Last week I wrote a couple of articles about determining good posture based on your arms hanging straight down from your torso. I mentioned the best way to determine that was to just glance down at your hands and, if you draw a straight line up from the center of your hands, it should come up somewhere at a point between your chin and your nose.
Well, I discussed in detail that more people reach for the ball than stand too close, because that's exactly how the article was triggered. A student asked was it impossible to stand too close to the ball and I said absolutely NO. But more people tend to reach than I've ever seen stand too close to the ball.
I went into the whole discussion of reaching, feeling strong, powerful, that's why we tend to do it, but it pulls the torso out too much and therefore pulls the hips under and knees bend too much, and it just opens up the door to a myriad of bad shots.
Those two articles got some good blogs coming in. I was hit with one when I got an email the other day from one of my long time students, Jim. He wrote me this: “Surge, what do you mean by the hands feeling like they are under the neck when swinging up?”
What I mean is that if I'm standing property with my arms hanging straight down, it is therefore much easier for me to swing up when I go into the catcher's mitt and up the tree to lift the club upward. When the hands are directly under the neck and I'm in good posture with the hips pushed outward my body is in a better position to support the club in the backswing, into the mitt and vertically up the tree.
Conversely, I will be in a good position to be able to stay still on the way down and pull the club more vertical down to impact and ultimately into the forward catcher's mitt and up the tree. So, throughout the whole swing, especially in the impact zone, from about where my hands and arms are reaching the right (back) leg approaching the ball and through to the left (front) leg, where they start going into the catcher's mitt in the forward swing and up, I feel they're definitely, directly under my neck. This is compared to the 'old me,' as I've stated, where I have the biggest tendency, and I continually fight it, reaching for the ball because I have long arms, which makes it even worse.
In that impact zone, from the back leg to the front leg, centrifugal force is trying to pull my arms outward because of centrifugal force — remember centrifugal force caused by swinging the rock and the string — is pulling outward. We're always fighting this, from one shot to another because we're being pulled out of balance.
With good posture, when the hands are under you, the thing that I started immediately to feel, even though it was kind of scary that I felt I was too close to my ball, was that I was maintaining my quieter body to the impact zone. And, in that impact zone, my hands were directly swinging under my neck because my body could better support the vertical swing in the backswing, lifting up, approaching impact and swinging up to the T-Finish.
I lost that feeling of having to struggle or work harder to maintain my balance when my weight was going to be pulled forward to the balls of my feet. But it stayed dead center in my arches. So, I was centered in my arches, I could lift my arms better, all the way up. Then they came straight back down under my neck, swung through under my neck, and lifted back up where, when my weight shifted outside to my left foot, back towards the ankle, and I went into a perfectly, dynamically balanced finished.
It all came down again to the #1 premise of the Peak Performance Golf Swing. “The setup determines the motion.”
If you're reaching, it's almost impossible to lift your hands up as vertical as we need to and stand the club up to 12 o'clock, because once you're reaching, you have to pull the club inside to get it back under your neck. Unfortunately, once you start pulling in too much, it's got a tendency to keep going and over rotate the club to heavy and laid off.
So, check your posture out, make sure your arms are hanging straight down because if they're hanging straight down, you'll be the vertical swinger you're trying to be with the Peak Performance Golf Swing. Your path is held tighter to your body, so you'll have a much better path, which gives you a tighter starting position where you'll have less pushes and blocks, and, believe it or not, you're going to clip out better divots and, very likely you'll swing the club a little bit faster. All because of good posture.
(Note: I'm down in Orlando with DJ for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, then I'm headed down to Port St. Lucie for the PPGS school. I may be a little light in the blogs, but keep at it. I'll fill you in on all that's happening. And look for details soon on our California PPGS schools at Talega Golf Club in beautiful San Clemente, May 17 – 19 and 20 – 22. It's going to be one heck of an experience. Call: 1-888-84SWING[79464] or 1-864-525-7336.)
The Surge!