I hadn’t swung a club in more than five months. I live in the northeast, so by November I was done playing (don’t really enjoy cold-weather golf), the weather this spring has been kind of crappy, and just been too busy at work to find time to hit balls, let alone play a round of golf. But I have been both curious and anxious to see, after losing 25lbs over the last 5 months and working out, how I would hit the ball and what my golf swing would look like with my new body. Would it be a new, improved swing?
So finally a couple of days ago, I found a few minutes to go to the range. I hit balls for about 15 minutes – hit it okay considering the layoff time. Then, yesterday I had my camera set-up for my morning lessons and in the afternoon I found a few minutes to hit balls again. So after hitting balls for 5 minutes, I decided to video my swing and see what it looked like. Now the thing that I’ve struggled with for years is maintaining my posture on the downswing. When I did my TPI Golf Fitness Certification, they called this move an “early extension” and I was a classic example. They also presented data that showed that 99% of golfers who can’t do a full-overhead squat, will early extend on the downswing. And I was one that couldn’t do the squat, so there was some evidence that my physical limitations were the cause, or at least contributing to the problem. I’ve worked on the doing the squat and exercise related to it, and can now do one fairly well.
So I took a couple of swings and videoed them. I went to the computer, pulled up the swings, and the first thing I looked at was whether or not I was early extending. And?
The answer, unfortunately is, “yes I was”. But I wasn’t disappointed, because really I was just being hopeful. We learned at TPI that just because you change and improve a physical limitation, many times, in and of itself the motion may not change immediately. In other words, just because I am now physically able to maintain my posture, doesn’t mean that I will. I saw the same thing with the length of my swing. I am certainly more flexible now than I was 5 months ago, and because of my limited flexibility I tend to have a fairly short backswing. And it’s still short.
So it appears that we learn a motor pattern (our golf swings) much by the way our bodies are built – both with its strengths and weaknesses – and that pattern gets “set” over time. So now the question is, with my new body, what and how much of it will I have to do to eliminate the early extension in my golf swing?
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I just visited the website and saw the latest entry. I enjoyed your posts. I have been fighting the dreaded “early extension” for years. I’ve done all the exercises recommended by TPI, Chek Institute… etc. etc. I’m certainly no model of fitness but I could perform all the recommended tests to a reasonable degree of proficiency and I was still losing spine angle.
So I started thinking about why… Well something must be making my body uncomfortable in the bent over position. It really wants to straighten when I put any effort into a swing, but I can stand in front of a mirror in my living room all night and swing in slow-motion with perfect angles. I’ve done the drill with the butt up against a wall a million times.
So what was I doing differently when I was swinging at a ball. Well my legs are strong and very active… probably from all the other sports I’ve played. And my back is usually pretty tight and my torso doesn’t move all that well until it is warmed up.
So maybe the problem stems from the differential between my hip rotation and my torso rotation. After thinking about it for a while and looking at lots of pros swings here is my take on what needs to happen.
Hips move somewhere around 45 degrees to target line.
Torso moves another 20 degrees in addition.
Shoulders move another 25 degrees in addition.
These are rough estimates that will be different for everyone but the point is that on the downswing each of these components needs to catch the one before it and pass it… i.e. torso must catch hips and shoulders must catch torso.
Now if the hips just fire and everything else stays static there’s going to be an immense amount of pressure on the joint between the hips and the torso. You guessed it… the lower back. Ahah… maybe that explains a few things. If you’re in doubt, take one of those bending straws, bend it to around 60 degrees, rotate one section and hold the other section still. What happens to the joint will make you cringe.
So maybe I have to help my torso get back to square with my core muscles. I didn’t even know what this felt like. Try it. Stand up straight and try just moving your torso left and right without moving your hips at all. Then try moving your shoulders around your torso without moving your torso or hips at all. These are the sensations I was missing. The hips do still need to turn but the torso must turn faster and the shoulders still faster. Each element must accelerate past the first from the ground up.
Now the immediate problem for me was that it is very easy to accelerate the hips as hard as I want because they are pushing against the ground… a pretty solid object to push against. But the torso sometimes just doesn’t want to get going. A good drill to get the torso moving is the move that Duval and Annika use. At the top of the back swing turn your neck and eyes to look at the target. Your torso will naturally follow. If you are like me you will miss the ball a bunch of times until you get it, but then you will find that your sequencing improves dramatically… and hopefully you will be able to keep your angles with greater ease.
Disclaimer: I am neither a professional teacher or player. The above is from my own personal exploration. It may not be completely correct but it works well for me.
Cliff, thanks for touching base and for your thoughts on this. I actually can perform the seperation exerxises that you mention and I can do them very well. it’s funny that you mention the Duval move, because I already do that in my swing! I can keep my posture and hit balls, only under these cricumastances – I keep my butt on a chair OR I hit balls with full swings , nbut only at about 60% of full speed. So my inclination with this is that I can do it when at a “walking” speed, I just need to keep upping the speed until I can do it when I run.
Thanks again for your input. BTW – have you checked out on video whether you have early extension now that you believe you have discovered something to help you overcome it?