Golf Scientists Now Proving That Release Is Not Passive - Full circle on old theories

WILDTHING

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After all these years reading and believing the scientific literature regarding how the club releases (ie. double pendulum, etc ) while having oily passive wrists , it's now gone full circle.

The golf scientists have now produced graphs (using something called 'inverse mechanics') showing that Pro golfers do use some active uncocking of their wrists during release (ie. to unfold the lag angle between the clubshaft and lead arm).

So all you 'casters' out there are just timing your 'cast' a little too early.

I'm on another golf website forum where TGM mechanics has been used for many years to explain the biomechanics of the swing , especially the passive release of a 'swinging' technique, but this will now have to be discarded.

Back to the drawing board :cry:
 
Hmmm. Maybe I am missing something but hasn't wrist action has always been a crucial part of achieving club head speed? It's arguably the most important lever in the golf swing. It's now if you release, it's how you release that tends to screw up swings. At least that's been my philosophy. :unsure:
 
I need some help understanding what you mean.
 
Ben Hogan and Freddie Couples are two beautiful examples of releasing the hands in the swing.

Ben did it more to compensate for very slight mistakes during the take away and downswing. He had that sort of control in his swing. You can see his hands hold off, or totally release on different shots.

Freddie had that beautiful & almost lazy looking power, but his hands were almost freakishly fast through impact.

The one thing they had in common, was that they both could do this closer to impact than most of us.
 
I can tell you from personal experience that a passive release doesnt work, at least for me. If I dont work on actively releasing my wrists at impact, I will hit everything right and with less power.
Its something that Ive had to work on and before I did, everything was a block to the right for me.
 
As I have been hitting the ball better I almost have a lazy right hand grip at address then the club head loads into my right hand at the top. On the way down I am holding that as long as possible then pushing the right hand through at the bottom. I can snatch the heck out of one if I go too early. It's way left. It definitely feels a little more consistant than the free and easy swing I was trying to play with. That one was a 2 or 3 on rigidity of body, this one is about a 5.
 
The old theories were based on the double pendulum which PING MAN and IRON BYRON swing machines are based on . Those machines do not use wrist torque to release the club (although they have some mechanical means to square the clubface) and there are lots of scientific literature/books that base the golf swing on the physics of the double pendulum.

The recent golf scientist data shows something more complex going on than some effortless 'Double-Pendulum' type release with passive wrist action.
 
Hmmm. Maybe I am missing something but hasn't wrist action has always been a crucial part of achieving club head speed? It's arguably the most important lever in the golf swing. It's now if you release, it's how you release that tends to screw up swings. At least that's been my philosophy. :unsure:

I am saying that the new evidence seems to imply that the wrists are only used to assist in 'kick starting' the release , not actually powering the swing . There are other forces in play that increase clubhead speed and they are way larger than anything the wrists can do , especially in the late downswing stage. Previous scientific theories said the wrists were not supposed to be active at all in the downswing.
 
After all these years reading and believing the scientific literature regarding how the club releases (ie. double pendulum, etc ) while having oily passive wrists , it's now gone full circle.

The golf scientists have now produced graphs (using something called 'inverse mechanics') showing that Pro golfers do use some active uncocking of their wrists during release (ie. to unfold the lag angle between the clubshaft and lead arm).

So all you 'casters' out there are just timing your 'cast' a little too early.

I'm on another golf website forum where TGM mechanics has been used for many years to explain the biomechanics of the swing , especially the passive release of a 'swinging' technique, but this will now have to be discarded.

Back to the drawing board :cry:

what is the point of holding an angle (lag) if you never release it (cast). release that thing!
 
what is the point of holding an angle (lag) if you never release it (cast). release that thing!

This is going to sound weird, but.. I know I'm actively releasing the club, but I'm not actively thinking when I need to do it. That results in too much timing. I just swing, let the weight of the club at that speed do it for me. 🤷‍♂️
 
Apologies all - I might have to revisit this thread again as these graphs I am looking at (ie. created by Dr Kwon- a renowned biomechanics expert) might be sending me and others on a 'red herring'.

Why would a scientist change the units of a 'Force' measured in Newtons to 'Newton/Kg' ?

Golf scientists sometimes drive me crazy because they can be so vague and their research articles virtually incomprehensible.
 
Okay , just checked another golf biomechanics expert graphs (ie. Dr Sasho MacKenzie) and it looks like there is a 'cast ' happening (active wrist torque) to release the club as the 'hands turn the corner' .

Here is a snapshot.

image.png
from

The above is a graph showing the 'Hand Couple' (torque being applied to the grip of the club). As you can see the club is being released from P5.5 to P6 by the 'hand couple'.

P5.5 would be the similar golf position seen in the below image 2 , while P6 is image 3 (similar to the position of the club in the picture above) and you can see that the lag angle between shaft and left arm is starting to unfold (ie. release). So it looks like the scientists have proven that the release is actually 'kick started' by a wrist hand couple.

DoyleHandArc.jpg


Please note that even though the golfer is applying a hand couple right from the start of the downswing, there are other forces in play which retain that 'lag angle' from image 1 to image 2.

Conclusion:
Golfers do not swing and 'trigger ' release the club with passive wrists like PING MAN and IRON BYRON machines or exactly like the physics of the double pendulum.
 
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If you do engage the hands in the golf swing you better have very good hand eye coordination because the timing of the hand "release" needs to be spot on or you could end up with pull hooks, blocked shots, or what not.
 
I’m really glad I don’t understand or have ever thought of any of this and just go out and play golf. See ball, hit ball, find ball, repeat.
 
I’m really glad I don’t understand or have ever thought of any of this and just go out and play golf. See ball, hit ball, find ball, repeat.
It's those of us searching for a swing that get into all this mumbo jumbo. It's no wonder we don't get better. 😂
 
It's those of us searching for a swing that get into all this mumbo jumbo. It's no wonder we don't get better. 😂

My focus thanks to my dad has always been on fundamentals and not the positions in the swing or what’s happening during the swing. For me it’s grip, ball position, alignment, posture, and tempo whenever things are off and I’ve always been able to get it back on track fairly quickly. All those things except tempo are pre-shot things that I don’t have to think about during the swing. If I engage my brain anytime except between swings on the golf course things go badly. KISS theory for golf, lol.
 
If you do engage the hands in the golf swing you better have very good hand eye coordination because the timing of the hand "release" needs to be spot on or you could end up with pull hooks, blocked shots, or what not.

That's what I think too.

That graph is more complicated than I first thought because although it infers ' Hand Couple' does that mean the 'Torque' is just due to independent muscular uncocking of the wrists? For example, I can hold the club with straight arms in front of me with both wrists cocked to their maximum, then just bend my left arm slightly while forcefully keeping my right arm straight, which will cause my wrists to uncock and the club to rotate away from me . Does that action constitute a 'Hand Couple' ? Reaction forces via my wrists have done the uncocking but it was really due to my elbow bending and right arm being kept firmly straight.

Nuts!!!!
 
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Hmmm. Maybe I am missing something but hasn't wrist action has always been a crucial part of achieving club head speed? It's arguably the most important lever in the golf swing. It's now if you release, it's how you release that tends to screw up swings. At least that's been my philosophy. :unsure:
Correct. As far as I understand it.
 
I can tell you from personal experience that a passive release doesnt work, at least for me. If I dont work on actively releasing my wrists at impact, I will hit everything right and with less power.
Its something that Ive had to work on and before I did, everything was a block to the right for me.

I have the same issue. And if I dont focus on the release it feels like I get my hands stuck/locked in a bad position. At the top of the backswing, as I start to transition, I can already feel if my wrists are going to be in a bad or good position at impact. Problem, it's almost impossible for me to stop the swing at that point to reset and start over.
 
My focus thanks to my dad has always been on fundamentals and not the positions in the swing or what’s happening during the swing. For me it’s grip, ball position, alignment, posture, and tempo whenever things are off and I’ve always been able to get it back on track fairly quickly. All those things except tempo are pre-shot things that I don’t have to think about during the swing. If I engage my brain anytime except between swings on the golf course things go badly. KISS theory for golf, lol.

I suspect if the golf scientists cannot provide any pragmatic information that will assist teachers and pupils, we will need to revert back to KISS.
 
After some more analysis it looks like the 'Hand Couple' in that graph in my previous post is not just caused by the muscles in the wrist uncocking but also by the arms and body 'transmitting' forces/torques to the hands (ie. just like the bending of the right elbow would cause a force via your hands on the grip).

When I checked the 'Hand Couple' on that graph (its called "C_in plane" ) at position P5.5 , it was 17 Nm which means that the approximate force being applied by each hand across the grip (ie. the 'Couple' ) was 38 lbs force and its drops to zero in about 0.02 secs. Therefore the golfer did some move that manifested those forces/torques in the hands and assisted in a rapid 'kick start' to the 'release'.

Theoretically, it could be one or both hands involved in some part to create that 17 Nm and unless the golf scientists have a million dollar 'hand/grip sensor' to measure forces in each hand , it will remain just hypothetical.

But one thing is sure , the 'triggering' of release involves 'hand couple' which might also include some muscular wrist uncocking .
 
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Different golfers have different feels, and while there is a "release", it isn't forced or a feel that is releasing for most people. I would say that most golfers need to feel no hands, and no arms to get the proper shaft lean and release. To do that, you have to use your feet and ground forces properly, which is a bit of an issue for most golfers, not because they can't, because no one has taught them properly.
 
I have the same issue. And if I dont focus on the release it feels like I get my hands stuck/locked in a bad position. At the top of the backswing, as I start to transition, I can already feel if my wrists are going to be in a bad or good position at impact. Problem, it's almost impossible for me to stop the swing at that point to reset and start over.
For me, when it doesnt work well it feels as if Im holding on too much or holding off my release. I try to have the feeling like Im cracking a whip at impact and that my right hand is on top of my left by the time the club reaches the 9 o'clock position.
Some might say what Im doing is flipping the club but it works. 🤷‍♂️
 
For me, when it doesnt work well it feels as if Im holding on too much or holding off my release. I try to have the feeling like Im cracking a whip at impact and that my right hand is on top of my left by the time the club reaches the 9 o'clock position.
Some might say what Im doing is flipping the club but it works. 🤷‍♂️

I’m curious now and just might have to try that!
 
The hands absolutely "actively" release. You are either releasing them "under" for a "cut" and/or to elevate the ball/stop the ball quickly, or you are releasing them "around" to "trap" the ball/move it RtoL or make it "go/release."
 
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