[12 piece bucket]

Yoda - you wrote-: "We encourage debate on the fine points, Jeff, and we welcome your contributions. We also can handle being patronized (as long as we feel we are being educated). But, don't continue to insult us with obvious contradicitons.

That tactic does nothing to further the objectives of this fraternity and destroys your own credibility within it."

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You seem to be implying that I am acting in "bad faith" by tactically trying to get away with some obvious contradiction. That's terribly unfair! I may be arrogant and stupid and uninformed and totally wrong, but I am not trying to intentionally mislead anybody.

I got that BM drill from this BM article.

http://www.brianmanzella.com/forum/g...backswing.html

Brian was concerned that golfers tended to reverse pivot if they rigidly kept their heads too still. He suggested that a golfer should learn to pivot the pelvis correctly by having a free rotation of the pelvis that would allow the spine to acquire a rightwards spinal tilt. Brain was not concerned if the head moves slightly to the right. He wasn't promoting a deliberate movement of the head. He was simply stating that it is more important to keep the base of the neck still.

His exaggerated drill may produce an excessive upper torso tilt to the right and excessive head shift to the right, but he was not encouraging upper torso swaying (which is a lateral torso movement without a major rotary component). In fact, I think that he was essentially dealing with the same problem-issue that Brady Riggs was talking about - a reverse pivot due to swaying the pelvis right-laterally instead of rotating the pelvis. Both instructors were encouraging a movement of the right femoral head left-backwards, thereby inducing a pelvic rotation, and that pelvic rotational movement would naturally cause the spine to become more oriented towards the right (as I previously described).

I think that both golf instructors are encouraging the correct method of rotating the pelvis in the backswing, which inevitably causes the spine and upper torso to acquire a rightwards-tilt. However, my personal belief is that this reverse-K postural movement should not be exaggerated to such a degree that the head moves more than 1-3" right off its central position. My personal bias is that a small amount of rightwards head movement is acceptable during the backswing, but that it is very unacceptable to allow the left side of the head/face to move closer to the target at any time point during the backswing or downswing (compared to its address position).

I may be wrong in my opinions, but I am definitely not trying to mislead anyone or reconcile obvious contradictions.

Jeff.

Not sure how that drill encourages the base of the neck to be still but whatever . . . .

So now that we know your theory on proper backstroke pivoting . . . . What should the head do on the way through the stroke? Move forward the amount it moved back or move forward that much more or just stay back there?

That article doesn't mention anything on the spine's ability to side bend or extend in either direction . . . . If you don't extend your spine on the backstroke you'll end up looking like the drill does.