Why is early extension bad mechanics

[slytown]

On 10/4/2023 at 7:30 PM, MannJ said:

I just took these swings inside because it’s storming here but maybe you can see something from this. I would appreciate any input. 1 is my normal swing, take the club back and move through the ball. 2 is me making effort to stay down on the ball in the backswing and then get everything to my left heel in my downswing. As you can see I am not successfully accomplishing either things. 

1.mov 2.mov

 

So, there are a couple of things in the backswing I think you can work on.

 

1. You are sucking the club inside in the takeaway. Work on lifting the club up the plane more. When you suck the club inside it gets the face open and promotes a more OTT move in the downswing.

 

2. Second is the LOOOOONGG arm swing and overwrist set. I shouldn't see the clubhead go below your hands at the top of the backswing. With that long swing it will take a long time to get the club back down and match the shaft to your rotation. With a shorter arm swing, timing things up is much easier.

 

I would have you work on just those two backswing things. Honestly, your EE is not that much. Your backswing is just making it difficult to get in sequence in the downswing. Check Adam Scott's position here at the top. Your body position is quite good. You seem pretty flexible. But, the arm movement is causing you problems.

 

 

[Albatross Dreamer]

18 hours ago, Nels55 said:

 

Regarding this training method I have a question for anyone who is expert on lower back issues.

Is this spine position good?  Will moving through this position cause lower back problems?  Would it be better if his belt was tilted more to take some side bend out?

Thanks!

I wouldn't copy this position unless "maybe" you're using it as a slow motion or static exaggeration. You can see the curve on his shirt bending near the the thoracic-lumbar junction, which the lumbar portion of the spine is not really designed to bend much.

[MannJ]

29 minutes ago, slytown said:

 

So, there are a couple of things in the backswing I think you can work on.

 

1. You are sucking the club inside in the takeaway. Work on lifting the club up the plane more. When you suck the club inside it gets the face open and promotes a more OTT move in the downswing.

 

2. Second is the LOOOOONGG arm swing and overwrist set. I shouldn't see the clubhead go below your hands at the top of the backswing. With that long swing it will take a long time to get the club back down and match the shaft to your rotation. With a shorter arm swing, timing things up is much easier.

 

I would have you work on just those two backswing things. Honestly, your EE is not that much. Your backswing is just making it difficult to get in sequence in the downswing. Check Adam Scott's position here at the top. Your body position is quite good. You seem pretty flexible. But, the arm movement is causing you problems.

 

 

Thanks for the input!

[Nels55]

8 hours ago, slytown said:

 

If you watch her swing, her knee locks out and she has a flippy release. Yes, she manages it really well because she has good hands. But, it is still early extending before she gets to her lead side. I think its mostly due to her lack of hip rotation in the backswing. To clarify, I"m not saying she is over the top. I'm saying she extends early.

 

 

Maybe she manages her release well because of her good hands or maybe she is swinging exactly like she should swing and if she used a 'better' grip and swing she would be selling insurance or working in high tech or whatever.  I think that Mike Adams would say that she has slow hips and her lead hand grip matches her hip speed.  LOL there is no way to know for sure though a lot of folks seem to believe that they know...

[Longdriver295]

1 hour ago, Nels55 said:

Maybe she manages her release well because of her good hands or maybe she is swinging exactly like she should swing and if she used a 'better' grip and swing she would be selling insurance or working in high tech or whatever.  I think that Mike Adams would say that she has slow hips and her lead hand grip matches her hip speed.  LOL there is no way to know for sure though a lot of folks seem to believe that they know...

There's a lot on here that thinks they know about a lot of Stuff when in reality they don't know Squat. 

[MannJ]

I have a new question I would like to get a few golfers input on:

If you shot your best two rounds ever in the past handful of weeks, and you wanted to get better, would you keep doing what you’re doing or would you go into swing rebuild mode with the hopes of eliminating ee?
I played as a kid and then rarely played for two decades. Last year I started back at it pretty obsessively. I’m already a lot better than I was in high school, and I have dropped my handicap from 13 to around 8 (per 18 birdies) in the past 8 or 9 months. 
Does really make any sense for me to be going down the ee rabbit hole right now?

[Nels55]

1 hour ago, MannJ said:

I have a new question I would like to get a few golfers input on:

If you shot your best two rounds ever in the past handful of weeks, and you wanted to get better, would you keep doing what you’re doing or would you go into swing rebuild mode with the hopes of eliminating ee?
I played as a kid and then rarely played for two decades. Last year I started back at it pretty obsessively. I’m already a lot better than I was in high school, and I have dropped my handicap from 13 to around 8 (per 18 birdies) in the past 8 or 9 months. 
Does really make any sense for me to be going down the ee rabbit hole right now?

I believe that you need someone competent to look at your swing and give you some options.

 

If you post your swing here and listen to every random wrx’rs advice you can tie yourself up in knots for the rest of your life!

[Nels55]

On 10/3/2023 at 10:40 AM, MonteScheinblum said:

Most tour players are mid, which means you can tell them anything and they can make it work.  Most golfers are upper.  I’m an upper……and I’d bet Bernhard is an upper.

Langer is interesting, when he was young he had fast hips and used a strong grip.

[MonteScheinblum]

2 hours ago, Nels55 said:

Langer is interesting, when he was young he had fast hips and used a strong grip.

If memory serves he didn’t get that open, didn’t have much side bend and a high handle.  

[Red4282]

I didnt read all the replies so it may have been mentioned already, but the reason early extension has a bad connotation, IMO, is it limits the amount of shaft lean you can present. Much more important with irons. Less with driver/woods. When you lose spine angle, the hands have nowhere to go but “up”. In order for you to reach the ball and not thin it, you must dump your angles with your trail elbow and wrists earlier which presents more loft. The interesting thing is this is so common because its a natural reaction to an overly open face right before impact. Its how most learn to square the face up. If you stayed in your spine angle, and dumped the angles to square the face you would fat the crap out of it. 

[MPStrat]

8 hours ago, Nels55 said:

Langer is interesting, when he was young he had fast hips and used a strong grip.

Young Bernhard

 

2002

 

 

 

Recent

 

Still rotates a lot for his age. Snall amount of EE in his swing. But this is a great golf swing. This isn’t a Larry Rinker move. 

Edited October 7, 2023 by MPStrat
Autocorrect

[Nard_S]

Have always had extension issues, I'm upper body, too upper. I learned from "Golf My Way", lol. It's also easier on the back too if the body math is off. The best progress I made was committing to swinging through the gate of my setup, holding to that geometry better and defining that as desired result. Keep doing it, I was forced to change movement patterns at every joint pairing, change my impulses. I still work on it but I'm older and swing harder and my back is fine. Everything got flipped from that simple goal but it's a slow burn and takes a real long time.

[Nels55]

4 hours ago, MPStrat said:

Young Bernhard

 

2002

 

 

 

Recent

 

Still rotates a lot for his age. Snall amount of EE in his swing. But this is a great golf swing. This isn’t a Larry Rinker move. 

Langer was probably lower core when he was young and has moved to maybe upper mid core now.  Interestingly Dr. Wright was extreme lower core when he first set out to solve the problem of why certain students could not seem to learn his swing and has also moved up as he has gotten older also.  Larry Rinker is extreme upper core and always has been so comparing his swing to Langer's is pointless.

 

Of course I am assuming that the core system is viable which is my assumption based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the system.

[MPStrat]

1 hour ago, Nels55 said:

Larry Rinker is extreme upper core and always has been so comparing his swing to Langer's is pointless

It’s not pointless when a bad still photo is used to make him look “upper core”

[Albatross Dreamer]

5 hours ago, Nels55 said:

Langer was probably lower core when he was young and has moved to maybe upper mid core now.  Interestingly Dr. Wright was extreme lower core when he first set out to solve the problem of why certain students could not seem to learn his swing and has also moved up as he has gotten older also.  Larry Rinker is extreme upper core and always has been so comparing his swing to Langer's is pointless.

 

Of course I am assuming that the core system is viable which is my assumption based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the system.

Are you able to define what drives what "core" someone is? Meaning there has to be some anatomical, etc characteristic driving it. If you're not sure perhaps @MonteScheinblum knows? I'm really interested in knowing since there's a few things that come to mind, but the ones I'm thinking of wouldn't allow for switching cores as far as I know.

[Nels55]

8 minutes ago, Albatross Dreamer said:

Are you able to define what drives what "core" someone is? Meaning there has to be some anatomical, etc characteristic driving it. If you're not sure perhaps @MonteScheinblum knows? I'm really interested in knowing since there's a few things that come to mind, but the ones I'm thinking of wouldn't allow for switching cores as far as I know.

I did watch as many videos on the subject as I could find a few years ago but I don't recall seeing much concrete explanation of the system.  There is a thread on the subject which contains some interesting info:

@BigEx44 has been through the assessment process so maybe he can provide some additional info...

 

 

[angler99]

On 10/6/2023 at 7:46 PM, MannJ said:

I have a new question I would like to get a few golfers input on:

If you shot your best two rounds ever in the past handful of weeks, and you wanted to get better, would you keep doing what you’re doing or would you go into swing rebuild mode with the hopes of eliminating ee?
I played as a kid and then rarely played for two decades. Last year I started back at it pretty obsessively. I’m already a lot better than I was in high school, and I have dropped my handicap from 13 to around 8 (per 18 birdies) in the past 8 or 9 months. 
Does really make any sense for me to be going down the ee rabbit hole right now?

I think it does make sense. I haven't eliminated EE entirely but it's gotten much less severe and every step I've taken to try to eliminate it has lessened the EE and made my ball striking much, much better with a lot more distance to boot. My journey has not been remotely a "swing rebuild" and it's not like I shank every ball or can't make contact. It has just improved so many issues I have. Even though I still stand up a bit before impact, it's so much more pure. Eliminating each potential cause of EE makes your swing better even if you still have some EE and you'll find that you are getting a little more distance and a little more consistent ball strike.

[MannJ]

28 minutes ago, angler99 said:

I think it does make sense. I haven't eliminated EE entirely but it's gotten much less severe and every step I've taken to try to eliminate it has lessened the EE and made my ball striking much, much better with a lot more distance to boot. My journey has not been remotely a "swing rebuild" and it's not like I shank every ball or can't make contact. It has just improved so many issues I have. Even though I still stand up a bit before impact, it's so much more pure. Eliminating each potential cause of EE makes your swing better even if you still have some EE and you'll find that you are getting a little more distance and a little more consistent ball strike.

I think you are right that correcting the contributing factors of ee will improve consistency. In my case, I don’t think it will improve distance. I think it’s possible I could lose some distance. 

[Nels55]

On 10/5/2023 at 10:28 PM, Valtiel said:

Recommendation for Wayne D. videos, watch them on 1.25x speed, lol. Even 1.5x is better than standard. 😅

As an experiment I watched his Hogan analysis video and started at 1.5X and it was okay, switched to 175X and it was watchable then went 2X and that was about right for me.  Thanks for the tip!

[agolfman]

On 10/5/2023 at 12:29 PM, slytown said:

 

EE is a GOOD THING. It fixes something that is happening earlier in the swing. Try and stay positive. You are reacting well to get to the ball.

 

If you are struggling with EE and want to get rid of it, you need to fix something earlier in the swing. First culprit is grip. A weak grip makes it near impossible to come from the inside or on plane. Second, work on path of the arms. If the arms work out instead of down, you have to EE to shallow the club.

Well, I tried this today.  
 

What. The. Actual. Fudge.

 

Range session plus nine holes with a much stronger grip. Tempo, path, ball striking, recovered distance, just blown away by this. I’ve been a life long neutral grip guy and considered it an untouchable foundation of a good player. What a mistake not to have tried it.

 

I’m 50% thrilled, 50% furious and 50% frustrated, but here I am. 
 

It is a true oddity of the golf swing that there are cascading physical movements during the swing as a results of a more closed face.  It just goes to show that we always have something to learn in this game. 
 

Whoever you are, Slytown, I thank you. 

[MannJ]

I have been working on this ee deal. Using different swing thoughts, trying to adjust timing etc. one problem I am having is swinging my arms out away from my body, which I believe necessitates my body pulling back and up. 
I am not sure how much of a problem that is, but I hoped to get some input on the attached swing. My hips and shoulders aren’t getting very open, and I am either casting or nearly casting. Are these things that would cause problems?