Coach Jules Swing

+Tyler F I think you have a nice swing I feel like the Core movement could be lagging in Stage 3 curious to hear Tyler's thoughts I too have spent some time with Mac....

i want to thank Tyler in advance for sharing and thank the other coaches for whatever help they are able to provide and for the time they take. Just three additional pieces of info that might be relevant. 1. I just turned 73yrs old, having been playing competitively since I was 11 or 12; had four teachers at different teachers over course of my golf life: -- Strafaci brothers (Tom and Frank -- legendary in NYC area in late 50s/60s) as kid in Bklyn; Claude Harmon Sr as charity case -- he took me on as favor to another teacher who told him I was talented, that my father had cancer and we had no income to pay for lessons: Ben Doyle when launching post College Amateur days, Mac O'Grady post serious injury. Finally now with Tyler with whom I have found a lot of success in improving transition and release, but unsurprisingly issues remain. spent life in academia so I can't do anything without becoming a student of it. So constantly risk being a head case about my swing, but not in coaching others where I work hard to keep others from falling into rabbit hole I have. 2. Had a major injury in my 40s while playing in Amateur. Tore three major nerves under right armpit on lat pull down machine preparing for medal play qualifier. Muscle atrophy on right side and muscles supporting right shoulder destabilized and weakened. Didn't play for 5 years and did not play seriously or competitively for nearly 15. 3. Played basketball competitively from grade school on and net effect after ACL and Miniscus tear/surgery is non trivial arthritis in knees that I ignore as much as possible. All this has impact on limits of what my body is capable of and some limitations on my strength compared to my youth not owed entirely to aging.

+Tyler F Hi Jules, Tyler, I think you have a nice motion. I suppose that you did some 3D stuff with Tyler. If so I would love to see your pelvis sway graph on a full swing. I suspect that there is something to look for on this graph. Let me know Cheers David

Thanks everyone, especially Tyler. I NEVER would have noticed this, in part because I wasn't sure where I should look. I wasn't far off insofar as one of the things I have most focused on in my swing once I reconstructed it post injury was what I called a fake full backswing which was trying to get back to the club being parallel at top of backswing as it had been prior to the injury. Given how weak my right side had become through the triceps, lat and shoulder I started letting my arms run on after my body stopped moving. I worked hard to admit this was a mistake and tried hard to stop movement in the arms post turn/coil. But I see now that my body movements were also a culprit. What remains is to figure out how to correct this. Any suggestions? Thanks again,. Jules

Very interesting. I look to see if there is one thing that is so integrated into the rest of the swing that there is improvement in lots of places by just working on that. My reason for this approach is not that it always works, but for most people who come to me, they have such a glaring error, that much of what happens afterwards is a compensation, so fix this one thing to start and the need for compensations disappears. It's not like they don't still compensate, but they learn that they dont have to and then you can show them why and how to change. My favorite example is open clubface at club parallel in downswing. Get people to change that one thing and it doesn't automatically stop the stall or flip, but when then stall and flip at first ball goes wildly left a lot and you can then show them that they can rotate and hit it straight. So here's what I did on my own. When I got to the top in near full swing, i took my left arm off club and used left index finger to push against spot on my right shoulder where i could feel whether it was rotating internally or externally in right arm only transition. Sure enough, it was minor but definitely internal. I changed that to externally and increased shallowing. That one thing naturally led to other differences. More inside path to ball, and then a need to focus a bit on motorcycle more than I had and to slow everything down a bit to coordinate motion which also led to some more body compression and a less simple but more fluid motion -- like a dance move -- getting to left side hip wise with more of a feeling of pressuring down and left shoulder down; and all this happened in two days. But interestingly, not everything is better yet. For what disappeared was what was previously pretty good, which was my wipe. That wipe had been connected to my previous form of transition and now has to relearned and connected to these transition moves. I played a round with these feelings at a famous old Donald Ross course with smallish greens in West Hartford and noticed it all through the round that I had lost the move to both arms straight, left arm following rotation and arms extending. It just disappeared because that move had been a natural follow to the place I had gotten myself to in delivery as a result of my previous transition movement. Also my left hip movements were not completely coordinated with my shallowing and external rotation. I hit more than my share of pushes, pulls and the occasional semi-smother. Thank god i know how to make my way around the golf course. Respectable round with more golf shots gone awry than the norm; more interestingly, my body ached in different spots. Realized two things that were natural before needed further readjustment. Creating room for the path post shallowing which would enable rotation without have to extend prematurely and lose the wipe; and reinstituting the wipe from the new delivery position. First led me to introduce yesterday your 45trail leg drill to make the room consistent with the core compression while still rotating. I was only able to work on it for a half hour so more to do. Will see what positive if any impact that has on the wipe or whether I fully have to work on it independently then reintroduce. So in a way we are both right about our approach. In the end there were probably a half dozen things that i needed to work on, but they were all the result of locating the right place to begin, which I never would have found had it not been for your analysis of my video. And that was really very subtle. Additional benefit was this. Through impact and beyond I have felt for last 12-15 years since reconstructing my swing that my shoulders would rise rather than settle in both backswing and downswing. Everyone I spoke with had attributed it to tension. But as soon as I pressed agains my shoulder joint and could feel the difference between internal and external rotation and implemented the latter - independent of how much external rotation I implemented in my transition (less than in my practice swing needless to say) the shoulders were shrugged and surpressed rather than protracted. Work remains of course, but it was very revealing the domino effect of this one change; sometimes the other changes in body movement came naturally, others did not but the need for them was obvious. I will send videos to confirm progress in due course. Thnx