Looks really great, Ted. Sustaining the lag is a beautiful thing.
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I remember a friend came back from a PGA Tour event and said he gained 30 or more yards because he started to imitate their very gradual acceleration in the beginning of the downswing and then going close to full throttle near impact.
I remember watching a video of Moe Norman and he was saying that the fastest part of the swing should be the follow through, but most golfers play backwards and have the fastest part of the swing being their backswing.
Very nice work by both student and teacher. Structure (Extensor Action) and Impact Alignments are much improved, also Clubhead speed and more Snap than Sweep. All this from working on proper Acceleration or is there other things you worked on?
I've spoken about this guy many times. He's the poster child for hard work. He's the one that's changed his max driver speed from 84 mph to 107 mph. He's recently had some irons creep over 100mph. We've updated his irons and changed the shafts to match the increased load he's placing on the shaft.
When his alignments get a little off, he returns to slower speed swings. Then, the pictures on the right are the result. The pictures on the left are from our original meeting. The pictures on the right are from yesterday.
Very nice work by both student and teacher. Structure (Extensor Action) and Impact Alignments are much improved, also Clubhead speed and more Snap than Sweep. All this from working on proper Acceleration or is there other things you worked on?
In 18 months, I don't know if there's anything that we haven't done. You name it, and I think we've done it.
It's been really enjoyable for me to see such changes. But, there's a guy that works at our range that saw Richard hitting balls for the first time, in a long time. After a couple of choice expletives, he watched in amazement as Richard pounded a few 7 irons. He couldn't believe that Richard had come so far. He hadn't seen the gradual changes that I had seen. He saw the culmination of months of change.
Proof positive! Do you recall what ideas in particular spurred your student on? i.e. which concept started the ball rolling for him? Example: for me it was understanding the way the right arm bends and straightens, or is straightened. This helped me understand the flying wedges, extensor action, and the sequencing of the accumulators.
The biggest difficulty with Richard was having his dominant arm on the front side of the club. I much prefer to have the student's dominant arm on the back of the club. So, it was difficult for him to learn to use the right arm. It's still instinctive for him to attempt to employ the left arm when going for the additional speed.
During the lesson today, we had some interesting things happen. We quickly returned to the same success with the irons that we had in the last lesson (like the previous pictures in this thread). In fact, his speed with the irons was faster when hitting the ball than it was in the practice swing. I've found this to happen many times with my own stroke. I have much faster speed when hitting a ball. I can't get the club to move as fast without a ball.
Here's the interesting part. When Richard tried to max out the driver speed, he reverted to some of his original alignments. Each of the pictures on the left are of a practice swing, where he was trying to exaggerate some of the alignments. The pictures on the right are hitting a ball, where he returned to some faults. Amazingly, his speed when hitting the ball was 107 mph, with poor alignments. So, he's gone from 84 mph to 107 mph. That alone would qualify him for an amazing change. But, even more amazing was the speed on the practice swing. It was 118 mph!!! You can get some false readings if it picks up a portion of the ball speed. But, it's impossible to get ball speed when you're not hitting a ball!
As Homer said, "Impact is not a destination." When Richard learns this (physically) and is no longer ball bound, he can find his true potential in clubhead speed. 84 mph to 107 mph is a great success story. But, I can't wait to get him from 84 mph to 118 mph, when hitting a ball. I've never seen that much change. I know it's just a practice swing. But, I'd challenge anyone to get that speed with a golf club, with or without a ball, when your starting speed was 84 mph!
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