Ideas about The Release - a video by Brian Manzella (comments/reviews)

[dlygrisse]

I have been a working on really using the body to power the swing for several years, angled hinge release.....forward lean...etc. etc. The result? My body is beat to hell, I am hitting the ball straight but have lost distance and can't flight a five iron high enough.

I downloaded the video after doing some reading and VOILA! I went to the range and golf felt easy again.....I was hitting the ball a little farther, the ball was getting airborne, and I wasn't exhausted after hitting a medium bucket. I feel like I am using the swing of my youth again...my first experience with golf instruction was reading Golf My Way, I think I have now come full circle and may be on to something good....Thanks Brian!

I know I am only one bucket into it but when when I hit the ball I was never really sure if I was going to hit a push or a pull, a good amount of the shots were straight but my D-plane was a moving target. with my "old" body powered swing it was tight draws all day, but with this release while I seemed to be getting some zip back I wasn't quite sure where the ball was going to start. Any suggestions?

 

[Brian Manzella]

If you exaggerated everything in the video, you'd probably be draw-centric.

One of the tricks is figuring out where you will be—'cause it will be different—with your body at impact.

 

[JDMAC]

The left wrist has to bend straight back when it bends.

The top of the wrist should stay on the target line side for a long time.

This is a huge key for me, underplaner (recovering) who had a drag and roll... i replace the arm and then pay attn to the above.

Funny when you do this and then watch golf on TV you see swings in this new light watching them taking practice swings rehearsing "the release".

 

[Shot Limit]

This is a huge key for me, underplaner (recovering) who had a drag and roll... i replace the arm and then pay attn to the above.

Funny when you do this and then watch golf on TV you see swings in this new light watching them taking practice swings rehearsing "the release".

I noticed this as well watching Webb Simpson take a few practice swings before a chip. I won't speculate exactly where the left wrist was bending but it was definitely bending.

 

[James Marshall (Hogan1953)]

All things be equal would you expect the vertical swing plane in Trackman terms to be higher given a well-timed release?

 

[softconsult]

I have practiced twice using this new release. Hit maybe 300 balls, mostly with 8, 9 , wedge. When I returned to golf in 2005 after a ten year abscence, things had changed. Ball, metal woods, internet info, etc. etc. So I worked on a more body dominated more rotary swing than my previous swing, say from 1975 to 1995, which was more high hands, arms swinging more, deep divots type swing.

This release is very familiar to me. I could never master, what I now know as the full roll swivel. I had a hold off release. I have always taken decent sized divots.

So now the season is over. During my first session, what I noticed most was that my shots with an 8 iron were much more consistent. Nice grouping around the flag. Next session, toward the end, I was playing game of golf horse, so to speak, with a friend. The problem was that my normal 9 iron is 140, when I add in the jump and time the whole thing, I was hitting between 150 and 155. Little scrape marks on the turf. This could be a real adjustment problem.

On the course, different story. Concentrating on pivot, grip tension, jumping up and pulling in. Inconsistent as would be expected.
At some point in the round, I remembered Brian's advice to just swing the club and let the body follow. Magic, effortless. When I could shut down the analysis.

I like it. Just wish it had come at the start of the season, rather than the end.

 

[Marcus0418]

I don't know if this is relevant, but I guess I should preface by saying I'm a 3 handicap and am guilty of being a serial swing tinkerer. Cant ever seem to settle on something that makes me happy. I like this pattern, and when I've tried applying some of the ideals on the range (in particular the out toss)it it feels natural and surprisingly solid.

I'm still trying to wrap my nugget around what Brian said with 75% of the work our body does doesn't even go into club head speed. With that in mind I have a question in regards to swing speed for this pattern. Where does it come from and how do you get more of it in this pattern? Is it something that you can produce more of by being more aggressive in going "normal" or are there other points in the swing you can concentrate on to produce it?

 

[Brian Manzella]

75% of ALL the work—arms, hands, wrists, and the rest of the ENTIRE BODY—gets "lost in translation."

 

[Marcus0418]

Sorry Brian, I knew what you meant in the video, I guess I should have said entire body instead of just body. So, where does SS production in this pattern come from? More importantly, how can you max out it's potential in this particular pattern?

 

[spktho]

My guess is that most of the initial speed comes from the shoulders/arms/wrists and then from "sticking the hula hoop in the ground and yanking it out" right before impact.

 

[OLIVER1]

This is a huge key for me, underplaner (recovering) who had a drag and roll... i replace the arm and then pay attn to the above.

Funny when you do this and then watch golf on TV you see swings in this new light watching them taking practice swings rehearsing "the release".

What does this mean? I've been trying to conceptualize this but I can't get it into my head...Gosh, and I feel so close with this. I feel great 3/4 of the way into the downswing, then my body jumps up and my arms lag, fall under and I hit weak blocks. Could Brian's above comment be my "Holy Grail?"

 

[drewyallop]

All things be equal would you expect the vertical swing plane in Trackman terms to be higher given a well-timed release?

I say lower. See Michael Jacob's thread on Mike Granato's swing.

 

[BrendanC]

Just watched - GREAT video. Appreciate that it is from an ongoing project.

I thought the previous vids on different patterns were superb, but this is at a whole new level.

Congrats to Brian + team for taking on the guys all over the internet providing dud info and winning.

 

[drewyallop]

75% of ALL the work—arms, hands, wrists, and the rest of the ENTIRE BODY—gets "lost in translation."

Now that is really surprising. For some reason I thought it was only the legs and torso.

 

[BrendanC]

Some observations after a range practice with these new ideas.

- Much improved short irons, with higher flight. Had been catching a lot of these heavy.

- The explanation of the proper left shoulder action, pulling 'in' and the throughswing really valuable.

- Working on these allowed my to understand pushing off the ground. Felt great, much more stable body during swing.

- Got shanks when I made extra effort to turn my back to the target. Yikes. Probably just overdoing it?

 

[birly-shirly]

- Got shanks when I made extra effort to turn my back to the target. Yikes. Probably just overdoing it?

I feel your pain. But see posts 114 and 115.

 

[BrendanC]

Sorry for the trouble.

But, it is obvious that you were using some "get on top of it" move with your upper body to help square the clubface previously, and now you are "under it."

What I would have you try is to do your "out-toss" with the face and left arm turning more downward and get you left arm to "replace" itself better.

If you need me to do a little video shooing you, just ask.

Got you.

Would like to see this video for sure.

I am definitely used to using a hard turn left of the upper body in downswing to make it all work.

Actually, doing the hard turn I'm used to doing is directly opposite to the video's advice isn't it!

 

[raindogs]

Great video in production quality and presentation. I've watched COAFF, SD, and NHA, and I agree with others that this is Brian's best video yet. Everything looked great, and he superbly simplified a few mind-bending principles. I'm not a chart and diagraph kind of guy, and even I was able to follow everything from beginning to end without having to rewind.

Is it for me? The jury's still out on that one. Whether it will be or not, it's a relief that at least a few others out there believe that we can swing the club effectively and consistently without obsessing over a FLW at impact and trying to jam our hands way ahead of the ball at impact (something that Damon and I discussed and laughed at during my first lesson with him).

After reading through most of the megathread on the release and recalling a lot of what I read when I first started playing a lot of golf in the mid 90s, it occured to me that we may be coming full circle on the golf swing. People may remember that back then Leadbetter was on GD's cover every other month, and McLean's X-Factor was all the rage, but the two books that made the most enduring impressions on me were Penick's Little Red Book and Flick's On Golf (go ahead and smirk now, fellas). I can easily draw a correlation between "Throw Out" and Penick's Magic Move as I interpret them, and I remember Penick's preference for "picking" the ball off the turf rather than digging it out of there. Brian has already discussed Flick's "body responding to the swinging of the club" so I won't beat that to death. Both books were very big factors for getting my banana ball under control and going from an 18 handicap to a high single digit handicap within a few years.

So here we are almost 20 and 15 years after those books came out. Being the weak-minded and impressionable individual that I am, I went through McLean's X-Factor (ouch), Leadbetter's loop ("Son, hand me that protractor...gotta check my angles at the top of my backswing"), the Yellow Book's handle dragging (Fore Left!), and Harmon's Shorter and Wider (Fore Left!....no Right!...gotta get an A-flex driver).

Now Mandrin posts about a flat spot in the swing (something McLean talked about in one of his articles or books from the mid-90s), and McLean himself in GD recently did a spot on how handle dragging chips is no good. Yikes! I was giving serious thought to quitting smoking, but I figure why bother? At the rate we're going, in 5 years the Surgeon General will determine that smoking will make us all taller, stronger, and richer.

Sorry about the rant and length of this one...just a cold, miserable day here in Omaha. 35* and 20 mph winds...I had to walk in after nine. I digress...

Anyway, great vid, Brian. Looking forward to following further discussions on this release. One warning though...if you wear a tweed jacket and plus-fours in your next video, I'm out.

 

[birly-shirly]

Got you.

Would like to see this video for sure.

I am definitely used to using a hard turn left of the upper body in downswing to make it all work.

Actually, doing the hard turn I'm used to doing is directly opposite to the video's advice isn't it!

Brendan - I got shot of my shanks.

I made more of an effort to stand tall at address. I think I had been crouched over more, looking for a running start on putting the hula hoop in the ground.

I also looked again at the out-toss section of Brian's video. I think I was probably trying to cheat my way to more lag - trying to move my hands wider from the top but leaving the club behind. I went to the range with the idea of really tossing the club over the hands, and the right hand moving to a palm down position - as shown in the video. I took video of this in my own swing to prove to myself that this doesn't result in the huge cast that it feels like. Ball striking was much better - no full swing shanks at all.

 

[drewyallop]

Brendan - I got shot of my shanks.

I made more of an effort to stand tall at address. I think I had been crouched over more, looking for a running start on putting the hula hoop in the ground.

I also looked again at the out-toss section of Brian's video. I think I was probably trying to cheat my way to more lag - trying to move my hands wider from the top but leaving the club behind. I went to the range with the idea of really tossing the club over the hands, and the right hand moving to a palm down position - as shown in the video. I took video of this in my own swing to prove to myself that this doesn't result in the huge cast that it feels like. Ball striking was much better - no full swing shanks at all.

This was my experience birly. I misinterpreted one of MJ's videos to mean that we should leave the club COG behind the neck as long as possible. Took BM's advice to throw the club away from the hands and it came together.

I like your learning process - taking it one step at a time. Too much, too soon leads to a mess. I know.