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Fred's GolfTEC Lessons Thread

T

Tedfroop

One eyed and left handed
Joined
Apr 2, 2011
Messages
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Location
Edmonton, Canada
Handicap
RCGA 10.8
I used to play a lot of golf and scored consistently in the low 80's but somewhere along the way an old back injury started getting worse and in order to make it to work everyday and pay the bills I put the clubs away, my dream of playing a round in the 70's unfulfilled.
A couple of years ago I found a chiropractor who used a thing called "spinal decompression" to help my back feel better. So much so I tried a round or two of golf and played without pain for the first time since my teens.
I used to hit it pretty good. Driver was a reliable stinger like 10 yard draw. Everything else was pretty strait and I could hit it pretty well - 7 iron about 165 off a 34 degree club. When I came back to golf at 46, I was hitting weak slices. Huge slices. Somewhere in the next fairway slices. I tried a bunch of stuff to help myself but the only real way was to let off - big time, I hate letting off.
I heard about GolfTEC here and wished we had one here. I have seen teachers here at work and they use video or just get you to swing the club and hit balls and book more lessons. I wanted to get help but not that way.
When GolfTEC opened here, I did the evaluation and then booked lessons. So here it is, a one eyed, left handed, slightly color blind guys journey to improvement.



I was a mess. :beat-up: All that we saved of that was my setup position. In my next few posts you can see how quickly you can improve.
 
OK, that fist post looked pretty ugly.

What we started work on was the back swing. Luke and I started working on a one piece take away.



As you can see and hear, we started with take away. Working toward one piece take away and building width in the bottom of the swing. There is one thing you are going to hear a lot, I know I do, and that its wrist hinge.

At this point in my lessons i I tried to increase hinge I started picking the club up. [frustration!!!] So I just chose to move on and worry about everything else and once I started to groove the rest worry about adding wrist hinge.
 
Glad to see you going with GolfTEC Fred...it's a long process...but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel
 
Yes it was a good choice. I drive almost all the way across the city to get there for practice twice a week and for lessons.

We are going to jump ahead here four lessons to my latest lesson this last Saturday.



My sway is almost gone and we are working on the top of the back swing. My turn has improved drastically and most of the rest of the mess of sway is going away. Its now the wrist hinge thing that is a hold up. Just working on the 90 to 90 drill now and using the Swingyde to get the feel for setting the wrists.
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Thank you so much for sharing, I'm amazed the technology available!
 
IceyShanks said:
Thank you so much for sharing, I'm amazed the technology available!
Click to expand...

Its even more amazing when all this was done in 5 weeks. In bay practice is what the ads say "Structured Practice" its a time to work on getting whatever you are working on right. Seeing yourself and your swings and being able to step through what you see above at a higher frame rate means you can work from slow to fast to get it right so you can move on in your next lesson. You may only hit 25- 40 balls in a session but the positive feed back and knowing what went wrong with the bad ones really helps with consistency. I am hitting 95% + in the middle of the club face now and dropping most of them within about a 6 yard circle.

The way I see it now is if I get this right and get comfortable with it then we can move on the transition this next week.

On a side note the Swingyde works very well. if you are having problems with hinge that's the tool you need. When the hinge is right you can feel it come back against your arm in the right place in your swing. Then you can stop and check if you are too laid off or upright with the club and get that right too.
 
I'll have to check out the videos later, but thanks in advance for posting them. Love this sort of thing!
 
That's a great position at the top in the last video looking down the line. Glad that you're seeing some fruits from your labor.
 
Great job Fred! Being someone with my own back issue's, it is good to hear there is help out there. Good going as well on your choice to use GolfTec. I've heard nothing but good things about them. Thanks for sharing!
 
Thanks guys. Just got back from a practice session and the wrist hinge is coming along. Its not comfortable or natural yet. The OTT move showed up today so I had to slow things down to get back on plane.
This seems to be my biggest challenge to change at the moment. Working with the Swingyde club seemed to help. A few swings with it, a few swings with my club. The hinge is right some swings and not others.
I guess I need to work on the 90 to 90 drill some more. (get the club to 90 degrees in the back and swing it through to 90 in the follow through, mirroring the back swing.)
 
Good luck on the journey!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
All the hard work sore wrists and elbows are starting to pay off. Now this looks like a back swing.




Like Luke says I still have a little clean up work to do getting the hinge a little better and getting the face opened a little more but that will come with a little focus. As for the yellow and red numbers we had those fixed right quick.

If you look close in the video my right leg is going strait. That is helping over turn my hips and getting my shoulders out of line - they should be pointed about a foot or so outside the club line. When I started keeping my knee bent and get good separation between shoulders and hips and not over rotating my hips then numbers went back to green.

Then we started transition. Just the basics - let your body pull your arms through.
 
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That looks great you're gonna be good for the season.
 
Nice progress Ted....my next lesson is tomorrow
 
Great thread Fred. Amazing progress so far!
 
Here is the knee problem I was having last week and the explanation. The strait knee and the over rotation it caused were what was throwing my hip an shoulder tilt out.



You can see how my shoulders and hips ar eflatter on the right than the left.
 
This week working on transition...



Its starting to improve, As always changing old habits is tough.
 
March 23rd lesson.

Backswing is now good. I am getting the club down without coming over the top or casting at last. Its all starting to feel more natural and balanced than it did in the beginning. Ball striking has been better in general but shot direction changed to a push once I got the club moving inside to out coming down.

That naturally led to this weeks lesson. We worked on hand position, particularly the right hand as I had a tendency to get it too far under the handle. I was also holding on at the bottom and not releasing the club. The hand position was helping me not release very well leading to pushes.

Once I moved the hand and focused on release it started to work and a draw appeared at last. That is where we were here:

 
Wow - real visible progress - I am guessing the shot feels a lot more powerful now!
 
I didn't realize it had been a month since I updated. Things have been a little crazy since then. I missed a couple lessons, one when I got called in to work and another due to injury. My upper back went out and it causes tightness and pulling in my chest, particularly around the ribs. I got that all straitened out and got some practice in this week and had a lesson Saturday.

Since most of my swing is in order as far as plane, shoulder position separation of hips and shoulders and most of that we started working on getting the lower body moving first and getting the hips cleared on the way down. As you can see and hear I am getting to the point of repeating, even when we change clubs. Ball flight is improving and getting more consistent too. Its starting to look like something I can play with now.
One of the best byproducts of the GolfTEC teaching method is that I am now really getting to know my faults and tendencies. Knowing my swing means I can tell what I am doing even without video. Like I said to Luke I can tell where the clubhead is a lot better than I could when I started.

 
Heck of a difference since your first lesson Fred. Impressive!
 
Great so see improvement here Fred. Looks like Golftec is really helping you groove a good swing!
 
Hard work in practice ie paying off! This week was a lot more relaxed lesson wise. It is getting so I have less and less to work on at last. The first half dozen swings were green all accross the board all the way through. For those not familiar with that the motion tracking equipment shows your body position relative to tour averages. They go red, yellow, or green based on how close you are to those averages. I am now staying with in a few degrees of my numbers on every swing now and it is the same whatever club I have in my hands - except driver - to this point. About the only thing that went yellow all day was my shoulders were getting a little open at impact. That is a really good feeling though as if you look back I used to be really flat footed.
About all that still needs work is the driver but that I think it will take a little while for the mental scars to heal and for me to start trusting what is going to happen when I pick it up.

 
I have completed my lesson series with Golftec now. I am just going post a couple more videos that highlight some of the last things we worked on. In this lesson we worked a bunch on getting the lower body moving in sync with the upper body. It is something I really need to think about still as it really improves my shot shape.

 
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