fersman4

Stephan on evolvr.com analyzed my second video and told me what I expected: that I need to do more inside-out. And he gave me a new visual/drill to help me do it better. He told me to feel like my back faces the target longer during the transition. Makes sense to me! Looking forward to giving it a shot. Also a little worried because I've been striking the ball much better the last couple days. But I gotta keep my mind focused on the long term.

I don't know what's right and what's wrong, but when I used to have a wider stance, I sometimes had trouble shifting my weight forward. So by narrowing my stance, I actually ended up with better consistency of ball contact. Edit: And I just now saw how old this post is. Silly me.

Here is my latest swing video, composed of "natural" full swings. My natural full swing is slowly evolving from over-the-top to inside-out. The drills and visuals given to me by the evolvr.com folks seem to be working, but I think I'm only about halfway there. It's certainly easier to do the right things in a slower swing, so I'm still working at slower speeds to improve my muscle memory of the correct swing path. Oh and Sunday's round wasn't pretty. It's safe to say my swing path was all over the place, and that hurt my consistency, both contact and flight path. Somehow my short game showed up and minimized the damage. Still didn't win anything because I'm not a sandbagger.

Thanks for the response. One less thing to worry about. I was at the range today practicing what I'm supposed to practice and as my path stabilized (still needs work) so did my contact. I guess you know what you're talking about :D

So what do you all think: do you think vision focus has a significant impact on ball contact precision, or do you think it's primarily a muscle memory thing? Or is it half and half? Another way to ask this quesiton is: how much do you focus on your ball during the swing (on a 1 to 10 scale I'd say I'm a 3). First, I'm working with evolvr.com on my swing, so I'm not looking for any new swing thoughts or practice drills to muddy the waters. Anyway I'm not really very atheletic, and my eye-hand coordination naturally leaves a lot to be desired. In general I would say that my ball-striking suffers greatly from poor contact. This last round when I didn't hit fat or thin due to path issues (that's what I'm working on with evolvr), I tended to hit it off center, losing distance and sending the ball off in the wrong direction. This is nothing new...it's always been like this. I would say that I am rather lazy with my vision focus. My brain is working hard trying to make sure my body is doing the things my instructor is telling me to do. Most of the time during the swing and impact my eyes aren't focused on anything really, like the ball just happens to be in my field of view, as does the grass surrounding the ball. I'm relying almost entirely upon my body's muscle memory to get the clubface to the ball. But because a mishit is an inch off center in any direction, it gets me wondering whether I should be striving for more precision with the help of vision focus, not just improved muscle memory.

I can empathize. My back causes me trouble, though in my case it's because I'm overweight. Once it starts to hurt my swing stops working like normal and I tend to swing in order to protect myself from the pain. In my case I tend to hit over-the-top even more than usual. I'm about ready to go to a chiropractor so that I can function while I continue my weight loss program.

Most likely yes. That's what I figured too, but I just couldn't stop.

I'm with ya here. I like idea of using bounce to stop from hitting fat from tight lies (it happens to me once or twice per round). Here is the video posted in the other recent topic by mvmac: http://thesandtrap.com/t/39411/quickie-pitching-video But after trying to hit 150 balls from 20 yards out on the practice green using this technique, and hitting about 10% of them thin and only about 2% of them to within 6 feet, I'm inclined to think I'm not ready for that method. I was getting to the point that I was intentionally hitting fat and off the toe just so that I didn't hit it thin, and though the ball went in those cases, distance was far from consistent with very similar tempos. So I'm prepared to use my inferior technique for now until I can get some real help, and not just a generic video.

I'm using one of those "deep faced" drivers and hitting up. I have a rather average swing speed (100 MPH or so). I tend to have trouble getting center face contact, but at my handicap that's practically a given. So I'm curious what an instructor would say about my switching to the newer kind of driver. Is it more forgiving or less forgiving? Would my swing speed lend itself to one type of driver or the other?

You slice the heck out of the ball. I'm no instructor but despite all the flaws and issues you mentioned, the slice would likely be the top priority of any instructors. Also you seem to be a rather naturally atheletic person, so this may not apply to you, but if I tried to hit the ball as hard as you do, all kinds of bad things would creep into my swing. At the top of the list would be poor contact at least partially related to a swing path issue. I think you may need to prepare yourself to slow down your swing to get consistency, but again, I'm no instructor.

Man you can smack that ball! Does center face contact come easy to you?

I've been working off and on throughout the last few days at home without a ball on what Stephan wanted me to work on, and this morning I brought it to the range. Most of my work on the range was with a slow tempo with the ball teed up a little. Stephan wanted me to hit the balls off to the right of my target using the key points I identified in the video. Early on I found that if I rushed the downswing, I was neglecting to "drop my hands", and the ball would go straight instead of right. I also found it difficult early on to do a proper weight transfer while I was concentrating so hard on what I was supposed to work on. However I made the conscious decision to not care about that, and just keep working on the path (Stupid Monkey?). The video shows a sample of swings throughout the session. The swings get progressively closer to what I'm supposed to be doing. By the end of the session I felt like I had made some good progress. Being more comfortable with the swing changes the weight transfer came back, and I was dropping my hands better at normal tempo. No doubt the swing still feels a little weird, and I'm not sure I'm getting "inside" enough yet, so I need a lot more repetition with Stephan's drills. After the last swing in the video I saw a half-bucket of balls that someone left around, so I did more practice off camera without teeing up the ball. Some of them were full swings, great-looking draws that started off right of target. I'm happy to see some progress, even though I know there's tons more work to do. I've got a Men's Club round on Sunday and I don't want to look like a complete duffer.

Someone else pointed me to this post: http://thesandtrap.com/t/54840/simple-specific-slow-short-and-success-the-five-s-s-of-great-practice

Got my first Evolvr analysis back. And not surprisingly it's about Key #4, namely correcting my over-the-top move. I'm very pleased with how Stephan Kostelecky described the problem, and provided some visualization for what the correct path is. And the drills he's going to have me do are much "smarter" (for lack of a better word) than what I expected or heard and read before, so I'm excited. I'll give another update after I put in the time and work.

I believe in the Stupid Monkey post they talk about exaggerating the thing you're working on over and over again and your body learns to replicate something in the middle over time. Have you found this to be the case?