Bowing the wrist

Quote:

Originally Posted by onephenom 

I'm working on keeping the club from going over the line at the top of the backswing. Should the back wrist (right wrist for you right handed golfers) bow to facilitate that? I have always heard that you should keep flat wrists but the proper grip doesn't allow for that at the backswing. Did I just get some bad advice?

You mean cup (dorsiflexion) right? Bowing would be making your palm get closer to your forearm.

And yes, your right wrist should cup (dorsiflex) throughout your backswing. The amount will vary, and some will reach maximum early in the downswing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onephenom 

 I have always heard that you should keep flat wrists but the proper grip doesn't allow for that at the backswing. Did I just get some bad advice?

 

You can't really keep both wrists flat. One has to be somewhat bent in one direction.

If you bow your trail wrist (assuming we're using the same definition of bow here), you'll open the club face dramatically. And your lead wrist would be extremely cupped.

If you want to shorten your backswing, I would think keeping your trail arm straighter on the backswing -- or more specifically, not folding it beyond 90 degrees -- would do that. Then you would really only have to worry about the amount of shoulder turn you are getting.

Are we on the same page here?

EDIT: Oh, Erik just responded while I was typing. Good news for you! 

Quote:

Originally Posted by onephenom 

I meant bow to mean the knuckles get closer to the forearm. I don't see how that would be cupping, I don't get how iacas is defining it. if your palm is getting closer to the forearm, it's like you're "cupping water"

That's the opposite of how golfers define those terms.

Left one is bowed (palmar flexed). Right one is cupped (dorsiflexed).

I think the confusion here is because we have several sets of knuckles. The knuckles closest to the back of the handcould move toward the outer forarm and cause the wrist to "cup" whereas the knuckles closest to the finger tips could move toward the inner forearm and cause the wrist to "bow".

During your backswing, if you allow your trail knee to lose some of its flex that it had at address (i.e. to make it more straight but not locked out), you can turn your shoulders more freely. Primarily, this allows the hips to turn on their inclined plane, but the shoulders experience a lot more freedom and a centered-stability too as a result.

I have just been taught that our right hand (I'm lefty, too) should hinge basically 90* to the forearm. Say if you held you right hand straight out in front of you with a flat hand, fingers together, you hinge the wrist to our left, keeping the hand flat. Now if you make that action with your right hand with your golf grip, our left hand "dorsiflexes" (I've never used that word before!) nicely.

If you cup your right wrist instead of hinging it "flat", the left wrist stays flatter.

Turns out I was doing the opposite of all this, I had it completely backwards. But then, that's only what I was just taught (as in yesterday) so it could have been a fix for me that isn't a hard rule of the golf swing. But I'm sure someone else can fill us in on that.

There's an excellent video on YouTube showing the independent wrist movements (I just can't friggin find it!) where the pro has two hinges, one strapped to each wrist. The left hand (front hand) has the hinge running along the top of the wrist, following the thumb back down onto the forearm and the right hand (rear hand) has the hinge running along the back of the hand onto the forearm. Not sure if anyone was clever enough to bookmark it as I clearly wasn't but it was a fantastic example of the independent motions of each wrist during the swing. :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon 

There's an excellent video on YouTube showing the independent wrist movements (I just can't friggin find it!) where the pro has two hinges, one strapped to each wrist. The left hand (front hand) has the hinge running along the top of the wrist, following the thumb back down onto the forearm and the right hand (rear hand) has the hinge running along the back of the hand onto the forearm. Not sure if anyone was clever enough to bookmark it as I clearly wasn't but it was a fantastic example of the independent motions of each wrist during the swing. :(

It's good ol' Martin Hall that you're thinking of. He doesn't talk about palmar flexion vs. dorsiflexion (or in golf terms, bowing vs. cupping) and how that affects the angle of the club face, but he does talking about flipping (side-bending, in his words), hinging, a bit about forearm rolling, and of course, the importance of the flat left wrist and hitting the ball before you hit the ground.

Yup, that'll be the one. The relevance to this topic was more one of making sure each wrist is performing it's correct function before trying to diagnose improvements. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon 

Yup, that'll be the one. The relevance to this topic was more one of making sure each wrist is performing it's correct function before trying to diagnose improvements. 

No, I definitely agree that it's relevant. I learned a lot from this video when I first saw it a year and a half ago or so.

Just be warned that he's not entirely correct in that video. The right wrist still cocks some, for example.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iacas 

Just be warned that he's not entirely correct in that video. The right wrist still cocks some, for example.

Good point. And just to add this: Chuck Winstead says some very questionable things in the handful of solo videos he's done that I've watched.