Is Your Golf Swing a "Swing"?
Posted by Charlie King on Tue, Oct 07, 2008 @ 06:38 AM
Check out the video golf lesson Is Your Golf Swing a "Swing"?
Most golfers go out to practice or play and say, "I'm working on my golf swing." I'm just being candid when I say to some golfers "You don't have a swing". My experience has shown me that a majority of golfers don't actually swing. Most golfers are "muscling" or "maneuvering" the club around, not swinging.
We need to first define what a swing is. A swing is a to and fro motion that involves momentum with the weight of the clubhead moving back and forth. You can picture a child in a swing at the playground and how the momentum of their weight swings them back and forth. They are pulling on the chains and their feet are going out and that creates momentum; it creates centrifugal force. The weight goes back and forth and basically feeds upon itself. So that same idea works with a golf club. You sense the weight of the head and it is swinging.
If a player doesn't feel like he or she has much control over the club, our nature is to hold on tighter to the club and muscle or maneuver the club back and forth. I would say most golfers are dealing with a golf maneuver as opposed to a golf swing.
To quit maneuvering, muscling and guiding, and start swinging, there's several things we need to do. First, we need to check our grip pressure. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being you holding it as tight as you can with your hands, wrists, and arms, and a 1 being so loose the club could basically come out of your hands, we want the grip to be somewhere in the 4 to 5 range. We want there to be a little more pressure with the left hand (for right handed golfers). This sense of freedom in the arms, wrists, and hands is critical to having the weight at the end of the shaft to be swinging. With this grip pressure you take the club and swing it forward and then the momentum from swinging it forward swings it back and the momentum of the backswing swings it forward and they keep feeding on themselves and swinging to and fro, back and forth. That's momentum. That is truly a swing.
You will notice that you start to get a sense of rhythm: tick, tock, tick, tock, as the club swings back and forth. To practice this, tee a ball low and swing the club back - tick, swing the club forward - tock, or you can count one thousand one as you go back, one thousand two going forward. One of my favorite drills is to use a three count. Your back swing is tick, your forward swing is tock and when you get to the top of your finish you then swing it back a couple of feet -tick. The drill then would be Tick, Tock, Tick and it's really helpful.
Another drill you can learn from is to get your driver, make full swings and then start at a 10% effort level and work your way up to 90% effort level. If you swing back full but let the club fall and not give it much effort, we will call it 10% effort. Hit a shot doing that. You then add a little more effort, maybe 30% effort, then go to 50%, 60%, and then 80%. Somewhere in there you will find your maximum effective swing speed or MESS and that's where you want to spend a lot of your time golfing.
Find your grip pressure. Develop a rhythm. Learn about what effort level works best for you. And your golf swing can truly be a swing.
Check out the video golf lesson Is Your Golf Swing a "Swing"?