Practice without a club?

Hello all.

I discovered this forum a few weeks ago and have been soaking up knowledge from the great threads whenever I can. I’m home on R&R right now but commitments to the military have kept me from playing golf for the last 7 months and will continue to keep me from playing golf for the next several months. All together I’ll have a forced break of about 18 months from the game.

My question is can I do anything to work on my game, more specifically my swing, while I’m away? A little back ground might help. I’m 38 and have been playing golf for about 12 years. I’m self taught, never had a lesson in my life. My handicap (unofficial) was down to a nine last year before I had to take this extended break. I knock it around pretty well when my game is on. Have really struggled with quick smother hooks with the driver the last couple of years. Have been following the Manzella forum for about that long too and using his videos “Flipper” and “Never Slice Again” to work on my game.

I found out from this forum that I’ve been playing as a switter most of my career. I’m committed to getting rid of the swing parts of my full shots and focusing on being a hitter.

Thanks for any help any of you can provide.

Hey Coach,

Thank you for serving!

Yes, Just join up with Lag and he has all kinds of drills/Modules/muscle development exercises/that should be easily doable while you’re away…It’s probably perfect to improve your game…

yes…thanks Coach for what you did/ are doing.

and Happy Fourth

PS…Lag has great use for the military duffle bag !

Hi Coach,

I would also like to thank you for your service.

Happy you found this site and ABS.

Joined ABS 6 months ago…best thing I have done for my ball striking. I would encourage you to jump on board!! You will be glad you did.

So are all of suggesting that I sign up for the online lessons while I’m deployed? Maybe there is a part of this site that I’m not aware of?

Coach,

As long as you have access to a computer, camera (to send Lag videos), a golf club, and an impact bag you should be good to go. You don’t need access to a driving range just a place to do your Modules.

Happy 4th of July :smiley:

Here are some items you can use for practicing without a club. I know you have access to these everyday item

  1. 2- water bottles have full. One for each hand with this you can practice module 1 & 2 also full motion with and check your postions. Try to keep the water at one end then dump it where the ball would be. Credit to Ben Doyle

  2. 1- Towel you swing swing the towel working on your pivot motion. Credit to Ben Doyle

  3. 1- Broom swing this and you can create lag and you can work on your motions with any module. Credit to Ben Doyle

Thanks of serving our Great Country and Protecting US.

If I can remember any thing else I will be more then happy to send them out on this post.

Ballturf :laughing:

Those would all be excellent drills… if you are swinging… but not for hitting…

I want you to be able to swing a golf club… and train with that club, because not only does a club give you better visual of where things are, and has
a weight that is based in golf reality, it also has the proper balancing and weighting we need to properly develop our spacial awareness for the sweetspot.

Golf clubs do not have a sweetspot that is shaft aligned, so training with any other instrument can often be counterproductive.

Ultimately we want to cross train all these things together, and there is nothing better to do this with than a proper golf club.

Swinging a broom is for swingers. Oops. It’s true that you learn something every day. Swinging a broom is one the drills I used to use a lot. Time to do some more research!

Thanks for the post Lag. I guess I’ll use the rest of my time for research and start the real work when I get home.

Lag,

You don’t like #2 for hitters?

“2. 1- Towel you swing swing the towel working on your pivot motion. Credit to Ben Doyle”

I used to do this for baseball–we would hit the tee ball bat stand as hard as we could with a towel, and try to knock it over. This forced us to use the body to swing the bat rather than our arms.

As for golf, I could see it’s merits for a hitter in that it’s pivot driven, although one doesn’t utilize hand firing.

I don’t think it’s a swinging motion bc you really can’t dump the towel into impact area, and you have to stay connected.

I’ve done this before waiting on the tee box–hitting my golf bag with the towel–and find it a simple way to hit with the pivot rather than stall and flip. You really have to rip with the body to knock over a golf bag, and you really feel most of the effort post impact a la ABS’ mod 3.

Best,
Parker

My point is that we are best to swing a golf club… because a golf club is a unique instrument that has unique qualities in the way it is balanced and so forth.

Towels, and ropes, mops and brooms feel like towels and ropes, mops and brooms.

Some of these feelings can be similar but many are not.

We really want to learn to swing a golf club, not a mop or towel.

The module work here, will train you with a club to do the right things, at the right time, with a club, so that when you are done drilling, it becomes much easier to take that to the golf ball.

I would not say that some drills with other objects don’t have occasional merit, but they can sometimes have unwanted effects not really considered.

For example, I trained extensively with a fan club for an extended period of time, and although this appeared to offer benefits to my golf swing, it was a disaster to my touch and feel around the greens… I suspect Mac O’Grady suffered a similar effect… whether he knew this or not.

Once I came to the realization that you can learn to swing a club properly without swinging other objects, then the need to do so became less important.

Golf is probably the only sport with thousands of training aids and i believe Mac O’ Grady said that the makers of such contraptions should be put in jail. Baseball - ball,bat,glove not too many other devices, football- ball, pads, helmet, Golf - club,ball,tee why would one train with something else or a $10.00 training aid. We dont want false feels or bad habits are intentions should always be with a club and a properly fitted club at that.The training is in the modules and you’ll never see that in Golf Digest or any magazine.I never heard of Hogan using any crazy tools but i think i heard him say everyday put a club in your hand or else your 1 day behind!