Good idea or Bad?

[zebrasinamerica]

Ok, so I had a terrible flying elbow develop last season and I have given myself a break from even picking up a club much less swinging one. My thinking is that if I give my body some time to forget I can get my flying elbow under control. Is this approach good, bad, or indifferent?

Marshall

[Dminn23]

Ok, so I had a terrible flying elbow develop last season and I have given myself a break from even picking up a club much less swinging one. My thinking is that if I give my body some time to forget I can get my flying elbow under control. Is this approach good, bad, or indifferent?

Try to picture that your holding a tray of drinks at the top of the backswing and trying to balance it with your right hand. If you do that and your left wrist is nice and flat, no more flying elbow.

[golfchief]

Your body will not forget the last thing you allowed it to do, you need to retrain the elbow to stay down.

[Everardo]

...My thinking is that if I give my body some time to forget I can get my flying elbow under control. Is this approach good, bad, or indifferent?

I've found that after taking a break that my first round back is one of my better rounds...

Your body will not forget the last thing you allowed it to do, you need to retrain the elbow to stay down.

I've also found out that my 2nd or 3rd round after a break is often one of my worst rounds

[zebrasinamerica]

Try to picture that your holding a tray of drinks at the top of the backswing and trying to balance it with your right hand. If you do that and your left wrist is nice and flat, no more flying elbow.

Dminn, thanks for the tip. You hit the nail on the head, I pulled up some pictures of me in my backswing in some late season tournaments (when my game really went south) and I was examining my position, spine angle, and then wala the shaft caught my eye and took me down to my positioning of my wrists at the top of my back swing. I some how got my wrists in the complete opposite position than what the need to be that led to my "flying elbow". Somehow or another I was keeping my right wrist flat and cupping my left wrist (I'm right handed), if you cant picture this just act like your taking a backswing (you don't even need a club for this) and look at the wrist that is flat (it should be your left so you can hold your position until your release point). So I went outside and took a few back swings and found that as soon as I flattend out my left wrist and "held" it up with my right hand with a now cupped wrist my elbow dropped right where it needed to be very nicely. However my wrist has lost some flexibility and I am currently trying to find some stretches to improve the flexibility of my wrist again. Thanks again for the tip Zebra

[allin]

Ok, so I had a terrible flying elbow develop last season and I have given myself a break from even picking up a club much less swinging one. My thinking is that if I give my body some time to forget I can get my flying elbow under control. Is this approach good, bad, or indifferent?

Actually I think a break does help sometimes. Muscle memory does decrease with time (21 days). If you have become stale or if you are tensing up and the break lets you reduce your self pressure and restart with fewer thoughts, or focused on a new change and better tempo then this could be a plus. I would suggest you start back by working on a practice drill for a few days at home before you go live.

[Surly Bastage]

I find slow motion drills are the best way to get my swing back when things go south.

[icourtnage]

I agree with what Surly said. I recently took 6 months off, and now that I'm back into it, I've found doing drills in slow motion really helps for two reasons: 1) I just took a bunch of time off, and starting back up again and ripping at the ball is asking for an injury, and
2) My muscles seem to be more responsive to changes that are made to drills that are done in slow motion. Maybe its because the muscles have more time to truly feel whatever change you are trying to ingrain?

-Ian