First off, I’m loving this site and Tom’s YouTube channel. Tom, thanks for all the great instruction and for making your videos entertaining! I’m in my first week of practicing the stack and tilt. So far, I’m noticing that when I really “feel” that my weight is staying on my lead side, that my trail heal is staying off the ground as I extend my trail leg during the back swing. As I “use the ground” to start the downswing the trail heal still is slightly off the ground and that seems to help me keep the weight on the lead side throughout the rest of the swing. Is this bad? I don’t want to start practicing a bad habit.
Thanks,
Will Hackney
Taylorsville, NC
Welcome to this great forum community, @dugrandaddy. I hope to see you participating here regularly and engaging with your fellow members!!
Typically, when a golfer is transitioning from a shift & lift motion to S&T I have to get them to really feel that weight on their front side, because what they "feel" is 70% forward oftentimes is 50/50 at best. This is the reason why I have drills such as 90% Weight Forward/Arms Straight. It's far less common for me to encounter your situation of perhaps too much weight loading onto the front side too soon...
In S&T you start with your weight forward (55/45 generally, but up to 60/40 for the longer clubs), gradually add more forward weight to the top (70/30), 80/20 halfway down, 90/10 impact, and 95/5 finish. With your trail heel coming up off the ground during the backswing I'm surmising two possibilities: 1) you are way ahead of schedule in terms of loading into your lead side, and 2) you may be tilting without extending sufficiently. With regard to the latter, you'll know this immediately if you video your swing from the face-on view and notice your head and upper torso moving down and towards the target. That is the only way I can imagine why your trail heel might be getting pulled off the ground.
Extension is what keeps us centered as we tilt in the backswing. Here's a lesson on this component. Also, below is an excerpt from the S&T book on how the three elements of tilting, turning, and extending work individually. Of course these motions are combined in the actual swing, and that is much of what Chapter 2 is about. I strongly suggest spending plenty of time mastering everything in that chapter as you'll then have a great foundation for your swing. In fact, the primary course of frustration that I see results from folks jumping ahead and/or skipping outright these critical building block elements.
Please let me know if I'm missing something here, as this is my best guess without actually seeing your swing.
Have fun out there!
Tom