Transition - Hitting v Swinging

[ericpaul2]

Richie,

I found an old post on your blog where you discussed hitting and how you found that the transition was critical in both hitting and swinging. I've been experimenting on my own with both hitting and swinging, or at least my interpretation thereof. I've been finding a very similar thing. When I'm using a hitting feel (basically dumping the right arm into the ball), I get consistent contact by using a steady transition and accelerating late (roughly half way through the downswing). Whereas when swinging, I get almost surprisingly good results by feeling a very quick change of direction though not necessarily an accelerating feeling after the transition (feel already quick, no need to get faster). The reason I feel like I'm on the right track is that ball flight is matching what is described elsewhere (low fade bias with the hitting action, high draw bias with swinging).

I guess I'm wondering if you continue to feel that's a critical part of your swing.

[Richie3Jack]

Well, I don't believe in pure hitting. I believe pure swinging is technically possible, but not likely since 99.99% of golfers have two hands and arms and they are going to use both.

Now that I am more M.O.R.A.D. trained along with what I've learned from other instructors, researchers, etc....the transition is still a critical piece of the swing.

For my current swing it is critical because that is where I tend to have biggest issues. I'll get the shaft plane too steep and jut the left arm. And for me, when I'm just a little steep with the shaft plane, the ballstriking is very good. And when I'm on the money with the shaft plane, I'll take my ballstriking up there with a lot of amateurs. Problem for me is that I'm too often well to steep.

The other issue is that it becomes easy for me to narrow the radius of the hand path on the downswing. I think the really great ballstrikers usually had a good bit of lag without narrowing the hand path radius on the downswing. That's what I see out of Mac and Hogan. They are lagging the holy hell out of the club, but not faking it by narrowing the hand path radius. The pic on the right shows a bit what I'm talking about.



To me, it's about where the hand radius is at p4. And it may narrow a touch, but not a whole lot. I think theses pics show a larger narrowing of the hand path radius.



The other parts I feel very important are rotation and linear motions on the downswing.

We know from Force Plate data that the Center of Pressure has to move towards the left foot. And of course, we have to open up on the downswing. For me, my tendency is to open up the torso too soon. So if you can swing like Bubba or Garrigus where their shoulders are quite closed at p5 while their hips are open and the CoP has moved towards the left foot, it can create quite an advantage.

Hope this helps some.







3JACK

[teeace]

Feb 25, 2014 14:21:09 GMT -5 Richie3Jack said:

The other parts I feel very important are rotation and linear motions on the downswing.

We know from Force Plate data that the Center of Pressure has to move towards the left foot. And of course, we have to open up on the downswing. For me, my tendency is to open up the torso too soon. So if you can swing like Bubba or Garrigus where their shoulders are quite closed at p5 while their hips are open and the CoP has moved towards the left foot, it can create quite an advantage.

Hope this helps some.







3JACK

Richie, that bolded is huge misunderstanding even for those who produce those plates. Center of pressure doesn't move there, it shows that when lead leg pushes up and back and counterforce effect makes that line jump for a millisecond. If it would be moving, the line should stay high instead of peak that is most common.

[gmbtempe]

If you don't have much lag with a larger hand radius would it be better to narrow to increase lag?

[Richie3Jack]

Feb 26, 2014 10:05:03 GMT -5 gmbtempe said:

If you don't have much lag with a larger hand radius would it be better to narrow to increase lag?

I generally do not think that is a good idea.

Narrowing the hand path radius usually results in a choppy downswing from my experience. I don't see any real benefit to a narrower hand path radius.

So to me, I think you're better off keeping the hand path radius the same and figuring out what is going on with the wrist motion and alignments that prevents the club from lagging.






3JACK

[ericpaul2]

I think I generally agree that there's not such thing as pure hitting for sure and while technically possible, no one actually does pure swinging. There's always some force applied through centrifugal force and some by applying force to the handle (radial, or close to it, its not technically 90 degrees to the shaft or left arm). Its pretty obvious from their writing that guys like Hogan and Snead were definitely doing both. The question is always how much of each. That's where I'm finding the difference in transition to be critical. I also believe there is more than one way to apply force to the handle (pushing or pulling/throwing). Fred Couples seems to be the perfect example of someone that really applies force to the handle using a throwing motion, so much so that his right hand will come off the handle occasionally. To me, I'd characterize his tempo as slow, but with transition that is quick, and reserving some acceleration so that he can apply that throwing motion on the downswing. That's a level of transition sophistication I can only hope to achieve.

My current working theory is that using a quick transition and light hand pressure prevents early application of force to the handle, and keeps the shaft from dropping too far behind me. At that point, I actually have trouble applying force to the handle at all because i have to "catch up" to the shaft. At that point, I just need to make sure I'm turning fast enough and far enough to keep the handle leaning forward at impact. It helps to keep a stretched feeling in the arms, similar to the Hogan photo you posted above, though I'm no where near that stretched...that's just the feeling.

Meanwhile, if I'm focusing on applying force to the handle with a pushing motion, I naturally use a tighter hand pressure, that seems to keep the shaft steeper going back. A slow, deliberate transition seems to give me time to shallow the shaft a little and allows me to time the force application to the handle. As I said before, at this point, this transition is so slow, I get poor distance presumably because I'm not using enough centrifugal force to add speed. On the course, I see some applications of that approach for punch shots, and some short game shots.

The point to the original post being, I have started to develop a good sense of where I am on the centrifugal versus radial force balance and I need a lot of work on adding radial force correctly to my full swing. My frustration is that I find very little written about transition speed variations specifically and variations in acceleration patterns generally, not that there isn't a lot of data out there. Everything is very prescribed ("you must do XXXX"), but contradictory. Obviously, when you get to elite swings, I think the variation in that force balance is a lot less than for amateurs. I'm beginning to feel like much of the confusion of "pop" golf instruction is primarily related to this variation between the two forces (centrifugal v radial) and components that work best along this spectrum. Even the instructor I see periodically seems to know there has to be a balance, but doesn't seem to know where on the spectrum to point me for fastest improvement and what other components need to be adjusted to match, though I may not be giving him enough credit.

Back to the swing radius, which is a great point. This may go back to the concept of parametric acceleration. If you start the downswing by shortening the hand radius, it will speed up the movement of the club away from the center of radius, losing some of that stored energy earlier than would be ideal. Better to shorten it late to gain that speed before impact (the left leg extension).

I wonder how much of the differences you showed are due to Hogan backshifting (to use a Maves term) away from the club and shallowing the shaft before starting to turn his shoulders back to the ball (i.e. was he trying to stretch, or did the stretch happen due to other things he was doing), versus the other two who seem to be rotating the shoulders sooner and perhaps pulling the arms in closer to the body...both are way more rotated in the shoulders than Hogan and the guy on the right definitely looks like he's pulling the right elbow in rather than allowing body movements to do it for him...just like I do :/

Dustin Johnson is another guy that looks like he gets and keeps great extension in the early downswing, although his shaft doesn't appear to be quite as shallow as Hogan, probably because of his early arched wrist and strong grip.