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In this golf smart insight, we're going to answer and remember a question.

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So, Joe from California wanted to get my take on the handpath.

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Now, I focus a lot on the movements of the body, the hands, and what they're doing.

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I leave some of the club stuff to those who have a little bit better technology for measuring the club,

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because my system is the AMM8 sensor, and it's very good at measuring what the body is doing,

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but misses out on some of the club data.

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So, I'm going to give you my take, but this is not based on my own research,

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there's more based on my interpretations of other guys' research.

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So, here I'm going to have my little graphical representation of what's going on in the golf swing.

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So, what you can see here is the club is going to be traveling down, if we're hitting with an iron, right?

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So, the club is traveling down, makes contact with the golf ball and continues going down before it starts to come back up.

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And that's because it's traveling on this incline plane going in a little bit of a circle,

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somewhere there's the furthest point away from you or the bottom of the swing, that is going to be after the golf ball.

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Now, the hands are also traveling on a somewhat planar path, a little bit flatter than what the club is doing at times.

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But what it's doing is it's reaching the bottom of its peak right before it comes,

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or right before you make contact with the golf ball.

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So, the big controversy in the hand path is they used to talk about how if you're going to have the club head moving down,

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you want to be applying kind of this constant force down towards the ground through the golf ball.

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I don't disagree with that in principle, because I'll get into breaking up the movements on why and how this happens.

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But just understand that the hands are going to reach the bottom of their swing before you hit the golf ball,

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while the club is going to hit the bottom of its swing after you hit the golf ball due to the club leg.

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So, I'll go back into our station and we'll discuss this and break down the hand path a little bit further.

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Okay, so now that we have an idea of the what, which is the hands are going to be coming up and in through impact,

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let's talk about some of the why and the how.

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So, if I was here, I've got the plane board just to kind of give a little visual representation,

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and so you can have a little backdrop to see that my hands are actually starting to come back up.

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So, if my hands actually continued to go down, I would hold onto a lot of leg and I would have a very steep angle of attack.

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You could see it just like so, as it goes down, it's a very clunky feeling.

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As opposed to if I just got to there and then had those hands starting to work back up,

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you can see that the club kind of glances the ground gives you more shallow angle of attack,

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which gives you a bigger flat spot at the bottom, a bigger margin of error.

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Right, that's how you take those long skinny divots as opposed to really steep ones.

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Well, the question then becomes, how do I get my body to do that?

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Do I just think it? Do I just make sure that the club is coming up?

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That could be one way, but as you notice in my release videos, the transition videos, I have an idea of what I think the best players do

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through these phases or through these different

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movements in order to make it work.

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So what causes the hands to actually move up? Because what I teach in the release and what we see on 3D

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is that through impact, both arms are going to be straightening, your wrists are approaching

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more neutral, so for all intent and purposes, the club is moving away from your chest.

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The club is moving further away from you. So, if my upper body stayed the same as it was at

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setup, that means that the hands would be moving down through impact. But that's the big caveat.

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When you swing, you got your whole body that can adjust it. So even though my arms are going to be

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extending away from my body, my upper body is going to actually be backing up as it continues to

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side bend and starts to extend. So when that happens when my upper body is backing up,

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now when I extend my arms away from me, they are just slightly coming up as they go through that

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release or through that impact interval. It's a very powerful mechanism. We see it in pretty much

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every other sport. If you're throwing a ball, you're not going to continue having your upper body

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go forward. You're going to try and kind of post up so that you can rotate. If you're hitting a ball

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in tennis or in baseball, they've actually switched in basketball now instead of throwing

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these steps, chest passes or bounce passes that I did thousands of. Now they're doing this more

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rotational pass because it contributes a whole lot more power. So it's got the double benefit of the

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big, the shallow divot, so bigger margin air and it's more powerful. So that's why we see the hands

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come up and that's how we see the hands come up and in is a result of what the body is doing through

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impact not what the hands are actively doing through impact. The hands are kind of going away from you.

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So what we then want to talk about is why this might be happening. So or why certain golfers would

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struggle with this if they have the wrong mental idea. So if they think that the hands are going to

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be traveling more down through here, that creates a very steep angle of attack. So then what your

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result, your left with is you've got to shallow out the club some way. What ends up happening is

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if you get very steep, the best and the fastest shallower out of the club is to flip your release.

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So the faster I can get my hands going like this, the more I can shallow out the club. And so

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oftentimes I'm able to get golfers to get out of a little bit more of a flip release

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by understanding how the body shallows out the club to replace the flip, shallowing out the club.

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So if you work on those release drills, if you work on the follow-through position,

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you've already taken care of the fact that the club moves up and in or that the hands move up and in

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as the club is moving down and out and you won't have to think about it. Now that's the more

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complicated part of the hand-path, the second thing that a lot of people talk about is more

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the hand-path during transition. And Sasha McKenzie has done some great modeling which shows the

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effectiveness of, do we really want to be on-plane the entire downswing? And

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for all intent and purposes, modern researchers are saying no, if you were dead on plane,

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then it takes a significant muscular effort to square the club face. If you allow the club

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to drop underneath the direction that the hands are pulling. So if the club is now kind of on a

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flatter plane than the direction that my hands are pulling, that will cause the club to want to

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align those two sources as you lengthen everything through impact. And so what it ends up

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happening, what it ends up doing is it ends up helping you square the club face with less

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muscular effort. So what we see on 3D is the way that they're able to do that is to have a little

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bit of this flattening move or this rotation of the right and left forearm that I talk about in

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the transition section. So those movements account for the things that we're seeing in the hand-path

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studies and help produce this consistent, powerful, bottom-y or swing. So Joe, I hope that clears it up

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and for anyone else or any other members, if you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

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We love answering them and as you see, if it's tricky enough question, we will definitely get a

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video out there to help you understand it.