SEMI_Duffer

It is. The PGA instructor from whom I first took lessons, when I started back in 2020, taught this. It felt unnatural to me. Awkward. I hated it. That was the very first thing my new (on-line) instructors ironed out of me. It actually came back into my setup a bit as a side-effect of my weight training. In barbell lifts (squats, deadlifts, presses) good form requires you do this to avoid/reduce shear force on your lumbar spine. In restarting swing training a couple weeks back my coach noticed my lumbar spine was arched in a bit and told me I needed to fix that.

I continued icing the knee upon which I had surgery for at least a week after I stopped feeling any pain. Maybe longer. Anytime I worked that knee as part of my recovery therapy it got iced afterwards.

I'm going to go a bit against the grain, here, and suggest if your current clubs are ill-suited for you (don't know that they are and don't know that they aren't), then a fitting and new clubs may not be a bad idea at all. I have seen comments by coaches, club manufacturer's representatives, and other players to suggest poorly-fitted clubs can not only retard your progress, but can encourage you to poor swing mechanics. If you have time to play, you have time to get instruction ;) Consider on-line instruction. There are several options. I believe @iacas does on-line instruction, for example? The point here is: At only nine months in the time is now to learn good swing mechanics, rather than having to unlearn them later. I'm going to suggest you not discount GI clubs out-of-hand. My feeling being that, at only nine months in, the thought that you're going to buy new clubs now, grow into them, and use them the rest of your golf journey for the rest of your life is probably not likely. Particularly at your age. I lucked-out. I was gifted an entire bag. Everything but the irons was replaced w/in the first year because they were really, really poor clubs. The irons, oddly enough, actually suit me pretty well. Even then: If I start playing regularly I expect to replace them. My current irons are most-closely matched by player's CB irons, these days, so that's what I'd tend to gravitate towards. But if a fitting shows GI irons can tame my misses a bit and give me a bit more distance--can maybe shave a few strokes off my HC, then that's what I'll get.

Thanks! I expect it helps somewhat that, except for the Covid shutdowns, followed by knee surgery, I've been in the gym pretty consistently since 2005. There's a set of warm-up drills I do, every day, before I resume swing training. I'll time them if I think about it, but I think it's about fifteen minutes. We shall see.

Trained, actually. I never even quite made it to the practicing phase. (Except chipping and putting.) So... after breaking for Christmas/New Years, during which time my wife inexplicably forces me to tear down my "golf studio" in the living room , I got back to it a week or so ago. I was gratified to see all the training reps I'd put into setup, take-away, and back-swing stuck. Even better: All the reps I'd put into transition and pivot-down stuck, as well. Took a few days for my body to groove the range-of-motion and execute smoothly, again, but I had the fundamentals down pretty much right out of the gate. Now for that pesky arms thing: Swinging at the ball with my arms. Last year, despite a good take-away, back-swing, and initiating the downswing well, my arms would take over on the downswing. My brain, realizing what my arms were doing, would stall my pivot, and... *ick* I may have finally found the cure. A couple AMG videos, entitled "Shallowing Like You've Never Seen Before" and "The Magic Downswing Move Everyone Needs," both of which I happened-upon entirely by accident (I generally tend to shun YT golf "instruction"), appear to have finally unlocked that last door for me. I'll do 1500-2000 reps of motions just to ingrain having my trail arm come down like it needs to, rather than across, then add my lead arm back in and do another 1500-2000 reps. If I apply myself, I should be able to do those in three to four weeks of training. (Assuming 3-4 sessions/day, twenty-five reps/session.) Then it's on to the finish move.

While both of these are true, of the two I'd peg beer as the greater of two evils. It turns out the problem, maybe the greater problem with alcohol isn't just the empty calories, but alcohol also raises your cortisol level. Increased cortisol encourages your body to save/add fat. Chocolate, conversely, particularly dark chocolate, can actually help lower cortisol. I've all but given up alcoholic beverages. This coming from a man with an enviable stock in spirits (particularly Bourbon, Rye, and single-malt Scotch) who used to always enjoy a good IPA with dinner. I can't recall when I last drank any spirits and, other than a birthday party I went to last weekend, I've had one beer, with dinner, since the first of the year. I don't really miss it anymore. As an admitted chocoholic I do enjoy a couple pieces of quality chocolate with my after-dinner coffee each evening. TBH: It doesn't seem to impact my fat loss. As for swing speed training: I agree with the others. Get your swing grooved. Get comfortable with it. Get whatever physical ailments are plaguing you resolved. Then think about swing speed training. First maybe get into the gym? Do some general strength training? Also maybe look into joint mobility work?

Apologies for the late follow-up. (Seems I didn't have email notifications on mentions set. Fixed!) Sorry, can't commit. I've no idea where my golf game will be and April through June promise to be very busy time for me with other commitments. But thanks for thinking of me

That's mostly what my wife and I do now. We found ourselves struggling to come up with something, anything, to get each other for Christmases and birthdays. Finally decided neither of us needs any more "stuff," merely for the sake of coming up with something to gift one another, so we don't do that anymore. E.g.: I've a couple upgrades to my home gym I want. When the Black Friday sales roll around I'll pick one, tell her "I'm gonna get this for myself for Christmas" and that'll be that. It may even be set aside until Christmas Day (Though they're both fairly large, so maybe not.)

Approaching the end of the golfing season, here in S.E. Michigan, so I guess now's a good time for an update. Once again I'd been overly optimistic about my progress. I did finally find an effective drill to help me learn to pivot-down to the ball well--get things started from the bottom, keeping my hips through my shoulders turning through the impact position. After 4-6 weeks of drills, 2-3 sessions/day, I got that dialed-in. But, as soon as I put a club in my hands and tried swinging, my persistent swing nemesis, swinging the club at the ball, came right back. My brain, knowing what the result of that would be, would stall everything else and I'd end-up with something not much different from my old down-swing--except without all the swaying and waving about. Now experimenting with some drills suggested in a video from Athletic Motion Golf--a way to train & ingrain the feel of bringing the club handle down, rather than down and around with the arms, letting the body take care of the "around" part. Initial impression is it looks promising. So, it now looks like I may get to the point I may get something grooved well enough to hit the range before the snow flies (range has heated bays), but, playing this season is unlikely. I will get it. I will not be deterred

I would. I did. I plan to eventually embark on swing speed training, but, other than occasionally hitting a few balls in the back yard, just to see what would happen, I haven't even been to a range, much less played, much less considered swing speed training. My thinking was doing any of those things would only slow the process of me grooving a new swing. (Given how long I've been at it that seems hardly possible, but, that's been my thinking, nonetheless.) I agree, but, who am I to say?

They aren't saying it won't happen. They aren't saying it will. See: I'm an Android user, what are my options? (I am kind of surprised they don't have an Android version of their app available, yet.) From what I've read they accomplish much the same thing, but, in different ways. Also, from what I've read, I prefer TSS' "biohack" approach. My wife and I use iThings, so this is easy for me to say, but, I think that, were we still Android users, I'd be inclined to acquire an economical iPad and go with TSS. Though we switched to iThings years ago, I still keep an Android tablet handy for a couple apps that aren't on iOS/iPadOS. When it dies, someday, I'll probably go out and acquire another for that reason.

Impact Ace: Able to strike the ball flush with every club, every time.

In order for a device to register the club tags it has to have an NFC reader. The Apple Watch has no NFC reader. I don't know if any smart watches have NFC readers in them. I'd bet the rent the answer will be "no." Even if the Garmin watch had an NFC reader (seems unlikely), ShotScope would have to make a version of their app to run on the Garmin watch (does the Garmin watch even support loadable third-party apps?) that would communicate with the ShotScope app on the iPhone. The way Connex works with an iPhone and Apple Watch is you tap the club handle against the phone (which can be in your pocket) to register the club. The Watch is kind of a slave to the app running on the iPhone. If the Garmin watch had an NFC reader, and if it supports loadable third-party apps, and if ShotScope made a Connex app for the Garmin watch that would communicate with the ShotScope Connex app on an iPhone: There's no reason it couldn't work.

Whatever's reading the Connex tags has to have an NFC reader. I don't know about the Garmin watch, but, I know the Apple Watch doesn't. Secondly: The device has to be able to load and run the ShotScope Connex app.

As noted by others: You might care to look into ShotScope H4. If you have an iPhone and Apple Watch, and you keep your phone on you whilst playing, you might also consider the ShotScope Connex. I've seen others speak highly of the 18Birdies app. Somebody on another forum recently praised the Golfshot SwingID app. I plan on giving The Grint a try. They recently added shot tracking and have announced they'll soon be adding auto-tracking. I haven't actually used any of these, myself.