Feel Ain't Real

[Buckeyebowman]

OK, The arms and the clubhead are on one side of the pendulum. What is on on the other side? Doesn't a pendulum depend on a counterweight?

[nevets88]

On 12/31/2017 at 9:32 PM, iacas said:

Yes. Some players have better proprioception, better awareness, better body control, better timing… whatever.

Wonder how much is nature vs nurture? After years of methodically videoing my swing, I think I slowly developed my feel vs real radar but I'm under no illusions that the talented have an innate proprioception that is better without any video experience than if I had ten years of videoing experience but that shouldn't keep anyone from using video but the contrary. I think the more you use video and associate what is happening and what you feel, the better for your swing and improving it. 

[iacas]

1 minute ago, Buckeyebowman said:

OK, The arms and the clubhead are on one side of the pendulum. What is on on the other side? Doesn't a pendulum depend on a counterweight?

No. The arms are one part. The shaft is the other part.

https://www.google.com/search?q=double+pendulum&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ7bHV5brYAhWkmOAKHc2pASUQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1400&bih=745&dpr=2

[Ty_Webb]

4 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

OK, The arms and the clubhead are on one side of the pendulum. What is on on the other side? Doesn't a pendulum depend on a counterweight?

A pendulum is just a weight on an arm hanging from a fixed point. The double pendulum would therefore be a fixed point (probably your head, but maybe your left shoulder), a top arm (your arm), a flex point (your hands), which connects to the other arm (the shaft) and has a weight on the end (the clubhead). 

Conservation of momentum is going to mean that as some parts of you move others may move as well (unless you stop them using the ground), so your head may move in the opposite direction from the club at times, but I don't think it has anything to do with a pendulum, single or double.

Back on topic again, no matter what I do to try to make it feel like my arms go first, my arms always lag behind my body, so I stall and flip and wind up with a steep AoA and too much loft on the club. Not exactly efficient. It kind of works, but I really want to fix that so I can present a more direct hit on the ball.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Ty_Webb

[nevets88]

6 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

OK, The arms and the clubhead are on one side of the pendulum. What is on on the other side? Doesn't a pendulum depend on a counterweight?

Guessing the arms act as a pendulum and the shaft is a pendulum hanging off the end off the arms? Like an extended pendulum. 

[iacas]

Okay, again…

[uitar9]

Feel - experience (an emotion or sensation).

Real - actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

Just trying to understand this; if I swing and hit a shot that gives me the result I want, my thought is that "that swing is good". 

Someone watching me may think "that swing is not good".

If I get the result I want regularly, I am pleased. I may not care about the swing mechanics being correct to someone else.

In fact I don't give a rats.

So what is better for me? A great looking swing or results? I'm going with results. 

[CR McDivot]

Perhaps I have a different perspective on this but...

When I swing I can "feel" whether I made good (or less than good) contact. I can observe whether I obtained the ball flight and direction I desired.

As I set up I visualize the totality of my desired result, but I depend on my ingrained muscle memory to achieve this result - I do not concentrate on the technical aspects of the swing other than to make minor adjustments such as pertains to lie, draw, or fade. The swing itself is pretty much the same for all full shots.

Thus, in my mind, "feel" is simply the confirmation of how well I actually "really" performed my intentions.

Golf to me is less "left brain" than "right brain" - i.e. more art than science. I visualize the picture, observe the result. If the result falls far off from what I visualized, I don't go nuts analyzing where I can change the mechanics to match the intent - rather I relax, move on, and artfully visualize a better "feel".

"Swing Your Swing" seems to me a more realistic approach than trying to imitate the mechanics of "the perfect swing" INDIVIDUALLY developed by very different players, coaches, or instructors (any of which most likely have no semblance to you or I as regards to physical ability or mental agility).

Feel and Real rarely meet - but how we pursue that glorious moment is what golf is all about!

Edited January 7, 2018 by CR McDivot

[JonMA1]

7 hours ago, uitar9 said:

So what is better for me? A great looking swing or results? I'm going with results.

I struggle with this as well. What pulls me back to improving the "look" is less a matter of aesthetics and more the probability that what looks bad in my swing hurts my scores. (I'm not suggesting this applies to anyone else, only describing what goes on with my crazy game).

That said, there are plenty of golfers in the world who would kick my butt with their equally ugly swing.

---

As far as feel/real, after the last two seasons of taking video at home, at the range, and on the course, my belief (hypothesis?) is that I can change the picture some - only to fall back into really (I'm talking excessively) bad habits without realizing it. What makes it all the more difficult to control is that there isn't a dramatic change in the shot results or the feel because the slide back to poor mechanics might occur in small increments.

I cannot identify the poor mechanics with feel alone.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, JonMA1 said:

What pulls me back to improving the "look" is less a matter of aesthetics and more the probability that what looks bad in my swing hurts my scores.

@JonMA1 pretty much nails it in this response to @uitar9 and @CR McDivot. The "look" is not about the "looks" - it's about the improved mechanics.

That's about as simple as I can say it. It's not about whether you play better or hit the ball better or not - "feel ain't real" is about whether what you feel is actually what's happening.

11 hours ago, uitar9 said:

Feel - experience (an emotion or sensation).

Real - actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

Just trying to understand this; if I swing and hit a shot that gives me the result I want, my thought is that "that swing is good".

It may or may not have been good. And what you felt you changed may or may not have actually changed.

And, bad swings can produce good results now and then.

11 hours ago, uitar9 said:

So what is better for me? A great looking swing or results? I'm going with results. 

That's not at all what the topic is about.

9 hours ago, CR McDivot said:

When I swing I can "feel" whether I made good (or less than good) contact. I can observe whether I obtained the ball flight and direction I desired.

Also not quite what the topic is here. The "feel" we're talking about isn't what you feel about impact. I'm not suggesting at all that players can't "feel" impact properly - slightly fat, a little on the toe, etc.

9 hours ago, CR McDivot said:

Golf to me is less "left brain" than "right brain" - i.e. more art than science. I visualize the picture, observe the result. If the result falls far off from what I visualized, I don't go nuts analyzing where I can change the mechanics to match the intent - rather I relax, move on, and artfully visualize a better "feel".

And if you're happy to be a 15.6 or whatever, that's one way to play golf. Others like to improve.

9 hours ago, CR McDivot said:

"Swing Your Swing" seems to me a more realistic approach than trying to imitate the mechanics of "the perfect swing" INDIVIDUALLY developed by very different players, coaches, or instructors (any of which most likely have no semblance to you or I as regards to physical ability or mental agility).

For good instructors, anyway, that's so far off base it really doesn't warrant much of a response. That's not at all what a decent instructor does.

Your swing is a 15.6 swing. So again, if you're happy to be a 15.6, go ahead and "swing your swing."

Not really the topic, here, though if you want to talk about mechanics vs. feel, this topic applies:

[uitar9]

Feel vs Real

Short game vs long game

and it continues

[RandallT]

11 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

Feel vs Real

Short game vs long game

and it continues

Care to elaborate? You sound a bit snide here frankly.

From what I’ve reviewed of your past posts, I feel you are mis-interpreting some things, but I don’t want to derail this thread on the long v short game debate.

Regarding feel v real, I think @iacas has replied specifically to your last post. Might be better to quote what you disagree with and list the reasons.  It could be you are just coming at this from an entirely different perspective and thinking he means something quite different.  

 

[uitar9]

So, let me understand, real is another word for mechanics and feel is how one misunderstands their own mechanics, unless its one particular take on mechanics 

So on this site, there is only one real. 

Snide-derogatory or mocking in an indirect way. Real is only what you believe. Reasons are only facts you believe or not. 

 

 

[iacas]

17 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

So, let me understand, real is another word for mechanics and feel is how one misunderstands their own mechanics, unless its one particular take on mechanics 

So on this site, there is only one real.

No.

Not at all.

You're completely missing the point, or something.

I've told people you can talk to here to have the feeling that they're stabbing a pig that's sitting on the ground in front of them with a knife sticking out of the butt end of the club.

Yet if they had a knife actually attached to the butt end of their club, they'd come nowhere near "stabbing the pig." What they made do is change their hand path, or change something else that will improve whatever mechanics I was targeting with that "feel" or mental imagery.

Another example: I've told golfers to feel like they keep their left knee flexed into the follow-through. This is for a golfer who does nothing but "jump" immediately from the top of the backswing. What actually happens, usually? They delay the jumping a little bit, but still start extending or "jumping" well before impact (as good golfers do).

17 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

So on this site, there is only one real. 

I haven't got a clue what you mean by that, and it's not remotely true.

Nothing in the 5SK forces a singular pattern. I have students who hit draws. Students who hit fades. Students with upright swings. Students with flatter swings. Students who use exact opposite feels to achieve a similar mechanical change, and students who use the same feels to achieve different mechanical changes.

And, though it's off topic for this topic, you don't really seem to understand the "full swing vs. short game" argument, either. We've always said that if you want to improve your scores the fastest, you work on your short game for a bit, but the bulk of anyone's improvement is going to lie in the full swing. We've also said that if you're pretty much at the cap for what you can physically do with your full swing, then just maintain it and do all you can to work on the short game and putting.

17 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

Snide-derogatory or mocking in an indirect way. Real is only what you believe. Reasons are only facts you believe or not.

It's uncalled for.

"Real" is what you're actually doing. "Feel" is what it feels like you're doing. That's pretty simple. "Feel ain't real" the vast majority of the time, whether you're Ben Hogan or John Daly or working with Teacher A, B, C, or X, Y, or Z.

And I have no idea what your last sentence means. Facts are facts; they don't require "belief." They're true, or they wouldn't be a "fact."

[mvmac]

5 hours ago, uitar9 said:

So, let me understand, real is another word for mechanics and feel is how one misunderstands their own mechanics, unless its one particular take on mechanics 

So on this site, there is only one real. 

Feel = Phil Mickelson feels like his trail knee stays at the same flex on the backswing

Real = The knee decreases in flex on the backswing

Example from my own swing, here's how steep I'm trying to feel the shaft on the downswing.

Here's reality, to achieve a "happy medium".

Another example.

 

[dchoye]

Remember a playing lesson with Jim Furyk on the Golf Channel and when asked how he loops his swing.  He simply says that he doesn’t feel it loops even though it’s very obvious to others watching him 

He says that his swing “FEELS straight back and straight through “

 

 

[iacas]

I tend to become particularly annoyed when instructors pitch feels to everyone as if they're some golden truth. Quite often, a simple video analysis of THEIR swings reveal that they're not actually doing what they're teaching, either.

For example, @Secretmove posted this video recently:

In general, it's not a terrible video. I disagree on a few points he's trying to make, but I really dislike the way he talks about the downswing given that he doesn't demonstrate it very well at all.

Here's how Bobby Lopez wants you to look at the top of the backswing:

And at impact:

Here's how Bobby looks when making a swing (on the right) against what he suggests (on the left):

At 9:10 or so in the video, Bobby says "you just turn, turn" and then he hits another shot… which looks a lot more like what he actually does on the right, of course, and not at all like what he's posing on the left.

I've taught variations of these feels, or these feels exactly, to various students. But IMO, in a video like this, you've got to describe which students are likely to benefit from it. You've got to describe the fault the feel is intended to fix. You've got to put up some disclaimers.

Bobby also talks in this video about how the left arm comes down first, and the shoulder stays in place, but again watch his own swing and you'll find that he doesn't even do that: the golf swing starts, like almost everyone's, from the ground up.

At just past 10:00, Bobby encourages the host to actually do this:

The words "Pro Tip: Stay back and square it up." appear on the screen. The host's next swing, which earns multiple "good!"s and clapping from Bobby, looks like this:

The previous "bad" swing that needed the correction demonstrated two pics above, looked like this:

The swings are nearly identical, as one would expect given that they were back-to-back swings (one is a few inches later post-impact than the other, and had a slightly wider stance, but the body is in almost exactly the same position(s)):

Now, that's as much of an ad for other topics here, like "Simple, Specific, Slow, Short, and Success - The Five "S"s of Great Practice," as this, but the point remains that you can't just teach a feel to everyone and then say "good" because a student hits it better on that one particular swing. Odds are, at full speed, they did the same thing they've always done.

At 12:56, Bobby's "Pro Tip" is "Put your shoulder on the ball, not your head." He demonstrates this with extreme axis tilt, putting the host's left shoulder almost directly above the ball with his head well back. Yet again, look at Bobby's own swing:

I don't see a lot of tilt there at all on the left, nor in this image at impact (on the right):

At 14:05, Bobby gets very very excited when the host makes this swing, screaming "YES! YES! That's it!!!":

Look, I'm not trying to beat up on Bobby Lopez or anything here, or the BBG host. I'm just illustrating how, once again, "feel ain't real," and that you should take any "feel" advice you get from someone with a grain of salt unless it directly speaks to your priority piece at the time.

And even then, as I've said, some students who need to change the same mechanics feel it in completely different ways. Yes, while everyone is a feel player, everyone's feels are varied and different from one another.

[cooke119]

Maybe I'm missing the point of this thread, and I apologize if I have, but at the range I can work on different 'techniques'  and get a 'feel' but on the course I really can't start thinking about my swing, I go by feel more than anything else. I can think on the backswing, e.g., brush it back, left arm straight, left shoulder under chin, head stationary, etc., but once I've completed the backswing if I think about anything on the downswing and follow through I'm sunk. I especially can't think about 'firing the hips first', that really screws me up. I've had by buddy film me at the range and I think I look pretty much as I feel.