Fixing my backswing

[Valtiel]

14 minutes ago, TheDeanAbides said:

Namely, too much of everything. Maybe it's the hypermobility, but it looks like your swing is still long drive length. 

Agreed, the over-rotation of the shoulders and the "long" position the club is getting into at the top leads to the hands/arms being quite late in the downswing. Everything needs to be shortened/tightened up.

@RayPlan at this stage of your work you probably need to be assuming that most things you're doing are "too much" as that definitely seems to be your tendency, as you kind of identified. Arm swing, shoulder turn, hip turn....all need to be looked at with the assumption that you're going too far until proven otherwise. You lost your balance because...



...you dumped a ton of tilt in transition to shallow a club that got long and across the line. From the top you did this:



With hands already pretty deep (distance behind you) you dropped them even further backwards, which is something you basically never want to see from a position like this as it both gets you leaning backwards and losing your tilt/orientation towards the ball on the ground (meaning extra compensations to make impact) and is a generally inefficient path to take towards the ball...meaning a longer route and more distance cover to get to impact:



A face on view would show your hands lagging way behind your body here and a lot of flipping at the bottom. So when you said:
 

Quote

I'd like to focus on this shot, which had my best contact in recent memory (ball-then-divot)

You unfortunately need to keep in mind that this is kind of irrelevant. Great contact on a single shot doesn't mean much...it can happen with even the most busted swings. Great contact across hundreds of shots and/or several rounds of golf is what matters, and doing what you're doing here won't produce that level of consistency. If you tendency is to go too far then your practice needs to be skewed towards shortening/tightening things up consciously. 

[RayPlan]

19 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

Agreed, the over-rotation of the shoulders and the "long" position the club is getting into at the top leads to the hands/arms being quite late in the downswing. Everything needs to be shortened/tightened up.

Terminology question: what do you mean by the "long position" of the club at the top?

 

19 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

@RayPlan at this stage of your work you probably need to be assuming that most things you're doing are "too much" as that definitely seems to be your tendency, as you kind of identified. Arm swing, shoulder turn, hip turn....all need to be looked at with the assumption that you're going too far until proven otherwise.

My most recent assignment was essentially an arms-only swing. I probably need to feel like I'm just swinging to P4. 

 

19 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

 

You lost your balance because...



...you dumped a ton of tilt in transition to shallow a club that got long and across the line. From the top you did this:



With hands already pretty deep (distance behind you) you dropped them even further backwards, which is something you basically never want to see from a position like this as it both gets you leaning backwards and losing your tilt/orientation towards the ball on the ground (meaning extra compensations to make impact) and is a generally inefficient path to take towards the ball...meaning a longer route and more distance cover to get to impact:



A face on view would show your hands lagging way behind your body here and a lot of flipping at the bottom. So when you said:

 

19 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

You unfortunately need to keep in mind that this is kind of irrelevant. Great contact on a single shot doesn't mean much...it can happen with even the most busted swings. Great contact across hundreds of shots and/or several rounds of golf is what matters, and doing what you're doing here won't produce that level of consistency. If you tendency is to go too far then your practice needs to be skewed towards shortening/tightening things up consciously. 

I picked the one with good contact not because I felt like it was meaningful overall, but because of the reasons you highlighted above. I had some other shots that were a bit thin, so the good contact won the tiebreaker, because it's more interesting that a busted swing can produce good contact sometimes. I'm absolutely not satisfied with the swing above, and I would still consider it busted, though perhaps more functional than my swing has been previously.

 

Thanks again for all the feedback. 

[Valtiel]

7 minutes ago, RayPlan said:

Terminology question: what do you mean by the "long position" of the club at the top?

In frame #1 you've already made a full turn, you just haven't fully set the club with your wrists. You're at (or slightly beyond) 90* of shoulder rotation here. In frame #2 you go well beyond 90*, the club moves across the line a bit, and your spine angle starts straightening while your head moves back. Your exceeding your backswing range of motion and things are starting to break down. A seven iron swing should never be this long or over rotated....many pro's driver swings are shorter than this.