SOG Wedges and G. Loopy The Role of Right arm Flashcards
What is role of Right arm Part 1?
NOTE: These are only highlights on the subject. For details read the actual webpage Word Document.
The right arm is often referred to by golf instructors as the “speed arm”, it has primary responsibility for transferring the energy from your torso through to the golf club.
It is also a compound pendulum in its own right.
Most amateurs use their upper body far too much and far too early in the golf swing. This feels powerful, since your arms are connected to the golf club, but it prevents you from benefiting from the compound pendulum effect. It throws away all of the club head lag
What is the role of right arm part 2?
There are a few key characteristics that you should note:
The right arm stays bent at the elbow at approximately 90 degrees.
It doesn’t start to straighten until the hands reach about hip height. [MN: It will not fully straighten until the instant of whipping action at impact. So straighten it with your impact snap.]
There is no conscious muscular effort applied to the right arm until the hands drop down to about waist height and the shoulders reach maximum rotational speed.
No matter how strong you are, you will generate far more club head speed as a result of a correctly timed sequence of movements than you can through muscular effort.
Those of you who are good at pitching a baseball, or otherwise throwing balls, will have noticed the similarity in the movement of the right arm.
This card is from Golf Tips magazine with definition of what is a release.
Here’s the skinny: A proper release happens naturally when the golfer allows the clubface to square through impact as a result of the proper path and clubhead speed. It’s not a position that you can just put yourself into at impact–you have to arrive at it via the proper sequence.
The result is a flat left wrist and a square clubface at the moment of contact.
If you wear a glove, your glove hand should be underneath your right hand. Once again, this isn’t a position that you just put yourself into; you have to let it happen automatically. [not sure how this works with RIT]
High-handicappers, on the other hand, try to hold the clubface square through impact, not allowing the release, so they end up with the glove hand on top of the right hand. This combination causes a slew of mis-hits, including high, weak shots to the right. . Furthermore, the tighter you grip the club, the more likely you’ll slice the ball.
Adjust your grip pressure before each swing so that the clubhead feels heavy.
What are the cautions about golf tips?
Taking a lesson and then going on the range and hitting balls, trying to groove your swing changes, is very ineffective. The human brain doesn’t learn that way.
And it’s not just a terrible way to learn. Hitting golf balls at full speed while practicing can be counter-productive and even destructive.
To learn a new skill, to change a movement pattern, or to break a bad habit, the brain needs to build new pathways.
Building and reinforcing these pathways takes time, it needs to be done in small steps, it needs focused, perfect repetition.
You can’t focus in the right way when you’re concentrating on hitting golf balls. You need to build the pathways before you can perform the golf swing at full speed and in distracting situations.
Pros. Trying to do what many of them do might seriously hurt you.
Only by learning exactly how to move, using the correct muscles, in the correct sequence, will you make lasting change and improvement.
Golf Digest once called Sam Snead “the best natural player ever”. Sam Snead said “People always said I had a natural swing. They thought I wasn’t a hard worker. But when I was young, I’d play and practice all day, then practise more at night by my car’s headlights. My hands bled. Nobody worked harder at golf than I did.”
What is deliberate practice?
Deliberate Practice
It is a miracle of nature that the conscious mind, The Learner, can, when properly focused, actively grow and reinforce the neural pathways needed to perform any skill better. With proper focus and effort, this growth, and the associated increase in skill level, can be accelerated to an astonishing degree.
We call this accelerated learning mechanism “Deliberate Practice”.
Deliberate Practice works because it fully engages The Learner. It works because it is hard work.
“It is only human nature to practice what you can already do well, since it’s a hell of a lots less work and a hell of a lot more fun.” — Sam Snead
What is Deliberate Practice?
Deliberate Practice is practice that focuses intently on tasks that are beyond your current level of competence and comfort.
Don’t count time, count reaches. If you can make mistakes and learn from them, and perform a drill perfectly 25 times, all the time working at the limit of your ability, during a 10 minute session, that’s about ideal.
As soon as you start to tire, as soon as you can no longer work as urgently and intensively as humanly possible, stop. Walk away. Come back for the next session ready to give it your all.
Deliberate Practice isn’t about getting it perfect first time, it’s about a framework that helps you to improve steadily and systematically.
You need to take baby steps. You need to break the swing down into simple parts, or chunks, then use specific drills to practice those chunks in a way that enables you to perform them perfectly.
At first you will perform each drill very slowly, making sure that you perform it perfectly. Then you will slowly add speed and complexity, but never so much that you can’t perform the drills perfectly the majority of the time.
Try, fail, and try again
With Deliberate Practice, you rejoice in your mistakes. Failure is the path forward, mistakes are the wellspring of progress.
It’s the struggle that makes you smarter, grows those pathways, makes you more skilful.
Mistakes are absolutely vital to learning. You should have total focus, and be ruthless about noticing and fixing errors.
Introduction overview of your setup.
You want the ball to be 4 or 5 inches (12cm) behind the bottom of your swing arc, which is the point of maximum extension where the club bottoms out at the deepest point of the divot, directly below the centre of your shoulder joint. This will enable you to use the golf club to optimum effect, the way it is designed to be used, generating a downward strike with the sweet spot of the club face and producing a penetrating, predictable ball flight.
Your weight should be over the front of your ankles, not the balls of your feet, to facilitate rotation around the hips and protect the knee joints.
The knee joint is designed to flex, not rotate. You want your weight over the front of your ankles so that you activate your glutes, the strongest muscles in your body, for stability and leverage. This forces you to rotate around your hip joint, which is the way the human body is designed to move. This means you can generate enormous power and speed without fear of injury.
The stance width and lateral position of the golf ball remain the same for all clubs when making a standard full swing from a normal lie. The driver is a special case, as are speciality shots like chip shots and sand play.
Your stance width will probably seem fairly narrow, each foot being the diameter of 2 golf balls outside of hip centre. Stand in a relaxed position with your legs straight down, then move each foot outwards by the diameter of 2 golf balls (about the same as the width as the heels on your golf shoes).
Your ankles are rolled in slightly to place your weight inside the ankle for greater stability.
The golf ball is positioned one golf ball diameter inside your left heel, your head is behind the ball.
Your feet should point straight ahead. If you have restricted hip movement you may angle your left foot outwards slightly (up to 30°), but this is rarely necessary.
Bend from your hips to address the ball, letting your hips drop back as you keep your torso in good posture, your spine intact. This should give you a great flat back, great posture.
Your knees should be relaxed, with the back of each knee directly over the back of the ankle joint.
You should feel balanced over the inside-front of your ankles.
Keep your chin up, your chest up and out.
Failure to stabilize your core, by properly engaging your abs, is the number one cause of golf-related back pain.
SOG Wedges:
- Nothing is more important than contact!
How do you address your wedge?
- ADDRESS: Do not ground the club. Hover just above grass with arms locked extended and holding the triangle. Now swing holding body where it is, do not dip, sway or pop up. Accelerate on DS slowly and Turn, Tuck and Tap.
How do you grip for wedge play?
- GRIP: Use split grip like Casey. Use this separated grip so hands do not touch each other. Practice this feel. Push down with left hand and pull up with right hand. After you get the feel right, then use normal grip but perform the correct push pull action. You can use the split hand grip for small pitches, but for like 30 plus yards and greater, use your normal grip.
How do you perform your Take Away with a wedge?
TAKEAWAY: Keep the club face square. Push down with lead (left) hand, pull up with rear (right) hand. Remember that on a wedge DS is not inside to out. It is square to square. Many times your swing path will be out to in.
How do you aim?
What three things to do on your wedge downswing?
- AIM: Aim is after impact movement. You DO NOT want your club to swing to target. But! Do watch where your CF is going on practice swings to get close to target line.
- DOWNSWING: TURN, TUCK and TAP. TURN** is the natural turn of your body. **TUCK** is pumping hips to match your chest in FF. **TAP is the toes of trail foot making your rear balance point. Ie, All your weight SB on front foot.
How do you gauge clock positions on your back swing?
What loft should you use on a wedge shot?
- CLOCK POSITIONS: Reference everything on LEAD hand clock position. Have 3 positions. 7:30, 9:00 and 10:30. BTW, 8:00 works well for 30 yard pitch. Then just practice your positions and modify the set positions a bit to modify your pitch. Tiger Woods modified his pitches by modifying his FF, lower or higher.
- CLUB LOFT: Use the least lofted club you can get by with. Thinking mostly PW, but might experiment with 7 or 8 iron.
How do you setup for a wedge shot in the rough?
Should you hinge and hold?
Should you use the bounce of the wedge?
- ROUGH SETUP: In the rough the lie always dictates your setup. Setup to hit most ball and least amount of grass. You never want grass between ball and grooves on club; it make you totally lose control of shot direction and all other aspects like height, spin, etc. Play ball back in stance. Hinge and hold shot works the best for pitches, but be careful. Hinge and hold greatly delofts the club. Do a very minor hinge and hold. You want to use some of the bounce from your wedge.
What are the procedures on DS for wedges according to Golf Loopy?
- Remember the Golf Loopy procedures. Weight on left, open stance, left foot at 45 degrees, stomp on left foot on impact and rotate into FF for a rock solid foundation. Ball SB in center or a little back in stance. For full wedge, use normal golf swing and stance.
Some regular iron shot tidbits I am working on:
HT have the slow club control for partial wedge shots.
- Use the push down and pull up on your regular golf shots. It gives you a lot more control as you are progressing through your swing. Remember keep CF square on TA.
Note: On the TA, keep the CF square but also very important is to trace the target line with the CF on TA, then on the DS, match the target line as you start bringing the CF down. As you take a longer BS, the CF will swap positions on tracing the target line with the grip, then on the way back down to the ball the grip will swap back to the CF coming down to impact the ball. This is very easy with a short club, but a 5 wood or driver, you really have to pay attention to staying on that target line path with both the CF or the Grip.
HT prevent myself from overswinging to a full BS.
Also, this gives me my personal maximum distance without going to a full blown back swing.
It also keeps me in balance and prevents mose mis-hits.
- BOOKREST: It is very important to BS making your left wrist bowed. [or flat] To do this, your right wrist SB laid back like a recipe book rest. It makes an easy swing thought to TA Square into the bookrest. Another great benefit is using the bookrest at end of TA permits me to stop the BS at eye level behind me. You power your best shots from only going back to the bookrest positon. Normally when you use a full BS, you either push the ball right or you greatly pull to the left. Perhaps later you can sneak in a full BS but while you are encoding procedural memory, use the eye level bookrest as your stop. And remember, your TA into this position is very slow.
- Try not to swing into this bookrest position. Instead turn hips, do your transition, do your clock position upper body TA and very briefly pause; then concentrate on down transition, left leg back down, holding shoulders back out of your swing until you cannot, and dropping the club and right elbow into your swing slot. Stay focused on where you are going to go through the ball. Remember “Oily towel snap” for ball impact. Remember to only hit 70%. Stay balanced!
