I ask cause I sometimes dont and I was wondering /QUOTE]
Dear hp12c,
I have been answering your questions about club head and other velocities and forces on another thread, and seeing this question/thread now understand your sincere desire to improve. I think that is a common characteristic of everyone that frequents Brian's site, and so my response here is based on this, your desire to improve.
I hope you have noted in a few other responses my respect for Tim Gallwey, his writings and especially my belief in his approach to 'The Awareness Instruction' as best described in "The Inner Game of Golf". It's main purpose is to 'break away' from the dominant method of teaching the 'to-do instruction', and in THIS CASE, trying to KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL AT IMPACT. Dr. Gallwey, on the other hand would say "be aware of IF you kept your eye on the ball at impact", an after the fact assessment, BUT A VERY FOCUSED FUNCTION, and IMO, a very excellent way to be able to KEEP OUT all other damaging downswing 'to do instructions'.
So, my answer to your question "should we be looking at the impact on our swing?" is YES, but by whatever process you are comfortable of just BEING AWARE of the impact, maybe a combination of seeing, hearing feeling etc.
So for a valid test of the 'efficacy' of this BEING AWARE, hit ten balls at the range, and ask yourself AFTER THE SHOT, "was I aware of the impact of that swing?". What I bet you will find after 10 shots FOR WHICH YOU WERE AWARE, is that they are more accurate and less dispersed, and here is an easy and statistically sound way to measure what IMO, truly is the significant advantage of BEING AWARE OF THE IMPACT.
For a 'reasonably' controlled system, 7-12 events are sufficient to 'estimate' the one sigma standard deviation of the process as 1/3 of the RANGE of those events. So if you do not have a Trackman or FlightScope available to measure this dispersion, just estimate the distance AT LANDING between the furthest left, and furthest right of your intended target; this in statistics is known as 'the range', so then just divide this by 3.
The real fun, is to compare those ranges and one sigma dispersions of shots for which YOU WERE AWARE OF IMPACT, and those for which YOU WERE UNAWARE of the impact.
My bet based on personal experience, is that when you stay AWARE, your entire 'body and golf club system' will work better.
For those interested in the statistics of hitting more than 10 shots, and the effect on the estimate of the standard deviation, the noted 'range' of 13-30 events is a good estimate of '4 sigma', and the range of 31-150 shots, is a good estimate of 5 sigma. I personally use these higher numbers to give me a feel for whether or not a science-based swing change I am testing on the driving range has believable and different characteristics than the established 'baseline' swing I am used to. The higher number of events increases the 'confidence' of the determination and estimate of the one sigma value of the standard deviation.
Of course the 'range' in differences in distance can also estimate the one sigma standard deviation of that, or any other measurable parameter, if a launch monitor is not available.
Regards,
art
