WEBVTT

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In this golf smart insight, we're going to answer a member question.

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So, Joe from California wanted to get my take on the hand path.

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Now, I focus a lot on the movements of the body, the hands and what they're

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doing.

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I leave some of the club stuff to those who have a little bit better technology

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for measuring the club

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because my system is the AMM 8 sensor and it's very good at measuring what the

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body's doing

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but misses out on some of the club data.

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So, I'm going to give you my take but this is not based on my own research.

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It's more based on my interpretations of other guys' research.

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So, here I'm going to have my little graphical representation of what's going

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on in the golf swing.

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So, what you can see here is the club is going to be traveling down if we're

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hitting with an iron, right?

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So, the club is traveling down, makes contact with the golf ball and continues

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going down

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before it starts to come back up.

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Because it's traveling on this incline plane going in a little bit of a circle,

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somewhere there's the furthest point away from you or the bottom of the swing,

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that is going to be after the golf ball.

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Now, the hands are also traveling on a somewhat planar path, a little bit fl

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atter than what the club is doing at times.

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But what it's doing is it's reaching the bottom of its peak right before you

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make contact with the golf ball.

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So, the big controversy in the hand path is they used to talk about how if you

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're going to have the club head moving down,

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you want to be applying kind of this constant force down towards the ground

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through the golf ball.

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I don't disagree with that in principle because I'll get into breaking up the

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movements on why and how this happens,

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but just understand that the hands are going to reach the bottom of their swing

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before you hit the golf ball

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while the club is going to hit the bottom of its swing after you hit the golf

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ball due to the club leg.

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So, I'll go back into our station and we'll discuss this and break down the

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hand path a little bit further.

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Okay, so now that we have an idea of the what, which is the hands are going to

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be coming up and in through impact,

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let's talk about some of the why and the how.

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So, if I was here, I've got the plane board just to kind of give a little

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visual representation,

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and so you can have a little backdrop to see that my hands are actually

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starting to come back up.

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So, if my hands actually continued to go down, I would hold on to a lot of leg

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and I would have a very steep angle of attack.

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You could see it just like so. As it goes down, it's a very clunky feeling as

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opposed to if I just got to there

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and then had those hands starting to work back up, you can see that the club

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kind of glances the ground,

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gives you a more shallow angle of attack, which gives you a bigger flat spot at

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the bottom, a bigger margin of air.

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That's how you take those long skinny divots as opposed to really steep ones.

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Well, the question then becomes how do I get my body to do that?

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Do I just think it? Do I just make sure that the club is coming up?

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That could be one way, but as you notice in my release videos, the transition

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videos,

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I have an idea of what I think the best players do through these phases or

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through these different movements in order to make it work.

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So what causes the hands to actually move up? Because what I teach in the

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release and what we see on 3D

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is that through impact, both arms are going to be straightening, your wrists

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are approaching more neutral,

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so for all intents and purposes, the club is moving away from your chest, the

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club is moving further away from you.

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So if my upper body stayed the same as it was at setup, that means that the

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hands would be moving down through impact.

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But that's the big caveat.

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When you swing, you got your whole body that can adjust it.

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So even though my arms are going to be extending away from my body, my upper

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body is going to actually be backing up as it continues to side bend and starts

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to extend.

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So when that happens, when my upper body is backing up, now when I extend my

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arms away from me, they are just slightly coming up as they go through that

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release

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or through that impact interval.

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It's a very powerful mechanism. We see it in pretty much every other sport.

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If you're throwing a ball, you're not going to continue having your upper body

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go forward.

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You're going to try and kind of post up so that you can rotate.

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If you're hitting a ball in tennis or in baseball, they've actually switched in

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basketball now

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instead of throwing these step-to-chest passes or bounce passes that I did

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thousands of.

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Now they're doing this more rotational pass because it contributes a whole lot

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more power.

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So it's got the double benefit of the shallow divot, so bigger margin of air,

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and it's more powerful.

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So that's why we see the hands come up and that's how we see the hands come up

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and in

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is a result of what the body is doing through impact, not what the hands are

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actively doing through impact.

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The hands are kind of going away from you.

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So what we then want to talk about is why this might be happening.

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Or why certain golfers would struggle with this if they have the wrong mental

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idea.

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So if they think that the hands are going to be traveling more down through

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here, that creates a very steep angle of attack.

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So then what you're left with is you've got to shallow out the club some way.

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What ends up happening is if you get very steep, the best and the fastest shall

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ower out of the club is to flip your release.

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So the faster I can get my hands going like this, the more I can shallow out

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the club.

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And so oftentimes I'm able to get golfers to get out of a little bit more of a

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flip release

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by understanding how the body shallows out the club to replace the flip shall

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owing out the club.

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So if you work on those release drills, if you work on the follow through

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position, you've already taken care of the fact that the club moves up and in,

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or that the hands move up and in as the club is moving down and out, and you

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won't have to think about it.

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Now, that's the more complicated part of the hand path.

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The second thing that a lot of people talk about is more the hand path during

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transition.

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And Sasho Mackenzie has done some great modeling which shows the effectiveness

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of do we really want to be on plane the entire downswing?

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And for all intent and purposes, modern researchers are saying no.

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If you were dead on plane, then it takes a significant muscular effort to

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square the club phase.

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If you allow the club to drop underneath the direction that the hands are

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pulling,

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if the club is now kind of on a flatter plane than the direction that my hands

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are pulling,

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that will cause the club to want to align those two forces as you lengthen

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everything through impact.

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And so what it ends up doing is it ends up helping you square the club phase

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with less muscular effort.

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So what we see on 3D is the way that they're able to do that is to have a

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little bit of this flattening move or this rotation of the right and left

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forearm

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that I talk about in the transition section.

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So those movements account for the things that we're seeing in the hand path

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studies and help produce this consistent, powerful bottom of your swing.

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So Joe, I hope that clears it up and for anyone else or any other members, if

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you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

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We love answering them and as you see, if it's tricky enough question, we will

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definitely get a video out there to help you understand it.