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In this analysis video, we're going to take a look at the evolution of Jack

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Nicholas's golf swing. So I had a student ask a question of obviously swings

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change

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a little bit as you get older. Our golfer is pretty much trying to do the same

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thing and just the bodies won't cooperate or are they trying to do

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something different because of a changing body. So he submitted this

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picture and basically you can see that the impact position looks very different

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.

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Well, is he trying to make a different impact position or is it just the same

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thing on a different body? I don't know for sure what Jack Nicholas or any of

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the

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other golfers that I'm going to analyze as this evolution kind of series works

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on.

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I don't know exactly what they're thinking, but I have a few kind of

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theories as far as what stays the same and what changes. So what we'll take a

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look at are what stays the same, which is typically going to be triggers and

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sequencing, and then what changes, which is typically going to be range of

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motion, the steep and shallow blend and bracing. Okay, so here we have two

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different iron swings and if we look over on the right, we can see, let's take

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a

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look at triggers first. So you can see his little head cock off to the side and

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as we go into the takeaway, you'll see that 30 years later or so he's got that

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little head movement to start the program and some similar patterning. So

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we can see that he's kind of trying to do the same thing. Now we'll see that as

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he

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gets towards the top of the swing, we're going to notice some pretty big

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differences. One, we can look at range of motion. So as we look over here on

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the

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right, we can see that he got his hands up a whole lot higher. His lower body

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rotated a little bit more, maybe not a ton more, but we can see that there's a

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pretty big difference in the amount of turn of his upper body as well as the

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amount of side bend. So he's developed some stiffness kind of in the spine

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region and as a result, the arms are going to not going to create nearly as

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much depth. So since he's trying to do the same movement, but he has a blend of

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these steeps and shallows the way the arms move and the way the body moves. If

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you take away some of the body movements, it's going to change that

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relationship. So having that amount of rotation and side bend tends to create

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deeper arms, which helps create shallow. Now he also is able to keep his head

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at

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about the same height. So what we'll see as we kind of start through transition

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,

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you'll see that his trigger for starting the noun swing is definitely a lower

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body, but we'll see that some of his kind of steep shallow blend is going to be

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a

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little different. You'll see that his head stays at about the same height and

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as a

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result of his head staying about the same height, you can see that his arms do

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a

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nice little shallow movement. There's lots of stories of Jack Nicholas working

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with his golf instructor and his instructor holding his hair to try to

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keep his head still. We can see that he did a pretty good job in this

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particular

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swing of keeping the head kind of at the same level. Now older Jack, if he didn

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't

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have the head on and if his coach had been holding his hair, you can see he

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would have struggled a little bit there in the backswing and we would see that

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he

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would struggle during the release. So who knows if that stand-up move is just

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part of Jack's natural tendency and so his coach helped him to work on his

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pivot

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control by holding his head and as a result of working on the pivot control

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and having it holding his head, he forced himself to learn how to shallow out

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with

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the arms. We can see that if he has a slightly steeper arm movement and now

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his body is standing up, those two are going to balance each other out but it's

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not going to give us quite the same flat spot and it's going to not allow us to

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power the swing quite as intensely with the body. So we'll take a look from a

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different perspective and we'll look at the bracing strategy that's going to be

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a result of both the path as well as the range of motion and the impact

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conditions that he creates as he's evolved his swing over time. So here's

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an interesting find. We have almost the same camera angle but these swings are

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taken about 40 years apart. So over on the left we have 2014 at the Masters and

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over here on the right he was about 30 in a competition against Lee Trevindo.

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So

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if we take a look at the movements to the top of the swing again we see that

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same

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trigger and head movement and we can see that it's kind of a similar

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patterning of what he's trying to do but it's shortened because of the range of

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motion especially not nearly as much back rotation right we can't see nearly as

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much flexibility here in his ribcage and that limits his ability to create that

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arm height. Now what we'll see over on the right is a very good sequencing

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getting the lower body to start and then he gets well open so when he comes

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through you can see that those arms kind of do a really good job of releasing

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but

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continuing to straighten they don't really bend he gets into some tremendous

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side bend and rotation positions. Now as you as you get older once you've

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passed

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about 65 or so you tend to lose about a third of the amount of side bending

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movement you can maintain some with flexibility and strength training but

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you're going to lose a little bit just as the natural degeneration of your

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spine.

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So what we'll see is in 2014 he still sequences and still starts with his

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lower body but we know that he didn't have as much room for his arms because

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he didn't have as much rotation so he didn't creep the shallow depth that comes

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from rotation to the right. So even though he sequences his lower body first

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and

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then his arms because his arms are going from a steeper position he uses more

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vertical body movement and not quite as much rotation so he's not going to get

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nearly as open as he did over here on the right in his prime and so as a

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result you'll see as he comes through less body and steeper arm movement is

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usually going to result in those arms bending sooner so you'll see that as he

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goes through that left arm starts bending pretty much right after impact

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where if we scrub through those frames back and forth over here because he's

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doing more of that bracing movement with his lower body his upper body is in a

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better position he's able to really extend those arms have a really solid

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release. So there's obviously been some changes over the 40 year period but I'm

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going to show you what's interesting is if we look at just this three year

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period between two of his ceremonial first T shots we can see a little bit of

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change so over here on the left we have Jack Nicholson 2011 and over here on

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the

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right we have Jack Nicholas in 2014 so it's only three years apart he's 71 in

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on

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the left and 74 on the right so the the age difference isn't that great but we

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can see that they're in the span of a few years we can see some changes

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starting to kind of take place it's not a great frame rate but if we scrub back

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and forth we can kind of see the amount of body movement over on the right we

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'll

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see a little bit less kind of core and hip movement where this will really show

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up will be in the follow-through strategy or the bracing strategy so he does a

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little bit more lower body initiation of his transition and so as he comes

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through you can you can see that left arm staying mostly straight as it kind of

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works with the body rotation now over here just three years later we can see

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that as he comes through because he doesn't have nearly the amount of body

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rotation you can almost assume that he was in a steeper position and we can see

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that that lead arm just starts bending almost instantly through impact so while

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he's well his brain is trying to power the swing and kind of control the path

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in a similar way because of the path relationship and how it's working with

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his body he's absorbing the speed differently in these two frames or in

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these two swings so one of the one of the things that we'll see from some of

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the other examples is if you're able to maintain some of your flexibility and

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strength it's going to be a lot easier for you to maintain a more similar swing

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and kind of have it deteriorate slower but what will happen is if you if you

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get stiffer and you're not able to create the rotational depth of during the

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backswing we will tend to get steeper with our arm movements which then causes

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more of a body stand-up move and less of that body rotation move if you want to

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understand your swing and you want to understand the different pieces of

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takeaway setting the club transition the release and what to look for in this

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bracing strategy that I'm talking about check out the content videos at

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galsmartacademy.com or for more analysis feel free to subscribe to our YouTube

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