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Oversetting The Wrists

The most important thing with the backswing is to make sure that you are ready for the downswing. If you hinge your wrists (especially your right wrist) too much, then you can have issues with casting in transition, as well as making the motorcycle movement more challenging.

Tags: Backswing, Drill, Intermediate

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This video is oversetting the wrist.

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So I've had a couple cases recently of golfers who were trying to kind of understand what

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the wrist should do at the top of the swing.

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And basically what they were trying to do was they were trying to hinge them as much as

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possible.

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Now, this has been talked about a lot in golf because when we look from this face on view,

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you're going to tend to see this narrowing or this angle here.

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And so a lot of golf instructors have talked about hinging the wrist kind of like hinging

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a hammer.

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Now the problem about is when we look at 3D, that's not exactly the case.

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And I'm going to go into exactly why during this video.

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So if you were to maximally hinger wrist, then this left wrist is going to drift towards

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extension like so.

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The reason for that, you can check the video on combined movements of the forearms, but to

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understand that if we were to hinge like so, you'll see that my wrist can extend pretty

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easily.

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If we hinge and then try to flex, feels very uncomfortable and actually pulls my body out

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of that hinge or radial deviation.

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So when you go up to the top of the swing, if I'm facing this way, if you hinge as much as

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you can, you can see that that would tend to put the club face in a certain position.

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If I then try to flex it, which is the motorcycle movement, you'll see that that

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tends to pull me slightly out of that hinge.

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So what's more important is at the top of the swing feeling like the right wrist is going

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to cup or extend, as they've talked about kind of holding a tray or holding, you know,

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as if you were to grab the shower curtain, basically getting this wrist facing up like so.

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What we see on 3D is that in the top of the swing, the right wrist is going to be extended

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for a right hand a golfer, almost 60 degrees, 50 degrees, somewhere in that range, which

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is near maximum for a lot of golfers.

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The left wrist is only going to flex 5 to 10 degrees.

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So what ends up happening is as I make this movement, because the right wrist is going

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to be cupping and the left wrist is going to be hinging, they're going to basically get

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into a comfortable position up at the top of the swing, as if I was in this loaded position

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getting ready to throw.

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Now if I was to maximally hinge this as much as possible, then I would physically have

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no slack to increase it on the way down.

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So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we get some hinge in the left wrist and

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the fair amount of extension in the right wrist, but not quite go to maximum, because if

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you go all the way to maximum, you can't increase it in the transition.

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And the more important thing, if I face this way, the more important thing is during transition

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to get that motorcycle going and to have that wrist set.

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Now one of the other questions that I tend to get is is it okay to start that motorcycle

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movement to end the backswing?

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And absolutely, there's a number of golfers, prominent golfers, who tend to, as they set,

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already start flexing that lead wrist.

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And in doing so, that pre gets the club face already starting close, then you don't

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have to think about it during transition.

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But if you're focused on hinging the wrist as much as you can, it's going to make it harder

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for you to do that motorcycle move.

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So yes, we want to hinge the wrist, but we want to have more of a focus on the cupping of

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the right wrist and the position of the wrist this way, rather than trying to maximize

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them in this hinge motion.

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Hopefully that helps clarify what the wrist are going to do during the setting phase.

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If you focus on it, it'll allow you to be a little bit more aggressive with what your body

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does during the downswing.

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