My man Bom
It took awhile, but I got my answer!!
You remember this?
As I have mentioned, I always enjoy your numerous posts…
my question to you is—what are you after?
Now I know, even if I don’t understand half of what you speak!
your friend
bent
bob
Duke,
I trained under and was promoted to Sandan (3rd degree blackbelt) by Isao Ichikawa. Hanshi Ichikawa was the number one student of Toyama Kanken who was the number one student and assistant to Itosu. Itosu was from Shuri Okinawa and introduced Karate to Japan. Itosu was the designer of the Pinan Katas. If you are familiar with Okinawan or Japanese Karate you are aware the Pinan Katas are the fundamentals and provide the foundation for beginning students.
I spend many hours with Hanshi Ichikawa from private lessons to dinners to helping him move into his apartment in Vienna Austria. I am giving this lineage so you know I learned under, at that time, one of the only true master’s of Karate. I can tell you first hand, striking–not to–but through the target was a key to training. The Kaia happened at completion of the technique which was through the target.
I am not denegrating your training maybe we just learned from teachers with a different approach. I respect many forms of Maritial Arts. But with all due respect I do take issue with your statement, “you will NEVER find a good marital artist trying to do what you recommend.” Hanshi and his instructor would disagree and as a loyal student, so would I.
Hey Bom…a question.
Somewhere on this forum there was some discussion between about the amount of time between an “intent” and the action that follows. For instance, if my intention was to flip a pancake, how long in milliseconds before the action starts? And does the distance from the pancake make any difference…as long as it’s within reach?
I’m with 'ya on intentions…they are the key in my mind. For instance, if my intention was to have the full loft of the club exposed squarely to the target at the point of ball seperation from the clubface…I think maybe everything we do especially in the set up, and beyond, might be or maybe should be, or is, part of that involuntary process that our mind and body perform to satisfy that intention. 
RR
P.S…the rats in the nest are just fine 
That makes perfect sense to me, littlealm. Consider this scenario: If I were going to rip someone’s heart out using the front punch mantis technique - I would punch, grasp the heart and then continue through the back of the victim whilst still gripping the heart. Both in martial arts and as an engineer - I would state that it would be a grand waste of energy to grasp the heart and then reverse gears and remove it from the attack’s entry point. 
Case closed.
Captain Chaos
I do remember it, Bent… we got there eventually!
Cheers
Littlealm,
This conversation reminds me of the one we were having a while back about the downside of having your acceleration point too far after the point of impact. I think you can have it too far post impact and lose the zip required to make it through step 1. Like in the Captains example, you might not make it through the chest to begin with if you’re overly concerned with coming out the other side, it would be in danger of becoming a sort push or shove instead of a punch. It’s an interesting one for sure.
RR,
I do remember that discussion but I can’t remember the numbers. Though my sense with those sorts of calculations is that they’re bound to change at some point so I don’t let them dictate too much my thinking. This is why I don’t pay too much attention to those who say you can’t alter the path of the club while it’s in motion, these are often ‘scientific’ claims made by people who haven’t really played the game at any decent level. Anyone who has knows that there are things you can do very late that will have an effect on the shot.
With the pancake question you could also ask when your intention to flip it began- It could’ve been when you were lying in bed wondering what you were going to have for breakfast There are too many unknowns in all of that stuff to be certain, but it does seem clear that mental or emotional desires or urges are the things that make us move our bodies. Obviously with repetition we get better at the actions but it’s the learning of the how that starts the process I think. Whether it’s in observation or in words, it’s a mental processing that governs the learning as far as I can tell, and then we put it into practice physically. It may not be active or conscious, but anything audio or visual is processed by the brain as far as we know, and then interpreted and then done. This might change, but for know it appears that the brain is the hub of the processing. It seems fairly evident if you stand at a driving range for 20 minutes or so, that the general perception on how to move a golf ball is a bit off. Something ought to be done about it, I say!
This may all be getting a little philosophical but it seems important to me to understand or at least try to.
For a pivot driven hitter this is regulated somewhat by the additional intention/awareness of releasing you angles. The analogy to the un-accelerated push/shove punch would be too much forward shaft lean through the impact interval. So post impact acceleration is important but you also have to train your hands to release the angles somewhere around p3 so the butt of the club is pointing around the belt buckle near impact and not at the target.
Lipout…
Releasing your angles IS acceleration, and it’s into the point of impact… strength of pivot maintains the blow through. It may be perception, but it is what it is to me. Hogan wasn’t holding angles, he was hitting the crap out of it. In my thinking, his swing was a ‘beat and hold’, not a ‘hold and beat’.
I agree, too much shaft lean is one of the greatest fallacies in the game, it’s one of those overly linear thinking power destroyers, and has no place in anything athletic. It completely ignores the thing that actually hits the ball. It also one of the many TGM misunderstandings based on misunderstood observation. Hands leading or hands ahead isn’t actually about a descending blow as it’s claimed.
Some of what your saying I see as happenings as opposed to goals, but I get it what you’re getting at.
Cheers.
I really like Born’s term “misunderstood observation”. It has meaning for me just as Lag’s “vapor trail” opened my mind to intentions and to the concept of allowing things to happen in the swing as opposed to creating each and every angle with conscious effort. However, I do intend to work on improving my teacup picking. Cheers!
If I am going to error I prefer to error on the side of through. I always learned “through” is better than “to”. There is a saying in Martial Arts, “Break the floor under the boards.”
I remember my best days pitching as a kid. It was when I listened to my coach and followed through.
I think the tea cup anology misses the enormity of the challenge the golf swing is. To me it will be like lifting a full beer jug which has the handle as small as a tea cup. And do it at top speed. Thats where intution gets shaky. You have seen thousands of golfers beating balls on the range and the course but seldom you see a golfer who gets it right, of the bat.
Seldom is right, Macs.
In my opinion, seeing the enormity of the challenge of the golf swing misses the simplicity and similarity of picking up a cup of tea- you just have to know where to look. As my man James Joyce said, ‘in the particular lies the universal’.
Each to their own, I suppose, but it is what it is.
I’m not thinking about errors, I’m working on plain principles. I understand where you’re coming from, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
Agreed on your first point but perhaps Hogan was ‘beat and continue to beat harder’. He certainly talked about the fastest velocity post-impact. I wonder how a swing would perform in which the angles were released from p3 with the minimal acceleration needed to achieve a relatively in-line condition of the left arm - shaft at impact when viewed face on. This would save the rest of the golfer’s maximum possible acceleration capability for post impact. Perhaps this is the ideal and why golf can seem so counter-intuitive. You’d certainly think at first it would be better to hit your maximum effort/acceleration just as you go into the ball but that would mean you are slowing down immediately post impact (or slightly before if you barely miscalculate).
But I think what people fail to realize is that we don’t just arrive at p3(as you guys call it) this is a point in the journey, and the angles have already been considerably released at that point- they can’t just all of a sudden cease being released. I bring up Hogan because for as sharp as his angles were at transition, comparatively speaking, they’re almost nonexistent coming into impact. I know the freeze frames show him held, but taking them from where he came from, they’re fairly minimal. I see it as ‘beat and held’ because he fully released into impact and then braced it through with his pivot. There’s a consensus that he somehow held his angles coming in there, but I don’t see that as the case, I see him as firing harder in than past.
I understand intentions, but in dealing with reality, the ball slows the clubhead. In theory, if you’re a believer in physics, it slows to zero in order to match the stationary ball. I’d rather deal with that reality and bring as much speed and strength into impact as I can to impact the ball, than try to defy it and attempt to speed up after the ball has already left. That’s how I see it.
bom,
i don’t understand what you mean by “if you’re a believer in physics, it slows to zero in order to match the stationary ball.” i don’t mean to hijack this thread, and if this topic has been discussed elsewhere, i apologize.
i come from more of a mathematics background than physics, so if you or anyone else can educate me, i’m all ears (or since this is an internet forum, all eyes). here is how i understand it:
let’s say a car is driving in a straight line at a constant velocity (i.e. zero acceleration) of, say, 30 mph, and a stationary object is in its path. if that object is light compared to the car, say a pylon or even a shopping cart, the car–as i understand it–will not slow to zero velocity. it will slow down (decelerate), but it won’t stop. perhaps it will slow to 25 mph or 20 mph. now if the object is much heavier than the car, say a very solid wall, then the car would slow to zero velocity (i.e. come to a stop). if you agree with me so far, let’s go on.
now let’s say the car is accelerating rather moving at a constant velocity. let’s say it’s accelerating at a constant rate of an additional 10 mph every second. so, one second after it was moving at 30 mph, it would be moving at 40 mph, and another second later it would be moving at 50 mph, and so forth. now if the stationary pylon or shopping cart is in its path, why does the car have to slow down? that is, why does the acceleration have to go to zero? why can’t the acceleration decrease from 10 mph every second to say 5 mph every second? as far as i understand, decreasing acceleration does not imply decreasing velocity. the car can still be accelerating, it’s just doing so at a lesser rate.
we can go even further. if instead of the car accelerating at a constant rate, let’s say it’s accelerating at an ever increasing rate. that is, the first second the acceleration is 10 mph per second, and the next second it’s 15 mph per second, and so forth. so now the car can even still be increasing it’s acceleration after a collision with a stationary object.
now, if instead of a car, let’s say we have an accelerating club head. i don’t know what the stationary golf ball would be the equivalent of. the pylon? the shopping cart? the wall? something in between? so are you saying that the stationary golf ball provides so much resistance that the accelerating golf club must not only decrease its acceleration, but also go to zero acceleration? i don’t know the answer, but i also don’t understand why in general you say it must be so. i’m not trying to pick a fight, i just don’t understand what you are saying.
william
Hanisch,
For starters, I wouldn’t be thinking you’re picking a fight, so don’t worry about that. And there’s no hijacking either- it’s all conversation to me, and everyone’s involved.
This stuff depends on how literally you take the laws of physics. If for every action there’s an equal but opposite reaction, than at least in theory, at the moment of impact, a stationary ball will have to be met by a momentarily stationary club. I appreciate the reality of the situation much like in the ways that you’ve described, but I think it pays to take a look at the possibilities and the theoretical possibilities.
At the very least, the moment of impact does slow the club as the energy is transferred into the ball. So any acceleration past that point, when the ball has already gone, is irrelevant since the moment of importance has already happened. This is why I think it’s so important to bring maximum acceleration and strength into the ball and maintain it going through. Like a car crash, the severity of the damage is dependent upon the speed the car is traveling prior to the impact. The structural stability of the vehicle also determines who suffers the most damage. Btw, I’m not suggesting you hit the breaks at any point. Do you see where I’m coming from with this stuff?
Feelings are another issue.
Hi bom,…question for you
you say that in theory (reality too…no?) that the clubhead comes to a standstill because the ball is stationary. Can you point me in any direction on the internets or otherwise about that stuff…are you talking about some equations on impact mechanics? I always thought that as far as reaction goes you just had the effect of deceleration, not a complete “theoretical standstill”. I also started to wonder to myself that if true why should the club after it had stopped begin moving again? Your arent invoking any kind of philosophical debate about fletchers paradox here are you? I feel also I have to say that im not beiing condescending, just curious, it´s easy to misunderstand the “tone” of ones ramblings on the forums here.
Regards
CP
Littlealm, what a great experience that must have been to receive the training that you did. My background is Wado Ryu and I believe that our basic training at least would be quite similar.
As I read back over my post I can see how it might be misconstrued to think I said to hit at our target. When I wrote that we want to deliver our energy to our target not way past it, I could have worded that better by saying that we want to deliver our energy into our target. I still stand by the last part where I stated not way past our target and I mentioned acceleration not speed, power, force, etc. I believe that you would agree with that statement.
My problem with Lag’s statement is that it is not how martial artist train that I am aware. Having the power of any technique I throw happen past the target or short of the target is unacceptable. I would have never of received even my original black belt if I couldn’t demonstrate proper application of all techniques. If I tried to accelerate a technique after it has encountered it’s target, I would still be a purple belt or lower. My training involves applying energy quickly into a technique, (or weapon), in a manner that gives it the most power and precision at impact.
I am not trying to downgrade Lag’s method, I just feel that he is trying to pump up his method in a way that is not accurate. I also have a problem with him comparing martial arts training to “brick breakers”. That is a circus sideshow of martial arts training. I believe that lag would have a problem of me comparing real golf to Long Driving. I perceive his statement to be as degrading and incorrect.