Hold a large glass of water directly in the center of your body at about belt buckle level…with the forearm parallel to the ground.
Without dropping your forearm…turn the forearm clockwise until all the water spills out toward your R foot. Notice how the elbow moved toward the left foot. Now do the same thing and pour the water towards your L foot. Notice how the elbow kicks up and moves towards the right foot.
When saving right arm…and not disturbing elbow location…what shoe do you get wet?
Coming soon to a forum near you…Elbow Room II…the sequel. RR
I’m corn-fused… which hand is holding the glass? And is it AT the buckle? If it’s the right, then clockwise from the elbow would be towards me? Like I said, I’m corn-fused…
BOM
Sorry for your corn-fusion. It’s the R hand ( left sided golfers don’t exist in my universe ) and it is extended out past your toe line…just like you were handing a glass of water to someone. Only, for illustration, the hand is about at buckle level and in the middle of the torso.
Just tip the glass to the right so the bottom of the glass is facing up. The glass opening should be pouring out towards the right foot, or just a little in front of it. Hope that helps Bommo… RR
Thanks, RR…
I had the feeling that was your point, but I wanted to make sure…
I like what you’re saying in a similar way to your pancake discussion, but I think the intent in striking the ball itself is still a little beyond it, though very simliar! The falling liquid from the glass is a very strong image, and creates a good position for the arm, but doesn’t in itself encourage forward thinking acceleration. Ya know what I mean? I like where we’re going with the discussion though…
BOM
Bom…in my mind that particular arm orientation helps with accelerating past the ball. I know I will screw up this explanation a little…but it concerns centripetal acceleration. There’s something in that formula which states that as velocity increases, centripetal forces will have to increase by that factor squared. In other words, if a race car increases its speed, the amount of additional centripetal forces will have to increase by that number squared in order to keep the car in its current orbit around the track. Something like that…Mandrin, where are you
I think that is why early velocity or acceleration from the top makes it more muscularly difficult to muster that much centripetal force to harness the orbit. So the task would be how to get the R arm to travel to elbow plane without introducing early velocity into the equation…and leaving the clubhead alone. If one can get the hands near the ball (which would be a significant amount of travel ) without introducing velocity…about the only thing left to use to accelerate is the pivot…hands…and firing up the plane.
I have the feeling at times instead of a reverse loop at the top…more of the R forearm opening on the way down…and never stops opening even through the ball a little.
I think the open R forearm is the pathway to creating the centripetal force required when hitting. Good stuff… RR
There’s a lot in this post. I tried highlighting different parts to comment on them specifically, but that got a little old. So I’ll try to make some points connected to it.
In the first paragraph, I’m assuming you mean cornered or rotational acceleration. I’m not saying that to be picky, just to be clear. The acceleration of the body/shoulders etc tends to happen on a perp angle to the spine. From the top, if you accelerate hard, you tend to go outside the desired angle of attack because the spinal energy plane is far flatter than the plane of attack the club is on at the ‘top’ of the swing- as a general rule, but not always, and not necessarily. On a side note, I don’t believe in planes for the most part. I think energy planes exist, but not physical club traveling ones.
The arms have an extremely difficult, if not impossible time, overriding the strength of the early unwinding body since that tends to work on the energy plane of the spine. This is why it pays to either hold and brace the body/pivot at the ‘top’ of the backswing, or to have a pretty short and compact backswing action that doesn’t let the arms get too far away from the action. There are always options.
But overall, as I’ve said before, I do think that we move because we need to, so why should we make unnecessary moves that are not required and then have to be compensated for? It doesn’t seem to make sense.
RR
RR
RR