Acquired motion question
 

I love practicing with acquired motion and thought I was doing it correctly until I started going through Yodas lessons with Colin Neeman. I have a hell of a time keeping the clubhead below the hands. Is that simply over acceleration? And, how important is it? I hit a lot of solid shots going right forearm to right forearm. Any suggestions would be welcome. The Colin Neeman videos are great. I learned my finish swivel was wrong too (breaking the left wrist). I guess I still have a long way to go.

Bring your dowels.
 

Good question, probably something all of us have tangled with and yes this is very important. In fact this touches on perhaps Mr Kelley's greatest gift to golfers or G.O.L.F. ers. Check out Chapter 12.

Id say you need to start at the beginning in Basic and then work your way up to Acquired and then gradually all the way to Total Motion. Its hard to jump in mid stream and see the subtleties in the evolution in Lag Pressure, Length of Stroke, Hinge Action, Power etc. Fortunately the Corriculum for learning TGM leaves you with one heck of a short game.

I cant remember if Colin Neeman started in Basic on the tapes or not. Normally Lynn does this greenside so maybe it didnt make it on the video. Not sure.

Start with Basic, One Accumulator, 2' back 2' through. Address, Top, Finish the Three Stations which amongst other things means no provision what so ever for Impact. Do this first without a ball to avoid throwaway and then with a ball. I start with only my right arm swinging the club. Do it beside a green so you arent tempted to put some extra Lag Pressure into it. Its a very short shot. Feel the Lag Pressure in your #3 Pressure Point. You'll notice a correlation between you good shots (with no provision for impact) and the maintenance of Lag Pressure in the #3 Pressure Point. "Hitting at the Ball, (throwaway) produces only Hackers". Within the 2' back 2' through length of Basic is a range of different Lag Pressures that gives the ball more send. Like a putt the Lag Pressure is applied smoothly, evenly. The stroke is the same length on both sides of ball, no extra acceleration needed. Tick, Tock like a metronome. Get to both arms straight. Use different Hinge Actions and Lag Pressures, ball positions to vary the shot's distance flight, spin, run etc.

Acquired. As in you "acquire" more power, another Accumulator ,a Pivot etc. Move to the range now or longer pitching area. Right forearm level to the ground to Clubshaft approx 45 degrees with both arms straight. Having succeeded in Basic, cutting things short at 45 degrees should be easier for you. Same drill here. Address, Top , Finish. Know where they are, dont go past them. Look at the face angle at Finish to check compliance with the Hinge Action. Play around with different Lag Pressures, Ball Position for different shot distances , flights. You'll find you can hit it pretty far in acquired....this training comes in handy if your punching a 5 iron under some trees from the rough, say.

From there you work you're way up gradually adding more length to the stroke while varying the Lag Pressure, Hinge Actions etc. Both Arms Straight and horizontal to the ground, Both Arms above horizontal but no finish swivel, add the Finish Swivel for a 3/4 shot, Total Motion.

I probably have some of this wrong, which reveals the work I have before me in my course of study. The end result is Ball Control. Total control and one heck of a short game. Hitting a normal seven iron is easy after going through all of this. You can scoot through the rest of the bag if your in a rush to the tee, no problem. If your just practicing and hit a rough spot , go back one club. Cant get Acquired right? Go back to Basic. Having trouble in Basic go to one hand or no ball. Having trouble with no ball....go home. Mr Kelleys revelation came when he realized he never "hacked" at daisys, I believe.

I start off as above and then do it the other way around hitting say 75 yard shots in every manner available to me. Normally working my way down from a Total Motion with lightish Lag Pressure to Acquired with lots/tons of Lag Pressure. Then 60 yards ,then 50 yards, then 40, then 30 then 10. When you can get to a 10 to 20 yard shot with Total Motion you're getting good, real good. Lynn throws this at me in our lessons. Ive been working on it, hope I dont choke when next he tries it. In the past its been a nightmare for the ball pickers to find my efforts in those trees and pastures.

The Total Motion, super light Lag Pressure reveals a lot of hidden wobbles, wrinkles. Like an aging actress in a bright side light. I can get rid of my swing wrinkles though, hopefully. Thanks to Mr Kelley and Lynn I now have a procedure for accomplishing this. No surgery necessary either.

Sorry for the ramble. Its almost Golf Season here and I'm dying to hit some balls on real turf. Dying.

PS Basic isnt as easy as it sounds. Dont leave Basic till your hitting them really well. You can do more good for your driver in Basic than just pounding balls with your driver as a warm up. The ball responds to the Geometry. I personally find I can sort of patch things over in Acquired while Basic reveals everything with brutish honesty. It was in Basic that I first got to know Three Dimensional Impact and Both Arms Straight. Id been playing at a fairly high level for years and had never experienced a little chip so powerful and sweet. Really weird but it left me to wonder what would happen with the rest of my bag if I could accomplish it there too. And so it goes.

Back to basic motion
 

Thank you for that awesome response O.B. I sincerely appreciate your effort. Looks like I'm going back to basic motion. I must admit I never truly mastered it. It is hard for me to take it 2' back and 2' through. I think it is because I'm over accelerating and putting in some pivot. I will just have to work harder. I really want to have a kick ass machine.

Wow
 

Hall of fame post O.B.!!!

Kevin

What a great post!
 

Awesome post OB!

A must read for all newcomers to TGM: this is the true curriculum and a great lesson – basic motion will reveal the true flaws that plague your game and will allow you to find the way to correct them.

A few years ago I too suffered from over acceleration. Like GarageFan I hit a ton of basic motion that saved me and helped to clearly understand all the fundamentals of a solid GOLF stroke.

Basic motion is a true Gem GarageFan! Trust all the fellow TGMers here: use and abuse of it, you'll do a great favor to your game!

How to create more lag pressure?
 

I'm digging basic motion now. I can finally do it. The right arm only drill helped a lot. Also the address, top, finish positions with no attempt to hit at the ball were gold! My next question is "how do I create more lag pressure without trying to accelerate?"

Lag is the secret of golf
 

Over acceleration of the clubhead is a race between the hands and the clubhead.

If your hands decelerate prior impact, the clubhead won’t and they will win the race...

To make your hands win the race:

• continue to accelerate your hands to both arms straight - stopping your effort at impact is not enough (REALLY driving to low point will also help).
• slow your stroke to give a chance to your hands to go at least at the same RPM as your clubhead (this is the SLOW and HEAVY concept you already know). Don't worry, you won't lose yardage because you will replace clubhead speed with clubhead mass. ONLY THEN you'll be allowed to go faster with YOUR HANDS (not the clubhead) for tour pro yardage :)

Now, talking about Lag Pressure, I'm so crazy about it that I felt the urge of setting up a blog around it! Feel free to give it a look, you may find something helpful - but I don't want to threadjack or steal visitors from Lynn and I encourage you to search the forums here first on this topic because you'll also find a ton of great information on this subject.

:salut:

Clever yodeli
 

Ha! I never knew your signature was a link. How cool! I have bookmarked your site. It looks great. I hope to check it out tonight or tomorrow morning. So more lag pressure is acceleration of the hands and as long as I keep accelerating them to low point I shouldn't have throwaway.

The thrust of the Hands is Down and Out all the way to Both Arms Straight (Follow Through). Way past Low Point.

The thrust is still going Down while the clubhead is coming up post Low Point. One really good reason to monitor the hands instead of the clubhead.

Implicit in this is that the Right Arm is bent at impact. Leaving it to Thrust actively (hitting) or passively via the pivot (swinging) through the ball. Like the boxers punch, you want to reach impact with a bent right arm and then extend it. A straight arm impact having no thrust left to offer. In TGM this is referred to as "running out of right arm".

Do this right arm extension thing with the right wrist frozen in its Impact Fix degree of bend. "Golfs unique move" according to Mr Kelley.

Hey, you're asking some great questions. Next you'll probably be wondering how to get the bent right arm from Top to its Release Point? Well your just going to have to figure that one out for yourself, Buster cause there's no way I'm telling you about the "On Plane Right Shoulder". OOPs.

How could Homer Kelley's insights have been ignored by the greater golfing world for 35 years? Its as much of a wonder to me as the book itself.

Go down & out to both arms straight
 

You're on fire OB, hot and boiling :) !

OB is right GarageFan, low point is not enough and you must go to both arms straight.

Again, you remember the example with the driver: nowadays with those 460cc heads we are told to hit the ball on the way up. So, low point in this case would be before the ball.
A common fault would be to think that because the clubhead has passed low point there is no more need to go “down” in the stroke.

Wrong!

The thrust continues down and out even after the clubhead has reached low point.
It is only because of the left arm acting as a leach that the clubhead goes up and in while you continue to direct the thrust down and out until both arms straight.