How to get the hips moving in the backswing

[natureboy]

17 hours ago, Rainmaker said:

Interesting observation .  . my teacher is a man of few words . . for example, he'll say "keep your left knee bent longer" . .and then I could literally write a thousand words, maybe draw a few diagrams,  about what that means to me, lol.   

Well . .the other thing he said on that lesson was "keep your hands closer", referring to my hands at and past impact.  

What I've noticed for me, though . .is I can't do any of this directly.  I can't "keep my left knee bent longer"...I can't "keep my hands closer".  These things feel arbitrary.  I have to find the right mental picture that makes these things happen.  Give them some context.  My teacher says the biggest obstacle to learning golf is "what we think we're doing is not what we're doing" . .but, for me, there's an awful lot of "what I think I saw, I didn't see" . .so I'm trying to do the wrong thing . .and then probably also not doing what I think I'm doing, lol.  

Communication of individual perceptions and feels is one of the very challenging elements of learning/understanding golf. There's a sports science study that talks about athletes having internal vs. external focuses. An internal focus would be on hand path and an external focus would be on the path of the clubhead.

Now imagine a teacher conveying his external focus on the clubhead 'swinging to right field' through the ball to an internal focused student trying to figure out how to consciously accomplish this. The student interprets swing to right field as an action of the hands, but that's not what the teacher is visualizing. An intent to swing toward right field and trying to hit a ball hard to right field likely create very different motions. Precision in language and lack of understanding of differing perspectives creates a breakdown.

Maybe be bold in asking more specific questions of your teacher of few words to get him to explain how he accomplishes what he's asking you to do or what he feels as a mistake when he doesn't do it well?

FWIW here's the image from Steven Nesbit's modeling study on different hand paths showing the opposite curvature / radius at the same points.

Here's the link to the full page: https://www.tutelman.com/golf/swing/models4.php

And here are some vids with possibly different 'word pictures' related to the subject:

 

 

Edited January 5, 2017 by natureboy

[mvmac]

Don't consciously try to resist with the trail knee, allow the trail hip to turn back and around. Can even let the lead heel come off the ground (more as an effect of the lead knee turning/flexing inward).