drewyallop
New
For the less accomplished golfers here this may help (warning, I am not a teacher and the following may be all nonsense).
Practicing yesterday and getting the hang of a good release. No pop out on the downswing, replacing the left arm well, applying torque, releasing in the plane of the wrists, maintaining the angle at impact. Beautiful solid strikes and ball going dead straight - but no distance.
Took a break and watched a guy down a couple of stalls creaming it 40 yards beyond me. Not a white belt, not a hard belly, lead arm never got above parallel, good hand path and release. But his shoulders seemed to be rotating about twice as fast as mine. I remembered Brian saying somewhere in the release thread that the shoulders were a very important source of power. So I start spinning those shoulders. Didn't work. Too much axis tilt and chunk.
Then I remembered a BM comment on the lead shoulder blade being important in allowing the lead arm freedom. That got me thinking about the back shoulder blade. Took a few swings and noticed that I was tucking it on the backswing but keeping it tucked on the downswing (this maybe a remnant of the handle dragging, slide into the ball, FLW days). So I tried starting the downswing with the intent of rotating the back scapula out.
What a difference. Shoulder rotation automatically sped up and, even better, it was much easier to apply torque (did not have to think about it) and to keep the hand path in. Arms did not feel so restricted and they swung a lot more freely.
Distance up about 10%.
Practicing yesterday and getting the hang of a good release. No pop out on the downswing, replacing the left arm well, applying torque, releasing in the plane of the wrists, maintaining the angle at impact. Beautiful solid strikes and ball going dead straight - but no distance.
Took a break and watched a guy down a couple of stalls creaming it 40 yards beyond me. Not a white belt, not a hard belly, lead arm never got above parallel, good hand path and release. But his shoulders seemed to be rotating about twice as fast as mine. I remembered Brian saying somewhere in the release thread that the shoulders were a very important source of power. So I start spinning those shoulders. Didn't work. Too much axis tilt and chunk.
Then I remembered a BM comment on the lead shoulder blade being important in allowing the lead arm freedom. That got me thinking about the back shoulder blade. Took a few swings and noticed that I was tucking it on the backswing but keeping it tucked on the downswing (this maybe a remnant of the handle dragging, slide into the ball, FLW days). So I tried starting the downswing with the intent of rotating the back scapula out.
What a difference. Shoulder rotation automatically sped up and, even better, it was much easier to apply torque (did not have to think about it) and to keep the hand path in. Arms did not feel so restricted and they swung a lot more freely.
Distance up about 10%.
