I’d appreciate swing thoughts, training aids, anything. I’m disgusted with my extremely steep downswing. On tape, the shaft is almost vertical coming down. It appears through my neck, rather than through my right forearm.
I know that the hip bump is supposed to flatten the shaft, but my hip bump does not do the trick at all.

My preference would be for a “TGM-approved” solution, but I’ll try anything.

Thank you.

rteach1

I tried this drill…and works for me. I place a ball 2 feet left of the left foot on the ground, I hold another ball between my right thumb and forefinger and bring it with the right forearm to the top of backswing position. The left arm is out of the exercise at this stage.

Quiet the upper body and try to throw the ball in my right hand to the ball at the ground. If I do that correctly, my right arm is straight and the right wrist is still bent backward. Now put my left hand and right hand together. See myself in front of mirror, I can see good 2nd axis tilt, both arms straight, flat left wrist and bent right wrist, great follow-through alignment.

If you post a swing video of your swing, then you can expect to receive more tailored advice.

However, a generic piece of advice relating to an overly steep downswing is that two major factors may be a play – i) hands are not deep enough at the end-backswing (often due to a failure to withdraw the right pelvis backwards and ensure a rotary backstroke action); ii) starting the downswing with a roundhousing upper body move rather than a lower body move.

Jeff.

I’d appreciate swing thoughts, training aids, anything. I’m disgusted with my extremely steep downswing. On tape, the shaft is almost vertical coming down. It appears through my neck, rather than through my right forearm.
I know that the hip bump is supposed to flatten the shaft, but my hip bump does not do the trick at all.

My preference would be for a “TGM-approved” solution, but I’ll try anything.

Thank you.

rteach1

rteach1,

Commiserations, but fear not.

The torch drill or simply pointing your shaft at the line you want to swing on will show the way. Trying to get your body to do something your hand have no clue about is a total waste of time.

Make your hands move the club the way you want. Don’t be shocked at how strange it feels. Make your body fit that pattern.

How much does it cost for a duracel?

Jeff ,
CAn you elaborate you lost me here, I’m trying to picture what you mean?

Biomechanic – what point can you not understand – i) or ii).

This swing video lesson segment may explain my position slightly better regarding getting the hands deep.

Video segment

I believe that one needs the combination of a right hip clearing action in the backswing and a rightwards tilted spine to get the hands sufficiently deep in the backswing (deep = hands opposite, or behind, the right shoulder, rather than being behind the neck).

Jeff.

Jeff,
Do you notice in your back swing you right arm is doing the chicken wing effect? You did a great explanation of ex tensor action in Chicken wing post,Why don’t you do it in your video? Jeff I agree with tilt, would you find this is a natural phenomenon? regards the right arm is lower to your left at address?tilting to far to your right is dangerous, The body tilts the opposite way on the back swing, The hips, right hip is higher then left on the back swing tilt,. On down swing ,Yes the upper and lower body do tilt on down swing like address(hips 0 to-2 degrees) although left hip is higher at impact between,9 to 13 and axis tilt is (spine tilt) 6 to 10 at address, at impact axis tilt is 20 to 28.
The figures and fromulas are worked out to keep spine straight and no pressure on spine or body parts,
Jeff i agree the upper and lower body moves together in the first stage with right arm takeaway, but hips turn between 30 to – 40 degrees and are suppose to stop, Tilt 9 to 13 Remain hips at 30 to 40 degrees. Then you turn your upper body(spine, shoulders) from 60 to 80 degrees ( 60 degrees for some one with 30 degrees) is acceptable, this creates the stretch and separation. Potential energy, If both turn together you would have no separation, no power, stretching of the muscles is what creates power source (potential energy)to be turned in to kinetic energy.
Jeff have you ever asked yourself, why we can hit half swing shots so far?
Because our hips are at maximum rotation. 30 to 40 degrees. when you hit the shot, hips reach maximum speed, at impact as hips would in a full golf swing.
Negative back swing, downswing positive.

Biomechanic

It is correct that my right arm is doing a chicken wing action in my backswing and that there is no extensor action pulling the left arm straight in my demo video. However, that is due to my physical disability – I cannot move my left shoulder around more than about 50-60 degrees. That causes my left elbow to bend and my right elbow to chicken-wing to accomodate my bent left arm. That also produces an excessively narrow backswing. In a golfer without my physical limitations, the right elbow shouldn’t hug the right side in the backswing and the right upper arm should separate from the torso as the golfer tries to straighten the right elbow as much as possible in the backstroke action – which applies extensor action to the left arm keeping the left arm fully straight in the backswing and thereby producing a nice wide swingarc.

Although I recommend turning the pelvis at the very start of the backswing while simultaneously performing the one piece takeaway with the two arms-shoulders turning as an unit, I don’t thereby imply that the shoulders and hips should turn the same amount. The total pelvis rotation should be about 45-50 degrees, and the total shoulder rotation about 80-100 degrees.

I have no idea what you mean by “figures and formulas are used to keep the spine straight.” I don’t even know what you mean by a “straight spine” and why the spine should be straight. I do believe that the spine angle (as viewed from a DTL view) should appear straight and should remain constant. However, I cannot envisage a straight spine alignment as seen from a frontal view – if you mean a central spine without any axis tilt.

Jeff.

Jeff,
there are formulas set in place to work out the ranges in which the body rotates,tilts,bends. same for the spine so there is no stress on the body or spine
Jeff , the body isn’t suppose to turn 80 to 100 degrees of shoulder turn, The body isn’t designed to turn this far,
any further then 80 degrees shoulder turn (backswing) you are putting stress on your back. Your spine loses shape.
Any further then 80 degrees of shoulder turn, on the back swing , people aren’t physically strong enough to keep up with body rotation speeds. They do damage. They researched , injury in golf and found any more rotation then 80 degrees of shoulder turn leads to back injuries.
We don’t use raw data and say this is how the body functions biomechanically,
Jeff the way we have researched biomechanics is taken raw data over 50years of research and worked out what ranges the body is to function with out putting any stress on the body and be injury free.We developed ranges the body should biomechanically function with out any body stress. The industry have formulas to work this out,
we work out the optimum rotation to hit the ball maximum distance, with out putting stress on body. We have had guys who use to rotate shoulders 120 degrees, shortened to 80 degrees of turn(on the back swing) and hit the ball further.

Dart,

Can you elaborate on what you mean by the torch drill? I’m assuming that you are referring to using flashlights or lasers to point to the plane line. Am I correct about that?

I’d appreciate it if this thread did not turn into another debate between bi0mechanic and Jeff, as I would like some more help and would prefer that my post not be thread-jacked.

Thank you.

rteach1

rteach,
Yes, using flashlights against a wall, as described here : torch drill
but you should probably start at the beginning (bottom of the page)
iseek golf school

Rteach1,
Sorry mate, I was answering jeff’s question he asked me, there won’t be arguements, Sorry to get off track,

Jeff respond to my post in data collection thread.

I have the same problem as rteach with club shaft vertical on way down going through line of right shoulder. This is what they call OTT I presume.

I would post a video but cant get the upload to work.

The shaft appears to be on plane during backswing but how do you confirm this at top? Its fine if you can get the shaft parallel to ground and pointing parrallel to target line but how do you tell if its on plane when laid off at top?

Done heaps of the flashlight drills but once I get a club in my hand I cant stop it coming down very steep then obviously correcting at some point in downswing to make contact.

It almost feels as if I need to have the right palm facing up from the top of swing all the way down to about thigh height to keep the shaft on plane.

I have been working on trying to get the butt end of club pointing to ball when hands are coming down at about thigh height but feel I need to have my right wrist/forearm open to achieve this resulting in open clubface at impact.

Spent hours on the weekend trying to work it out myself without success so will be booking a lesson later this week.

Yes that right palm stays relatively more up as you ‘thought’ above.

I notice I have a shallow takeaway that developes into a very steep, chopping down style downswing. Is this shallow takeaway creating this problem and should I be trying to steepen my backswing to correct.

How do you go with keeping the flash lights aimed at the base of the plane line?

Guru,

I can get the flashlight on the base of plane (imaginery line running directly behind the ball) but once club goes to parallel on backswing for some reason I bring it straight down in a choping motion.

No problems with keeping the flashlights on plane mainly because I am looking at the light beam and not concentrating on that little white ball.

You need to learn how to feel those flashlight hand alignments. One feels ‘this way’ the other feels ‘that way’. The club in hands way is incorrect so work out how to change that feel to the correct one.

Also look at your hands and the light beam. Compare to the club look.

When u are talking parallel are you talking from hip height or all the way at the Top?

I just did a google search and you shot 82, 77, 86 to have a total of +29 in a past tournament Guru. (Byron Bay-2007) $0.00… What happened there? TGM had a holiday that week I suppose? How can you be a guru of golf when you cannot play the game at a level that is of todays ability? How can you give advice to a person on this forum with your golfing skills….or results? That 86 must of been hard on you?

Be cooll

wow praningka! You took all that trouble just to diss someone who couldn’t care less!

What did David leadbetter or Butch Harmon or Hank Haney shoot recently?

I don’t care, it has feck all to do with their ability to teach ; )

can i ask jeffman…..............why are u wearing what your wearing in the videos.

u look ridiculous and frankly i would find it hard to listen to someone talking about golf who is more dressed like a cyclist.

sorry, but how can anyone take u serious!! plus u bring shame to golfing attire. golf is supposed to be smart.

barry

lol

thats what I said when I first started posting here.

Eventually you’ll just ignore Jeff’s posts. He means well, but if something could be said in two simple words, Jeff would write an essay in gobbeldegook!!!

Praningka,
That’s a very low act, if guru’s information was incorrect fair call,
but he’s good at what he does and has great in formation to share,
He’s qualified to instruct and has more qualifications and knowledge then most golf coaches out there. How different the golfing world would be if there were plenty more guys like guru out there coaching. Instead of ego teachers with their heads up their own butts teaching Bull sh-t. I couldn’t care if he shot 120 at least he is teaching the truth.

Well, here is my progress report. I have carefully re-read Guru’s articles on the plane and have done the flashlight drills indoors. It is amazing how much simply maintaining the bent right wrist flattens the shaft and lines it up with the right forearm on the downswing. I hadn’t realized how poor my right wrist position was previously. I confirmed all of this on videotape. Now for the follow-up questions:

So far, I have not tried to actually hit any balls with this new consciousness of the bent right wrist. Before I hit any balls, what should I be aware of in order to avoid any pitfalls?

For example, GottaStartSomewhere posted about keeping the right palm up on the downswing, in order to keep the club on plane. Guru, you replied that this is correct. However, when I keep my right wrist bent and my right palm up, the club face is quite open. Now I’ve created a new, and potentially worse problem.

I would like to create a swing where the club face automatically squares up at impact (Yes, I know that this actually is supposed to happen at separation). I don’t want to manipulate my hands to try to square the face during the half-second duration of the downswing . Is there something I can do to achieve a body-driven swing whereby all hand manipulation is completed by the time I reach the top?

Guru? Dart? Anyone?

Thank you very much.

rteach1