If I could do that maybe golf would have been easier to learn for me. I can’t prove it but it seems that learning percussion instruments and/or musical instruments requiring both hands might accomplish results akin to those of the SMT research. So why not learn to tap hands and feet to melody notes from a repeated CD tune and do variations and gradually increase the difficulty of the music along the lines of clonig the SMT protocol?
(If there is merit in that, and I believe there is, I can not take any credit for it because it stems from a question to me by another ABS enthusiast.)
I believe there is merit to learning about rhythm and by being able to perform different rhythms.
One example:
This skill could be used to recognize and memorize certain rhythms in a good swing.
It will be easier to recall and repeat those rhythms later on if you have a well-trained ‘rhythm muscle’.
Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar.
Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more (more).
Singing about the good things and the sun that lights the day.
I used to sing on the mountains, has the ocean lost its way.
It’s all about a PGA pro who hears the cry of the golfing public (the ocean). The pro reminisces about the good old days, and questions if the masses have been lead down the wrong golfing path by the USGA, R&A, and OEMs. His voice is being drown out by their deceptive marketing and questionable motivations. That’s an ABS version, anyway.
Finding the SMT study was new stuff for me. Folks are marketing products and services that may be based on results of the SMT or similar research; I don’t know. I am not sure the marketed products are uniquely needed to boost learning skills or have been subjected to rigorous controlled testing for provable benefit. That means I am not ready to spend time and money evaluating the products and would hold off from recommending them for a number of reasons, chief of which is I am no expert on anything.
It seems possible we might train our athletic coordination’s internal timing mechanism ourselves by privately and cheaply approximating the SMT study using only a CD player repeating appropriate tunes and trying to tap with our hands and feet the timing of the melody notes following the SMT protocol as well as we can imagine from the research paper description. Some might believe we could take drum, guitar, piano, or other such music lessons instead, but those are broader training that much of the time might be further from the SMT design. That is not to say drum, guitar, or piano lessons would not help our golf; I suspect they might help some people’s golf. I doubt we need specialized computer software like that in the SMT research. The computer feedback during the SMT research procedure probably fine tunes the brain and nervous system faster than my flaky approach, but it may be possible to achieve some training progress without the exacting SMT research environment. However, doing things outside the SMT research control environment means I will not be able to prove my cheaply cloned SMT procedure has done any good, and that is fine with me. Whatever my scores might be in the future could be from many other reasons and that would make it impossible to assign definite responsibility to SMT principles. I can’t prove lots of stuff that might be good or bad for me, but it’s ok to make best guesses what to do based on accumulated objective research that other people accomplished.
Had a second and complete read on the SMT study. There was a time when I would have been able to quickly work my way through the study, but I’m a little long in the tooth and after the re-read found myself with some questions that may go to the accuracy of their findings. However, they are only initial impressions and the quantitative analysis is something not only quite involved, but would require me to go back in time and refresh some old skills in order to fully explore some of my thoughts. For instance if I read the study correctly, the control group was allowed to spend time on an Explanar while the study group was receiving SMT reinforcement. Yet I didn’t seem to find an analysis which confirms the Explanar did not, in fact, deteriorate the innate timings of the control group shown in the pre-test versus the post-test. It may have been there, but I didn’t see it on the re-read.
And the definition of accurary stated as distance from ball to pin is peculiar to me instead of distance from a center line. The diagram used shows a center to left curve diverting from a center line. However if the shot were started left of the center line and curved the same way, you would have a left to right curve and and the miss would be going toward the pin versus away from it. Just a couple thoughts after the re-read, and although I think it to be a good study to sink one’s teeth into for a thorough look, I would not be able to spend the proper amount of time doing so…as my brain cells are old, crusty and simple these days- but in a good way.
But just for you Teebox I’ll give you a peek into the rat’s nest on timing for swinging. Now this is just for Teebox, so if anyone else is reading this please go to another part of the site for a while.
3/4 waltz is solid if seen as there are three points of demarcation or emphasis…the top, impact, and finish. Now Snead’s swing could be put into Danuabe Waltz time and there would be an easiness and flow matching the tempo of the music to the different segments of the “swing”. However at faster and faster tempos the Danube Waltz becomes a train wreck- the points of emphasis become blurred.
There is a pattern however applicable to most “swings” and it comes in the form of alternating accented triplets which is a 3-stroke pattern. The difference here is that a triplet pattern can be played at slow or faster tempos and when approaching faster tempos one doesn’t hear a blurry train wreck…but hears a constant repeating pattern. Next time at a range, watch someone swinging and regardless of tempo this pattern will usually apply. Courtesy of an old rat relative named Mickey that has been passed along to all rats…
Put it together and see what you’ve got…BBBBBBBoo!
I am especially indebted to Tim Chapman for the questions he posted recently. His questions motivated me to look into motor control timing issues in human performance in the world beyond golf. After checking a little deeper it appears there are many behavioral deficits that may be related to motor control timing disorder. Part of my interest is selfish: older folks like me often begin to develop issues that may be caused by atrophy of motor control timing or something like that. It looks possible that tweaking the motor control timing mechanism of the nervous system is something that helps some senior citizens with more serious issues than mediocre golf.
I joked in a reply to IOZ that my dancing is miserable so I refuse to try dancing even if it could improve my golf. OK, I may have been a bit hasty there. There is substantial research suggesting faulty motor control timing may be treatable and maybe fix terrible dancers. Hmmmm. Will anybody in their right mind bet money on that? I won’t ante a dime, but I will read about it as long as my bleary eyes don’t fall out.
RR, I haven’t checked to see if “Bippity Bobbity BBBooooo” appears in Lag and Two’s swing videos, but I will have a look. In my own swing, I suspect there is not enough “Bippity Bobbity” and way too much “BBBooooo”, but I will check it out.
OK, going on a sabbatical or walkabout or whathaveyou to catch up a bit on motor control timing info. It looks like a long haul pulling with bald tires.
Well I haven’t visited this thread in a while … But I think I have some new insight to throw in. Many years ago I wrote something to the effect that “the golf swing is smaller and more conservative than the mind is willing to believe. In light of this, less movement is better.” It all comes down to the nature of pure intention. When we are focused and intent on the goal, the mind creates the action necessary and no more. When the mind is dictated by the false action of ego and of extraneous assumptions (how to’s), the pure intention dissolves into tension and dis ease. The foozle (or impure shot) then becomes imminent.
Pure intention involves placing the hands (and all points inward to the True Centre) into the proper phase space. I use to refer to this as “placing the hands into orbit.” To me it feels like a slipstream of pure ease. When we do this, the results are amazing!
For some reason I think this fits on this thread. The left handed bit isn’t altered at all, it’s just flipped neutrally- even though it looks like a fun house mirror. Lefties always seem ‘leggy’ to me, in a way, and I reckon it’s because we’re so used to looking at the swing face on and seeing a rigid lower right side. When it’s flipped it becomes clear how ‘bulge-y’ it is lower down on the forward side. There’s a beautiful symmetry to this one, one way or another, that speaks to the bigger picture that the action is a part of. I’m a huge fan of Johnny Miller’s knees one way or another…
Preoccupation is sometimes good and sometimes bad I guess. But what else do old Rats do…too old to chase down cheese so we just sit around and look at things around us. Ever wondered about the old phrase “Four Corners of the Earth”. I guess if we see the world being flat that might make some sense I guess. But that would mean the horizon converges to corners- four of them. Maybe the ancients had one too many red pills while considering this. Maybe not.
However the true horizon is circular, is it not. A 360 degree panoramic view- like we are standing under 1/2 of a geodesic sphere, or a dome if you will. So do spirals have room within a dome? They do if one considers the narrowing of the space toward the top of the dome.
Found this picture which I thought was cool and the dotted line would approximate the horizon.
The first internet link, on page 1 of this topic thread, the link to Ryan McGinnis’s research about engineering a better golf swing is now invalid. (The link is: asme.org/NewsPublicPolicy/Ne … _Swing.cfm .) Because this topic thread was launched with that link, I am looking for a new link to his paper. If a new link is found I will request to have it replace the current invalid link. Thanks.
I was re-reading this thread today and this time I gained a new appreciation of the journey of the development of spiral energy, perhaps because I am further down the line and also because I happened to be receptive at that particular moment.
It occurred to me that the golf swing could be considered to swing in a spiral orbit just like the nautilus shell…in fact, with some imagination, you could envisage swinging the shaft within the confines of the spiral chambers. Taking it further, you could imagine a higher orbit going back and a lower orbit after transition as the shaft then drops to and feeds around the right hip…all the while the shaft does not go straight back and through…instead it is being swung on two horizontal planes but the laws of nature add height going back and lowers the orbit coming into impact.
BomGolf222 has posted a lot about this and Lag has said that he feels like he is swinging inside a conch shell. As BomGolf222 said somewhere else, if you can turn your mind to the development of this spiral energy then the shaft finds the correct plane and meanwhile although it may look like you are swinging on a very orthodox plane, you are trying your level best to swing around yourself in a nautilus spiral rather than tracing a diagonal line back to the ball. Bom’s image here speaks to this sensation, wish we could view this in 3D!
I remember Lag saying something along the lines that he trys to swing as off plane as possible and that it makes his swing appear to be on plane.(apologies if i misquoted)
I’ve practiced a load trying to be as above plane as I can on the way back and as below plane as possible at P3 then back above plane, but with my quick swing it just looks like one plane. Trevino talks alot about the loop from upper to lower rims.
Thanks NRG…another way to consider the golf swing would be to ‘simply’ make one’s focus the generation of spiral energy…that in itself creates the horizontal feel to the swing and then its the free ride down at transition that drops the level of the spiral. So, in other words,…forgetting about the ‘look’ and concentrating on the energy.
Of course when you film it, it just looks like a normal swing except its not in 3D so you can’t see the spiralling of the swing and also perhaps more importantly you can’t sense the changes in energy and pressure created by the motion. Thats why the film footage I like viewing the most now are the overhead shots…check out the Player, Palmer and Norman overhead GIFs in the vault. To define a sensation I am messing with further, its not so much that I feel that I am above or below plane but more that I am a higher horizontal plane on the way back and a lower horizontal plane after transition…so the plane does not feel inclined, it feels horizontal.
Just rambling on a bit more…I think that you could consider that this spiral energy gets loaded into the shaft as ‘potential energy’ that gets spat out at impact with ball. Maybe thats why the class ballstrikers don’t appear to lash at the ball because they have developed the energy already by virtue of a class spiralling action.
…I always liked Lag’s conch shell description and is a stong image. Not sure about the two horizontal planes, but I think I see where you might be going with that- maybe like holding a club like a plumb bob and going rotary horizontal, the clubhead will rise outward and upward from the center. My spiraly feel mostly centers on passive acceleration versus active acceleration.
During transition when the club goes to slot mode, when the turn commences it feels like, and is for me, passive acceleration as the angles are opening some, but not the angle between the arms and shaft. Kind of hard to describe, but it feels like it is just a movement in order to get past impact where the acceleration becomes really active going upward. So, it feels like everything is more passive before the ball, even while the angles are opening- maybe residual acceleration before impact might be a better term.
But it reminds me of Lag’s very cool thought image and intention of…slow, slow, slow and go, go, go, to put the most active part of acceleration after the ball. Good pressure upon it when doing so.
