Let's talk about swing speed.

[That post]

A bottom-up spiral will not need a toilet paper gateway.

View attachment 9244742

Yeah what I’ve been working on lately is feeling the load start in my backswing with my rear foot and then coiling up and around once I get to the top, I want to feel the load for a brief second again in my rear foot, moving up into my trail hip with an ever so slight squat in the hip, hands falling, Weight shift to front foot then release the coil through the ball.

 

[Buckeyegolfnut]

It’s kind of crazy how big of a difference rotating my hips has made. Before I was right around 88-89mph with a 7i and after learning to engage my hips more I’m up to 92-93mph….and that’s in the offseason while barely swinging

I haven't read all the thread so I'm unsure if the importance of the ribcage in creating clubhead speed has been mentioned.
For body rotation to be effective in the swing there needs to be good separation between the ribcage and the pelvis. The ribcage needs to rotate more than the pelvis by quite a bit. In a powerful swing the ribcage performs like a large spring.

Here's a great example of contrary ideas about a golf swing that can both work! The second idea was promoted many years ago in Golf Digest and called "The X Factor". In other words the more separation you could get between your shoulder turn and hip turn would automatically lead to increased distance and accuracy. What it actually led to for a lot of people was lower back pain!

If you're flexible enough and strong enough to do that, great! A lot of people aren't. The newer idea is to let the hips turn in order to lengthen the backswing, especially for older people. Get that right pants pocket going behind you. Just make sure you can get back to your left side.

 

[razaar]

Here's a great example of contrary ideas about a golf swing that can both work! The second idea was promoted many years ago in Golf Digest and called "The X Factor". In other words the more separation you could get between your shoulder turn and hip turn would automatically lead to increased distance and accuracy. What it actually led to for a lot of people was lower back pain!

If you're flexible enough and strong enough to do that, great! A lot of people aren't. The newer idea is to let the hips turn in order to lengthen the backswing, especially for older people. Get that right pants pocket going behind you. Just make sure you can get back to your left side.

My understanding of the X factor theory was restricting the rotation of the pelvis while rotating the spine to it's limits. That method has been proved to lead to injuries.
The ribcage is separate from the shoulders which are not directly connected to the spine where the ribcage is.
The muscles that rotate the spine are different from those that rotate the shoulders and from those that rotate the ribcage in an effective golf swing.
I have come to the conclusion that most golfers have little knowledge how their body is designed to move.

 

[Slot708]

I think speed is awesome.But if your not hitting center face than it isn’t as effective as I would like. My problems with adding speed is it makes my short backswing even shorter. I turn a swing motion in my mind. Into a hit motion. If that makes sense

 

[Scribble]

This is something I came across yesterday..

 

[Hawk]

@That post have you seen any negatives with your iron swing on the course? It's one issue I seemed to encounter, but my iron swing was also trash then.

 

[That post]

@That post have you seen any negatives with your iron swing on the course? It's one issue I seemed to encounter, but my iron swing was also trash then.

Yes I have. Was talking to a friend about it last night. My iron swing has gotten out of sequence and bad. I’m finding the hosel A LOT.

Friend I was talking to says it’s pretty common with speed training that irons start to go to . Because we are spending so much time making a driver swing with the speedsticks our bodies start to get used to that and try to replicate with irons. Obviously a bad move. Our hands and hips are being taught to be faster and rotate on a tighter arc to pickup speed so without making the right compensations covering the ball more with your iron swing it can wreak the type of havoc I’m dealing with.

 

[Karl]

I need to figure out how to swing faster for someone that has the strength but less turn due to back arthritis.

 

[Karl]

This is the one I wanted to post.I need to get off of YouTube golf video instruction.Literally can watch this stuff for hours.

I think this could help me.

 

[Dewdman42]

I am 59 and I am hitting the golf ball further than ever in my life. when I was younger I had a poor swing, so I was trapped in 250 yard drive city for sure. As I have gotten older I have improved my mechanics and now I can hit a pretty solid 265, occasionally 275, 280, even every once in a while a 300 yard bomber downwind. No, at my age I will never be hitting it 350 yards like the young guys or Rory, but I think the average distance for my age is way below what I am actually hitting right now, which says everything... Age is a factor of course, but it doesn't need to be as low as many people seem content with, you can hit over 250 yards, even into the high 200;s... my swing speed is right around 100mph. That is not considered fast and I will probably never swing faster than that, I have tried for years. The reason I wasn't getting there was purely technique. I am finally starting to get some of those mechanics better now, but of course my age is still becoming a factor so I really don't think I will be swinging my driver at 105 or 110+ at this point in life...and I wouldn't want to try. I suspect it will slow down a little bit in my 60's but I'm not really swinging out of my shoes at all to get 100mph, its just efficient. and I know plenty of guys that are my age and older that can hit the ball pretty damn far.

so first thing is, don't sell yourself short based on age. And secondly I think it's a mistake to get speed trainers and try to force faster swing. In my opinion that kind of training should only be for people who have already optimized their mechanics absolutely first, and probably more for younger people that can then try to use their much faster muscle responses to get faster speeds, etc.

I am not a fan of the X-factor stuff either, especially while aging. that is brute force.

I really think there are a couple of things that have optimized my distance, with a mediocre swing speed of 100mph, even less perhaps average might be 97. I don't have a consistent way to monitor it. But for me it was about several things I did to optimized my mechanics and it took a matter of years to work on these things, and actually I am still working on one aspect which might gain me 5mph or might not since i'm aging as fast as I'm learning...but....

1. Contact the middle of the clubface. Actually measure this. Use a monitor or get the stickers to put on your driver face to see where you are contacting the ball. get it in the middle. This may mean adjusting how you address the ball
   
   
2. Make sure you have good ascending Angle of Attack, consistently. For me, this really opened up for me when I started learning about D-Plane. By closing my stance just a tad and positioning the bottom of the swing arc maybe 8 inches behind the ball, I can basically do something pretty close to a flat swing, no crazing efforts to tilt my spine back, etc.. a little bit is good, but not too much. the D-plane itself provides the positive AoA and it makes a huge difference.
   
   
3. In conjunction with #2, also get a draw bias, the D-plane concept helped me again to get inside out without having to radically swing inside out, easy inside out.
   
   
4. get the right dynamic loft, which is a factor of the loft on the club, how you time the release so that you have the optimized amount of shaft lean or not, so that the ball is compressed the most with just the right amount of backspin, not too much, not none either. That, in combination with positive AoA will result in launching the ball further and with more compression, struck from the middle of the face it will sail quite far even with a 90-something swing speed.
   
   
5. Make sure you don't stall out your body rotation in order to release the clubhead. keep driving your rotation through and use parametric acceleration to create a clubhead release. The Pros all do this. They are young and hit 350 yards that way. You can hit 275 that way.
   
   
6. Make sure you have a clean release, follow through and finish, at no time do you decelerate any of that, always be accelerating, by driving your hips through rotation, and releasing your hands and clubhead at the right time, but continue to accelerate well past that into follow through so that there is no chance you are decelerating anything prior to impact.
   
   
7. Make sure your hands don't lag behind, they need to keep up with the body rotation in order to deliever max pressure on the shaft at impact.

Well those are just a few things, there are probably more..but the point is....I would not obsess about swing speed. First obsess about absolutely clean contact with the right amount of AoA a dynamic loft to get ideal launch conditions for whatever your swing speed is. After that work on taking away any decelerating movements such as stalling out your hip/shoulder rotation prior to contact. Only when you have addressed all of that might you consider actually trying to increase your swing speed, which probably has already increased just by doing those things and your smash factor will have gone up too, in fact you'll probably already be hitting well past 250 and not worried about trying to swing it like Rory anymore.. going for those swing speeds is IMHO, an athletic endeavor and not for everybody but I have a perfectly relaxed swing myself...and I am able to get to 100mph, or close to it..just be eliminating the inefficiencies and getting out of my own way. I hope that this increased efficiency will basically make it possible for me to play well into my 70's while still hitting my drives past 250 most of the time. At some point that will end though... hehe.

 

[Karl]

For someone that has less turn and flexibility, is it faster to swing more upright or flatter? For me I find it harder to swing flatter.

 

[Buckeyegolfnut]

My understanding of the X factor theory was restricting the rotation of the pelvis while rotating the spine to it's limits. That method has been proved to lead to injuries.
The ribcage is separate from the shoulders which are not directly connected to the spine where the ribcage is.
The muscles that rotate the spine are different from those that rotate the shoulders and from those that rotate the ribcage in an effective golf swing.
I have come to the conclusion that most golfers have little knowledge how their body is designed to move.

Not in my body. And I don't want to get a degree in physiology or become a yoga master in order to go out and play nine holes with a decent score. And I don't know that I have the proprioceptive sense to differentiate between those muscle groups. I stood up just now and tried a little experiment. It's true that I can rotate my shoulders somewhat without moving my ribcage "much". But, it's far less than needed for what I consider a "complete" golf swing, which is what I've been concentrating on since last season.

And you're right, that's exactly what the X Factor was promoting. Just another bogus idea from people trying to sell you something.

For someone that has less turn and flexibility, is it faster to swing more upright or flatter. For me I find it harder to swing flatter.

I guess it depends on how flat is flatter? And what is the reason for the loss of flexibility? As a general idea, I think the faster swing would be on the proper plane as determined by your height, weight, body type, and physical issues. That makes it very hard to just make some sort of blanket statement here.

I am 59 and I am hitting the golf ball further than ever in my life. when I was younger I had a poor swing, so I was trapped in 250 yard drive city for sure. As I have gotten older I have improved my mechanics and now I can hit a pretty solid 265, occasionally 275, 280, even every once in a while a 300 yard bomber downwind. No, at my age I will never be hitting it 350 yards like the young guys or Rory, but I think the average distance for my age is way below what I am actually hitting right now, which says everything... Age is a factor of course, but it doesn't need to be as low as many people seem content with, you can hit over 250 yards, even into the high 200;s... my swing speed is right around 100mph. That is not considered fast and I will probably never swing faster than that, I have tried for years. The reason I wasn't getting there was purely technique. I am finally starting to get some of those mechanics better now, but of course my age is still becoming a factor so I really don't think I will be swinging my driver at 105 or 110+ at this point in life...and I wouldn't want to try. I suspect it will slow down a little bit in my 60's but I'm not really swinging out of my shoes at all to get 100mph, its just efficient. and I know plenty of guys that are my age and older that can hit the ball pretty damn far.

so first thing is, don't sell yourself short based on age. And secondly I think it's a mistake to get speed trainers and try to force faster swing. In my opinion that kind of training should only be for people who have already optimized their mechanics absolutely first, and probably more for younger people that can then try to use their much faster muscle responses to get faster speeds, etc.

I am not a fan of the X-factor stuff either, especially while aging. that is brute force.

I really think there are a couple of things that have optimized my distance, with a mediocre swing speed of 100mph, even less perhaps average might be 97. I don't have a consistent way to monitor it. But for me it was about several things I did to optimized my mechanics and it took a matter of years to work on these things, and actually I am still working on one aspect which might gain me 5mph or might not since i'm aging as fast as I'm learning...but....

1. Contact the middle of the clubface. Actually measure this. Use a monitor or get the stickers to put on your driver face to see where you are contacting the ball. get it in the middle. This may mean adjusting how you address the ball
   
   
2. Make sure you have good ascending Angle of Attack, consistently. For me, this really opened up for me when I started learning about D-Plane. By closing my stance just a tad and positioning the bottom of the swing arc maybe 8 inches behind the ball, I can basically do something pretty close to a flat swing, no crazing efforts to tilt my spine back, etc.. a little bit is good, but not too much. the D-plane itself provides the positive AoA and it makes a huge difference.
   
   
3. In conjunction with #2, also get a draw bias, the D-plane concept helped me again to get inside out without having to radically swing inside out, easy inside out.
   
   
4. get the right dynamic loft, which is a factor of the loft on the club, how you time the release so that you have the optimized amount of shaft lean or not, so that the ball is compressed the most with just the right amount of backspin, not too much, not none either. That, in combination with positive AoA will result in launching the ball further and with more compression, struck from the middle of the face it will sail quite far even with a 90-something swing speed.
   
   
5. Make sure you don't stall out your body rotation in order to release the clubhead. keep driving your rotation through and use parametric acceleration to create a clubhead release. The Pros all do this. They are young and hit 350 yards that way. You can hit 275 that way.
   
   
6. Make sure you have a clean release, follow through and finish, at no time do you decelerate any of that, always be accelerating, by driving your hips through rotation, and releasing your hands and clubhead at the right time, but continue to accelerate well past that into follow through so that there is no chance you are decelerating anything prior to impact.
   
   
7. Make sure your hands don't lag behind, they need to keep up with the body rotation in order to deliever max pressure on the shaft at impact.

Well those are just a few things, there are probably more..but the point is....I would not obsess about swing speed. First obsess about absolutely clean contact with the right amount of AoA a dynamic loft to get ideal launch conditions for whatever your swing speed is. After that work on taking away any decelerating movements such as stalling out your hip/shoulder rotation prior to contact. Only when you have addressed all of that might you consider actually trying to increase your swing speed, which probably has already increased just by doing those things and your smash factor will have gone up too, in fact you'll probably already be hitting well past 250 and not worried about trying to swing it like Rory anymore.. going for those swing speeds is IMHO, an athletic endeavor and not for everybody but I have a perfectly relaxed swing myself...and I am able to get to 100mph, or close to it..just be eliminating the inefficiencies and getting out of my own way. I hope that this increased efficiency will basically make it possible for me to play well into my 70's while still hitting my drives past 250 most of the time. At some point that will end though... hehe.

I enjoyed this! And sometimes I think that I get long winded, but this reminded me of something! Memory is a wonderful thing! Some years ago, when my main golf buddy and I were having our "should we move up a tee" debate, we teed off on a 400 yard par 4 from the whites. He hit his usual drive right down the middle. I somehow accidentally did everything right and just crushed one!

To further our debate I asked him how far he thought that he hit his drive. He said about 260-270. We got to his ball and the in-cart GPS said he had 180 in! And I could see my ball lying about 70 yards in front of his. I knew that I couldn't count on that kind of performance going forward, and kind of fell into the idea of reduced expectations. Which produced reduced results.

I've been trying to turn that around with the ideas that I took on about the middle of last year. Swinging the club and just letting things happen. It's been working so far, We'll see how things go this coming season.

 

[Dewdman42]

I enjoyed this! And sometimes I think that I get long winded,

that's nothing, you should see my personal golf notes....

 

[razaar]

My understanding of the X factor theory was restricting the rotation of the pelvis while rotating the spine to it's limits. That method has been proved to lead to injuries.
The ribcage is separate from the shoulders which are not directly connected to the spine where the ribcage is.
The muscles that rotate the spine are different from those that rotate the shoulders and from those that rotate the ribcage in an effective golf swing.
I have come to the conclusion that most golfers have little knowledge how their body is designed to move.

This separation of ribcage/pelvis thing is about how the QL's and lats need to work in a rotational swing. The QL's are two rectangular muscles that start in the top of the pelvis and connect to the lumber spine and insert in the 12th rib. These muscles are referred to as the loin and/or lower back muscles. They work opposite to each other in moving the lumber vertebrae sideways. When one stretches the other contracts. The lats are the largest muscles in the back connected to the 9th to 12 ribs, the spine, the shoulder blades and to the humerus. The lats pull the body to the arms and vice versa. They are sometimes referred to as the pull up muscles and archery muscles (drawing back the bow string).

 

[That post]

I played my first 9 holes of the year at my club this morning. We've been closed but due to the warmer weather the past week we opened up early.

This is a place I play 100+ rounds a year at. I know exactly where my ball will end up off the tee. The tee boxes I normally play were pushed back about 10y from its typical placement. Even still my drives were an easy 10-15y deeper than they typically are. Fairways are still a bit mushy so I wasn't getting typical rollout this was the first drive of the day. You can see what I believe to be the ballmark from that drive only about 2 ft behind the ball.


I'm going to have to adjust my game a bit once it gets a little warmer and the ball starts rolling out the typical 20-25y that I see at the home course.

I'm LOVING THIS!! Still have 6 weeks to go with the speed program too!

 

[DGA3]

Wow.

I just discovered this thread, and am very interested.

I'm headed back to page one . . . . .

 

[Buckeyegolfnut]

There will be some verrrry interesting reading along the way.

 

[DGA3]

What about the old Whippy Tempomaster?

 

[That post]

Uhhh... it's going well guys.
Really well.


Gonna try to get some of this speed on the course this weekend.
My 'cruising speed' with the driver is at around 103-104 now pretty consistently. That's up from 96-97 mph when I started.
7iron speed is up almost 10 mph to 85-86 mph.

 

[Karl]

Last spring I made some distance gains with the lag shot driver. Then I lost that distance back at my home course that has a lot of tight tee shots.

 

[stryper]

Last spring I made some distance gains with the lag shot driver. Then I lost that distance back at my home course that has a lot of tight tee shots.

I’m dealing with a bit of that right now myself. It’s a mental thing in my case, I still need the distance, but I find myself trying to steer my way around trouble. When i do that, my swing gets choppy and all sorts of crazy things start happening.

 

[Slot708]

Has anyone tried some zen to increase speed? I watched a video where a YouTube instructor had him look up at the sky before the shot..Get calm, than briefly look at the ball and swing.Seemed to get his mind off of micro managing a motion..And more on the task at hand.

 

[Sean]

I am not a fan of the X-factor stuff

That really puts a tremendous amount of street on your spine...up to eight times your body weight.

I'm closing in on 69, and don't chase speed anymore, instead I simply moved up to the senior tees. At my age, my concern is injuring myself chasing distance. I was watching an LET event a while back, and this skinny 21 year old girl was averaging 290 off the tee (not much role as the course was wet). In my opinion, the best way to increase swing speed is to develop a solid golf swing. I'm not saying to stay out of the gym, but I think too much emphasis is put on developing strength.

 

[Karl]

I’m dealing with a bit of that right now myself. It’s a mental thing in my case, I still need the distance, but I find myself trying to steer my way around trouble. When i do that, my swing gets choppy and all sorts of crazy things start happening.

Yep I hear you.

 

[stryper]

That really puts a tremendous amount of street on your spine...up to eight times your body weight.

I'm closing in on 69, and don't chase speed anymore, instead I simply moved up to the senior tees. At my age, my concern is injuring myself chasing distance. I was watching an LET event a while back, and this skinny 21 year old girl was averaging 290 off the tee (not much role as the course was wet). In my opinion, the best way to increase swing speed is to develop a solid golf swing. I'm not saying to stay out of the gym, but I think too much emphasis is put on developing strength.

64 here and still chasing speed, BUT I’ve done a ton of work in the gym over the last several years focusing on core strength, mobility, and all the other stuff people smarter than me recommend. Injury prevention is a concern of mine as well.

Then, too, I haven’t found a senior tee far enough up to satisfy my distance needs.