Reduce Swing Movement for Better Ball Flight, Consistency, and injury prevention
Why and How Should Overall Swing Movement be Reduced?
- Why reduce swing movement?
- How should whole-body movement be reduced
- How will it improve your full-swing and give you more swing-satisfaction?
Although many golfers do not realize it, the brain controls all movement — whether new or learned. Its method for controlling movement is complex. Many parts handle planning and execution. Even when a movement is "learned" and becomes automatic (as with walking), movement still shows variability. Small variability can be beneficial because it helps prevent overuse injury. The brain selects a few movement aspects that are most important and keeps them stable despite overall variability. For example, when standing from sitting, the brain keeps the center of mass stable so the body does not topple.
The brain’s control of movement changes in conditions of anxiety, injury/pain and fatigue. Thus it can be seen that the brain’s control of movement is very complex; movement is prone to variability with some limited stability; and movement changes under unusual conditions.
If the movement itself were simplified, the brain would have a simpler motion to control and be able to be more efficient in its control of the simpler mechanism. The best way to simplify is to reduce motion – especially whole-body motion and improve dynamic balance. The less body parts that are bent and twisted during the backswing, the less organization the brain requires to have, in order to unbend and untwist them all – especially given the fact that the downswing only lasts 1/4th to 1/3rd of a second. If whole-body movement is to be reduced, in which directions should the movement be reduced? Of the four basic whole-body movements – up-and-down, down-and-up-again, side-to side and rotary, which can a golfer afford to cut off? WHICHEVER MOVEMENTS ARE NOT FREE.
Not free? What does that mean? It means the movements to reduce are the ones where extra muscular effort is required to undo the movement made during the backswing. The first movement to consider is the up-and-down one (yellow arrow in the picture). The trail (right-side for a right handed golfer) shoulder is lower than the lead one at address (see individual joint positions), and once again at impact. What sense does it make to have it higher at the top of the backswing, as all typical golf swings do? This movement is purely redundant and does more harm than good, so it is the first that should be removed, simply by keeping the trail side of the body lower from address to impact.
The next movement to consider is the down-then-up-again one (red arrow in the picture). This has become popular in recent times, with many golf instructors advocating a squat-jump type of downswing movement, as they believe that once a person squats, the ground pushes that person up again (ground reaction force (GRF)), which will help to raise the lead hip and thus lead shoulder. If the lead shoulder can be high at impact, the lead shoulder and arm can form a long lever which gives better club speed. The issues with this are three. Firstly, there is no proof for GRF pushing a person, and it does not make sense either. A simple explanation is that if one stands on a basic weighing scale, the number shown on the dial represents the force one is applying on the scale, which should be matched by the ground. If the scale is put on even a fine carpet (or grass!), that number increases. Does that mean a carpet pushes us up more forcefully than a hard floor? If so, why do we have a tougher time getting out of a squishy sofa than a firm one? Secondly, the loads on the spine, hips and knees are at their highest at the lowest point in the squat, making it a risk factor for injury. Thirdly, the down-then-up-again move is silly is because if one stood maximally upright throughout the swing and simply allowed the trail arm to straighten, it will automatically push the lead side up (at least that is the case with the Minimalist Golf swing – MGS). This, then, is another movement one can easily discard.
How about the side-to-side movement golfers refer to as weight-shift? Some “experts” believe that one can use the frictional force of the trail leg against the ground to push off off, but it is difficult to push off a leg that has a large proportion of the body’s weight going through it (try standing on just your trail leg then attempting a push off it, to understand).This movement can give the swing some starting momentum if a golfer is quick enough to shift weight forward at the beginning of the downswing, but comes at a high cost. If a golfer is not fast and strong enough to shift weight at the beginning of the movement, the torso, which has been “wound up” during the backswing begins its rotation, leaving the golfer’s weight stuck on the back leg, resulting in that very common and dreaded slice. So, side-to-side movement should be reduced to a great extent too.
How about rotary movement, or the typical coil-and-uncoil motion that most golf swings have to some extent or the other? The downswing “uncoil” is a spontaneous movement (especially if the backswing has stretched the muscles or the torso adequately) and thus totally “free”. It is spontaneous because if the core muscles (external obliques and even the pectoralis major) have been stretched (as they are in the MGS), they contract very forcefully, because of a spring-like action of muscles, or the stretch-shortening cycle. Although the rotary movement is “free”, it is important for it to be produced in the correct sequence of lower-body before upper-body. If produced correctly, it is able to deliver both better distance (through a summation-of-forces principle) and better direction (as the only known movement to allow the club to arrive at the ball from a natural, inside path). See Thinking Outside the Golf-Swing Box for broader context on simplifying swing mechanics.
Thus, the one movement which a golf swing must have is the rotary one, while all other whole-body movements can safely be eliminated altogether or reduced to a great extent. The next blog post will explain how to guaranty a correct sequence for the all-important body rotation.
