My Swing (Jetfan1983)

[JetFan1983]

Golf Day #22

 

 

Do not attempt to adjust your playback speed. That's me swinging sloooowwww to try to hit the sequencing I want. Honestly, maybe I should practice like this more. Easier on the body too.

This is the PGA National range if anyone was wondering. I know I told Erik recently I can't hit off mats, but I only practiced driver and I only swung super slow*.

It was the Junior Honda Classic today so it was fun seeing all the best juniors in the state hit some balls. Crazy how good these kids are. 

Pretty excited though that I have a practice speed here where I can kind of swing how I'm envisioning. Certainly I'm not hitting all the spots I want, but this is way better than the crap I do when swinging even half speed let alone full speed. I'm going to make sure to incorporate this kind of "crawl before you can walk" kind of practice now.

*Some good news here. Turns out my elbow pain that flared up in September wasn't my old tennis elbow (which I successful rehabbed a while back) but actually the bone bruise I suffered back in May. For some reason it started hurting again after hitting off the sim at the PGA Superstore. It's calmed down now. Doc says these kinds of bone bruises take several months to go away, so I should avoid mats for the time being.

[JetFan1983]

Appreciate all the thumbs up on my posts here, guys! Definitely encouraging!

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Just a quick update here because I improved my driver posture a bit today. 

This feels like I'm setting up for a wedge. Definitely an awful feeling but I can see how this is better than the straight standing up thing I was doing in the previous post. This is going to take some getting used to, but already I can see how setting up with my torso tilted more towards the ball is better for several things during the actual swing. 

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Here's a slow DTL 8-iron from yesterday where I'm trying to just... swing better I guess you could say. 

Here's a 56 from today:

Swinging this slowly has been interesting. I worked out today too and have hit balls three days in a row, so that part of this is really positive. 

Here's a couple drivers. Lots to like relative to what I normally do at full speed. Interesting to see some things I still struggle with even going this slow too. 

 

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The big achievement today was that I hit balls three days in a row and that I improved my posture with driver. I know I'm only swinging super slow, but I think this kind of a practice is an interesting upgrade on mirror work in a lot of ways. Still love mirror work though!

PS- I tucked my t-shirt in to make it easier to see my hip turn. Definitely not trying to look like Urkel here 😄

[boogielicious]

Swinging slow take a lot of patience for me. You’re doing it quite well.

[JetFan1983]

11 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Swinging slow take a lot of patience for me. You’re doing it quite well.

Thanks, Scott! Hopefully as I increase speed, more and more of the good will carry over to the real thing over time. We'll see! 🤞

[JetFan1983]

Thought I'd do a quick update. I've only practiced twice since my last post due to battling some golfer's elbow, but rehabbing that is going well. The massage gun works great against it, plus stretching, isometrics and eccentrics. Using my therabar, gripper and three and four pound weights mainly. The elbow feels a lot better already and it hasn't even been three weeks yet. Promising. 

I still do mirror work daily and I'm still hitting the gym, but I lowered the weight I do for my upper body stuff by like 30% to take some pressure off the tendon. But overall, staying as active as possible seems to be the ticket out of this problem.

I did get to the range the last couple days though, so I thought I should share some stuff from today's session. 

Hitting a gap wedge here. It sounds like I'm saying I'm going to raise the exit point. I think I did that to help keep the club from tipping out from 4 to 6. Regardless, I'm happy with this DTL vid. I'm speeding it up a bit more too here and the sequence is more or less still there. 

I decided it was time to try an-course full swing just to see how it's going. I'm pretty happy with everything here up to like A7.1. Then my usual post impact crappiness with my arms and shoulders showed up. That's unsurprising since that's always my on-course swing thought and I wasn't using that here. Still, it's promising how everything looks all the way up to impact. 

After that I just went back to my slowed down, developmental tempo swings where it's much easier for me to focus on pieces. Arms/Shoulders much better here post impact. 

 

A new piece I wanted to mention I'm working on adding, mostly in mirror work, is trying to get my trail leg to do something good in the downswing 😄. It's very "dead legged" I like to say, and I would prefer if it was a lot more like Tiger Woods/Justin Thomas. In mirror work I'll feel the weight coming out of the heel immediately when the downswing starts, I'll feel the knee flexing again, and I'll feel the right hip turning downward. All this of course is to facilitate my weight shift/overall turning stuff. I don't think about it at all while actually hitting balls, but it's nice to see a little bit of that is trickling into my slowed down swing with driver.

But yea, otherwise, I'm really happy with how I'm progressing. I do feel I'm improving. I still haven't forgotten all the great lessons I've had from the years 2010-2016, and it's a blast to finally get to apply the information I've gotten from Erik, Mike, James Hirshfield and Brian Creghan. 

Today was golf session #26 since my mid-June return.

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by JetFan1983

[iacas]

Not too shabby.

[JetFan1983]

34 minutes ago, iacas said:

Not too shabby.

That's awesome, thank you, Erik. 😀

 

[JetFan1983]

For posterity's sake, I thought I'd upload yesterday's range session to the thread here. I've been rehabbing a decade plus tennis elbow issue since late January, so I haven't practiced full swing much at all. It was nice to be out there but it'll be even nicer when this elbow issue is finally behind me. Getting there!

TLDR on what I'm working on, it's a bunch of stuff I'm trying to bring from the mirror to the range. Lead arm more down than out on downswing. Squatting more, lowering torso more in transition... probably need more axis tilt as i get closer to impact, but I didn't work on that a lot. Mostly I'm just trying to get better at going from backswing to transition to early downswing. Also reduced wrist cock in the takeaway, it's nice to see that translated well from mirror to range. 

Good times. Next range session maybe in two weeks? Need to prioritize the rehab still plus some traveling. Could be a great 2024 with golf though! 

Edited October 10, 2023 by JetFan1983

[JetFan1983]

 

Here's a compilation of swings from late October to this past Saturday (December 9th). The final swing was the most promising as I like how my legs were working, and the club shallowed pretty effortlessly. Here's that last swing isolated.

I think this was maybe the best swing I've ever made. Some mevo+ data on it for you guys. It was a 7-iron:

I did toe it, but I love how my legs are working on this and how my hand path doesn't shift out badly. I would love to be able to do this at 90 mph, but being able to do it at 69.2 mph now is super promising IMO, and I just have to try to keep getting better at it over many, many reps. 

I have two priorities right now IMO:

1) lead the downswing with more active legs and hips

2) keep the downswing hand path more in/vertical.

In my mirror work I'm working on several additional things, but they're too much to think about when trying to hit a ball right now, so I pretty quickly abandon these when the range session gets tough.

1) no wrist set in takeaway

2) feeling more out and shut with the club in the takeaway so I don't suck that shit inside

3) a tad more flex in trail knee on the backswing. Still need good hip turn and depth though!

4) swing arms (long arms) from 6 to 8 better. Wish I could prioritize this one more, but whenever I do, my path gets too steep and left in the early downswing phase for it to really truly make a difference. I could be wrong though and maybe I should focus on this more.

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Slow down a lot. The mevo+ and my camera have pretty clearly shown me I cannot maintain a decent sequence if I try to ramp my 7-iron up beyond 70 mph. While it's important I push myself to swing faster -- sometimes just so I can develop some golf athleticism -- I still need to slow down a lot to make a lot of these improvements to the sequence. 

10+ months now rehabbing my left elbow and I'm nearing being able to speed train, so I'm super excited for that. So much low hanging fruit for me here, if I can just complete the foundation in the Stack, I'd probably gain 10 mph right away. No idea what my swing speed currently is, but I'd bet the cruising speed is barely 93 mph right now.

[JetFan1983]

Masters Week Swing Update! Here are a couple swings from this past weekend.

Both are basically drill swings, but the DTL swing did go about 150ish yards.

I know these choppy videos aren't great for online analysis (and exporting them seems to have made them worse), but I'm uploading them because it shows how I've been practicing these last three months. I've been using my LiveView camera exclusively, and it has helped my progress a ton. I find watching myself swing from my ipad in real time benefits me far more than shooting with a regular camera then checking it after the fact. I can retain and hone feel better. I'm leaving the lines I drew up to assist me in making these swings as well.

 

This driver swing is from late January, just before a 9-hole round of golf on the Champ course at PGA National. It wasn't in PGAT conditions yet, but this course hosted the Cognizant Classic just a few weeks later. I played the green tees with my dad which play about 5100 yards (for 18). I ended up shooting my first ever under par round with a 2-under 34. I was teeing it forward, but hey! My first ever under par 9-hole round!

Basically that day I was hitting driver about 260+ yards down there, leaving myself about 50 yards on every approach shot. I hit 4/9 greens only (which is pathetic) but I got up and down 5/5 times (which is also kind of pathetic given the yardage).

Approach shots are the worst part of my game by far.

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Priorities: I'm still trying to drop my arms behind me in the downswing. I like this as a priority because I hit the ball better right away, but also because it tends to improve my swing gradually over time as well. Dropping my arms behind me rewards me for both rotating my hips and shifting my weight forward, so I like it as a catch-all piece for practice and play. It's uncomfortable but it works.

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Rehab and Fitness: I'm 14+ months into rehabbing my 12 year elbow injury. It's probably about 80% healed at this point. It's incredible that this might be a 2 year rehab to get it back to completely asymptomatic, and this was a frustrating experience, but I'm relieved it's actually improving and that I figured out how to heal a chronic tendon injury.

About four weeks ago, with my same DPT, I started a core/legs program that I'm doing in conjunction with my regular elbow rehab and home gym work. It's been incredibly difficult, but this has been hugely necessary. I've been working out and stretching my legs/core for over 3 years consistently in the gym, but doing this with my DPT has taken it to another level. We are dry needling the crap out of my lower back and hamstrings, and while painful, it's helping a ton to unlock tightness. I can't bend at the waist and touch my toes, so that's the goal here, along with a big strength/speed increase.

Our other big goal is creating some separation between the lower and upper body for golf as my core is so tight that it makes my range practice somewhat futile at times. This changes that. 

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I haven't done a speed training workout with the Stack in over a month just due to energy/time/rehab constraints. I have so much low hanging fruit with speed though that just hitting full swings at the range once in a while is perfectly viable speed training for me anyway.

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On a final positive note, believe it our not but this is my first Masters week since 2016 that I'm healthy enough to hit balls. It's wild to even think about this. I'll be celebrating by hitting the range this weekend and playing 9 holes. It's surreal I can play during this specific week of the year. I'm so used to it being kind of low key sad for me, so this is a welcome change of pace finally.

Yea, so to sum up, the struggle with golf as always is real, but I'm in a good place where I feel like I understand how to practice in a way that gets me to hit it better gradually over time. I'd love to get healthy enough to justify a golf trip to Erie to get some @iacas feedback, and I'm currently well on my way towards that being a reality, but I have to stay patient thru all this gym/rehab work I'm doing day in and day out. For the next couple months I need to continue to prioritize my ongoing rehab/fitness program. On March 20th, I celebrated three straight years of consistent exercise, so I've come a long way.

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Some fun stats: I made my long awaited return to golf on June 14th, 2022 and in that first year I managed to hit balls 67 times (this includes days where I just putted too). So far in year two of the return, I hit 67 golf sessions last weekend. I have over two months to pad this number, which is exciting. The entirety of year two was dominated by needle work and rehab, so for me to get to 67 golf related sessions (mostly practicing at the range) with two months to go is a positive long term trend. I'm hoping year three is even better! 

Cheers, guys, and thanks for reading. Masters Week 2024! LFG!!!

[iacas]

21 minutes ago, JetFan1983 said:

Priorities: I'm still trying to drop my arms behind me in the downswing. I like this as a priority because I hit the ball better right away, but also because it tends to improve my swing gradually over time as well. Dropping my arms behind me rewards me for both rotating my hips and shifting my weight forward, so I like it as a catch-all piece for practice and play. It's uncomfortable but it works.

Rather than "dropping" which is often felt pretty passively, experiment with what I call "throwing" and widen the right elbow while letting the elbow drop to your side. Do this FAST - not passively or just with gravity like "dropping" implies.

I know #FeelAintReal and so I doubt you're truly doing it passively, but there's still a gap between muscle effort of 4/10 and muscle effort of 8/10.

[JetFan1983]

5 minutes ago, iacas said:

Rather than "dropping" which is often felt pretty passively, experiment with what I call "throwing" and widen the right elbow while letting the elbow drop to your side. Do this FAST - not passively or just with gravity like "dropping" implies.

I know #FeelAintReal and so I doubt you're truly doing it passively, but there's still a gap between muscle effort of 4/10 and muscle effort of 8/10.

Thank you! I've dabbled somewhat with this idea, but it felt so bizarre I wasn't committed to the feel much at all. Maybe one in twenty drill swings I would think about this. I will commit to that now.

[iacas]

It will feel like you are going to hit the club on the ground behind your right foot but that just lets your body rotate harder.

[JetFan1983]

Just now, iacas said:

It will feel like you are going to hit the club on the ground behind your right foot but that just lets your body rotate harder.

That makes sense. Thank you again!

[JetFan1983]

I'm getting in only two range sessions per week at most these days. I prioritize four gym days per week, mirror work, plus an option day for rest or the gym. It's more important for me to be fit than it is for me to be good at golf right now. That being said, each rep I make on the range is about as efficient as ever. My swing is working the best it ever has in my entire life. This is a slower 7-iron swing for me, but the sequencing is looking really good here. That is reflected in my scores too, which are low 80s these days, despite not playing as much as I know I need to to really progress. 

Working on: early extension stuff, Penick's magic move, widening the right arm, pushing up with the lead leg, and finally, right side bending an appropriate amount post impact.

The last six, seven month or so of core and leg training with my DPT, with a lot of dry needling, has really helped me swing this way. He's TPI certified too and I do the same routine he gives his tour players. Training with him is also training my golf swing IMO. It's insane the amount of work we've done on my left hip and lower back and I'm reaping the rewards now. 

I re-upped for another year at PGA National too, so hopefully I can have some fun rounds this winter. Fingers crossed!

 

The Foreplay Good Good stuff was still up a day later. Pretty funny. I didn't go because I was watching football all day, but it would've been kinda cool to catch the opening tee shots. 

I still do rehab twice a week and currently we're doing some work on minor neck and left wrist pain I've been having. Neither I consider serious, but these are just a couple of examples of the weekly grind I face in keeping myself in good shape and why I don't play a ton of golf, which for me, always makes my body weaker in various ways. Golf is exercise too, for twisting related stuff, but it also takes a toll on me in a negative way. Therefore, I always make a point to treat golf like the gym, with highly efficient reps at the appropriate "weight" with appropriate rest and reflection in between.

My distances are solid tho. My median driver is probably 260 without trying. My slow 7-iron swing goes like 170. I'm much more concerned with sequencing, and anything that compromises that is a failure in my book, in terms of my long term development. 

Anyway, clearly the swing isn't perfect. Bit too shallow going back, with a steepening move in transition, but I'm hitting the middle of the face at by far the highest rate I ever have. I get better every month it seems. It would not shock me at all if I hit like a 3.0 handicap or better at some point in the next year or two or three. Fingers crossed, guys. I know I need to get out there more in order to achieve that.

Some future pieces I know I need to focus on more are arms/wrist related. My hackmotion sensor tells me to bow the wrist slightly from P5 onward. I know that's a big reason why I have a bleeder fade miss. Otherwise I keep the face square until that point. The only reason I don't really focus on this one is because it's simply too many thoughts to juggle and I want to get to P5 better with my body and arms first. I have to spend too much bandwidth on not early extending and throwing my arms out in the transition, especially with the longer clubs like 3-wood and driver. 

Pretty darn excited though about my game these days. This is the lowest amount of dread I've ever felt over the ball, ever.

[iacas]

Swing looks good. What's your 7I speed up to these days?

[JetFan1983]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

Swing looks good. What's your 7I speed up to these days?

Thank you! 

Here in the video I'm going slower than normal. Maybe like 80mph only at best. On the course it's probably like 90ish mph. The last time I measured my 8-iron going full it was going 88mph and that was in late August. 

[iacas]

59 minutes ago, JetFan1983 said:

Here in the video I'm going slower than normal. Maybe like 80mph only at best. On the course it's probably like 90ish mph. The last time I measured my 8-iron going full it was going 88mph and that was in late August. 

Oh, that's good then.