Cannot control torso power

Hi Philip,

Thanks for posting your swing and the description. I think we can get a handle on it. The most common cause of the 2 way miss is steep early/shallow late. This often is combined with a flip down at the bottom. The two images that give me concern are in the first screen grab. The steep early and flip can both be seen. They are related to each other. While the right arm is more obvious, I would probably start by training some lead arm patterns first. It can have a big influence on the movement of the right arm.

Interestingly, if you look at the driver, you're not as steep early, but I'm guessing you have the same release issue. That release pattern tends to struggle when there is more speed, which makes sense with your solution to slow things down. I'd make this winter mostly about the release, by starting with the single arm 9-3's. Can you film those and post them here?

Tyler

Yes, foam balls are fine for observing the pattern, not as good for training it, but for identifying it's fine.

Here's the starter point for the single-arm releases https://www.golfsmartacademy.com/golf-instruction/single-arm-releases-with-a-club/

As far as the driver vs iron. Yes, it can be frustrating when your swing is geared more toward one pattern than the other. Some golfers hit their irons great, but can't hit a driver worth a darn. Your release will typically lead to low-point/contact issues, but that's not a critical skill for the driver.

It's natural that your driver swing will take a bit of a hit when you work on your irons a lot, but it's a necessary step if you want a well-rounded game. If you drive it well, but don't know how or why you drive it well, then it's more likely to fall off. But if you have a few driver keys, (as long as I do X, Y, and Z I hit my driver well) then you should be okay to lose it temporarily and get it back relatively quickly once you have a better iron swing in place.

Just things for you to consider with taking on a release change.

Tyler

PS - Relating to your original thread topic. To me, it doesn't look like your torso is overpowered. I think the pivot does some things really well.

Here are 3 with each arm doing one handed (sorry for the video quality my camera lens is a little cracked), I didn't really watch anything before it as I figured it's mainly about diagnosing. Thanks for your feedback, yeah with my driver I've had a weird little relationship to my irons, when I hit my irons the best I'd say I was playing with what felt like a pretty bowed/shut clubface from the start of the swing (I don't think it was heaps shut or bowed as I still tended towards a fade/straight ball, it just felt that strong because I used to cup it). Unfortunately that tended to make my driver feel unstable, trying to hold a strong wrist position going back it was either the backswing would feel good and the shot would go well, or the backswing would feel a little off and then anything from a big block to a snap hook could happen). Which is interesting because at the moment when I hit a hook it doesn't really tend to feel that off in the backswing or even most of the downswing, I just feel it in my hands as I strike it that I've lost control and it's diving left particularly with my 2 iron.

Hey Phillip,

Sorry for the holiday delay. Thanks for posting the single arms. The trail arm has more of a flip, but much better body action, the lead arm has more of a pulling action because it leaves behind the body. See how little rotation you have with the body with the lead arm only swing. That's where the arm breakdown occurs in your full swing.

I'd try some 9-3's with the lead arm, then open trail hand trying to get the arms and the body more in sync. That'll usually allow you to feel more of the bowed wrist without hitting big pull hooks!

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for getting back to me, hope you enjoyed your holidays! I'll give those lead arm drills a go, I definitely find that my single arm swings feel a lot tougher with just the left, especially striking the ball so I think any work there will help my swing. I had a lesson today with the coach I've been working with and he had me using the hackmotion wrist thing which was interesting, from the look of the feedback and how he explained it, I have a pretty severely bowed wrist on the downswing which sometimes I keep into the ball at around the negative 10-12 degree area, and sometimes it comes out just before impact and I'm hitting with 5 degrees cup into the ball. I think that kinda bears our what you and he had noticed about my swing with the late kinda flip, he said he'd give me the data from it so I'll try upload that when it comes through as he was curious what you might think as he mentioned you're well versed in the hackmotion data, particularly as he was saying I have an unusual amount of I think he said dorsiflex in the trail wrist in the downswing which he'd never seen before (he assures me it's meant to be a good sign though).

Cheers, Philip.

Here are the images from yesterday, one swing from trail one from lead, those numbers were pretty consistent it's just sometimes I lost the bowed wrist before impact and sometimes kept it all the way into impact.

Hey Philip,

Happy New Year!

Looking at these two images, it looks like the hack motion numbers match up. One thing to know about the hack motion is that its frame rate isn't that high (I want to say it's 100 or 120 frames per second). So it's possible that some of your graphs will show losing the flex at different times is just a result of the frame rate variance and how quickly things are changing there at impact.

Also looking at these two images, it appears to me that your release issues are more related to the shoulder and shoulder blade motions rather than the wrist motions. The wrist motion sensor might help provide good feedback, but you should also use some video to make sure that the shoulder pattern is also changing since that's something that the system doesn't monitor. Good luck with it starting 2023!

Thanks for getting back to me, so do you think I should be watching some of your shoulder movement videos/drills or would the shoulder movement improve from working on the single hand release drills? Also sorry to bombard you but I was curious about that trail shoulder dorsiflexion as my coach said he'd never seen a pattern like that before and wanted to know what you thought of it. Cheers.

I think the shoulder patterns will improve with the single arm drills, especially the lead arm. A bit part of their beauty is that they train the shoulders to work better with the body.

But if you wanted more details to it, I don't think any of the shoulder/release videos would be bad.
https://www.golfsmartacademy.com/golf-instruction/9-3-lead-arm-only/
https://www.golfsmartacademy.com/golf-instruction/block-trail-arm-throw/

As far as the trail wrist extension (what your pro called dorsiflexion), the pattern (shape) isn't too crazy, but the magnitude is really high, almost like the sensor was placed too close to the wrist in set up and it didn't stay flush to the skin. It's something worth investigating or seeing if it repeats session to session. But, for me, the pattern is almost more important than the absolute numbers. So I wouldn't worry about it too much.