Staying in the shaft plane

Something is working, slowly but surely. I will try to post some pics and short vids within a couple days. Extension is clearly the key for me to "feel" the S&T golf swing and guide it correctly.

I’m taking this to another existing topic called ‘Extension in the spine’ to continue. There are inklings of this promised Land in a swing here or there, but no consistency like I imagine if I could get a reliable feel for this part of the body motion

@ericostling - If you can successfully ingrain that "quiet arm" feel you speak of and entrust the swing to the proper integration of the body motions - of which extension is most definitely a key component - then you will be placing yourself in the fast lane on the road to the Land of Ball Striking Bliss!

@Tom Saguto this may be the key. And I might start another forum post if I don't find any other discussions about it specifically. @danny , @James Flood , @timmos1 , @Alan Studnicky you may also have some ideas. I actually know a lot about spine extension from t'ai chi. And if anything I've been extending the lower spine at address out of habit.(!) Which might be counterproductive here for the S&T approach(?), effectively leaving nowhere else to go when starting the backswing. So it's quite new for me trying to leave the spine *alone* at address, and then how (much) to 'extend' when turning. Which I started working with this morning, with some better results, we'll see. In video I'm also discovering my hands still tend to want to "feel" like in their old grip, where the lead hand was on top of the club, allowing an active straight lead arm to 'pull' the clubface through the ball. The standard grip here is very different, and so is that feel. So I started a self-made 90% swing drill with the lead arm only to get used to this more, as if practicing a single-handed backswing like in tennis. Requires a real quiet arm, all hip turn, but then you can't mess up the clubface so easily. And when correctly executed the ball always goes straight.

@ericostling - The dropping of the head is a result of insufficient extension of the spine in the backswing. Have a look at the photos below from the S&T book of Andy Plummer demonstrating the spine actions. He's not exaggerating. These are the changing spine conditions during the backswing.

Here's an extension lesson from the KFC Club. Here's another one on the three motions - tilt, turn, and extend - from the Get Out and Go Play program.

Extension is a difficult concept to grasp - in that you are actually "standing up" while keeping your head in place and maintaining your relationship with the ball - but it is the key move to unlocking the swing!

thanks @danny I remember that from the instructional vids.. I guess that means longer bathroom stays at work where there's a good stall to practice on :) I also found something on this in the KFC section vids, about keeping a steady head. including remembering to extend, not just tilt and turn. (of course @Tom Saguto 's got it all taken care of and covered somewhere!) I'd like to find a way to "feel" this out on the course, so it seems a little uncertain how to really take care of the issue myself. but maybe I'm closer than I think.

@danny , so I was working on keeping the head in place over the front, but video still shows the head dropping down as I turn to reach the top of the backswing. I finally caught an image of the nozzle striking the ball as a result of this drop, sending the ball, well - right.

do you know of other drills/fixes focusing on keeping the head in place? I don’t remember seeing Tom focus on a head drop

@danny , thanks for this comment, it tipped me off to something. I finally managed to set up a face-on vid on the range (not as easy, since you hi-jack another golf mat and people can get annoyed). From the vid I saw my head always moving *back* as I got to the top of the backswing, taking some of the spine with it. Sometimes it luckily returned to the address point, but there you go. It also explains the regular tailoff to the right since the swing becomes out-to-in as @Tom Saguto has explained in several of his vids. From this I will also be working with the 2.8 drill that puts everything together. For some reason that one didn't click before, but now it does, in terms of this forum title. It's the drill from which everything else can be referenced, outlining the shaft-swing plane and 'staying put' inside of it. More after my next session(s)...

Hi Eric,

I was just looking at that video of your swing. You are moving your head down in that view. It would be helpful if we could see face on whether you're just moving up and down or, if you're moving front to back as well. Although, the takeaway plane is MUCH better.

Danny

@ericostling sounds like you had a good range session. And I know how it goes with setting up the camera. Half the time I have it set up, do a bunch of swings, only to find that I wasn't fully in frame, the app glitched out, or something else. So I take the shotgun approach and film a lot.

I went to the range today and had a mixed session. Only about 50% success rate but I think I learned a bit; feel like I'm getting a much deeper understanding of tilt (even if I've yet to put it into practice). I'm going to post something in my other "swing thoughts" thread where I think you're already tagged.

James

"Practicing is like pushing a wall. Then the next day, you find the wall has moved..." - jazz pianist Bill Evans, on an interview with Len Lyons Well, the very first hit I took at a short session this morning was beautiful and straight. (6-iron, still limiting the backswing for now). And throughout the practice I was aware of the body starting to "feel" things with S&T. @James Flood thanks for the further comments from (re)viewing my vid. Some of the visuals are misleading because of the hurried camera angle and office attire, so I promise to post something else soon with good camera lines when I get the chance. I do agree a main thing for me is really allowing a full body tilt and shoulder turn *down*, in order to make a real relationship to the ball - which naturally tends to bring the trail arm up, instead of folding back over. It 'feels' like a failure, a troublesome dip dooming the downswing. Yet whenever I tried to "overexaggerate" this today there was never a 'bad' hit, only the arms trying to come back in, and, inevitably when they did...wait for it...sending the ball right. That's becoming a key for me to learn to trust more and more.

Great dialogue, folks. Keep it going!

And yes, @ericostling - as @James Flood said, great job with the "corral" setup!

Good stuff, @James Flood and @timmos1 , I’m looking at everything you’ve mentioned. My opinion, @Tom Saguto is carefully explaining a simple principle that modern golf has messed up royally, often requiring a lot of unlearning bad or old habits. Two things I’ve already learned to follow that I never had before:

1. The pure golf swing is a simple disc, spinning at angle around an unwobbling pivot point, like the Earth spinning on its axis. And the human body is designed to *naturally* trace this disc, if you train it properly.

2. When trained properly, the arms and hands “do nothing”. You could say they are just along for the ride, staying in place, to deliver the message to the ball coming from from the natural body turn.

Of course even this natural approach lends itself to fun training aids. Maybe I’ll grab one of these at Golf Galaxy on the way home from work this week. (Wouldn’t Kevin Costner have loved access to this for Tin Cup?)

Also, @ericostling if you haven't already, check out the video mentioned by Tom in this post: https://sagutogolf.wixsite.com/sagutogolf/forum/main/comment/60f1633b238e14001574f577

It hasn't "fixed" things for me yet but the overhead POV has made me far more cognizant of the correct swing path.

Great threads you guys.. initial question asked for input, so here goes ... Toms instructions are killer good. Have you noticed that his section on hitting the driver is only like 3 3 minute episodes? I have found that due to the physics of the clubs, that being the length of the club head from the ball necessitates a slightly different approach to get a wood into the "slot" as opposed to irons. Using alignment sticks, like in toms videos, the driver club head needs to travel rearward at like a 5-10 degree angle from the face being perpendicular to ball flight path. I have not found that the irons, being shorter, need such a large angle away on the take away. With my mid to short irons I get clean contact with a takeaway angle much less, it's a shorter path with a greater margin of error.... Unlike driver 45 inches any error is greatly magnified. Anyway that's my experience and thoughts...

@ericostling I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you as I'm still working through this myself but I did realize something today.

I know you saw my earlier thread on the topic here: https://sagutogolf.wixsite.com/sagutogolf/forum/backswing-help/my-progress-after-about-a-month-good-but-still-fighting-the-chicken-wing

After practicing the motion in the house in front of the mirror I thought that, maybe, if I focused ONLY on getting that left shoulder down, the other parts would fall into place. I filmed a few swings to check. Well, it didn't cure the problem - it made it MUCH worse. That said, it sure cured the low backswing - club came back right on the swing plane (until the end when it became a giant chop). At the very least, it's confirmed that the shoulder did have to come down a bit and that I was right to give it a careful look.

I now realize why I'm still struggling with the lifting: prior to S&T, my swing had almost no tilt (I went back and watched some from many years ago). The introduction of tilt is what's causing me to lift. Which is fine. I'm not going to stop tilting but at least now I understand the mechanics a bit more.

Next up, I'm going to focus on keeping the hands in and see what it yields.

Nice setup with the corral, by the way. I've been looking for something in my garage to get the geometry right.

I hope this was helpful in some way. I've really only discussed my swing here, but maybe something I've written could offer a new perspective which you can apply to your practice.

Good luck,

James

@ericsc somehow missed the tag. I'll get back to you on this for sure.

(Start of the session )

Well then @danny, here's the result of about a month of solid persistent effort. Also taking in your comment here and @Tom Saguto 's suggestion above to review the Problem #2 Takeaway drill. And then only after an hour and half with time to spare and no pressure to be anywhere else, using alignment sticks galore for most of it until the very end here, and taking plenty of time on each swing and between. And insisting on doing everything with different clubs, starting with a 6-iron and then a 3-iron before the wood - so as not to get suddenly intimidated by the big bad ones later on.

Still working on that trailing arm and getting the shoulder down. But always end your range session on a good shot.

Eric,

I've notice that starting the hips too soon does this to me as well. I'm currently working on sequencing the takeaway. I believe that it needs to start with the shoulders and then the hips only turn after the shoulder turn is done. Then, the downswing is the opposite. The downswing starts with the hips and pulls the shoulders along for the ride. It all sounds great in theory but, I'm still battling this. I have a tendency to start the backswing with my hips and shoulders at the same time, this seems to bring the club back, under the swing plane and then just to even the whole thing out, it brings me over the top with a shoulders first downswing... It's just so wonderful to have this unrelenting tendency that just does not want to give in... I'm definitely making progress as my club head speed is increasing and sometime the smash comes up into the 1.30s I just can't imagine what my results might be when I hook this up right and get 1.45 smash factor with 95mph clubhead speed!

It'll come... one day...

Danny