Interview with Chuck Quinton - High Hands vs. Low Hands Research

Interview with RotarySwing founder Chuck Quinton and Evan Singer of the ParTrain Podcast about the research Quinton has been doing during Covid on high hands vs. low hands.

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This whole COVID chaos has given all of us pause, you know, time to think about stuff and something I've been working on for, you know, long before COVID came out.

But once COVID stuff really hit, I really started, I had time to think, you know, because I couldn't do anything else, you know.

And so one of the things that I was dealing with is where's Rotary Swing going?

And really, what's the whole point?

You know, there's when I started this, it was so different, right?

There was a discussion forum and I had guys who liked what I did.

And they said, you should do a DVD, and I'm like, Never done a DVD in my life.

Like, what are you talking about?

I've never been in front of a camera.

Speech was my worst class in college.

Why do you guys want to do this to me?

It sounds like torture, you know?

But now, I don't know, 2,000 videos or however many later, we're still here.

But it grew very organically.

And it's always been like that, right?

You know, you and I have talked, like, we've never done paid marketing.

It's just all been word of mouth and organic growth.

But it's really also.

you know, it's left me to think, where do I really want to take where we are now and where I want to go in the future?

And, and as I mentioned with the COVID stuff, like we've all been kind of forced to stop and think about our lives.

Look at all the people like leaving cities and going into rural areas.

I did that like three years ago because I didn't want to be in a city anymore, which obviously didn't know COVID was coming.

But for me, I just, you know, I saw riding on the walls with things that were going on with the economy and politics and all of that stuff.

And I said, man, I just want to get, out away from stuff and return home to Colorado for me, which, you know, the mountains have always been my, my number one passion.

So, so anyway, I did that and, and, you know, had a lot of peace and quiet out where I live.

We live in a very rural areas, less than a thousand people here.

And it's awesome.

It's just big, huge ranch lands and mountains.

And so I really started having time to just sit back and say, you know, What does all of this stuff mean for me?

Like all the stuff that I've done, all the work I've done, all the research, all the biomechanics stuff and anatomy and hitting gazillions of golf balls and giving, you know, tens, you know, I think we've done almost 80,000 online golf lessons now and 10,000 in -person lessons.

It's a lot, you know, but, but at the end of the day, when I step back and I think about what I'm trying to do, like it's, it's morphed into trying to create.

A golf swing that makes sense, you know, there's so much conflicting information out there.

And and I really wanted to take a very black and white, hard and fast line in the sand.

This is the ideal way to do it.

Because the of XYZ, you know, it's it's safer for the body, or you don't put these ligaments at risk, or labrum, tears or back.

And because I was injured all the time when I was taking lessons as a young playing professional, trying to make it, you know, on the tour and playing the mini tour events and I was just hurt all the time.

And I would go from one instructor to the next.

I would, you know, Spend a year with this guy and then I would get worse and I would be hurt.

And nobody could ever answer these questions.

So it really turned out as my own pursuit of how do I get rid of my own pain that I'm experiencing in my swing.

But really, and that's kind of what Rotary Swing has been is all about, like, how do I biomechanically safely produce good club ed speed that lets me play at the highest level?

That is going to help keep me from just getting injured all the time.

And really, when I started thinking, stepping back even a step further, like, you know, now I'm 44 years old, I've been playing competitive golf for 30 years.

And I look at, you know, the next.

I like to look at things in big picture stuff, you know?

I'm always thinking 10 steps ahead.

And so I'm thinking now, the next 20 years of my life, what am I really trying to do with with golf instruction, with my business, with my own swing and my mechanics and all of those things.

And it came down to something you and I had started to discuss is the purpose of playing golf, for me, has never been solely about shooting a great score.

If it was, I wouldn't spend 99% of my time.

Ball striking practice in one percent short game, right?

If I actually cared about my score, it would be 90 short game and 10 ball striking.

But that's not.

You know, if I'm just totally honest with myself, it's just not the part of the game that I'm the most excited about.

That.

I wake up in the morning and I think, Oh, gosh, Man, that three-foot putt I made to save Parrish today was huge.

That doesn't stick out of my mind.

It's the 330-yard drive that I hit right on the screws, right out of the center of the face that flew perfectly true and felt effortless.

That's the stuff that I'm addicted to.

And I have been since I picked up a golf club.

That is the fascination with the game for me.

And it always has been.

So this year, when I started playing, I really was.

Thinking through all these things in my head about what do I really want to do?

You know, what am I going to do to take Rotary Swing to the the next 20 years?

We've been in?

Been doing this online for 15 years now.

I've been teaching for 25 years and that's a long time.

To kind of be able to look back and reflect on and say, I've done all these things, but what's next?

And, most of you know, huge part of what's driven rotary swing and all the stuff that I've done has been my own swing, right?

It's been the things that I want to feel in my swing, the experiences that I want to have.

And so when I went out to play this year, I actually a lot of people don't know this.

I haven't played for two years.

I played three rounds of golf in the last two years.

One of them was at Augusta, one of them was at a charity event and one of them was for business.

So in two years, three rounds of golf.

I've just been so busy with moving back here, starting my academy teaching, you know, the teaching business stuff has been keeping me extremely busy.

And and so I've just been too busy to play.

And so when I came out this year, I had no idea what I would shoot.

But I, you know, within establishing my handicap in the first month or whatever, I was the plus Or something like that.

So to me, that was kind of like the I don't know the word I'm looking for here, but it was like cement on what I've done.

Yeah, I can take two years off.

Yeah, validation, yeah, yeah, exactly like Here, I can take two years off, not play at all, and come out and still be a plus handicap.

That's the whole point.

It should be low maintenance.

It should, and I mean, zero maintenance.

I haven't done anything other than ice climbing.

I don't think that helps my golf swing.

So for me to do that, it was awesome.

It was to be like, okay, this is the validation that I've been looking for.

I can take all this time off.

I can still come out and play.

And that's huge for me, but it's still, you know, it's more about my students.

How do I get them to achieve that?

And more importantly, like, again, the long term, bigger picture perspective for me has been.

How do I maintain what I'm doing right now for the next 20 years?

Right.

Like I'm not getting any younger and my body is wrecked from all the stuff that I've done, you know.

Don't break your neck.

It's just a terrible thing to do and breaking your back and my arm and my leg and my hand.

I have broken so much stuff and had so many surgeries that unfortunately I now feel all of that.

Every day I wake up and I'm in pain from all the other stuff that I did.

And so I think to myself like, okay, I can swing my average driver speed this summer, when I was doing all these testing was in the mid to low 120s.

Like on the course, I don't know if you're like this.

I tend to swing harder on the course than I do on the range.

I don't know if you're like that, but because there's a purpose to it, right?

Like if I'm on the range and we have a launch monitor out there, I'm like 121, 122 every single swing.

And I got on the course and I'm like, oh, well, you know, I want to, this is a hole where I can really take advantage of my length.

I'm going to, I automatically step it up without thinking about it.

And then I swing like 125 on the course.

So at 44 years old and having scoliosis and nerve damage and broken bones and all this stuff, all these surgeries, That's a pretty good benchmark for being able to even be being able to play at all after going through what I did in five years of physical therapy.

And still swing at that speed and hit the ball really straight and really solid is great.

But it's still, there's always been this one nagging thought.

I don't know if you have anything like this, but in the back of my head, there's very few dates in life or events in life that really stick out as you get older, right?

Like, and that's really what you kind of start living for is these experiences that, that you look back at some point, you know, work and money and all that stuff.

Like, you know, I've been married for, gosh, I better remember this, been married since 01.

So, you know, almost 20 years, been married the same thing, you know, like my life is pretty much settled.

Right, like, I'm past that point of trying to go up the corporate ladder, trying to achieve all these things.

So I just really want experiences and so I look back the things that stick out in my mind.

Like, I remember the day I got married, I remember the day that we got our puppy Briar.

We're just talking about our labradoodle.

I remember his birthday, I remember my wife's birthday, I remember my birthday.

Uh, you know, and I remember certain events and experiences.

But from Out of all of these important dates and things in my life, I still have one day on the golf course.

Actually, it wasn't even on the golf course.

It was on the driving range that I still remember.

And it's like from 20 years ago.

And it was a day, it was my first time ever going to the PGA merchandise show.

And I did an Orange County National and they have all of the equipment, guys are on the driving range.

And I'm a young guy, just turned pro, moved to Florida.

And I'm trying to make it out there.

Playing these little mini tour events and stuff.

And I and I'd been working on my swing and I was working on these things.

That all just kind of clicked and and fell together in this unbelievable day that allowed me to achieve.

Like golfing Nirvana, I stepped up there.

I still remember the weather like it was a cold January morning.

It was windy and I wanted to go and try all these new clubs out, and so I stepped up there.

And I remember stopping at the Mizuno tent first and grabbed a seven iron and just started making swings.

And it just is one of those things where I couldn't miss.

Like every shot was just pure out of the center of the face.

And it felt like I was swinging at like a quarter speed, but the ball was just rocketing off the face.

And every ball was flying like perfectly true.

And then had like a tiny little draw on it.

The best.

Right.

It was just like, this is, this is so easy.

It's so fun.

This is the best feeling in the world.

So, yeah, I keep doing this and I'm like, I'm gonna grab a longer club, so I grab like a.

Like, a Mizuno, you know, forged blade, little, tiny two iron out of their bucket of of clubs.

And I just start roasting this thing and I'm like, Oh, dude, this is so fun.

It got to the point where, like, the Mizuno rep started walking over and watching me hit balls.

And then people were like, standing around me, watching me rip these two irons off the deck.

And I'm like, I couldn't, I couldn't do anything wrong.

Like, just every shot was pure, flying high and straight.

And so I actually went around like the whole, you know, giant Orange County National range.

And was just hitting clubs at every single spot and just ripping them and it was just like this.

This, to me, is why I play golf.

Shooting great scores, I've shot 64 twice, shot tons of rounds in the 60s, but my low score is 64.

I can barely remember the course that I did them at.

One was in a tournament and one was a fun day.

But I remember that day, that ball striking day, as clear as day.

And it's two decades ago.

So as I was reflecting this year and thinking about how I'm playing now, and obviously I'm still playing to a plus handicap after a big break.

I'm hitting the ball a long ways, but I'm like, can I swing like this for 20 years?

Obviously, I'm not injured or anything.

I'm still able to play.

But I want it to feel like that that day.

I want those effortless shots to where I just can't miss.

And I don't want to have to spend eight hours a day grooving all of these technical complications and compensations in my swing.

I want a really simple swing.

I want a swing that allows me to take.

A year or two off and then come back and like, Yep, I'm still shooting around par.

That didn't change a thing, you know?

And so that really started shifting my focus as I was thinking about this.

I'm like, Okay, you know, biomechanically, there's.

There's an ideal way to swing to allow you to optimize everything, to create maximum club head speed and maximum consistency, and all of these things.

But is that the most effortless way to swing the club?

Like, if you ask me, Would I be willing to give up five or 10 yards off the tee?

To be able to feel like that day where I could just step up there and do no wrong?

And it just feels so good how solid I hit it.

Of course I would.

I wouldn't care because I'm in the longevity stage.

I want to be able to do that for the longest period possible.

And I still hit tons of shots like that, but they're not as effortless and consistent.

As I think they can be, or as I would like for them to be.

Because that's not what I've been searching for, I've been searching for.

How do I optimize everything and make sure that my back and my hip and my shoulders and my wrists are protected?

And what's the you know, and how can I create the most speed, you know?

And I'm like, but I don't really.

I'm not competing.

A long drive association, you know, like, I'm never going to swing it, you know, 150 miles an hour like these monsters out there, and I don't even care about.

I love hitting the long ball.

I, I admit to being a total a distance addict, I'm not going to deny, I love it.

I love being the longest guy in my group.

I always am.

And I love walking past my buddy's ball and being 50 yards behind me.

I'm sorry, but I do.

And anybody who says that they don't love that, it's just because they've never been able to do it.

Everybody loves crushing the ball and hitting these pure shots.

And so I started shifting what I was thinking about to, well, how could I shift from being like, Obviously, injury prevention is still number one for me, Especially with all my injuries and my students who I've been able to help.

Be able to play after being injured and having hip replacements and all of these things.

That's still number one.

But how can I do it so that I can consistently pure the ball as often as possible while feeling absolutely effortless?

That has been the shift that I started thinking about.

And it started with.

My arm swing, right?

The arms are the most complicated part of the swing.

There's no way around it.

They move the most.

They move in the greatest distance.

They have the greatest range of motion.

You can create all these different angles by doing tiny little intricate things with your hands.

And it's what kills golf for most golfers.

They don't know how to coordinate their arm swing and the club with their body and getting that stuff to work.

And it's just a challenge, right?

There's just a lot of stuff that you're trying to glue together.

And I know that you've struggled in making changes in your swing and trying to understand all this stuff.

And again, there's so many different ways to do it.

But that's why one day you can hit it amazing.

And the next day you can't find the face, right?

Right.

It's the most frustrating thing in the world.

And so where do you go to look for answers?

What do you need?

First of all, you got to figure out what you're looking for.

If you're wanting to be the longest driver in the world, then you have to do certain things with your arms to create tons of speed.

you only need to hit one ball out of six in a hundred yard wide fairway, right?

We need to do a lot better than that because I'm not interested in that side of things.

And this is, again, the challenge, The thing that I've kind of always fought in the golf industry is that there's considered no wrong or right way of doing things, right?

You look at, like, take the golfing machine, for example.

I read that book a long time ago.

When I read it, I thought, man, this is a great study of somebody who's taken a lot of time.

to figure out all the possible variations in the golf swing.

And now it's just up to you to figure out how to put them together.

I'm like, well, wait a second.

There are thousands of combinations here.

And so I looked at that book as a giant bucket of parts.

And I look at them as a bucket of parts.

Like if you've ever worked on a car these days, you can't interchange parts from one to the other, right?

But back in the day, you could take some stuff off a Ford and throw it in a Chevy and you could make it work, right?

Nowadays, there's no chance.

And that's kind of how I look at the golfing machine.

And a lot of the teaching methodologies are out there.

It's not that they don't necessarily work, right?

But you have to figure out the right variations and the right combinations of all these thousands of different parts to figure out which ones work.

With.

All the things that you have going on in your swing.

And that's an exhaustive task.

I mean, you need a ton of time to sort through all of that stuff.

So I've always kind of joked, like, I do that work and research so you don't have to, because there are things that work together and things that don't.

And so that spurred on my approach this summer, or starting back in March, like, okay, I want, I now have a new directive.

It's about how can I effortlessly hit the majority of my shots.

And in doing that, I wanted to just start with the arms because again, it's the most complicated part.

So I thought to myself, okay, well, Let's take it to the extremes and then we're going to measure everything on the swing catalyst 3D Motion force plate.

Because there's things that I can look at in the data, Both from an efficiency perspective, in terms of how efficient my sequencing is and the force that I'm generating.

Because at the end of the day, it's what you do through your feet that truly gives you effortless power or not.

If your feet aren't working, or the force that you're generating through your feet that the ground is experiencing, you can't hit the ball anywhere.

Imagine swinging a golf club in zero gravity, right?

It doesn't work.

If you're just suspended from there, you have to leverage the ground.

So I said, okay, armed with this 3D force plate, I want to take it to the extremes and just look at arms.

Should your arms be really high in the backswing?

like Nicholas or Davis Love III or, you know, lots of different players.

You can obviously play phenomenal golf with really high hands in the backswing.

Or should they be really, really low?

Which I think is a trend that you see more happening on the PGA Tour now than in years past, right?

And the golf swing has morphed throughout the years in lots of different ways.

Back in the 70s, we had big lateral drive, big high hands.

That lateral drive helped shallow out those high hands and so on.

And you had the Hogan era before that and then Norman after that and everything in between.

So I said, OK, let's take it to the extremes with my own swings.

I always use my swing as a Petri dish.

And I never teach anybody to do something that I haven't personally done, felt, experienced in my own swing.

So I said, OK, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go really, really low hands and see what the data shows.

and see what kind of forces that I'm generating and what the efficiency, what the effortlessness scale, if you will, what does that feel like in my swing and what does the ball flight do?

So I would go in and I would make the changes in my lab, my studio, which is where I've got 300 frames per second cameras, launch monitor, force play, all of that stuff.

And I would spend eight, 10 hours a day hitting balls on the plate.

and measuring and looking at it, reviewing it and doing this all day.

It was a bit obsessive when it comes to this stuff.

So this was like seven months full-time hammering this stuff out.

Sounds awesome to me.

What's that?

Sounds awesome to me.

Well, it is and it isn't.

And we'll get to that because there were definite findings that made stuff really, really clear as to what you would want to do and what you wouldn't want to do.

So I would get it to where it looked reasonable and I could see, like, a substantial difference in what I was actually doing.

Right.

You can look at it on video and say, oh, well, this swing looks good or doesn't look good.

But I'm really concerned about what I can measure and really quantify, because that's subjective to a degree, looking at it on video.

But when I see what the ground is experiencing and what the force is in, this thing is super sensitive.

When I see that, I know what kind of things are really happening, what kind of forces I'm really creating.

And once I had that, I would take it out to the course and I would play.

And sometimes I would play with the change for a week.

Sometimes it would be a day.

Sometimes it would be a month.

It would just depend.

But I would do that and I would go out and play and see what my scoring average was.

So long story short, you can score great either way.

My scoring average remained almost exactly the same for the entire season.

like literally within like a half a stroke.

So the argument that one is better from that perspective, yeah, you can play great golf either way.

Honestly, it's not really that big of a deal.

You can score great with high hands, low hands, whatever.

What I did notice in terms of performance when my hands were lower, I felt certain things and I really.

I'm very careful to talk about things that I feel because it's so insanely subjective.

But I got to the point where I felt like I was objective enough that I can at least share some of these observations.

And then people can go and experience it, try it for themselves.

Right.

So with the lower hands, obviously your swing feels much more connected.

If you're swinging with higher hands, your arms have to move in this plane.

While your body turns in this plane, so they're kind of opposites, it's like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.

It's not easy for the average guy and that's really my focus.

I want to know, how do I take the 15 handicap and get him down to a two as fast as possible?

Right?

That that's kind of the my end goal is taking those guys and helping them play consistently in the 70s, low 70s.

So When I look at what these guys typically struggle with, they really struggle with getting their arms to play nicely with their body at all, right?

And so when you're asking them to blend this vertical motion of the arms with the rotational movement of the body, it's a challenge for most people.

Not that you can't do it.

I played great with it.

but it's just harder.

The things that most golfers struggle with, right?

If you just take, if I asked you to list three things that the average golfer struggles with, what would the first three things without thinking about it come out of your mouth?

What would they be?

Slice, big miss.

Okay.

So you got over the top sliced, right?

Yeah.

What else?

Inconsistent strikes.

So chunks, skulls.

Or contact.

Yep.

And lack of distance.

There you go, number three, all three, without saying, I would say the same thing, right?

All three of those things can be completely resolved very quickly when you shallow out your arms, because most of those things are caused by not coordinating the movement of the arms, right?

Over the top slice, it's right side push, ripping the shoulders around, the club comes over the top, you can't square the face, no brainer, you're slicing, right?

Poor contact comes from that steep angle of attack that's generated by you steepening moves in your swing.

And then the same thing with distance, you know, you start casting the club because you're accelerating the club at the wrong time, the wrong way with the wrong parts, the wrong sequence.

Those three things plague golf, right?

If you had a pandemic- The funny thing real quick, Chuck, is you're probably working with more, you know, mid to older, you know, guys predominantly that have those issues.

The funny thing is, I see this in my friends in their low to mid thirties, a lot where these are like fit.

Strong guys, and some of them just because of the flaws in their technique and their arms.

They can't hit it, they can't hit a driver more than 230.

Because it just comes in, the face is wide open and it just pops up.

They have no compression at all, and it's funny.

They just assume that, oh, I just can't hit the ball long.

I guess I'm not a long hitter, right?

But in actuality, it's so.

These simple things you're talking about that could make them drive it to 90 easily.

110.

It's completely.

I'm he's He's going to be in his fifties and still doing the same thing.

She's going to hit even shorter.

Right.

Because the guy in his fifties started out that way.

You know, if you don't ever fix the problem and you keep just searching for bandaid fixes, I watched a guy.

Yes.

Not yesterday, two days ago on the range.

And it was, it was, if you had to create like a cartoon about golf, the golf swing, this guy was it right.

We're out on the range together and I'm hitting what's that.

Just send it to me.

I could have used it for our Instagram.

So here I am.

You know, if I hit balls, typically people, you know, they'll stop and they'll watch and stare at me or whatever.

Because if I'm out, I was at a public course.

And so, you know, the average guy, they stink, right?

They're just not any good out there.

And so they see a good ball striker and like, oh, wow, what does he do?

And so they kind of pay attention.

And so I'm hitting balls next to this guy.

And he's really, I overheard his conversation because he was right next to me.

about how he's playing all the time and how he has to get drunk before every round of golf.

And that's why he didn't play in a tournament this weekend because he had a tee off at 10.

He didn't think he could get drunk enough to play golf because that's his swing lube, right?

And I've heard a lot of people say that.

So I'm not just totally poking fun at this guy.

Like if you're swinging, you know, if you need to be lit up before you can play golf, then there's some serious problems.

So he's out there grooving what he's doing, right?

And every swing.

exactly the same.

He's making practice swings, doing all this goofy stuff, has no idea what he's really trying to do.

But every single swing, he goes to the top and then just throws it as hard as he can and then scoops it through.

And this guy's a big guy, right?

Much bigger, much stronger than me.

And I'm literally, and I'm hitting pitching wedges and sand wedges that are going further than his drives.

And he's looking over at me like, and I know he's thinking to himself, what the hell is this guy doing that I'm not?

And he's dumbfounded, right?

And I feel terrible.

I feel bad because I'm watching this guy and I know how bad it sucks to hit bad shots and not know how to fix it.

I'm like, God, I want to help this guy.

This is not my place.

I'm not going to just go and step over there and give him a lesson or anything.

God, I feel so bad for this guy.

So many guys are exactly that.

He's going to powder puff it for the rest of his life.

Golf is not fun when you can't hit the ball.

It's just not.

I would take a great ball striking round and go out and shoot 76.

Then a crappy ball striking round where I shot 66, but I just got up and down from everywhere any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I just, I have a better feeling when I hit the ball better, right?

It's just that simple.

I'm the same way.

Yeah, I think the people who follow me, I think.

they're the ones who are gravitated to me.

They're obviously more analytical and really like to understand things there.

I think we have some of the sharpest members on the, on the planet.

These guys really like to study things and understand.

And we have a gal who's on our Facebook group.

She's a physicist and she's really wanting to understand like all the details of the swings, you know, and has a PhD in physics.

I'm like, those are the people that kind of are attracted to what we do.

Cause they really want to understand the truth of it.

Not like, Oh, just feel this, just swing out to right field.

If that crap worked, then nobody would.

to be slicing it.

You know, you can't override these movement patterns.

so long story short, I looked at the three most common problems that all golfers, the average golfer struggles with, and you, and you nailed them on, you hit them right on the head.

And I looked at the, the lower hands and I said, well, if your hands are lower, you know, you're swinging over the top stuff happens when you can't, you don't shallow out the club, right?

You actually, you steepen it, right?

If you have high hands, and then you push from the top to steepen the shaft even more, you're completely screwed.

It's done, right?

There are things that you have steepening moves.

And most golfers instinctually, because they're right-hand dominant, right-sided dominant, because they're right-handed, this side of the body, this arm, is really good at adding steepening moves to the swing, right?

pushing them with the right shoulder, pushing the club, casting, all that stuff.

That's all it can really do because it's loaded up in such a way that that is normal.

And so most golfers do that and they add steepening moves to their swing naturally.

But if you have high hands, you can't put any more steepening moves.

You've already added all the steepness you need to your swing and you need shallowing moves.

That stuff is not natural.

to the average Joe.

They just don't get it.

And I used to teach guys to, you know, kind of a throwing motion to get the club to shallow out and things like that.

It's effective for some, it works.

I, you know, I had a video on the side I did 15 years ago called the throw the ball drill.

And I thought that's the panacea.

If I can just get everybody to understand, you know, everybody's throwing, they know how to throw, right?

No, they don't.

People do not know how to throw, especially people not from the United States.

We have a lot of members from Europe and things like that that come over.

I'm like, oh, you know, you throw to baseball when you're a kid, right?

And they're like, what?

Like, no, I played cricket.

I'm like, well, how the hell do you play cricket?

I don't know how to do that.

So I always tried to relate it to like a throwing motion, but that doesn't work.

I had guys literally who I would do the throw the ball drill with, like just standing here static.

All right, just go to the top.

And I want you just to take this ball.

Don't think about it.

And I want you just to kind of lightly throw it at a ball sitting on the ground that it would be at address.

It's kind of teaching you how to aim, throwing the club at the ball to get you to shallow out the club.

And I had guys hit themselves in the foot.

I had them throw it across the range.

I couldn't hit the ball.

It was shocking to me, but it's just, if you don't have that built-in movement pattern from throwing stuff as a kid, you can't use that.

You can't rely on it.

That's why, again, you can't rely on these feel things.

So as I was messing around with this stuff, shallower hands, there's less work to shallow out the club, right?

Now you're also giving up leverage, right?

Because your higher hands, you have more time to accelerate your hands.

You have more leverage, potential energy in the higher hands.

So you have to make up for that somewhere.

So if there's a benefit to having shallower hands because it's easier to shallow the club, but you're not necessarily addressing the distance issue.

Right.

So how do you accommodate that?

Now, in my experience going through this, going from my really, really high hands position to my really, really low hands.

Remember, and again, I'm doing this as extremes.

I'm not trying to do it in the middle because I need to kind of see on either side of the spectrum of where one lies versus the other.

I lost about three miles an hour average club head speed with my driver.

Now it's about 2%.

But my ball speed, average ball speed, went up by about one mile an hour.

Now, why would you think that would be?

Was it just your angle or your compression?

Compression, basically.

It's more solid contact.

Now, my peak speed with my higher hands is definitely faster.

I can hit it further with my higher hands.

But I'm already, you know, I'm pretty close to like maxing out as fast as I really want to swing.

Cause again, I'm more on like, not how far can I hit it, but like how, how easy can I swing and how hard can I hit it?

Right.

So could I swing at 130 miles an hour?

Sure.

Do I know where it's going?

No, no clue.

And it's not going to feel very good on my body.

Right.

So, so.

By losing that 2%, and now mind you, Rory McIlroy swings with really low hands, But I can't assume that the average guy is going to have the athleticism and body speed and strength that Rory McIlroy does, right?

So sure, he can swing with really low hands at 125 miles an hour, but does that really apply to the average guy?

Probably not.

Tiger Woods, same thing.

He's gone to much lower hands.

His swing speed has gone down, right?

He's 117 now.

Still good, plenty of club head speed, right?

But he's not swinging at 124 anymore.

So I went from 122 average to 119.

And I felt like, but again, my ball speed, average ball speed went up one mile an hour because I'm hitting it more consistently, more solid.

And that's really what I started looking at.

It's the averages that matter.

At the end of the day, if you're really just wanting to go out and play good golf and have fun doing it, you want your average crappy shots to still be pretty good.

In your great shots, you want to be really good.

The higher hands, the higher variability is the way I looked at it.

The higher your hands, I have higher potential club head speed, but I have higher complexity in the swing.

And so I have a higher chance of mishitting it.

And mishitting it sucks.

I don't want to mishit it.

I'll accept a certain level of humanism and lack of perfectionism because I'm an imperfect being.

But I want to get as many as I can on that effortless, high up on that effortless scale.

For me personally, I found that that was much easier to achieve with lower hands giving me higher ball speed.

So I actually picked up distance overall as an average, even though my peaks weren't as high, right?

So to me, that was a trade-off that I was willing to make.

You know, I don't mind losing 2% club speed.

Now, I know a lot of guys out there, they would hear that and be like, oh, dude, I'm only swinging at 95.

You want me to swing at 92?

Forget you.

If you're swinging at 95, you're doing so much crap that's so wrong that you're nowhere near.

Realizing where you should be anyway.

So I, as I was developing this test, I kind of started giving myself a set of requirements, like, what am I?

What am I really trying to measure here?

Obviously, number one is injury prevention.

Like it has to be the safest way for me to swing two, it has to be effortless.

I have to use biomechanics, leverage ground force all of these things and start experimenting with different ways to see what the ground forces affect.

Based on what I do with my arms and my body.

And I also set a benchmark for club head speed.

The minimum has to be at least 110 for the average guy.

Now, if you're more coordinated or more athletic or whatever, you can swing faster, sure.

But the average guy.

should be able to swing at 110.

And I've always believed that.

And I've always been able to achieve that.

Even with my older golfers, I had a guy once come to me at Castle Pines like 10, 11 years ago.

And he, you know, he's a good handicap.

He's a four handicap golfer.

He's in his sixties at the time, had just had a hip replacement coming back and lost a ton of speed.

And he's swinging like 102.

Now he's been a good golfer like his whole life, right?

So here's a guy who knows how to move, how to swing really well.

And he said, listen, I'll double your lesson rate.

If you can get me over 110.

I said, yeah, sure.

No problem.

Give me 20 minutes.

You'll be there.

And we did.

I got into 112 miles an hour.

And as a 62-year-old guy, right?

So you can do that.

And if you're not consistently hitting those numbers, there's just so much inefficiency.

So you don't have to worry about that 2% loss.

And again, that's my personal 2% loss.

But you don't have to worry about that if you're not already at least nearing your potential for speed.

If you're not at least over 110, it's not an issue.

But that was a benchmark for me.

So injury prevention, consistency, I need to be able to do it the same over and over again.

1000 Golf is one of those interesting sports 1001 to me, that it's the only thing that you 1002 want to get to a certain level and then 1003 just maintain.

You don't want to try and 1004 improve it, right?

I love what Bryson 1005 DeChambeau is doing, but that's not real 1006 for the average guy.

Right.

1007 It's not, it's not even a point to it.

1008 It's fun.

I love watching.

I totally 1009 support everything he's doing because 1010 he's a swing science geek like me.

I'm 1011 all for it.

Right.

And I did that stuff 1012 when I was in my twenties, you know, I 1013 got to the point where I could carry the 1014 ball at three 50, but I could also miss 1015 it 50 yards, right.

Or 30 yards left too.

1016 So, you know, there's no point in that.

1017 And when he's my age, he's not going to 1018 be doing that.

It's just not going to 1019 happen.

Right.

So enjoy it now.

It's 1020 awesome.

But.

1021 I'm looking at it as like, how can I just 1022 consistently do the same thing?

If I hit 1023 my seven iron perfectly pure and 1024 consistent straight at 170, well, why hit 1025 it 180?

You know, there's no point to 1026 that.

But I think that a lot of golfers 1027 keep trying to like, oh, I hit it 1028 perfect.

1029 Let's hit it perfecter, 1030 right?

There's no such thing.

The word 1031 doesn't exist because there's no point.

1032 You hit it perfect.

That's what we're 1033 really striving for.

And by swinging.

1034 More effortless by feeling like you're 1035 not swinging out of your shoes because 1036 your arms are out of sync and out of 1037 control, You start being able to more 1038 consistently hit those effortless shots 1039 because you're under more control, right?

1040 And then you start getting everything.

1041 You start getting more consistent.

You 1042 start getting better trajectory because 1043 you're getting better contact.

You're 1044 hitting the better part of the face.

Your 1045 angle of attack shallows out.

That's a 1046 really big one for me too.

So we 1047 mentioned one of the three things was 1048 poor contact.

Typically that comes from 1049 people swinging too steep.

Now, of 1050 course, you can flip it and scoop it at 1051 the bottom that, you know, will cause you 1052 to have these issues to where, you know, 1053 you're super shallow.

You're not taking a 1054 dip at all because you're flipping.

Well, 1055 you got to stop flipping.

Once you stop 1056 flipping, People tend to start really 1057 driving hard with their arms and hands, 1058 and they start coming in really steep.

1059 And then now you've got to time this 1060 steep angle of attack with a.

with 1061 catching the ball just right.

And it's 1062 hard to do.

You either hit it just a hair 1063 chunky, or you get the divot too far out 1064 in front and you're catching it a groove 1065 low.

All of that stuff leads to feelings 1066 of, you know, doesn't feel very good.

You 1067 didn't hit it very solid.

And again, 1068 that's really what I'm trying to do.

So 1069 from that perspective, I found, again, 1070 high hands, more speed, low hands, more 1071 consistency.

And when I look at what I 1072 really want to help my students do, and 1073 when I ask them what they are looking 1074 for, they all want to be more consistent.

1075 You know, that's the thing.

They want 1076 those great shots that they hit every now 1077 and then that bring them back.

They want 1078 those more often.

And to me, that's the 1079 beauty of it.

That's really what we're 1080 all about.

And so that's really how I've 1081 shifted this stuff to be thinking, you 1082 know, if you think of the swing overall 1083 as, you know, 1084 steepening moves and shallowing moves, 1085 then it becomes a lot easier to 1086 understand what you're doing in your 1087 swing and what you need to do.

1088 But I don't like variables.

1089 I don't like saying, okay, There's six 1090 different ways that you can do this, and 1091 you just decide for yourself and just try 1092 them all.

I mean, you got time to burn, 1093 right?

Just try them all for a couple of 1094 years and see which one works best.

And 1095 that's kind of the approach to golf for 1096 most students.

It's like, I listened to 1097 this thing once with, it was an interview 1098 with Gabrielle Reese.

She used to do the 1099 show on Fuel TV.

You remember Fuel TV 1100 before it got bought?

It was kind of like 1101 a- Actually, yeah, I think I do.

They did 1102 like a lot of surfing, snowboarding, 1103 adventure sports stuff.

1104 But they had this show on there where 1105 Gabrielle Reese would go and interview 1106 different people in different sports.

And 1107 she interviewed Butch Harmon once.

And 1108 she talked to Butch about how he teaches, 1109 because obviously Butch is famous for 1110 teaching tons of tour pros.

And she asked 1111 him, well, do you teach a tour pro 1112 differently than you do an average 1113 amateur golfer?

He's like, oh, yeah, 1114 completely.

1115 You know, the Tour pro, he's got his life 1116 depending on, and you know, he's got 1117 mouths to feed.

You know, you can't make 1118 these.

You got to give a lot of feels, 1119 subjective stuff.

You just got to get 1120 them out there so they can bat the ball 1121 around kind of thing.

And I'm super 1122 paraphrasing, there's been a long time 1123 since I've seen this.

But what I did 1124 remember very specifically was what he 1125 said about how he teaches amateurs, and 1126 it blew my mind.

But it, it perfectly 1127 personifies the struggles that the 1128 average guy finds in golf, he said.

You 1129 know, with the average amateur, they're, 1130 they're, they're still going to, their 1131 wife is still going to love them when 1132 they come home.

Their dog's still going 1133 to love them.

They're not making a 1134 paycheck.

Their livelihood doesn't depend 1135 on this.

He said, so you just try a bunch 1136 of different things until you find 1137 something that works.

And I thought that 1138 was insane.

1139 What do you mean?

You just try a bunch of 1140 random different things and you throw a 1141 bunch of shit on the wall and see what 1142 sticks.

That to me is horrible.

It just, 1143 I was, I was appalled when I heard it and 1144 I'm sure he probably didn't mean it.

1145 maybe in the way that it came across or 1146 what have you.

But I, but I think there's 1147 a lot of truth in it to the, that's a 1148 whole lot of golf instruction is like, 1149 there's 50 different ways.

Let's just try 1150 all of them until we find something that 1151 clicks with you.

1152 Well, that'll take forever.

I don't have 1153 that kind of time.

You know, I got, I got 1154 stuff to do.

I have a life.

I want to be 1155 able to go out and play golf, have a 1156 really simple swing that I don't have to 1157 maintain, hit the ball great and then go 1158 home.

And move on with my life and enjoy 1159 that time, you know?

And so to me, that 1160 means not having four different ways, it 1161 means having one way.

Here's the fastest 1162 way to get you where you want to be, 1163 here's the most efficient way, here's the 1164 one that you can maintain for the rest of 1165 your life.

Because it's supposed to be a 1166 game for a lifetime, right?

I mean, it 1167 really is that it's what it's known for.

1168 Yeah, but I can tell you hands down.

I've 1169 seen more people who have worked hard 1170 their whole lives to be able to retire, 1171 to play and focus on golf, who quit the 1172 game out of frustration, then I've seen 1173 people who go off into retirement be 1174 like, This is the greatest thing ever.

1175 Because they're so frustrated, because 1176 they can't get to that point where they 1177 can consistently hit the ball because 1178 they can't get the right information, 1179 right?

1180 I'm sure there's tons of instructors out 1181 there that can help them by giving them 1182 these random band-aid fixes to glue it 1183 all together.

But one, it takes 1184 maintenance.

I mean, how many times 1185 you've gone to the course and been like, 1186 I don't know how I'm going to hit the 1187 ball today.

I better go like an hour 1188 early and start chopping wood, you know, 1189 swing thoughts that work only one day and 1190 find that thing that's going to work, 1191 right?

1192 You've been there, right?

1193 That's a scary feeling, especially if 1194 you're a tournament golfer, to be like, I 1195 got to get there early and just, I got to 1196 find something that's going to work, 1197 right?

1198 That feeling of desperation is one that 1199 has to be erased.

I haven't felt like 1200 that in years.

Like I go to the course 1201 and I know I'm going to hit the ball 1202 well.

1203 Is, you know, because I don't practice 1204 that much, you know?

Making all these 1205 swing changes this year?

Is it going to 1206 be like?

I'm going to just nut it?

Every 1207 single shot, every no, because I'm trying 1208 all these different random things?

My 1209 swing felt like a jalopy, I mean, I was 1210 trying, I had to make such huge swing 1211 changes so constantly to be able to do 1212 this.

But I, I was.

It reminded me of, 1213 like, gosh, I gotta play in, like, you 1214 know, a little money game today.

And I'm 1215 playing with high hands today.

And I 1216 gotta like, I better go groove this 1217 before I get out there, you know, yeah, 1218 1219 Most people never get to the point where 1220 they groove it because it's just they 1221 don't know.

It's too complicated.

It's 1222 too confusing.

There's too many options.

1223 There's too many variables.

1224 I think our brain shuts down at three.

1225 If you give me A or B, I can make a 1226 decision.

1227 A, B, or C, well, now I'd just rather not 1228 even make a choice because I don't want 1229 to make the wrong one.

1230 I don't know if that's the right thing 1231 and so on.

1232 I've always liked, you know, with rotary 1233 swing with what I've done, I'm like, 1234 here's the ideal way biomechanically 1235 safely how the body should move.

Right.

1236 But the arms have always been a variable 1237 because I couldn't say definitively.

1238 one's better than the other, right?

I can 1239 tell you if you shove really hard off 1240 your right foot and move your hips past 1241 neutral joint alignment, you're going to 1242 tear your labrum eventually.

And you're 1243 going to get sciatica and you're going to 1244 have low back pain.

You're going to 1245 herniate a disc.

That stuff I can say 1246 definitively, but I wanted to be able to 1247 do the same thing with the arms and be 1248 like, here's the ideal way, but not just 1249 about speed production, you know, and 1250 doing it safely.

It's about efficiency.

1251 You know, I want a beautiful effortless 1252 swing, Not 1253 a swing that takes a lot of work.

And you 1254 look at these guys today, like, you know, 1255 like Jason Day, right?

He's literally 1256 talking about retiring at 40 years old 1257 because of back issues.

How many guys on 1258 the PGA Tour do?

we have massive back 1259 problems, man, I.

I did a Google search 1260 the other day and I just started typing 1261 in random names on the PGA Tour on the 1262 money list.

And I would, so I would take.

1263 Like, Kevin Na back injury.

I didn't know 1264 if Kevin had back injuries.

I don't 1265 follow the tour closely, right?

I'm like, 1266 I'm just going to take some random guy.

1267 And the reason I did him specifically is 1268 I have his swing catalyst data.

I have 1269 his data on the force plates and I can 1270 see where he has these things called 1271 double spikes or double peaks.

I don't 1272 know if that's really what it comes, what 1273 I'm calling them in the vertical force.

1274 And I see it in Justin Rose's swing.

1275 I've seen it in a lot of different 1276 players' swings.

And then I started 1277 looking at their data and seeing, and 1278 then I was like, okay, I'm going to see 1279 if he's ever been injured.

Sure enough, 1280 Kevin Knox had serious issues with his 1281 back for a long, long time.

And I can 1282 watch, he hangs back and then pushes up 1283 and then has this double spike in the 1284 ground force.

I'm like, man, this is 1285 really important.

We can finally have the 1286 tools and the technology to quantify and 1287 measure.

1288 Stuff that leads to injury.

Now, you 1289 can't do this definitively yet, I don't 1290 think, you know.

I spent a ton of time a 1291 gazillion swings doing it myself, and I 1292 found that for myself personally.

When I 1293 would see these double peaks in the 1294 vertical ground force on swing catalysts, 1295 that I would notice some discomfort, or 1296 even to the point of pain in my back.

If 1297 I had vertical forces, that happened too 1298 late in the swing, and 1299 I would notice that my rotational torque, 1300 my torque would go up to make up for this 1301 loss of leverage from my legs.

1302 But I would also notice that I was 1303 working harder.

Right.

So my efficiency 1304 would go down.

My effortless protocol 1305 would go down.

Right.

And so I started 1306 trying to like we don't have enough data.

1307 And I'm hoping that, like the stuff that 1308 I've done is just will act as a catalyst 1309 for other people to kind of say, oh, this 1310 is interesting.

1311 I want to look at this with my students 1312 because this is kind of how it started.

1313 When I got the swing catalyst installed 1314 at my studio, I was asking them, you 1315 know, 1316 anecdotally, what do you guys have?

1317 You know, you've seen these double peaks.

1318 What do you, you know, the tour players 1319 that you guys have, what have they 1320 reported with this?

And they said, 1321 anecdotally, there's no statistical data 1322 for this yet, but anecdotally, they were 1323 seeing guys complain about back pain and 1324 have injuries when they had these double 1325 peaks.

So then I started saying, okay, 1326 well, Is there a difference in what I do 1327 with my arms in terms of high hands 1328 versus low hands?

That tends to lead to 1329 these double peaks, which could tend to 1330 lead to injury over the long term, right?

1331 And so there were a couple things that I 1332 found in how that I released the club, 1333 how I swung the club, how I shallowed the 1334 club.

Like Kevin Na is a great example of 1335 this, right?

So Kevin Na is a very short 1336 hitter relatively.

1337 And he hits kind of like this weak.

pull 1338 slappy cut, but I mean, he hits a solid, 1339 right?

Obviously he's a, he's a 1340 phenomenal player, but in terms of ball 1341 striking ability, he's, you know, you're 1342 going to put him down near the bottom of 1343 the list compared to the modern guys.

1344 Right.

1345 And the worst thing about it is that he's 1346 been seriously injuring himself by 1347 swinging this way.

So not only are you 1348 short, but you're hurt doing it.

Right.

1349 Whereas there's other guys who can swing 1350 really hard and hit the ball really 1351 straight.

1352 And and not have these double force, 1353 double peaks and not be injured, right?

1354 But he hangs back a lot, he literally his 1355 first move down, even with like a short 1356 iron, is to drop his head back.

Which 1357 creates this side bin, and then he, and 1358 then he creates a lot of vertical force, 1359 and then he double peaks, right?

I've 1360 tried it, what's that?

I've tried that?

1361 how'd that feel great?

Yeah, so so, 1362 anyway, all of these things started, kind 1363 of, I started looking at them 1364 holistically and saying, okay, I now have 1365 this kind of this thesis statement of 1366 where I want to go with rotary swing over 1367 the next 20 years.

And it's all about 1368 effortlessness.

It's all about 1369 efficiency.

Yes, I can hit the ball a 1370 long ways or further with higher hands, 1371 but am I seeing these double peaks that 1372 may lead to injury?

So what's the point 1373 of being able to play golf in my golden 1374 years if I can't play golf?

You know, if 1375 my back hurts, I don't want to take Advil 1376 every day.

I want to be able to go out 1377 and just be like, 1378 oh, just butter shot, butter shot all 1379 day.

You know, 1380 My vision of a perfect day on the golf 1381 course is where every swing I make looks 1382 like Tiger Woods warming up on the 1383 driving range.

You know, when you watch 1384 him on the range, you're like, dude, how 1385 could that guy ever miss a shot?

1386 I think that's really what's inspired so 1387 many people when he was in his prime is 1388 just how effortless he made it look, 1389 right?

1390 And he got on the course and then he'd 1391 swing out of his shoes and they'd look a 1392 little different, right?

But there is a 1393 reason that so many people that became a 1394 thing like Tiger Woods on the range, 1395 Tiger Woods on the course, two different 1396 people, right?

I want to be Tiger Woods 1397 on the range, but for the rest of my 1398 life, every single shot, assuming that 1399 that's more or less the ideal way to 1400 swing.

So that's really kind of like the 1401 foundation, the backstory on how I kind 1402 of ended up studying all the stuff that 1403 I've studied so far.

And as I've been 1404 going through and starting to write down 1405 my observations, and again, I made it as 1406 objective as I can, but at the same 1407 point, I'm not sitting out here writing a 1408 dissertation paper because nobody's going 1409 to read it.

Right.

1410 I need this stuff to be digestible.

So an 1411 average golfer would be like, oh, I will 1412 actually pay attention to what this guy 1413 has to say.

I'm not going to go read a 80 1414 page technical document.

Right.

So I've 1415 been trying to write down my my 1416 observations and data in a way that's 1417 digestible and relatable and makes sense.

1418 And that's kind of the next step is I 1419 want to start looking at this 1420 holistically.

How do I start sharing this 1421 information?

How does it become the core, 1422 the hub?

1423 Which rotary swing revolves around, you 1424 know, like now we we've taken, and 1425 obviously my goal has always been about 1426 injury prevention, you know, swinging 1427 safely and efficiently.

But now I really 1428 want to focus in on that effortless side 1429 of things like there's.

I want to go back 1430 to that day at Orange County National, 1431 where I could just do no wrong.

And 1432 obviously there are days where you're 1433 just everything.

You know, your body 1434 feels great.

Our body changes every day, 1435 our feel changes every day.

I'm not 1436 talking about 1437 being in the zone and doing all these 1438 mental tricks and meditating and becoming 1439 a Zen Buddhist to be able to hit pure 1440 shots, right?

Talking about it from a 1441 mechanical perspective, Building the 1442 simplest machine humanly possible, to be 1443 able to replicate and consistently hit 1444 the same shot, that feels amazing over 1445 and over again.

And that is where I want 1446 to go with rotary swing.

Here's the funny 1447 thing about that point, Chuck.

Like, 1448 you know, a lot of people talk about 1449 confidence, right?

And when you remember 1450 the days that you feel confident you're 1451 focused on what you're trying to do, 1452 right, that's probably the days that 1453 you're focused on.

Especially for, like, 1454 a mid to high handicapper.

You're 1455 thinking about where you want to hit it, 1456 you're thinking about what you're trying 1457 to do, your target, and then you go.

It's 1458 a lot easier to be confident when you 1459 have the context and understanding of 1460 what you need to do to make it work.

What 1461 prevents people from having a clear head 1462 out there is because you're thinking 1463 about the six different things you're 1464 trying to do.

Or if that didn't work, oh, 1465 oh, no, this, I need to try this right.

1466 And you never have a concrete belief and 1467 conviction in what you do.

And I've 1468 struggled with that a lot over the years 1469 of Just you get a feel.

You ride it out 1470 for three to five months, maybe even just 1471 a month or less.

1472 And then you feel like you need to go 1473 back to the drawing board.

And there's 1474 nothing worse than feeling like you need 1475 to go back to the drawing board when 1476 something's not working.

And certainty 1477 with information and technique is a 1478 really good way to prevent that, 1479 right?

Absolutely.

I mean, at the end of 1480 the day, the number one thing that people 1481 want is consistency.

1482 Once you have consistency, then 1483 confidence follows as a result.

Yeah.

1484 Right.

1485 And a lot of people think that, you know, 1486 I used to love reading a lot of books on 1487 the mental game because when I was 1488 younger and trying to make it as a pro, I 1489 read I really struggle with the mental 1490 game.

I was.

1491 unbelievable on the range.

I I stepped up 1492 onto the first tee and like, my hands 1493 would sweat and I'd be looking around.

1494 And why are all these people staring at 1495 me?

I made me very uncomfortable.

I just 1496 didn't know how to deal with it.

So I 1497 started reading like Bob Britello's books 1498 and all of these things.

And I actually 1499 did really spend a lot of time studying 1500 Zen Buddhism because I was like, I have 1501 to figure out like, how do I get the guy 1502 on the range out on the first tee?

Right.

1503 That was by far my biggest struggling 1504 point.

I couldn't play to my potential.

1505 And so one of the things, one of the 1506 tenants of a lot of these books, 1507 is that they say, oh, well, you just have 1508 to kind of fake it till you make it.

1509 You've got to be confident in your 1510 ability before you have any proof that 1511 you should be confident in what you're 1512 doing.

That's bullshit.

You have to be 1513 able to physically, Mechanically, strike 1514 the ball consistently, with a machine 1515 that works in order for you to ever be 1516 consistent.

And then you will become 1517 confident.

1518 Consistency breeds confidence.

You can't.

1519 You can't just skip that step.

And like 1520 you said, if you don't know really what 1521 you're doing or why you're doing it and 1522 don't understand your swing, you don't 1523 have to know the swing to the level that 1524 I do.

I mean, I'm obsessive about this.

I 1525 think about it 24-7.

And so that's not 1526 realistic for the average guy, right?

But 1527 this is my life.

So I pour everything 1528 into it and I'm obsessed with it.

So I 1529 really understand the mechanics, but what 1530 I try to do is take all of that stuff.

1531 and explain it in a way that's simple, 1532 that is digestible for the average guy 1533 who doesn't live, eat, sleep, golf, swing 1534 mechanics 24 hours a day so that they can 1535 understand how to diagnose their swing, 1536 How to fix it in real time and not be 1537 chasing all these random things because 1538 you'll just end up chasing your tail.

1539 Next thing you know, 20 years have passed 1540 and you're still the exact same golfer 1541 that you were 20 years, or you're 1542 probably worse off, right?

I mean, I've 1543 seen it happen thousands and thousands of 1544 times.

1545 So if your swing mechanics 1546 are just too complex to be replicable, 1547 right?

That's what it comes down to.

1548 Like, you can build a, you know, I raced 1549 cars and a big gear head.

You can build a 1550 really complex engine that can generate 1551 tons of power, but it grenades half the 1552 time.

Well, it's not very productive, 1553 right?

I don't want an engine that 1554 produces a thousand horsepower, but 1555 grenades.

On lap six, I need to finish 1556 the race.

So golf swings are are like 1557 really complex engines.

I mean, there's 1558 thousands of potential moving parts and 1559 variables and all of these things.

And 1560 and then you're dealing with people's 1561 mobility and flexibility and strength and 1562 coordination, and and mindset, all the 1563 stuff that's going on in their head.

1564 Like, if I can just plug into a golfer's 1565 head and know the swing thoughts or 1566 things that you're thinking, even at a 1567 subconscious level, it's hugely helpful.

1568 Because you, you don't realize it, but 1569 you're thinking things or believing 1570 things that you believe to be true or 1571 correct.

They may actually be the exact 1572 opposite of what you really need to be 1573 thinking or understanding about your 1574 swing.

you know, it's again, it goes back 1575 to these, this bucket of parts.

Like 1576 you're trying to take a Ford part and put 1577 it in a Lamborghini.

Well, it doesn't 1578 work right.

It doesn't mean the Ford 1579 part's bad, it just means the Ford 1580 doesn't work in the Lamborghini.

And you 1581 have to understand how those things work.

1582 And so, as I was going through, trying to 1583 think about, how am I going to 1584 help people understand?

You know, the 1585 reason that I'm going to a shallower 1586 hands position in my teaching and in my 1587 own swing is understanding the swing.

1588 Again, in in two simple dichotomy, one 1589 dichotomy, you either have steepening 1590 moves that work in your swing, or you 1591 have shallowing moves.

And that's it at 1592 the end of the day.

If that club's on 1593 plane, approaching on a good path, on a 1594 shallow angle, attack with a club face, 1595 it's going to coordinate with that path.

1596 Then all systems are go.

And if we can do 1597 this over and over again, we're golden.

1598 The trick is that last part, doing it 1599 over and over again, right?

1600 That's the trick.

And the more 1601 complicated your swing is, the harder it 1602 is to do, right?

So when you have high 1603 hands, you need a lot of shallowing 1604 moves.

And there's lots of options.

1605 There's lots of ways that the swing has 1606 been taught that works in a context.

1607 That is conducive to what those things 1608 are.

So, for instance, if somebody tells 1609 you, well, you know, you should really 1610 take this arm and really tuck this elbow 1611 in front.

That's a shallowing move.

I 1612 wouldn't necessarily advocate doing that, 1613 but it's not that it doesn't work, it's 1614 not that it can't work in.

In the context 1615 of a swing that needs a severe shallowing 1616 move like that, it's effective.

A lot of 1617 secondary axis tilt, that's a shallowing 1618 move, it's effective.

If you have super 1619 high hands, 1620 you can't bring your, yank your arms 1621 straight down.

And you can't start 1622 rotating.

Even though rotation can be a 1623 shallowing move, it's when that rotation 1624 occurs that allows the club to shallow 1625 out.

But then that can be too much of a 1626 good thing.

So it's understanding the 1627 swing in those two perspectives.

Is that 1628 a steepening move versus a shallowing 1629 move?

And do I need steepening or 1630 shallowing moves, right?

The way to get 1631 past all of this stuff is just to get to 1632 that one point where like, okay, I can 1633 commit to this, the shallower hands.

1634 Because in my opinion, so far what I've 1635 seen with the data, it's easier for me to 1636 reduce those double peaks that I see in 1637 the vertical force.

It's also easier to 1638 produce high amounts of vertical force at 1639 the right time in the swing.

And that 1640 gives me leverage from my legs.

If I'm 1641 able to use my legs more, I get to use my 1642 arms less.

1643 There's all kinds of discussion about is 1644 the golf swing more left-hand dominant?

1645 Is it more right-hand dominant?

Is it 1646 more body dominant?

Should your arms feel 1647 passive?

Should they feel fast?

1648 You could probably rattle off 20 1649 different things about the arms, and all 1650 of them could be correct in the right 1651 context.

1652 But it's too complicated because there's 1653 20 different more things that I got to 1654 try out and see if they work in my swing.

1655 And that's how golf magazines work.

They 1656 throw you something out of context.

Each 1657 month and tell you to go try it, and when 1658 that one doesn't work, they'll throw you 1659 another one, right?

Like, there's golf 1660 websites out there that say, you know, 1661 they brag that.

They have 4 000 different 1662 tips from different, you know, 15 1663 different instructors to help you with 1664 your game.

That's, that's crazy.

I don't 1665 want 4 000 different ways to brush my 1666 teeth, I just want one.

What's the best 1667 way to brush my teeth?

Why is it so hard?

1668 Like, I don't, I don't need 4 000, right?

1669 And so.

1670 The same thing is true with the arms.

1671 Like I've always tried to knit my, my 1672 goal has always been funneling down the 1673 swing to get it to be like, okay, 1674 minutiae BS, nonsense, 1675 dumb, hurt your back, hurt your arm, you 1676 know, to get down to the nitty gritty to 1677 like the finest, simplest, most 1678 efficient, effortless way to do it.

1679 Right.

1680 And so in my opinion, doing that with 1681 shallower arms for the average guy.

It's 1682 going to be the way to go.

I think that 1683 you see that on the PGA Tour.

You see the 1684 Tony Finau's, the John Rahm's, the Rory 1685 McIlroy's, the Tiger Woods, these 1686 transitions away from these higher hands 1687 steepening, you know, naturally steeper 1688 swings to a shallower swing with simpler, 1689 fewer moving parts.

Right.

I think that 1690 you will continue to see that trend.

And 1691 I, and I feel like now.

1692 Having at least some data with the force 1693 plates and the vertical force, I can feel 1694 more efficient.

I can see it in the data 1695 that I am doing things that are not 1696 causing extra trauma.

These double peaks 1697 are really bad, in my opinion, because 1698 your body is in a really vulnerable 1699 position when it happens, right?

So, your 1700 first vertical force happens when your 1701 lead arm is about parallel to the ground 1702 or a little bit below that, maybe pocket 1703 club parallel to the ground, give or take 1704 a little bit.

It's a little bit different 1705 for most people, but it's happening.

1706 Thousandths of a second, so it's pretty 1707 close to that range, but then the second 1708 peak happens about right here, when your 1709 hands are past the release point.

But 1710 you're in the point of the, you know, a 1711 lot of side bend and rotation, right?

And 1712 your body's in this little kind of 1713 delicate balancing stage.

To where it's 1714 just decelerating the club, it's trying 1715 to safely decelerate the club.

But then 1716 all of a sudden you'll see you.

Depending 1717 on how they pushed up off the ground, 1718 their body will kind of land back down.

1719 The lead foot will kind of jar and you'll 1720 see a big spike in the vertical force.

1721 And some of these players, like even a 1722 guy like Kevin.

Nah, I don't remember the 1723 exact numbers, but I can look it up.

But 1724 it would be like 230 pounds of force 1725 going through his leg, going into his 1726 spine when it's in this vulnerable 1727 position Now, Imagine just somebody 1728 hitting you with 230 pounds of force when 1729 your leg's locked out and your body's in 1730 this twisted side bend position.

Doesn't 1731 seem ideal.

1732 Again, it's all anecdotal at this point, 1733 but I hope in the future we'll have the 1734 tools, The technology to start to 1735 quantify the stuff so that we start 1736 dropping the injury rates dramatically.

1737 As we all can agree on and start to come 1738 to some sort of consensus based on data, 1739 that says, here's a simpler, better way 1740 to do it that's safer, right?

1741 When it comes down to it, I think that 1742 most people will see that while it's 1743 polarizing, like I did a little informal 1744 poll on our Facebook group, you know, 1745 hey, would you feel like you're better 1746 with higher hands, lower hands, you know, 1747 super generic.

And it was probably 50 50.

1748 Right.

A lot of people feel like, you 1749 know, I'm all high hands for life.

Right.

1750 Totally get it.

1751 You know, and nothing wrong with it.

1752 Right.

I can't say.

1753 that you can't swing like that.

Of course 1754 you can, right?

In my opinion, I think 1755 it's easier to maintain.

It's safer.

It's 1756 more effortless.

It's less complex.

And 1757 you can still produce world-class levels 1758 of club head speed, with a shallower 1759 hands position and getting the arms and 1760 body to move a little bit more in sync, a 1761 little bit more connected.

I hate using 1762 that word because it's bastardized a lot, 1763 but a little bit more synchronicity in 1764 the swing is going to be, where people 1765 migrate to over time.

1766 Yeah.

I mean, It's ironic we're talking 1767 about this right now because I've noticed 1768 without even knowing I was doing it, I 1769 noticed that when I had lower hands, it 1770 honestly, it felt like I was barely 1771 swinging it back.

I had gone so far over 1772 the top for so many years that, and this 1773 is to your point, when we had you on the 1774 podcast, Your point of mirror and video 1775 is the most valuable tool.

Because 1776 something that I felt was a half swing.

1777 Was right at parallel, Yeah, me, that was 1778 low hands, compact.

Naturally, that led 1779 to better ball striking for me because 1780 there was less room for error.

I wasn't 1781 going way over the top, my hands came 1782 down less steep because they were in a 1783 better position.

It makes me think a 1784 little bit, Chuck.

I don't know if this 1785 is a good analogy or not, but it kind of 1786 makes me think of what's worked for me 1787 over the last few years.

Around the 1788 greens, where I think amateurs.

1789 Uh, when you start out, you know, let's 1790 say you're hitting a shot over a bunker, 1791 right?

And you don't have a lot of green 1792 to work with.

A lot of guys or gals think 1793 they need to take this big swing and do 1794 this like, perfect flop shot that goes 1795 straight up in the air.

And I've learned 1796 over the past couple years, I can take a 1797 little pitch motion and open the face and 1798 that ball pops right up, right.

And my my 1799 room for error was very small, and so my 1800 my short game is really all about the 1801 smallest room for error.

To give me the 1802 best chance to put it, you know, five 1803 feet or whatever, to give me just a 1804 chance, give me a look, right?

I know 1805 that if I take a full swing, I just 1806 brought a lot of variables into play and 1807 so I think that applies to the swing, 1808 full swing 100.

I mean, well, we have so 1809 many guys who I.

This little drill on the 1810 site called the nine to three drill, 1811 right?

I've done it for 15 years.

It's 1812 kind of always used to be like the basis 1813 of my instruction.

Like if you can just 1814 get it right from here to here, then good 1815 things are going to happen.

And then what 1816 inevitably happened is that, you know, 1817 the nine to three is really just the club 1818 parallel to the ground to parallel to the 1819 ground.

It's a really short swing, right?

1820 But it's the stuff that matters the most 1821 when it's happening.

1822 And then people, I would say, okay, to 1823 make this a little bit like, oh, wow, I'm 1824 actually starting to really hit it out of 1825 the center of the face, doing this little 1826 nine to three swing, but it's just, you 1827 know, they're going 100 yards with a 1828 seven iron.

How do I add it up?

From 1829 there, all you want to do is just add a 1830 little bit of wrist cock.

That's how I 1831 would tell them.

And by doing that, that 1832 little bit of wrist cock would make the 1833 swing longer in time, right?

Because now 1834 instead of just not really setting your 1835 wrist on the real nine to three, by 1836 adding a little bit of wrist set.

The 1837 momentum of your hands that you got to 1838 here will keep going up because the 1839 backswing physically is taking longer in 1840 time, dimension of time, right?

So 1841 because of that, you're up here and you 1842 swear that you stopped parallel to the 1843 ground.

And everybody's like, dude, I hit 1844 the ball further with my nine to three 1845 swing.

I said, well, did you put it on 1846 video?

I'm like, no, but it feels like 1847 it's right here.

I'm like, go put it on 1848 video because you'll see it's a full 1849 swing.

But you can't have that if you're 1850 trying to move your arms a lot.

in the 1851 vertical space, you lose that sense of 1852 making a small, compact, connected, 1853 simple swing.

And that's what I started 1854 out that way.

And then as I started 1855 studying this, I was like, oh, I'm going 1856 to maximize.

I'm going to get as much out 1857 of this as I can.

And I went to higher 1858 hands and then I kind of settled in the 1859 middle.

I'm like, that's a good 1860 compromise.

1861 But I still feel I want my swing to be 1862 stupidly dumb simple.

Right.

And, and the 1863 shallower I get the, the dumber my swing 1864 gets, the simpler it gets, the more 1865 boring it gets and the more consistent it 1866 gets.

And so to me, that's the end game.

1867 And I think you nailed it on the head.

1868 Like you, you think you're here, but 1869 you're really here.

That's the best 1870 feeling in the world to me.

I mean, we 1871 were talking about this.

Maybe we end on 1872 this.

I mean, we were talking about it 1873 earlier this week where watching your 1874 videos and talking with you.

Now I've 1875 started to realize how simple.

1876 the swing really is.

The complicated 1877 thing is relearning or unlearning what 1878 we've been doing to the point about 1879 needing a mirror or a video screen.

1880 Like you've said many times, you give 1881 someone a lesson and they say, well, 1882 which thing should I do?

1883 Right.

Should I feel like I have 1884 different fields that I have, which 1885 fields should I do?

1886 Right.

1887 So like, that's the, I think the hardest 1888 part about golf, but.

hopefully through 1889 this awesome research you've done, we're 1890 at least armed with information and 1891 certainty that we're on the right path.

1892 And then we can have use video, use 1893 mirrors to like as checks and balances to 1894 keep ourselves and make sure we're on the 1895 right path.

1896 Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you have to know 1897 what you're doing.

That's the one biggest 1898 thing.

Like this guy that I was talking 1899 about on the range, he was just.

Casting 1900 the club as hard as humanly possible 1901 halfway down.

He has no idea that he's 1902 doing that, nor does he have any idea 1903 that he should or shouldn't be doing that 1904 right.

He just doesn't know, so you have 1905 to see it.

But at the same point 1906 transferring, there's always.

There's a 1907 two-step process that you have to first 1908 get in front of a mirror and see what 1909 you're doing.

And you recognize, like, 1910 holy crap, I had no idea, right?

That's 1911 step one.

You got to admit that there's a 1912 problem, so now we can start to fix it.

1913 The next step is starting to to work in 1914 the mirror and get these mechanics right 1915 in slow motion.

But the the really 1916 important step from that is starting to 1917 add pace to that, so that you start 1918 creating force.

You start creating 1919 dynamics that you can't feel at slow 1920 speed.

And a lot of people, They get so 1921 bogged down in perfecting the mechanics 1922 and slow motion stuff that they don't 1923 ever get to the chance of adding speed.

1924 Because then all of a sudden, it feels 1925 really different, right?

So you have to 1926 push through that.

And then as you start 1927 adding speed, you can't see what you're 1928 doing.

That's when you got to go to the 1929 video camera.

And then you got to start 1930 eventually transferring that into feel, 1931 right?

But your feel has to be right.

1932 This is the point you can't just do feel 1933 because nobody's feeling really the same, 1934 especially at first.

Right.

1935 But as you start getting to the point 1936 where you're transitioning through these 1937 phases of getting to the feel phase.

1938 It's much faster because you're no longer 1939 thinking at a, you know, 1940 analytical objective level in your brain 1941 at a, you know, really high conscious 1942 level.

Cause you can't process your 1943 conscious level thinking can't process 1944 stuff fast enough.

1945 Subconscious can process tons of stuff 1946 wickedly fast.

Right.

And that's where we 1947 have to transfer all this knowledge to 1948 that takes repetition.

1949 But if you start my opinion, What I 1950 experienced for myself and with the few 1951 students that I've done some testing with 1952 this in lessons.

1953 is getting them into shallower hands.

I 1954 was able to relate things to feel much 1955 faster.

1956 Whereas when I'm going high hands, it's 1957 really important that you keep your 1958 elevation in sync with your body turn.

1959 And you really need to see that to 1960 recognize what that looks like and what 1961 it feels like.

And it just takes more 1962 time to kind of perfect that movement 1963 than being shallower hands, and you kind 1964 of get to that feel stage a little bit 1965 faster, I think.

1966 Yeah, 100%.

1967 So, well, I'm excited to see this stuff 1968 come out.

I'm excited.

Yeah.

1969 Well, 1970 for sure.

Let's, you know, We can wrap 1971 this up here and then we can talk about 1972 kind of next stages of what we're going 1973 to do next.