues to increases until the arms slow down. When the arms slow down this causes the club to release or the right wrist to unhinge and the club accelerates delivering at the speed at the point of impact.

Scott, with cricket bowlers is it the faster bowlers or spin bowlers who leak power thru their delivery stride?

Scott, with cricket bowlers is it the faster bowlers or spin bowlers who leak power thru their delivery stride?

Rupert_The_bear,
They can both lose power through their delivery stride.

The actually coordination of movement to generate a bowling action is the same, lead foot, hips, core(upper body) arm (internal/external rotation).
Fast bowlers use speed and forward momentum to generate more speed, as well as using a kinetic link.

Using their speed running in can be lost if they don’t heel strike and connect to the ground effectively. This effects two things:
1)Their ability to generate more hip speed to stretch the muscles in the core to accelerate the upper body.

2)The main power loss is the forward momentum of speed, their lead foot/leg doesn’t stabilise at foot contact passing the momentum up through to the hips.
In addition the foot contact it what produces hips rotational speed.

This is very important to understand the lead leg has to stabilise to transfers speed up through the body. Also the stabilisation is to decelerate the lower body for two reasons.

1)The muscles stretched in the core between the hips and upper body can contract to accelerate the upper body.

2) transfers speed up through the kinetic link to deliver all the speed out through the arm.

Rupert same applies for spin bowlers they produce the same patterns so the same applies, the reason they don’t bowl as fast is they aren’t using as much speed or forward momentum when they hit the crease is all.

Hope this helps, does this make sense? If it doesn’t i can try to explain further it’s so hard to explain in simple terms and not to write a 3 page Essay at the same time :)

Out of interest what is a persons ideas on what is consider as a good foundations in a golf swing ?

Either, Steve Elkington or Adam Scotts swings are what as I consider as a good foundations in a golf swing !
Jon…

Scott, can I send you thru some photos of a left arm off spinner for you to have a quick look at & give some comments on.
Would a screening at his age (13 1/2)be beneficial as he is heading to England in 2014 to play Representative Cricket for the MPCA.

Thanks
Rupert