My Swing (Jeremie Boop)

[RandallT]

Nice work. Great to see the focus on one thing!

FWIW, as you know, I'm focusing on the steep part, and one thing I'm checking in my alignments at A6 is that the club head is slightly inside my hands. You'll likely get this assignment at some point.

Your club is outside your hands at A6 as you come down, which I understand is common for those of us who are steep. Mine looked like this too, but not quite so far outside.

 

[Jeremie Boop]

9 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Nice work. Great to see the focus on one thing!

FWIW, as you know, I'm focusing on the steep part, and one thing I'm checking in my alignments at A6 is that the club head is slightly inside my hands. You'll likely get this assignment at some point.

Your club is outside your hands at A6 as you come down, which I understand is common for those of us who are steep. Mine looked like this too, but not quite so far outside.

 

I could probably rectify it if I try to keep the feeling of having my right elbow closer to my side on the downswing. It's something I should be able to do in conjunction with what I'm currently working on, but I don't want to complicate things if it's not necessary at this point. Luckily the new apartment I moved to is super close to the driving range so I should be able to get more time in working on my swing. I'm also going to try to make an effort to use the range at the course I play the most. I'm thinking, instead of trying to hurry to the course after work and rush through 18 holes that it would do me more good to get there get a bucket of balls for the range and focus on doing drills to warm up then just take my time and play 9 holes. Maybe even mix up how I play the holes such as hitting irons off the tee so I can try using more of the clubs in my bag. Given that the scores can't be posted for handicap it actually frees me up to try a lot of different stuff instead of worrying about the score. It's a hidden benefit to the new posting rule I didn't expect.

[RandallT]

5 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

I don't want to complicate things if it's not necessary at this point.

Absolutely.

Plus, the hands at A6 could easily just be a symptom, and not a cause, so the experts would have you tweak something else to fix that. Good luck with the hands forward progress. Don't forget the concept of trying to do some swings that are REALLY exaggerated, to get the feel of totally changing things. Then the right amount of hands in front doesn't feel so awkward. I've had some success with that concept the past couple days- I think. Looking forward to my next progress check with a vid submission, but more to do first.

[Jeremie Boop]

Some quick snapshots of what the current drill is improving. I had 1 major key and 2 secondary key things I needed to improve on.

Major - Fix the flip = Check, much improved at the impact position.

Secondary 1 - Better extension post impact = Check, again some serious improvement here.

Secondary 2 - Fix steep downswing = Fail, some serious regression here. It's plain to see why though, I'm letting my right elbow get away from my side resulting in a horrible OTT downswing.

So, in conclusion, keep doing this drill but focus on feeling like my right elbow stays tucked against my side.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Jeremie Boop

[Jeremie Boop]

Spent another range hitting a large bucket with only my 8 iron doing the same drill but focusing on keeping my right elbow in closer. Had to hit off the mat due to recent rain and the ground being a bit wet. I wish I had been able to record my swings. I was either hitting way down on the ball with more shaft lean or hitting fat a lot. The ball was leaving marks a bit high on the face and a few times my wrist didn't feel too great after impact. I'm thinking it was more hitting too far down on the ball because the ball flight was super low and a fat shot would normally fly a bit higher? Either way, I haven't taken a full swing since my round on Saturday. Weather looks bad for this afternoon so I probably won't get a chance to get to the range tonight, but so far Wednesday and Friday look like good days so long as the range doesn't get flooded out. On a side note, the new apartment has a mirror I may be able to use for slow motion work. I may even see if I can find a decent mat I can put on the floor with foam balls to work on short swing drills for use on bad weather days. Like I said, it's time to take this improvement work serious. Though, I must admit, doing drills and slow motion stuff is extremely boring to me and very hard to stay focused.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Jeremie Boop

[Jeremie Boop]

Weather cleared up tonight so I was able to make it to the range and surprisingly enough the grass area was open. I screwed up the camera angle on the DTL shot  but I think it shows some pretty significant improvement nonetheless. I focused on turning my left shoulder more down under my chin and less flat. The ball flight was pretty consistent, as you can see just about every single shot took off in the same direction. They were all straight pushes, not that I'm all that concerned about the ball flight it just seemed to show that my path and face angle were the same.

At least I think I got the face on angle right . Same change with this swing, turning my left shoulder more under my chin. Swing looks like it's getting a little long for a drill though, I may need to dial it back.

All in all, pretty happy with my progress so far. Will continue doing what I am doing until such time as I'm told otherwise.

[Jeremie Boop]

Played 9 tonight and shot 44. Spent some time on the range prior to playing and worked on my driver set up. Got things a bit better with the driver, at least for tonight. Play was extremely slow but was still able to maintain most of my ability to hit the ball. Did pretty decent on fairways and greens hit even with some struggles. 43% FW and 33% GIR. Was pretty much 100% if you count nGIR. I did struggle with chips and putts because the greens were much slower than they ever are at this course. I could not commit myself to hitting the putts or chips hard enough except for one time with the chip and I over cooked it. 3 3 putts and a couple of 2 putts that should probably have been 1 putts. Easily lost 5 shots just on my bad putting and another 2 on short chips. Just one of those things where you get your longer game together just to watch your short game fall apart haha. That's fine though, putting and chipping is easy enough to get back into shape. No penalty shots and nothing worse than a double on the first hole so I'm pretty happy.

[saevel25]

On your drills, 

A1 to A2, you push your hands out and away, letting the club fling inward. You have very little to no hip turn. Try opening your hips sooner with your hands doing less. 

A4 to A7, faster hands, keep up the turn rates.  

With that drill I would focus on trying to keep in your spine tilt towards the ball more. You are still standing up. 

I would do the drill slower. 

 

 

[klund]

I agree with @saevel25 above regarding your hands. I have similar issues often and usually fix that with cocking the wrists earlier to get the club up more.

[iacas]

Feels may vary and this is progress, but it looks like you're still flipping but then "holding on" just after impact to make the finish look right.

I got your PM and will reply tomorrow. Getting back from Nationals late today.

[Jeremie Boop]

53 minutes ago, iacas said:

Feels may vary and this is progress, but it looks like you're still flipping but then "holding on" just after impact to make the finish look right.

I got your PM and will reply tomorrow. Getting back from Nationals late today.

I thought I saw the same thing, so I do need to dial it back and focus a bit harder. I did notice, also, that my head is drifting forward a few inches so I'll need to watch that as well.

[Jeremie Boop]

A little more improvement with the club position at A6 *at least I think it's A6, I can never remember what the swing positions are*, clubhead is a little further behind my hands. I slipped a bit on my impact position while trying to improve this part of my swing though, best to just focus on fixing the flip. I thought I could implement a second thought into my practice, but it appears that I'm only able to focus on a single thing at a time. It's ok, was worth a shot. Regardless, it was nice to get out today after being stuck in bed yesterday feeling ill. I noticed that the range had some of the older mats that they replaced stacked up, I may ask the owner what his plans are with them to see if I can make a deal and snag one to use at the apartment.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Jeremie Boop

[RandallT]

Yep, A6 is what that is. I remember A1, A4, A7 are the address, top, impact. So the ones in between are the parallel ones (club or lead arm).

I can relate to the whack-a-mole thing, when you work on one thing another problem pops up. I guess the encouraging thing is that the other issue can be dealt with because you had it before. My biggest struggle now is that to flatten out my club, I'm subconsciously contorting my body into strange position (and losing alignments that were once ok). 

Keep up the drills. Let's earn a stupid monkey award by sticking with our priority drills until we get over the stumbling block. I know I haven't given the drills enough time to work in the past, so what do we have to lose? I'm probably going to the range 3 times this week with video, and might play on Thursday. 

[Jeremie Boop]

I plan on practicing 3 or more times a week at the range, I also am going to try to start doing some slow motion stuff at home using the mirror and camera. I'll probably upload some of the mirror work because I literally have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to slow mo mirror work. I assume it's going to be mostly just extremely exaggerated movements so I'll do a few and upload them to see how far off I am. Erik has recommended me doing slow motion and mirror work previously when I didn't have a mirror so I was able to avoid it, but now there's no excuse since I have 2 large mirrors in my apartment. 

[travisv]

Hey Jeremie, nice work with the swing. I agree, it's almost impossible to try to swing with multiple thoughts. With my mirror work I just concentrate on taking slow swings and pausing in the position I'm trying to change. I'll usually hold it for a few seconds to try and get a good feel for it. Then, I might make some slow swings without pausing, but still checking that I'm hitting the correct position.

[RandallT]

Ever try putting an alignment rod on the butt end of your club, Jeremie? Like this:

Coincidence that he just posted here too above me, but @travisv reminded me of that idea for my piece, and I'm having what I think is a lot of success keeping awareness of where the club is pointing. I used an alignment rod to get my hands more forward (and tweaked my grip as recommended in that grip thread here on TST) last year, and I think it helped. YMMV.

[Jeremie Boop]

14 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Ever try putting an alignment rod on the butt end of your club, Jeremie? Like this:

Coincidence that he just posted here too above me, but @travisv reminded me of that idea for my piece, and I'm having what I think is a lot of success keeping awareness of where the club is pointing. I used an alignment rod to get my hands more forward (and tweaked my grip as recommended in that grip thread here on TST) last year, and I think it helped. YMMV.

Yep  August of last year. Let's just say, I've tried a lot of different things.

Time to add slow motion mirror work to that list.

Not sure how good these are, so hopefully someone will be able to tell me if I'm doing something wrong. One thing I really focused on was not moving the club with my hands first and making sure I did a one piece take away by turning my shoulders. Downswing I focused on starting by turning my hips first. One thing I noticed I may be doing wrong, because I'm trying to avoid hitting the floor I'm raising up a little. I can easily spend 10-20 minutes a night doing these to help ingrain the right feels. Since nobody will be around to see me do this stuff now I won't feel so silly, and if it's going to help I definitely want to be doing it correctly.

[Jeremie Boop]

Couple of checkpoints I'm looking at with the slowmo mirror/video work. Strange optical illusion on top picture, the club just seems to have disappeared in that frame. Really exaggerating the club inside of hands at A6 with work to shallow out the downswing. Bottom picture, extra exaggeration on hands still ahead of club at A7 as well as weight forward. The questions from here, are these positions ok to keep replicating or are they over/under exaggerated and is there any specific amount of repetitions or time frame I should do these slowmo swings for each "session"?