It’s a leverage thing too, a sort of rotational leverage or a leveraged rotation- lots of force and power for sure.
Some of the 10,000 words I’m working on with this explanation are captured in this photo that 2Ms posted…
One of the thing that has seldom been discussed is the right wrist/forearm movement from P3(the slot) to impact. Most of the top ball strikers have the right wrist fully flat without any bend (the opposite of bowing) in it; has some cocking. (I wish we could just speek of movements in anatomic terms around specific joints because thats where movements happen. Movement-joint). Yet at impact these players have significant bend in the write wrist while at the same time the right forearm has pronated/rotated. This is very complex because that will mean that while the face was turning to close with the forearms there was also a kind of backward movment by the right wrist. I suspect that explaining this might solve some part of the puzzle.
macs asked
Couldn’t agree more. Perhaps we could draft an ABS-specifc golfing / anatomy Rosetta stone? Guessin between the two of us we could come up with something both anatomically correct and meaningfull to golfers?
For example:
wrist cock = ulnar deviation (for the right hand of a right handed golfer)
cupped wrist = carpal extension
bowed wrist = carpal flexion
What say yeah?
hawg1
I just proved the value of proof readers, yet again
wrist cock = ulnar deviation (for the right hand of a right handed golfer) should actually read wrist cock = radial deviation (for the right hand of a right handed golfer)
oopsie.
hawg1
Hawg
The one that bugs me the most is Torso/Shoulder rotation which actually is rotation of the spine most of which is possible in the lumbar spine. This particular one is the holy grail of ABS. External and internal rotation of the two shoulder joints happens too as Bom was alluding to earlier in these posts.
Having said that may be you can start a new thread (I guess the terminology section is on the other side) so as to let Bom continue with his thoughts here.
Aiguille, I was thinking about your Mike Austin comment, and it’s interesting when paired with his more known advice of throwing the club from the top or however it’s said. That bit alone is fairly dodgy, but if your intentions are an upper cut punch through impact, that really changes the picture to a much stronger and more pivot driven impact journey. I think I was talking somewhere a while ago about him turning on the right power at the time it’s needed regardless of what he said his thoughts were, and that upper cut image really does speak to that.
Macs, no worries on the tangental ideas, they all add to the picture so the more the merrier when they’re related. I definitely agree with the inaccuracies of some of the commonly used terminology, and I reluctantly use some of them for the sake of communication, but getting the right words is so important as far as I’m concerned because the pictures they create are the actions we undertake. The torso, like the arms and shoulders as I was talking a bit about a while ago, is connected to the back, so that’s where it moves from. We can think, ‘I’m going to move my chest now’, and we move our chest. But the movement is an effect caused by the thought with the motion rooted in the back, this is extremely important to understand and really does aid in not firing the right side from the top. This is one of the reasons Hogan was so good in transition, and is why I love that little back fall transitional move, because it activates the back which pulls the left shoulder/arm/2 or 3 fingers of the left hand, etc., and actually pulls the upper right back/shoulder blade further into it’s turn, finishing off the backswing shoulder turn, AND pulls on the right arm and hand which momentarily pulls on the club, bringing it in towards you and down a little bit. And as long as you do all of this while still on the right leg, then you’ve got a great load to unwind with. Thinking torso, like thinking of the Dantien as your belly button and not inside you, puts the motion in front of us which we don’t need any help doing because of our eyes registering everything as in front of us, and when we see that, it’s very difficult not to fire the right side early from the top- which is what all bad golfers do. I’ve never seen a bad golfer who’s just starting out or who’s been doing it for a while, who I would say is a bad golfer because he/she is holding their right side back too far in transition. The basic traits of a bad golfer, and interestingly, are the basic things even good golfers have to battle against are: hands; eyes as hub of action; ball directly below me not in front of me(I’m not sure what the actual use of a semi colon is, but it looks cool here as a divider) Stand on any range anywhere in the world and you’ll see basically these 3 things ruining basically everyone’s chances. And I’d say that 99.99% of them, when asked what their problem is, will respond with some version of, ‘I’m not keeping my head down’. And it’s EXTREMELY difficult to convince them that this isn’t the problem. The problem is the complete opposite, which is why they lift their head through impact. Their linear, front side led, up and down scoop, requires it- it’s actually the functional part of what they’re doing 
Anyway, this is slightly away from what we’re talking about, but it’s related.
Macs, can you talk a bit more about the specifics of this point/question. I’m not 100% sure what you mean, but I’m thinking it’s related to the radius and ulna and how the forearm isn’t one thing, it’s kind of two things switching sides, in a way.
On a very basic level, the right elbow comes into the zone low, while the left elbow comes in high- relative to eachother, that is. This is a rotated position in terms of the backswing and it’s an unrotated, or laoded position in terms of acceleration and the through swing. During acceleration, in order for the left arm to rotate, it’s elbow goes around and down- this is why a high left shoulder through impact is bad, it blocks the rotation. The right elbow sort of has two basic funtional options- 1. the upper arm can stick to the side forcing most of the action into the forearm and wrist, with a sort of stay behind, firing of the hands(this would be a form of ‘swinging’ but a functional form because it’s not a free roll. Or, 2. the forearm can stay kind of stable in the elbow and the upper arm and shoulder can rotate around bringing the whole right shoulder/side unit, or being driven by the whole right shoulder/side unit. The latter of these two sounds a lot like Lag’s ‘harnessed, in the slot, OTT move’, and is the more consistent of the two in terms of rate of face closure. Again, this probably sounds very complicated, but it’s a complicated description of simple things, and it can all be done with the proper goals and intentions- this is the point of understanding, in my opinion.
The compression of the load and/or of the body in it’s different parts, is about leverage- this is the basic reason for dropping down prior to acceleration. It’s like picking up a box, the age old advice is ‘make sure you bend your knees’. This is meant as a back saver, but it’s a back saver because it’s the strongest and most efficient way to do it, not that it protects the back. It protects the back because it doesn’t force a heavy load to be leveraged in a dysfunctional way. We leverage with muscles and bones, but we can do it more powerfully and more easily if the bones are aligned as best as possible(hence, bend your knees). This would be a chi-line sort of thing- I can see that as a bone alignment that then produces the most efficient motion and, in turn, energy, because the muscles don’t have to spend any of their time or energy dealing with balance. It’s also a COG(Dantien) thing for the same reasons- there are some solid physical reasons for these supposedly intangible ‘energy’ theories. I find it difficult to talk about specific things without talking about, or relating them to, the overall picture, because I think it’s very important to keep things in perspective and keep track of where they’re coming from or going to.
If the arms are rotating in sync with the body, then they don’t stop rotating, because, as I was saying at the start of this analysis, all rotation is sequential and doesn’t stop. And if you want to maintain control of the club and not let it start controlling you, then you have to hold on firmly and actively rotate everything. And like me and Macs were talking about with the rotation potential, the hands can’t rotate without the arms- if the arms don’t rotate, then the club is just slinging around the corner by itself. And this is the essence of my point- by rotating as hard as you can, you stay ahead of the perimeter, and if you stay ahead of that, then you stay in control of it. And in a counterintuitive way, by working as hard as you can to rotate hard through the zone in a ‘closing the face’ manner, you actually stop it from closing unnaturally and keep pressure on the sweet spot, maintaining it’s CP inspired straight line in space.
And by CP I mean CF… but I guess also CP, it depends on perspective, I suppose.
Bom
Right at this table I am holding a marker(shaft) parallel to the table edge with my right hand in the laid of position with the palm facing skyward. Now without moving anything, I rotate my forearam. Not only does the my palm now face toward the table, but I have created a 30-45 degree angle between the marker and the table edge. Thats what I think the backward motion is. Of course in a golf swing this is happening on a moving plateform and in that time the moving torso has also taken the club to near impact.
But a backward movement during the most active segment of the swing??? This has got to be important in aiding release and/or preserving lag.
On fuerther testing I find the marker is also lifted (became steeper). I bet thats what Lag calls coming from an off plane laid off position to an on plane position from P3 to impact.
Aiguille confused me some months back with his description of being way laid off in the slot yet seeking to producing a steep strike. How could that be? Being anti-OTT centric/biased in my thinking, it seemed so counter intuitive to be avoiding the steeps from the top, but not at the bottom. I think you’re on to something crucial here, macs… from where the proverbial flashlight is pointing at P3 from that laid off position to impact, it will by necessity be steep to get to impact I think. Then again, I could be way, way out there…sorry if I’ve derailed in any way…
Think of it this way…
If the wrist is inline with the ball… and then fully cocked back and rotated, then worked from there back to impact… this will offer a much “steeper” angle of attack into the ball, than if the wrists are not fully cocked, and the arms moving back and forth instead of the “rotation, wrist swivel” approach.
Why am I so confused by the backward idea? In the table/marker picture, where’s the forearm to begin with? Are you holding the marker in the same manner as a club, or with it right across the fingers in a fist? I assume it’s in the normal right hand position to get those numbers. If it’s rotation, which it basically is, there’s always going to be things going in opposite directions, or backwards and forwards as it were. When you rotate the forearm and/or hand, it’s the same as rotating the shoulders or torso where the left shoulders goes around and behind(backward?) while the right shoulder comes around and forward. It’s on a smaller stage, but the hand and forearm are doing the same thing, though as you rightly point out, it’s happening on a moving platform so it’s going forward overall in space. But I will say that that moving platform does make a big difference to what actually happens, so to take it just as what happens while you’re sitting there, isn’t a great idea, imo. Looking at the rotating right hand, the thumb and index finger side of it travels further than the pinky finger side because it’s rotating, and the pinky side is closer to the centre of the action. The radius and ulna are basically switching sides, just like the shoulders are, so one side is going ‘forward’ while the other side is going ‘backward’. I don’t know if this is what you mean by backwards.
Bom
Its important to start at P3 with a flat right wrist, yes right. Now in anatomical terms while the two forearm joints are pronating the R forearm; the wrist joints is dorsiflexing; bending backwards. Its this paradoxical movment of the two joint systems that I think is important. To me this Flat right wrist ides tallies with a lot of the descriptives that have been used including the upper cut and using the bounce etc.
Now I see it! That is very interesting alright. I’ll need some time to think about it, but off the top of my head, what I would say about it is that while it is bending backwards, it’s doing it to apply a different pressure to the shaft than the one that brought the club into the slot. So it’s not that it’s ‘going’ backwards as such, it’s that you’re repositioning the load or pressure to get behind the thing that you want to move, and aligning the force in the direction of the place you want the ball to go. The moving platform is relevant because the goal and action is still clear. It also speaks to the importance of wrist rotation, I think, because like I was saying to Eagle about retaining that angle, it’s not that you’re retaining or holding it, it’s that you’re creating it through proper internal to external acceleration. I’ll have to think about it a bit more…
Good eye, Macs…
Lets keep it pure for this discussion. No rotation possible at the wrist (joint). Rotation in that area is Foerarm (joints) rotation.
I agree, but if you want to get really pure, I’d say it’s actually Dantien Rotation, but I’m trying to break it down for consumption.