DON'T hold the lag?

[Opie Taylor]

5 hours ago, GoGoErky said:

This topic of gravity dropping the club has been discussed over the last 6 months or so in numerous threads in this section. It’s has little to no affect because of how short the downswing swing is.

 

There is the correct way to move the arms and the wrong way. Most amateurs use them the wrong way because of old saying like hold the lag, fire the hips and so on.

 

Search gravity and by author iacas and you can read all the discussion on this topic of gravity 

I change my mind and agree with you, the word gravity is not a good description. 

[golferdude54]

[Ri_Redneck]

IMHO, The movement of the arms immediately post-transition should be "not rushed". In other words, the progression of speed of the hands should be smooth but progressively rapid. I find I swing my fastest when I swing as fast as I can while still starting slowly from transition. 

 

BT

[Nels55]

At the top release the vertical hinge and increase the horizontal hinge.  LOL that is one way to think about it that seems to work quite well for me.  Gets the club to shallow a bit producing an inside out swing with better impact position.  I think of it as throw and bow but that is probably something that just makes sense to me...

[GoGoErky]

1 hour ago, Ri_Redneck said:

AND, understand that what we convey as FEELS may be completely different from what is actually happening.

Some have been trying to say this but one or two people refuse to including the one who trophied your post, being the biggest offender in thinning his feels are real and that’s what actually happens.

[KD1]

13 minutes ago, Nels55 said:

At the top release the vertical hinge and increase the horizontal hinge.  LOL that is one way to think about it that seems to work quite well for me.  Gets the club to shallow a bit producing an inside out swing with better impact position.  I think of it as throw and bow but that is probably something that just makes sense to me...

 

Throw to 8 o'clock perhaps?

[Nels55]

11 minutes ago, KD1 said:

 

Throw to 8 o'clock perhaps?

Yes.  Cast A as I understand it.  

[ferrispgm]

3 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Exactly...I stated that the arms/upper body need to be passive long enough for the club to regain the plane that the ball is on to avoid coming into the shot over the top and certain people take it so far as to say that I said that the arms should fall at the rate of gravity throughout the entire swing, which is in no way what I said.  Oh you are about to get shots fired in your direction I assure you so brace yourself!! 

 

 

Funny.....I use a launch monitor in 80% of my practice sessions....I'm working on getting my arms extremely active immediately from the top (feels like 3/4 into the backswing)......Not once has my path been out/in and I have more lag.  Just stop....your swing theories are about as accurate as a flat earth society documentary.  Again, nobody would mind if you admitted you were wrong but you wont.

[Ri_Redneck]

I think the FEELING of passive arms is what R2L is indicating. I don't feel like I'm doing anything with my arms at the start of the downswing, but I obviously am! Perhaps the best description are that they are going along with the rest of me to generate maximum speed (driver). Also, my effort is to reach maximum speed slightly past the ball. I know this is not the case, but I believe it insures that I never flip into the ball and always make contact with the proper hand position in relation to the ball.

 

BT

[iacas]

31 minutes ago, ferrispgm said:

Funny.....I use a launch monitor in 80% of my practice sessions....I'm working on getting my arms extremely active immediately from the top (feels like 3/4 into the backswing)......Not once has my path been out/in and I have more lag.  Just stop....your swing theories are about as accurate as a flat earth society documentary.  Again, nobody would mind if you admitted you were wrong but you wont.

 

What's particularly funny is that I help a lot of people STOP coming over the top by making their arms MORE active earlier in the transition/downswing. It's all about sending their "action" in the right direction.

 

A lot of golfers who feel "passive" arms at the top… begin turning, while leaving their arms up, then they have to try to get their arms down late and they flip the most and swing left the most (for righties).

 

7 minutes ago, Ri_Redneck said:

I think the FEELING of passive arms is what R2L is indicating. I don't feel like I'm doing anything with my arms at the start of the downswing, but I obviously am!

 

If he said it's his feel and that it works for him, that'd be one thing. Instead, he's repeatedly denied that it's just his feel; he insists it's actual reality.

 

It is not.

[nikos74]

10 hours ago, Jugs said:

Passive does not mean inactive.  

Exactly true.  And from the ground up, not top-down on the DS.

Edited June 7, 2024 by nikos74

[ferrispgm]

24 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

What's particularly funny is that I help a lot of people STOP coming over the top by making their arms MORE active earlier in the transition/downswing. It's all about sending their "action" in the right direction.

 

A lot of golfers who feel "passive" arms at the top… begin turning, while leaving their arms up, then they have to try to get their arms down late and they flip the most and swing left the most (for righties).

 

 

If he said it's his feel and that it works for him, that'd be one thing. Instead, he's repeatedly denied that it's just his feel; he insists it's actual reality.

 

It is not.

 

Exactly....and I'd argue it's a lot more natural for your active arms to move in a downward direction and approach the ball inside than it is for them to move out and around, unless your BS is pretty flat maybe.

[Ri_Redneck]

28 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

What's particularly funny is that I help a lot of people STOP coming over the top by making their arms MORE active earlier in the transition/downswing. It's all about sending their "action" in the right direction.

 

A lot of golfers who feel "passive" arms at the top… begin turning, while leaving their arms up, then they have to try to get their arms down late and they flip the most and swing left the most (for righties).

 

 

If he said it's his feel and that it works for him, that'd be one thing. Instead, he's repeatedly denied that it's just his feel; he insists it's actual reality.

 

It is not.

That is why I don't particularly care to convey MY feels to anyone I'm instructing. It is rarely what they will feel. I find it better to walk them through the motion while videoing them so they feel THEIR feel. Then they can begin repeating it and work their way up to full speed.

 

BT

[MK7Golf21]

3 hours ago, Opie Taylor said:

LOL, maybe I should have just said "Don't throw the arms, but pull down the arms. My intentions of trying to paraphrase were genuine and I understood what he was saying but it didn't come out right. Thanks for posting the exact quote. Cheers.

Anytime, just trying to help with what he was saying in his book. Yea, the typical am move is the leave the hands up and spin the upper body, over the top pattern. Opposite is what he was saying, delay the shoulders a fraction, let the arms drop but it’s semantics. Then body goes. 
 

Was recently watching a guy on the range with the move. Trying his hardest to hit a draw and fix the slice. Every time he made a real swing the arms would stay up and his right shoulder spun out immediately from the top. Slice city. He needed to feel extremely active arms and a closed upper body from the top. I probably could have saved a bunch of frustration by telling him what he was actually doing. 

[ferrispgm]

2 minutes ago, Jugs said:

 

Good observation.  Feeling earlier speed can easily link to jumping away from ground during the strike while later speed is a pretty good indicator of staying with ground to get through the strike. 

 

IMO the early speed is only an issue if it's being provided by the lower body from the top....early speed from the arms is needed and allows the club to get in front more so you can provide the late "speed" from the lower body and use the ground more.  If you have early speed from the lower body, good luck. 

[Ri_Redneck]

10 minutes ago, MK7Golf21 said:

Anytime, just trying to help with what he was saying in his book. Yea, the typical am move is the leave the hands up and spin the upper body, over the top pattern. Opposite is what he was saying, delay the shoulders a fraction, let the arms drop but it’s semantics. Then body goes. 
 

Was recently watching a guy on the range with the move. Trying his hardest to hit a draw and fix the slice. Every time he made a real swing the arms would stay up and his right shoulder spun out immediately from the top. Slice city. He needed to feel extremely active arms and a closed upper body from the top. I probably could have saved a bunch of frustration by telling him what he was actually doing. 

There's a good chance had he been able to SEE what he was doing, he would have been shocked. Odds are he thought he was doing it exactly the way he should. When instructors talk about proper sequencing, this is what they're talking about. But unless someone actually does it correctly and gets the proper feel for it, They're lost.

 

BT

Edited June 7, 2024 by Ri_Redneck

[DaveGoodrich]

Seems to me that if your intent is to swing the arms fast, your body will naturally (try to) do what it has to do to support that motion.  It doesn't seem to me that the intent to turn the hips/chest fast necessarily results in the arms doing what they have to do. 

[Valtiel]

If we pull back to 30,000ft to establish context IMO it's also important to see the origins of "hold the lag" and where the concept even came from. 

One of the more common swing faults involves an immediate dumping of the wrist angles, usually in transition or early in the downswing. Unfortunately the cause and effect here is complicated and many instructors and well meaning enthusiasts tried to take the direct path to mimicking the P6 position you see in almost all pros by forcing it. It's the same problem as "keep the head down/still" and "maintain your spine angle", it's a thing that happens more automatically in response to doing other things correctly, and if you don't do said things correctly then attempting to force them is just going to break something elsewhere. Keeping the your head down and maintaining spine angle can only happen correctly if you create the proper pelvic tilts when rotating, which itself is a pain in the a**. If you can't do that, any attempt to keep your head down or maintain spine angles will put you out of position in relation to the ball, forcing other compensations. 

When it comes to lag it's the same thing. Lag is lost and angles are dumped because they need to be to hit the ball. Usually this is due to one of the following:

1) Ball too far back in the stance
2) Too much lower body lateral movement in the downswing
3) Incomplete/improper wrist hinging/setting

1 & 2 feel like the most common to me, and when combined you'll get the absolute worst examples of stuck/casting/flipping. People put the ball back in their stance because it feels like the most intuitive thing to do to hit down, then they're told to lead with the lower body in the downswing so they can correctly use the lead leg to rotate and create power. Bonus points if they've taken any of the "take the hands out/use the big muscles" types of advice that gets them shutting down the wrists too much. Combine all of that and you physically can't hit the ball with any leveraged lag and you're forced into a "wide to wide" swing pattern that only gets worse the more you put any effort into any of the three aforementioned common mistakes that you *think* are good golf moves.

"Hold the lag" exists as an attempted bandaid that literally only ever works by accident when it forces someone to intuitively stop doing one of the above. For the vast majority that this seems to screw up however, the solution is not to attempt creating lag where it isn't but to correctly create an environment where *having* lag is conducive to actually hitting the ball. This involves correcting any amount of the three issues above; moving the ball out from being too far back in your stance, pivoting and shifting your pressure the correct amount and in correct sequence, and making sure you've set your wrists/hands in a position where lag is present at the top in some capacity. 
 

[MonteScheinblum]

5 hours ago, nikos74 said:

Exactly true.  And from the ground up, not top-down on the DS.

A top down swing is physically impossible.  A ground up swing is automatic.  

[MonteScheinblum]

9 hours ago, Ri_Redneck said:

IMHO, The movement of the arms immediately post-transition should be "not rushed". In other words, the progression of speed of the hands should be smooth but progressively rapid. I find I swing my fastest when I swing as fast as I can while still starting slowly from transition. 

 

BT

When it’s measured it’s actually the opposite in elite players and long hitters.

[MonteScheinblum]

The important factors.

 

When golfers are measured:

 

1.  The arms trail the thorax by .01 seconds in elite players.  
2.  Elite players and long hitters accelerate their arms/hands earlier and faster.

3.  Most ams have their arms trailing their body badly.  90%, both visually and when measured.

4. Starting with the arms is IMPOSSIBLE.  
 

None of the above is opinion.

 

Ground up passive arm narrative persists.

 

Welcome to flat earth.

Edited June 8, 2024 by MonteScheinblum

[Ross_Albatross]

7 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

The important factors.

 

When golfers are measured:

 

1.  The arms trail the thorax by .01 seconds in elite players.  
2.  Elite players and long hitters accelerate their arms/hands earlier and faster.

3.  Most ams have their arms trailing their body badly.  90%, both visually and when measured.

4. Starting with the arms is IMPOSSIBLE.  
 

None of the above is opinion.

 

Ground up passive arm narrative persists.

 

Welcome to flat earth.

Baffles me that we’re able to measure peak hand speed, which happens by P5.5 at the latest, that Rory (just taller than a dwarf) can get them to 25mph while the average amateur gets to 17ish - all of this going from 0mph in less than 0.1 seconds and there’s a crowd that thinks it happens on its own, by some esoteric earthly force… it’s a chain, a sequence, if you want the end of the club to be going at 120mph, from a near stop, in less than 0.2 seconds, you better get the chain reaction going early in the right direction

[TheDeanAbides]

17 hours ago, Ri_Redneck said:

I think it would be best if everyone in this forum would designate between FEELS and MOTIONS when describing their swing/positions. AND, understand that what we convey as FEELS may be completely different from what is actually happening. Those FEELS may also not correlate to what others FEEL when doing the same motions. So arguing about specifics is pointless. We should ask questions and try our best to understand the information being conveyed AND understand how difficult it can be to understand the information as well.

 

We've all heard the phrase "Feel isn't real." which I absolutely detest! As golfers we HAVE to use feels because we cannot watch ourselves in real time as we are playing. When practicing/training we watch videos of ourselves immediately after we swing to relate the FEELS with what we see in the videos. Even then, What is ACTUALLY happening can still be incorrectly described. AMG uses tech that is available to only a tiny fraction of the golfing world and when they are describing what is happening, we have to take those words and turn them into FEELS. VERY HARD to do for most people. 

 

Lastly, if we are going to upload videos to show what we are doing, we should do our best to make them clear and have them be full swing videos with clubs and balls.

 

BT

"Feel isn't real" is the most important teaching phrase in golf. 

[TheDeanAbides]

2 hours ago, PracticeSwinger said:

Baffles me that we’re able to measure peak hand speed, which happens by P5.5 at the latest, that Rory (just taller than a dwarf) can get them to 25mph while the average amateur gets to 17ish - all of this going from 0mph in less than 0.1 seconds and there’s a crowd that thinks it happens on its own, by some esoteric earthly force… it’s a chain, a sequence, if you want the end of the club to be going at 120mph, from a near stop, in less than 0.2 seconds, you better get the chain reaction going early in the right direction

Which is why the myth of a slow and smooth backswing is nonsense. You need the momentum of a fast arm swing back to create decent tempo and a fast arm swing from the top. Tour Tempo did a lot for showing ams how fast a good swing is from start to finish compared to most weekend golfers. 

Edited June 8, 2024 by TheDeanAbides

[CoreyW1369]

As far as feels go, is it fair to say that a downswing should feel more like a wood chopping motion with a body turn; rather than the arms getting flung outward like with a spin drum? It seems to me the “passive” descriptor would be most like the spin drum.
 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2024 by Golf_Goof
Clarity

[Simpsonia]

Does anyone think any other athletic motion in any other sport is fully passive or limp with the arms/hands? Would you throw a fastball with passive arms, how about hitting a baseball with a bat, or hitting a topspin forehand in tennis, how about throwing a javelin? Stay athletic and hit bombs, says Paddy. 

 

Edit: I also think a big disconnect between the passive arm people who keep pushing back on athletic motions is simply that they have different internal definitions of the phases of the swing. When people are saying fire the arms, they aren't talking about firing the arms in transition, they're talking about firing the arms to start the downswing, ie as you are reestablishing lead side pressure, just like you'd step into a swing of a racket or bat. 

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2024 by Simpsonia

[GoGoErky]

3 hours ago, Jugs said:

 

It's not necessarily a question of whether a sequence starts from ground up but a question about what happens if a player comes out of transition and succumbs to a hit impulse.  Even though they are using ground they really aren't, so at that point is the player involved with managing the swing with hands and arms, or is the swing allowed to gain and control on it's own while its coming through.   Give up control to gain control is the idea. 

 

I'm sure flat earthers have considered earth is not flat, we stand in a bowl- we stand on the horizon while our eyes are level with it. 🌍 <lol>   

They are still using the ground just not efficiently 

[GoGoErky]

1 hour ago, Jugs said:

 

Maybe, but some may say 'let it go' leads, or should lead, the hit parade of most important teaching phrases in golf.   Number 2 might be 'get lessons' if you don't understand #1.   'Feel isn't real' could be well down the list.  

 

If I feel my trail knee lowering through the strike than its height at address is that feel not real when I know for certain it is?    Where does your definition start and end. 

 

 

There are feelings but what the phrase is talking about is that it doesn’t correlate to what’s happening. Like the feeling o farms first. It’s a feel but it’s not what actually happens in the swing. Many times is also creating an exaggerated feel to them get the golfer to do the right movement.

 

Monte has a drill for lead arm parallel in his efficient swing series where the lead arm rotates to have the club parallel to the ground. That would never happen in the swing but it’s a feel to create the right movement of the lead arm

[TheDeanAbides]

1 hour ago, Jugs said:

 

Maybe, but some may say 'let it go' leads, or should lead, the hit parade of most important teaching phrases in golf.   Number 2 might be 'get lessons' if you don't understand #1.   'Feel isn't real' could be well down the list.  

 

If I feel my trail knee lowering through the strike than its height at address is that feel not real when I know for certain it is?    Where does your definition start and end. 

 

 

"Let it go" is largely meaningless because impact isn't something you can control, it's a result of what went before. 

 

"Get lessons" won't be that helpful unless you understand that feel isn't real. 

 

You do understand that "feel is not real" doesn't mean that what you feel is never real, right? It means that what you feel is probably not real. I guess that if we want to be sematically correct you could adapt it to "Feel is rarely real, but sometimes it is, so don't take it for granted. Measure, video, observe." That's not quite as catchy though.

[TheDeanAbides]

16 minutes ago, GoGoErky said:

They are still using the ground just not efficiently 

Yep. The only way to not use the ground in a golf swing is to be levitating.