When Lynn first showed me the McDonald exercises I didnt like them very much or get what they were all about. I couldnt wait for the marching to stop frankly. I would have preferred to have been hitting balls and looking at film of my swing... I couldnt have more astounded when I finally got the message.
Lynn knew that words alone couldnt fix what I had ingrained over decades of golf . I needed motion retraining. It took hours as I recall to gain some ground that first day. Even then I was far from finished, the lessons continued for several years actually and it wasnt until a month or so after the last lesson that they clicked in full strength. Looking back on it he broke me like you would a wild horse. The biggest gains were made at the end of the day , after he'd exhausted me. My "head" got in the way of the retraining. He got me outa my head , like an acting coach would an "over thinking it" actor.
The darn swing just isnt what we tend to think it is. I was over turning , over lifting etc. All this extra stuff. Weirdest thing is my swing now looks way better than it used to . Without any thought to what I looked like during the motion training , I ended up with the look I wanted. Weird aint it?
O.B. thanks for sharing your Journey with the Drills.
I felt the same way that you did starting out.
I know that it will take time, but I am willing to
make the effort. One concern, at the present, is
combining the drag with the Right Arm Pick up. Don't
want to create a swaying problem. I will keep you posted
and would certainly apprecated your insite.
Donn
O.B. thanks for sharing your Journey with the Drills.
I felt the same way that you did starting out.
I know that it will take time, but I am willing to
make the effort. One concern, at the present, is
combining the drag with the Right Arm Pick up. Don't
want to create a swaying problem. I will keep you posted
and would certainly apprecated your insite.
Donn
Centred head is good. A right side pull of the pivot or a right forearm pickup doesnt preclude a centred head. Remember its not a sway to the right that loads your right side.....its more about pressure . You "load" your BRACED right side by pressuring your right side , you load it with the momentum of your swinging arms and club, your turning pivot. Hence the walking thing Lynn loves to demonstrate , the lifting heals thing. He always demonstrates it with a centred head. You dont move your head to the right when your weight is entirely over your right foot when walking (when the left foot is in the air). Moe talked about loading into his right side but not over his right side. Imagine a weight scale under your right foot. Make the needle jump but without swaying your head! With force along the inside edge of your right shoes sole. Like an inside edge when skiing or footing a door say.
You could if you want try that little Hogan kick in of the right knee which braced his right side ... pretty hard to sway your head without breaking that brace. You can kick the knee in and try to leave it there while turning your right hip out of the way. "Clear the right hip" , 12-3 #13.
Speaking of Hogan , he once described the initiation of his swing away , lagging takeaway as a "rebound " off of his full body forward press. Old skool I know but his early lag in startup was a product of this rebound. He swung the club back with lag and drag established early. The rebound being IMO a description of the early momentum provided by the pivot going to Fix if but for only a brief moment then "rebounding" in the other direction. The pivots mini change in direction causing a mini lagging clubhead as it does to a much more noticeable extent in the transition from backswing to downswing.
Its so hard to talk about this, describe this business ..... unless you're talking to someone who knows how it feels. Feels in the hands. How the sweetspot seems to seek out the ball magically as in the Melhourn drill when lag pressure is present.
Do the Melhourn drills until you see, believe in the link between lag pressure and sweet spot impact. Then conclude to seek it , lag pressure , out in all normal shots. (intentionally skulled wedge shots aside) . Feel the lag pressure on both sides of the swing , make no adjustment for impact (12-5 and the Three Stations). For compressions sake. Again even from Fix , even when putting you can feel this stuff.... even when the hands stay in impact condition and the clubhead doesnt actually lag.
You know Tiger's 3 continuous passes with the putter before he sets it behind the ball? Kinda Melhourn drill in a way is it? Only the Melhourn choir would agree to this song perhaps. It does sound outlandish.... at first. IMO there's lag pressure present for a nicely stroked putt. And probably none present for a yipped four footer.
Thanks again O.B. I have worked with Hogan's Right
side brace for years. First at address and second on
the back stroke. Along came the Right Forearm Pickup
in TGM as the way to stop swaying. Now the focus is on
the feet. Going to the range and work on combining the
three above.
Also "Hogn's Power Secret" Right Foot to
drive the Right elbow deeper forward before release. Also
"Running at the ball" with right knees in book, Afternoons
with Mr.Hogan by Jody Valquez. These items to use foot action
for lag/drive on downswing.
Overall don/t want to forget independent arm swing and Motion.
Thank again, Donn
O.B. I hit aprox 200 balls today, normally 400 but
really tried to think after each shot. For the first part
I concentrated on McDonald drill, marching with left and
right foot and independent arm swing. I hit some excellent
shots but pattern was not consistent. Then I tried getting
on the elbow plane and tried to align the club with the
right arm and had good results.
I watched the Mehlhourn drills which gave a lot of insight
but the observation came to me that we were going straight
to Motion skipping Alignments and Action and then motion. A guy asked me to look at his swing and says how does this look. And then does another swing and asked me, how does this look. I ask him to stop and look at his alignments. Hard to tell what he is doing based on motion. I don't think that an advanced golfer
would buy a swing based on Motions rather than alignments.
Would certainly appreciate you thoughts. Donn
Alignments in Motion is what Lynn teaches as you know. "The geometry of all alignments stems from the Impact geometry requirements " said Homer, 2-J-1 Impact Alignments. And Impact dynamics are three dimensional geometrically .... given the side on nature of the game and the implement employed. (croquet putting having been outlawed in 60's... damn!) . Contrary to what most would tend to think a lesson with Lynn is often , more like dance lessons than geometry class . He loves motion drills. I wouldnt want to rank them in a hierarchy of some sort but in order of presentation its geometry , alignments and then motion, in that order from what Ive seen. Which is logical. "Alignments in motion" however makes for a very nice acronym however and is copyright protected, by our host.
Lynn, from what Ive seen , typically starts with a new student at the breakfast table drawing the circle geometry on paper. Getting basic terms , geometry agreed upon. Then on the practice tee the first order of business is alignments . The on plane right forearm at address . The difference between impact and adjusted address ie how impact in not a return to your address position and how the pivot creates this difference even though it involves the entire body , arms , hands and club. How the flat left wrist when rolled into finish swivel is the cure for the breaking left wrist , chicken wing typical of most golfers. etc etc. Then after these things are ingrained to some degree of acceptability he turns to motion drills which introduces lag and drag.
Motion and alignments work together . Proper motion tends to encourage all forms of "lag". Lag tends to encourage or should i say "display" , proper alignments . Talking about ground up lag here, lag at every component not just clubhead lag, like a "chain action" (Hogan). In the downswing the clubhead lags behind and places drag upon the hands, the arms lag and place drag upon the shoulders , shoulders do same to hips, hips to knees , knees to feet. I said that backwards in terms of timing. The look of this ground/up lagging and dragging is the look we see on tv. Going back to the difference between adjusted address and fix : you could say that actual impact alignments are a product of lag , lag at every component. You pose them in Fix with a turn of the hips but they are a product of the dynamic motion when swinging.
To get the look of the guys we see on tv we need motion. Its not gotten by posing , its a dynamic. A dynamic of the multiple levers so to speak , doing their levering. Why the heck would you want to restrict one component (hip action say for an x factor backswing) when looking at human motion in this manner. When my back is out I tend to fumble things .... pens, phones etc. My system , chain action or whatever is not working as whole. The frozen back throws the direction of my hands travel off line.
Even clubhead lag ie common speak lag , delayed #2 angle is not achieved via holding onto it!!!!!!!!!!!! That will ruin the motion , ruin some alignments too. Its a dynamic. The intention is to release #2! Hence the mystery of great alignments as seen on film when one throws a club down the range. Hence Jack's confounding statement that "you can not release the club too early". See Lynns video where he "hammers " the ground with his left hand and club then turns the same action into an on plane strike of the golf ball. Now, you can delay of course or you can let it go earlier for certain shots.. Sweep Release vs Random Sweep vs Snap are mechanical adjustments available to the master mechanic. Even then its the pivot , the right shoulder that takes the bent right arm and fully loaded #2 angle to a delayed Release Point. Which can be viewed as an increase in Pivot lag when looking at things from a motion perspective rather than a degrees of wrist cock position. We do this pivot lag thing exactly , without thinking , when trying to throw a ball further. We use our pivot more forcefully. For some reason we make golf into something it isnt ...... a series of static positions rather than a dynamic .......er..... motion. This IMO this is what Homer meant when he talked about a "one piece total motion". 12-5 the Basic Motion curriculum starts with the club being swung back and through continually , with no adjustment being made for impact with the ball. Sort of like a mini Mehlhorn drill.
Dkerby , you asked about the advanced golfer and what he might think of motion drills. Lynn does them with such players. He teaches other teachers the benefits of the motion drills. He doesnt just teach this stuff to us hacks. In fact he has a story about a pro, whose name you might know, who came to him after having totally lost his game. They started with the back and through constant swinging Basic Motion chip shot of 12-5, no ball. In the presence of the ball the pro would flick it near impact , without the ball he wouldnt , wouldnt throw it away. Lynn waited , waited until he was making the motion (its the motion that makes the shot) then dropped a ball down mid stroke ..... Presto! Once re introduced to proper motion, with its lag and drag , his game came back to life. Quickly. Like a car with a new battery. "Sky high long irons" said Lynn. This is a guy who had won on tour!
Even when armed with the correct diagnosis , motion drills trump somebody merely saying "dont throw it away". Or "your left hand is breaking down" , or whatever. "Hold onto that that flat left wrist " wouldnt be correct either. Even the flat left , bent right impact hands alignment can be seen as a product of lag as well. And Lag as the product of correct motion. Also the motion drills tend to work even when there is an incorrect diagnosis!
I do some slow motion drills for sequencing , alignment training. I like em. At really slow speeds there is a problem that you quickly recognize (if you're also a fan of motion drills and free flowing lag and drag) in that CF , motion, is no longer present. CF is not present in a static pose, nor is it very strong during super slow motion swings. And its the CF that sets up the lag and drag. Its always a bit of a relief for me to get up to a speed where the CF/motion comes back into things. Without it I have to carry the club back, cock the left wrist manually etc etc. Things I dont want in my real swing. Things that are for me anyways best automated , powered by , produced by ...motion. The lagging takeaway powers my startup swivel which adds more momentum to the club which eventually powers my wrist cock. CF cocks the left wrist , said Homer (for the swinger). It cocks a little later in so doing but it keeps on cocking during the change of directions.... which is something new for me. Thank you Lynn Blake! And Ted Fort ! Ted by the way , despite his Hitter ways can really teach lagging takeaway , float loading, longitudinal acceleration swinging.
You ever notice how Hogan when doing his slow mo drills still did his full body forward press at real time? Doing it in slow mo wouldnt have had the momentum to cause the rebound he talked about , maybe? Nor did he show a lot of clubhead lag during his takeaway in his super slow motion drills. Pivot lag , clubhead lag etc on the downswing he shows! During his real swing lag and drag is there in both directions , from very early in startup to my eye. Same with a lot of the old guys. Nelson for instance.
There's something missing in slo mo swings , even when done by Ben Hogan ! And that something is the momentum provided by motion. In its absence you have to muscle things that arent normally, ideally to my mind, muscled.
Homer was primarily talking about Release motion when he said "let the motion make the shot" . There is a single sentence , a mere six words that could fill an entire book if expanded upon. That would be an interesting book, but very long! Or , perhaps preferably , one could just do the darn motion drills and learn how lag really feels ....
Anybody who doesnt know what a Mehlhorn drill looks like can skip to 2;21 ( albeit with a little extra footwork). Hogan liked to warm up doing a similar drill , without any balls in the locker room for 20 minutes. We can only wonder if Astaire ever met Mehlhorn but we know Hogan did!
Last edited by O.B.Left : 03-02-2013 at 01:36 PM.
Reason: getting quote right.
O.B. You wrote a Masterpiece. Lynn may have some thoughts
but for the most part I would certainly think that he is
proud of what you wrote. I would hope that the post could
be placed, on the website, where it does not get lost.
Many years from now, I hope a very long time, Lynn will be
gone along with the rest of us. Your post should be here
for generations to come as a gift.
Your post presents a lot for me to think about and will
provide guidance for many hours on the range to come.
So much to put in the incubator.
Hybrid Mode
