Skill 3

[ubizmo]

Re: Skill 3

Tod,

I can only say that the system works great for me and many others here. You appear to me to be holding yourself back with what seems paralysis by analysis, but that's fine if you think it helps.

With due respect I will not attempt to assist you with 3 SKs as I do not think it is a suitable system for you. I do hope you manage to find one that does work though.

I'm not suggesting that the system doesn't work. My comments in this thread are just about the principles behind skill 3. As for my own game, I've made more progress working with a few weeks working with Stack & Tilt (or some variation of it) than anything else I've ever done since I started playing. I actually think skills 1 and 2 have been very helpful with that, in that they allow me to understand why the S&T mechanics work, so they aren't just arbitrary adjustments. But skill 3 has been of no use to me, and I think I now understand the reasons why.

Check out Design Notes - Golf Physics p1 and scroll down to the section on Jorgensen's study. I think it refutes the idea that added wrist torque is needed to generate power in the golf swing. In fact, his study indicates that negative torque (i.e., the Right Hand Drill approach) probably works better. Hagen just has this bit wrong. That's not to say that thinking about rotating the club face to generate power might not be a helpful mental device for some, to achieve the transfer of angular momentum. The point is that the rotation is not, in fact, what's generating the power. It's merely one of the things that's happening as the power is being generated.

[BrianW]

Re: Skill 3

I'm not suggesting that the system doesn't work. My comments in this thread are just about the principles behind skill 3. As for my own game, I've made more progress working with a few weeks working with Stack & Tilt (or some variation of it) than anything else I've ever done since I started playing. I actually think skills 1 and 2 have been very helpful with that, in that they allow me to understand why the S&T mechanics work, so they aren't just arbitrary adjustments. But skill 3 has been of no use to me, and I think I now understand the reasons why.

Check out Design Notes - Golf Physics p1 and scroll down to the section on Jorgensen's study. I think it refutes the idea that added wrist torque is needed to generate power in the golf swing. In fact, his study indicates that negative torque (i.e., the Right Hand Drill approach) probably works better. Hagen just has this bit wrong. That's not to say that thinking about rotating the club face to generate power might not be a helpful mental device for some, to achieve the transfer of angular momentum. The point is that the rotation is not, in fact, what's generating the power. It's merely one of the things that's happening as the power is being generated.

I said I was not going to continue this but I guess I have to:

IMO it is impossible to make a powerful golf swing without cocking and uncocking the wrists and laying the clubface open on the backswing, then uncocking and laying the clubface closed on follow-through. Try getting to the top of the backswing without rotating your forearms backwards, the club would be pointing straight up as to being laid back behind you. In the downsing this rotation has to be removed and carried over to the opposite side , look at any picture of any professional golfers swing to see it. The only question is to whether your wrists roll over by their own momentum of whether assisted by the person. Without this action there is no lag or late hit or real power in the shot.

The study you relate to only makes a submission that wrist rotation can happen without force.

Just think of it this way: You want to throw a flat stone as far as possible with an under arm cast. You stand sideways on to the target, pull your rear arm back and up while rotating the shoulders and hips back, where will your right wrist be pointing at the top? Upwards towards the sky or in an open position. As you accelerate your hips will unwind then your shoulders, your elbow will lead the wrist creating lag then you will whip your forearm and wrist through to create maximum acceleration while rotating your forearm and hand to cast the stone forward. Your palm will be facing downwards towards the ground in a closed position as you follow through. Open to closed, maximum power, just like skill 3.

We know instinctively how to do it, I guess it's in our genetic memory to do this to create power in the throw (Without being sexist girls have a problem with this action when throwing). Try swinging a club while keeping the clubface exactly square to your body throughout, you do not get the same power.

EDIT:
In the simplest of example the clapping drill from the book shows the additional force generated with the closing of the clubface.

[bill reed]

Re: Skill 3

hi Brian
i agree with your first part about the the wrist and forearm rotation and i know with me it happens as part of my swing and not something i try and make happen, with the downswing and follow through i do try and keep the back of my hand facing where i want the ball start out, i always have a fade even with the short irons but the backspin stops it fading much.
as to the last part of getting more distance again i agree you cant keep the clubface looking at the target all the time but you don't need to close the face through impact to get more power. there are other systems the do keep the face looking at the target for a few inches more through impact and facing the target well after the ball is on its way. it has been shown there is no power loss and some tests show that if you want more power then flatten your swing so you come into the ball flatter and this cuts down on some of the backspin with a steeper attack.
i know i tried to get my wrists to cross and get that home run when i use to draw the ball before i changed to my Trevino swing and i could never get it timed right, i suspect Todd is having the same problems doing that as i did many years ago. i ended up going back to just letting it happen and forgetting about the home run, i tried it for months too.
bill

[BrianW]

Re: Skill 3

hi Brian
i agree with your first part about the the wrist and forearm rotation and i know with me it happens as part of my swing and not something i try and make happen, with the downswing and follow through i do try and keep the back of my hand facing where i want the ball start out, i always have a fade even with the short irons but the backspin stops it fading much.
as to the last part of getting more distance again i agree you cant keep the clubface looking at the target all the time but you don't need to close the face through impact to get more power. there are other systems the do keep the face looking at the target for a few inches more through impact and facing the target well after the ball is on its way. it has been shown there is no power loss and some tests show that if you want more power then flatten your swing so you come into the ball flatter and this cuts down on some of the backspin with a steeper attack.
i know i tried to get my wrists to cross and get that home run when i use to draw the ball before i changed to my Trevino swing and i could never get it timed right, i suspect Todd is having the same problems doing that as i did many years ago. i ended up going back to just letting it happen and forgetting about the home run, i tried it for months too.
bill

Bill,

I am more making a point that the clubface will normally approach the ball open and close to square, what happens after that is not of much interest to the ball.

I don't really want to steal the books thunder but there is a simple drill. Hold out both hands in front of at arms length, your palms together. keep your right hand fixed then take your right hand and arm back in a natural arc with no turning of the wrist, then return it making a clap. Now do the same but allow your palm to open in the back swing and close square in the backswing. Feel how much more powerful the clap is using the same rotation speed.

[bill reed]

Re: Skill 3

hi Brian
maybe i did not say what i was meaning very well, what i was trying to say was when i tried to cross my hands and move the clubface from open to closed at impact i found i was all over the place. i could not get it timed right, when i went back to not thinking about turning my hands and just let it happen i played better. i know my clubhead was going from open to closed but i was not trying to make it happen it just happened and get that little home run. maybe Todd was like i was and trying to manipulate his hands and getting the same results i was getting and maybe he would be better letting it happen.
i was down to playing off 4 back then so was not to bad a golfer but somehow i could never time my hands to give me that home run time after time, sometimes it worked but just as often it did not.
hope that makes more sense that the last post did.
cheers
bill

[ubizmo]

Re: Skill 3

IMO it is impossible to make a powerful golf swing without cocking and uncocking the wrists and laying the clubface open on the backswing, then uncocking and laying the clubface closed on follow-through. Try getting to the top of the backswing without rotating your forearms backwards, the club would be pointing straight up as to being laid back behind you. In the downsing this rotation has to be removed and carried over to the opposite side , look at any picture of any professional golfers swing to see it. The only question is to whether your wrists roll over by their own momentum of whether assisted by the person. Without this action there is no lag or late hit or real power in the shot.

Yes, I've already made exactly this point in this thread. Due to the anatomy of the human body, it is just about impossible to generate power without opening the club face relative to its swing path on the way back in order to get the angle between the lead forearm and club shaft to 90 degrees or even less. That angle, not the rotation, is what matters. This is my entire point. If you don't get that angle, rotation in itself will do next to nothing to generate power. In the setup, that angle is 180* or, for some people, a bit more. In the backswing, that angle goes from 180* to 90*, either quickly (the Joe Dante method) or a bit later (the one-piece method). But one way or another, that angle has to close from 180* to 90*, so that on the way down it can open from 90* to 180* again, just before impact. That 2nd angle change, not club face rotation, is how power is generated in the golf swing. That's the true essential, just as coming at the ball from an inside arc (no straight lines) is a true essential.

The study you relate to only makes a submission that wrist rotation can happen without force.

No, he found a bit more than that. I quote, " But the important change he did not have to make was to add any wrist torque to release the club at the bottom of the swing. That is accomplished completely by centrifugal force. In fact, once he had a mathematical model that behaved like the golf swing, he ran some 'what if' analyses to see whether application of wrist torque could add to power. He found that there is a critical time about 70-100 milliseconds before impact (where the arms are 60º back from vertical) where torque changes from hurting clubhead speed to helping it. That is, any uncocking wrist torque before the critical time will reduce clubhead speed at impact. You can indeed increase clubhead speed a bit by applying wrist torque, but only if you can do it for just the last 70 milliseconds before impact, and not before. It takes a very well-coordinated athlete to get away with this."

That is, adding torque instead of "letting it happen without force" accomplishes nothing, at best, unless you can time it to the last .07 sec. before impact.

EDIT:
In the simplest of example the clapping drill from the book shows the additional force generated with the closing of the clubface.

Yes, and that drill also helps to make my point. Clapping hands is not analogous to the golf swing in a couple of important ways.

First, it is not an action that we normally execute in a hinged way to generate power. We don't cup the clapping hand back and then whip it into the stationary hand. There is a reason why we don't. As a general thing, we're not concerned to generate power when clapping. We do, however, cup the wrist back to slap someone or something, such as a horse's hindquarters. In that instance, we do want power. Think about the difference between clapping and slapping and you see what I mean. The hinging and unhinging of the wrist is how we do it.

Second, clapping is a relatively low-momentum act to begin with. My point was not that rotation adds no momentum to the club face, only that it adds a trivial amount, relative to what the forearm-shaft angle change contributes. In the case of clapping, however, since it's a low-momentum act to begin with, the small increase generated by the rotation is perceptible. If you want a more realistic clapping drill, try this. Instead of just a normal clap, bring your clapping hand waaaay back and hit the stationary hand really really hard, full force, so that it stings. Do it both ways, with and without rotation. I think you'll find that in that instance the difference is no longer perceptible. And even in that case, the contribution that rotation makes is not as relatively small as it is in the golf swing case. In short, the clapping drill is somewhat deceptive and not truly relevant.

[BrianW]

Re: Skill 3

Tod,

Whatever. I guess you should just do what you do. This is getting overcomplicated I don't have the will to keep the conversation going.

[bdbl]

Re: Skill 3

Most of this thread is starting to fly well over my simple head; which is why I like the concept of 3skills even if my execution is still flawed.

This snippet though I think is interesting.

Another Myth:

Swing speed must come from the lower body.

A few of us has a much easier way that requires no timing. All a little different, but the same principles apply w/o squeezing and unsqueezing.

Cmays, I know this has been discussed before and to a degree I can see your point - you are a teacher and therefore your skills and teachings are commercially valuable.

However surely you can see that telling me that you have a method that will give me a controlled increase of 30mph swing speed and telling me no more is incredibly frustrating.

So a little more info please; I promise that - and I'm sure the rest of us are the same - I don't want to rip you off, I just want to play better golf and you might have a piece of my jigsaw.

[oldwease]

Re: Skill 3

As always, there seem to be many threads or elements stemming from the original post.

From my perspective, there is some natural rotation of the arms & wrists throughout the swing. I'm not sure you need to execute SK3 that consciously.

It also seems to me that is you execute SK2 properly (contacting the ball on the natural arc of the swing, clubhead inside to ball and back inside), SK3 will naturally follow more easily. Also, remember there's a difference between rotating the wrists and flipping the hands.

With regard to power sources, I would agree that the hinge, rather than rotation, provides the greater source of power. However, the rotation aids the quality of strike. On that basis, it's an important element of the swing.