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william1943

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  1. I think the mass of the body if measured at rest should remain 50:50 throughout the golf swing up till impact. Then it moves forward. The plate forces are measuring a reaction to the swinging of the club. The club moves back. The right leg resists the arms and club and shoulders moving back to maintain 50:50 mass ( at rest) balance So the faster you swing back,the heavier the club you are using, the greater the force will be seen on the right foot at the beginning of the downswing. AT the very beginning of the downswing, the arms and the club head move backward even more ( away from the target). This change of direction is a force directed backwards and so it must of countered by the right leg pressing in to the ground to keep the mass of the body centered and the axis of the body rotation stable. (As in an ice skater spinning around. The center axis of oration must be kept still\ or the speed slows.) It is a good idea at the beginning of the downswing to feel the pressure move to the left foot. This means you are balancing the backward mass and thrust of the early downswing motion with a slight counterbalancing move to the left foot. This is the key to the golfswing: Understanding that the transition has a force moving backwards ( arms and club) and a counter force moving forward with the hip moving to target simultaneously to counter the backward initial thrust of the downswing. Once the club changes direction and starts moving forward halfway through the downswing the backward force is released and the club thrusts forward. This release of the initial backward force of the downswing is what causes the "release" of the club through the ball. If the pressure plates seem to suggest that the pressure is too high early in the downswing this could have a number of causes. 1. The golfer swayed on the backswing and moved his body mass off center, needing to correct it before the downswing starts. 2. The golfer is trying to swing too hard at the start of the backswing, so he must counter that force as explained above. 3. The golfer is a power hitter and needs this much counter force to stay balanced .In this case the shot will be ok. No need to worry . It is essential to understand that the pressures generated by the feet in a golf swing are a reaction to the swinging of the arms and the club . By them selves , achieving the"correct pressure" readings will accomplish nothing. When you separate the foot pressures from the arm swing you become a dancer not golfer. Seve Ballesteros had a concept he taught where he imagined his feet glued to two railroad tracts. That kept him balanced . No dancing. Swing with your arms and shoulders. Use your feet to stay balanced while swinging. Focusing on generating a lot of pressure in the right leg in the backswing and the left leg in the downswing tends to disrupt the more essential task of staying balanced. WR
  2. I keep reading about how you should "use the ground" in your golf swing. However, I have never quite understood what this means. To my knowledge I have never heard any instructor explain this concept. I aM SUSPICIOUS that it means something like "remain in dynamic balance' ( whatever that means). Does using the ground mean your head should jump up and down during the swing.? That YOUR feet should push laterally or resist pushing laterally? That you should flex your knees on the backswing and extend them on the downswing or follow thru? I note some players heads go down on the backswing and up thru the downswing. Some players heads go down during the transition and up through the follow through. Some players heads stay put during the swing. It seems to me that if you are addressing the ball you are certainly using the ground as opposed to trying to hit the ball after jumping up in the air. What gives?
  3. Sharing. I think , however( since you asked), that, ( and this is just my opinion) if you don't have a plate to measure your forces you may erroneously conclude that it should feel like you are shifting your weight to your right foot on the backswing. I think that is dangerous. I think it is much better to "feel" like you are maintaining your balance 50 50 during the swing. The plate may say 90% on the right foot but the swing should still feel like your are balanced. If you are balanced you can move more easily and faster to the left toward the target than if you start the downswing with most of your weight feeling like it is on the right foot. I know a lot of golf instruction says move to the right. I think this is the worst possible advice you can get. I even try to move my lower body a tinny bit left during the backswing to compensate for the mass of the club club and arms going back. The weight moves toward the target on the on the downswing of course. Moving the weight to the right is something I see very few good golfers doing if i watch U tube of their swings carefully. And if they do move it to the right (Henrik Stenson does this these days a little in my opinion), they do it early in the backswing and then quickly reverse direction at the transition or even before. The worst thing you can do is hit the ball with the weight on the right foot. The weight must be moving toward the target during the strike. That is why the divot is taken after the ball is hit. I have not won the US Open so this is just my opinion.SO I won't argue with anyone who feels differently. I could be wrong. Golf is a journey. It beats working even if you are going in the wrong direction .
  4. http://www.clubmakerscalculator.com/golfbiomechanics/weight-shift-in-the-golf-swing-clearing-the-mass-confusion/#_edn1 Here is a nice discussion of the things being presented here with reference to the range of values found when more than 2 golfers are studied. Gives a nice overall presentation. Discusses the difference between the center of mass and the center of force. Another thing of interest ( implied by the question above regarding toe or heel weighting in this regard) is the DIRECTION of the forces being recorded on the plates. For example, the force may be 90% on the right foot. Is that force applied directly in to the ground or perhaps at right angles to the target.? Or some combination of the two. If I stand only my right leg and don't move I will have 100% of my weight applied to the plate into the ground on the right leg. Now if I try to move left I will apply a force in the opposite direction of this movement and the force will be applied laterally towards the right. In general, the more movement that occurs the more the plate will register a force in the opposite direction of the movement. Some might think that a 90% registration of force on the plate suggests that the mass of the body has moved to the direction of the force being recorded. But taking a sprinter as an example, right before the starting gun goes off the sprinter is not moving, his feet resting on the starting blocks. He is in motionless balance.When the gun goes off a large force will be recorded on the starting block The runner is pushing against that starting block But the mass of this body has not shifted backwards over the starting block . IN this case the force is applied laterally anyway from the direction of movement of the runner. IN golf, both movements of mass ( center of mass) and forces used create motion occur simultaneously and are being measured by the plates. The only way to distinguish between the two is to stop the movement . Then the forces on the plates will record changes in center of mass alone. So, in summary we have PLates that measure forces ... but we don't know a the direction of these forces ( down, forward, backward left, right) b the amount these forces are due to muscles creating MOTION c the amount these forces are due to shifts in the mass of the body one way or the other. Another interesting question ( raised in the citation above) is whether the plates record the forces at the same time they are generated .Or is there a time lag between the force the body applies and the reading recorded by the plates.If there is not perfect fidelity in force recording ,the assumptions made by looking at the swing positions and assuming that they correspond accurately to the force recordings will be misleading. Maybe Bubba Watson's refusal to take lessons is an intuitive respect for the difficulty in analyzing the golf swing scientifically. .
  5. OK. SO ground reaction forces are the force that the ground exerts on a body on top of it.Good. SO if you weigh 150 pounds the ground reacts with 150 pounds of ground reaction force. Now the next question is how do you "generate" ground reaction forces. beyond those obtained by simply standing still in a golf swing. Obviously if you want to generate MORE ground reaction forces you obviously must jump up and down to do so. If you jump up and down on a scale the weight reading will exceed your body weight for an instant . Exceed your resting baseline ground reaction forces.SO in a golf swing to generate ground reaction forces we must jump up and down. I guess this is what causes the head of good players to go up and down. Correct.?Like in skiing we bend our knees and jump up a little ( so called "unweighting") to allow the skis to turn. You can unweight without actually having your feet leave the ground. Now this brings up a question regarding the pressure measurements in the video. The pressure measurements do not measure ground reaction forces ( in pounds for example as a scale would read them).The pressure measurement only record the RELATIVE pressure DISTRiBUTION between the feet. Not the absolute pressure or weight in the feet. You could conceivably generate more ground reaction forces while maintaining the same relative pressure in your or swing and the increase of GRF would not show up ; SO these pressure measurements in the video are not measuring absolute ground reaction forces. Just relative pressure distribution. Other than the head moving up and down how can you determine if any golfer is generating ground reaction forces and how can you measure them? I assume the answer is that you cannot. The girl in the video did not move her head up and down like Tiger and Johnny Miller for example. .. Does that mean she did not generate any ground reaction forces.. To me this seems like a very advanced move.
  6. I got his book from my library. Outside request.
  7. If you look at the woman in the video you will see that at the transition she moves her weight to the left.Her hips move left. And the pressure on left foot reaches 50% by the time her left arm is horizontal to the ground in the down swing.A tiny arm movement. SO the weight has moved left but the pressure has only increased to 50% in the left foot. Clearly the weight has moved left BEFORE the pressure reaches 60 or 70 percent. The pressure has been reduced on the right leg by moving the hips left. It is not a dramatic visual event but it is the reason her right leg has reduced pressure and the pressure on the L leg has risen quickly . At this midpoint in the downswing point, her weight( pressure) is 50:50 and the L arm is horizontal to the ground. From this point all she has to do is swing the club thru and this movement rapidly releases the pressure on the right foot as the mass of the arms and club creates momentum that causes the weight to flow along to the left leg. and the pressure on the L leg increases as this happens. Try this; Stand with both feet evenly balanced with 50 :50 pressure and weight on both legs. Now move your arms in a backswing motion( no club needed) till the L arm is hallway back parallel to the ground. Pause and get the weight 50 50 again.Some pressure will be needed in the r foot to do this. A little. A tiny bit. Now keeping the pressure the same with your legs relaxed swing your arms from right to left as in a ball strike downswing. You will see that this motion will cause your weight to move all the way to your left leg. The arms swinging cause the hips to turn and open up towards the target and the weight and pressure to move left. The faster you do this move, the faster your weight will transfer and the faster your hips will turn. If you do this exercise with the weight 70% on the right leg and try to swing your arms, you will not be able to get the weight to flow to the right leg. ( Unless you quickly precede this movement with a shift of the weight to the L leg.) This is why balance is so important . If you don't get the weight rebalanced as the downswing strike occurs,you will never quickly reach the 90% left pressure impact position so important . And this will slow your swing down. Video observation of all top pros shows this to happen. They get their body mass 50 50 by the end of the transition and ready to strike. Weight transfer proceeds pressure accumulation in the L leg Hips follow the arm swing as the arms create a flow of mass towards the L leg. A consequence of this is the observation that speeding up your hips will never speed up your swing speed. But speeding up your arm swing will cause your hips to open up faster ( unless your hips are unable to keep up.) So fast hips are seen in good golfers BECAUSE they have a fast arm speed. Fast hips without fast arms will only get you "stuck" behind you, causing all kinds of problems. So the sequence is " weight moves left, arms swing down, hips open hip to allow the arm swing to keep moving to the finish. Staying in balance is essential. 'Thanks for the video of the pressure measurements. I have learned a lot. Keep up the good work. It would be good to have more examples to look at.Perhaps we would see something different in Rory,Tiger, Phil, Ernie. It would be interesting to see these measurements in long hitters like Bubba. and looking at sand play might be interesting. Henrik Stenson seems to just stand there and swing with his arms land just smash it with title follow thru. He would be interesting to test.
  8. You can't "push off the ground" with your left foot until the mass of the body is slightly shifted to the left. It would be like pushing off with your left foot when it was suspended in the air. Before you can put pressure on your left foot, you have to have more than 50%of your weight on your left foot. This is why all good golfers shift their weight slightly to the left during the transition. This shift to the left is done by pressure from the right foot.The left foot cannot thrust or spike anything until the mass of the body is slightly left.Try placing 90% of your weight on your right foot and ten percent on your left foot and try to leverage anything with your left foot. You cannot. You must move left first.That is why the pressure on the left foot is caused by the weight ( mass) of the body shifted to the left. Of course if you keep the weight on the left foot throughout the backswing this step is not necessary. When the weight is on the left foot, the pressure then can be applied. But this pressure ( "using the ground") is mainly applied against the ground vertically. The vertical pressure from the left foot occurs as an upward force and opposes the force of the arms bringing the club back to the ball as a downward force.As the club moves past the ball, the body is carried by the momentum of the club and the arms to the finish.
  9. You could be right. But It seems to me if the left foot is pushing against the ground, this would prevent the weight from moving left. not cause it. For example, if someone is trying to push you over to the left , you resist movement to the left by pushing on your left foot preventing your weight from moving to the left.If I push off the ground with my left foot I go to the right. If I push off with my right foot I go to the left. For some strange reason, If I try to keep my weight centered ( by feel) during the backswing and transition, I seem to get the weight thru the shot better than if I make a big weight shift to the right in the backswing and then try to move to the left in the downswing. It seems to me that if you start the downswing with the weight evenly balanced you can move faster to the target during the transition than if you make a big weight shift to the right in the backswing, A lot of folks tell us to "stay behind the ball". especially on the driver. What does your work reveal with a driver swing.?
  10. Without a doubt, the best shot I ever played occurred a few years ago at Peachtree Golf Club in Atlanta. On the 18th hole, presses all accumulated, I found myself on the left side of the green 45 feet from the hole. One of our opponents, the club pro, was in front of the green. All I had to do was tie him to win all the presses. He chipped in from 15 feet off the green for a three ( birdie). They started dancing around ,yelping like they had won the Super Bowl. I had to chip in to tie and win.Our opponents were already counting their winnings as I lined up my shot. My ball was on the left of the green which sloped down away from me. SO I had to hit my ball at right angles to the cup. Then allow the ball to make a right turn and proceed down the slope. I chipped the ball and it went about 18 feet then took a right turn and went 35 more feet. It went right in the cup. Our opponents went silent. Not a word was said. My partner and I just smiled and walked towards the clubhouse to collect our winnings.This was not only the best shot (especially considering importance to the match) I have ever made. It is the best shot I have ever seen by anyone anywhere.
  11. It is the golf course that causes slow play: Blind shots, 8 inch rough causing long ball searches. Sand traps. Sloped fairways that effectively narrow the width of the fairway to 15 yards. Overgrown trees that do the same. Greens with slopes so severe that a ball hit past the hole rolls 45 feet into a lake. Fix the course.
  12. Very interesting . I think it matters what you are "trying to do" in our head with your weight. If you try to remain in balance during the backswing you will feel evenly balanced. As the backswing begins, some backward momentum is created by the backward movement of the club ( it doesn't matter that the club is "light",it still has momentum).And, importantly, the faster you swing back, the more momentum you create going backwards. To "feel" in balance the body reacts to neutralize the backward force. This accounts for the pressure felt in the right leg, It is resisting the backward momentum of the arms and club moving back. So the woman in the video has pressure on her right leg on the backswing but she does not look like her body mass has moved to the right. Because it has not. This difference between pressure and weight shift causes a lot of misunderstanding in golf teaching. Almost all pro golfers do not look like they move their body mass(weight) to the right in the back swing ( except for a while Curtis Strange did this). This video helps a lot in confirming this difference between pressure and weight shift. As the downswing starts, initially the club moves backward again .(The club moves away from the target) This creates more right leg resistance . But only momentarily. As the club moves into the hitting position the momentum suddenly reverses its direction and goes towards the target. The force of the resistance in the right leg has no opposing momentum to neutralize and so the weight is actually forced towards the target causing the weight to actually move left and resistance on the left leg to increases due to the mass of there body actually moving left on to the finish position. As a result of all these changes in direction of force, the pace the the swing needs to be constant for the golfer to accommodate the changes in pressure required . As a result of theses forces, the faster the downswing the greater and faster will be the weight shift towards the target. So. it could be that what is critical for a good weight shift to 95% of the weight moving to the left foot is that the downswing is fast. SO it could be that the speed of the downswing accounts for the fullness of the weight shift ( and the follow thru). So the proper pressure dynamics in the downswing could be the result of the speed of the downswing instead of the cause of the speed of the downswing.
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