On Thursday July 15th, the day after Bom posed his post impact question, I ran into an old club pro that I have know for about 15 years. He is strong, HECK of a ballstriker, and chipper…but an awful putter.( how often do we hear that…is there a correlation?)
Anyway, conversation came around to golf as always, and he relates to me that a former tour player ( many of you would know) had recommended a book to him after seeing my friend have another good ballstriking round, and make nothing on the greens…leading to discouragement. My friend called the book " A Scared Walk"…but I soon found out it is “A Sacred Walk” when I Googled it.
Found out there is a free download , and I am about 2/3 of the way through, and so far there have been some chapters on fly fishing and painting, plane flying,and a fair amount of philosophy which I presume will continue as I read on(due to the title)…but one the themes is simply this :
SEE it FEEL it TRUST it. Use intuition, not so much intellect. Much of what happens with a shot, is the reult of what you do pre-shot. IMO…this is great, but you gotta have the fundamentals first.
A couple of things that struck me…the mentors/guru’s name is “Johnny”(Lag?) , he has a goat ranch range, 3 astroturf mats, and 9 hole course that conjured of visions of RR when I read the description.
Anyway, have any of you guys read it , and any opinion?
We have chickens, geese, birds of prey, deer, ground hogs, cranes…and other critters. Sometimes the deer will come out and will walk around the range and everyone just stops to watch them.
Sound like a good read…will check it out. Thanks Eagle.
I finished the book. The chapter entitled “Buried Lies” took place in a cementary, and got dead serious…pardon the pun. As I said , the book was leaning towards the philosophical, and here it became more direct.
While the topic of "significance of our lives and golf " is of great importance, I was not posting to try to push the book or that angle. I thought the “see it feel it trust it” was a good approach to shotmaking.
I enjoyed the book and can recommend it, but I can see some may not be interested in the additional message presented…while others may.
eagle,
Had the same experience as you with that book. Liked it, but the last couple chapters reminded me of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Kinda out of left-field. Regardless, some of the points, like See it/Feel it/Trust it, were good. It reminded me of something Lag had once written:
Sorry for the fleeting reply before…
My main point was that you can’t create anything of importance post impact that isn’t caused by something pre impact- there’s a reason that the 4:30 line that you guys talk about is so important. There’s so much reaction during that journey. The ball doesn’t really exist in a way, but at the same time it’s completely fundamental to the journey of the club and the direction of the energy coming from it. The ball is important, as is impact.
The bottom line is that the only thing that’s really important is impact. If we’re having a discussion about intentions vs. reality, then that needs to be established, I understand that and the value. But I’m talking about happenings, and they’re what I see as reality, and they’re what I’ve been discussing.
I’m open to both, but it’s not good to confuse them.
BOM…
I appreciate you guys looking beyond the sort of stark post that I put out there…
My thoughts are summed up by this idea that I came up with, it’s what U always return to. And like most, I’m on the search for answers and understanding, not to tell people I already have them…
Anyway, here’s the idea…
----Does the way that you do it create the thing that you want, or does the thing that you want create the way that you do it?
Bom
I believe the post impact acceleration or application of additional force (to avoid the debate weather further acceleration is possible or not). And here is why. In the ABS golf swing you try to delay the spending of the arms and powerful leg drive (straighterning of the bent knees). So from P3 to P4 the mains source of power is spine (torso) rotaion and forearms and arms rotation. At some point those arms and legs have to fire and obviously there combined effect is stronger. That voilent upward move is a tell tale sign you did things right at impact. If not you did not do them right.
If ‘the way that you do it’ includes acceleration through and beyond impact, and ‘the thing you want’ is an ABS-type swing; I’d say the first option.
If I read macs post correctly you’re applying additional forceafter impact (even though these actions may be instantiated pre impact).
Another point you made is the importance of not confusing intention with reality. I think the reason that Lag speaks of intentions is because it’s a good way of telling our body how to do certain things. For us humans, intentions create reality, so to speak.
Only if you were an Iron Byron, you could stop the club directly after impact and the ball would still have the same compression and flight. (the club would break though ) So only for machines there is as little latency between intention and reality.
If you were to increase acceleration from P4 to PV5 (intention) or absolutely minimize deceleration (reality) through direct muscular activity, then either of these actions would work their way back to a prior moment where a building of energy started… impact and even before.
If you clench your fist, the fingers start from an open position and close, then tighten more. This is a process that is completely dependent upon the final intentions. Without the clenched final intention, there is no certainty that any amount of squeezing is going to happen. If you quit along the way, you will never squeeze to your capacity… just the same in the golf swing.
It’s the completion of the intention that gives the toughness and stability through impact… without it… you are playing with fools gold.
This is common practice in martial arts, yet golfers somehow think they are exempt because they believe that once the ball leaves the clubface, the swing is over… but better to think the swing is just beginning.
Ask any Karate brick chopper, and they will tell you that if they were only to focus upon the point of impact, they would be going to the hospital with a broken hand. They all are focusing upon a point through and beyond impact with the point of impact being incidental. This insures that the strike is happening with acceleration and not just a given velocity.
You have two options… embrace this or not… but the consequences of “not” will lead to inconsistent golf shots.
This is a great point, and one I haven’t thought of before. I need a bit of time to figure out where the initial motions comes from. In a similar way to the golfswing, does the pull of the pivot initiate the downward motion of the arms, hands, and club, or does the downward motions of the hands, club, and arms compress the pivot. It’s an age old debate for me, that I’m still not 100% sure of. It could be a simple question of personal feel and coordination, but I sense there’s some definitive truth in there somewhere. Good stuff.
IOZ,
The thing that I think of with that question is that do you teach what you can physically see happening, or do you try to get to the root cause of that physical action? From my own experience I’ve found that focusing on the physical, what I can see, often leads to misinterpretation and frustration.
Lets say that we were trying to teach someone how to pick up a cup of tea, how would we go about that? In my opinion, even though it’s a lot less complex than the golfswing, it’s no different. The question is, how do you pick up a cup of tea?
This is not a very good argument from a martial arts point of view. To a “brick chopper”, the target is the final brick not the first. This comparison might be relevant if someone was attempting to hit 10 golf balls in a row. Put a weapon in a martial artist hand;i.e. bostaff, escrima sticks, sword, nunchaku and you won’t find any good martial artist trying to accelerate way past impact. We are efficient in our motion and want the energy delivered to our target not way past it. You will NEVER find a good martial artist trying to do what you recommend.
From the top I don’t feel the motion as a pull of the pivot as the first feel. I feel it more as a “squashing down” of the pivot first, then very soon thereafter, the rotary or pulling aspect you mentioned. I feel that the hands, arms, and club are carried down by the squashing or lowering aspect. When squashed, I feel those Faldo legs underneath providing a strong base to turn the screws loose.
To me, the pattern reminds me of the head of a Philips screw…a cross pattern that’s between my feet. The slot perpendicular to the target line is the slot that my turned shoulders are dropping into by way of squatting, or lowering…and then turn and fire from there. Something like that. RR
Good point, IMO you gotta know what’s under the hood.
If you want to ‘own’ the action or movement, you need to get to the root cause of the physical action.
As for your question:
I couldn’t tell you, but I thought there was a biomechanical expert on here somewhere.
Macs and IOZ
One of the things that I think I’ve figured out as a difference between some of my thinking and some of the thinking at ABS is the essence of the word Intentions. When I think of intent, I think of something mental, not physical. This is why I brought up the cup of tea analogy, the intent is to pick up the tea which is a mental thought or desire. The application of force and motion results purely out of that desire. This is the thing that I’m working on, finding that essence of thought that creates the required motion. If we never fail to pick up a cup of tea because our thinking is so well aligned with our motions, and vice-versa, then it’s possible that golf can be a more instinctive and reactive endeavour than we assume.
Motion and muscles are basically divided into voluntary and involuntary. The heart beats, the cells reproduce, the organs function, all without conscious effort- and thankfully so. But our movements in the world require thought, and if that’s the case, then they require the correct thoughts. If you thought that picking up the tea required pinching the actual liquid, no matter how much physical training you would do, when it comes down to it, you’d probably still go for the liquid. Maybe this is why routines and switch off mechanisms are so effective in golf, they short out the actual desire, the incorrect one, and let the instincts take over. But what if we got the thoughts right and they actually promoted the correct action?
This is all fairly subtle, but at the same time fundamental to everything… now that I look at the word, fundamental does contain the word ‘mental’… a bit cheesy but maybe relevant?
B
RR,
Good to see you again my man…
I feel the same way as regards the compression of the pivot, I think it receives as opposed to initiates, similar to the way it absorbs a landing after a jump, or sets prior to a jump. It’s a loading in many ways. But I do think that all this sort of stuff is secondary or reactionary to the need for the creation of force. It’s easy to get hung up on different aspects of the motion as being key, and I know I have in my time, but what are we actually trying to do?
I hope the other Rats are treating you well…
B
, and I am about 2/3 of the way through, and so far there have been some chapters on fly fishing and painting, plane flying,and a fair amount of philosophy which I presume will continue as I read on(due to the title)…but one the themes is simply this :
) So only for machines there is as little latency between intention and reality.
RR