Craig's Phase 2, Session 1 Recap

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My predominant miss was the push during my first phase 2 session. Learn what was causing the push and how to correct your sequencing to stop manually catching up with the hands to square the face. Sometimes the error may not be as apparent on video, but you can feel something is off. Luckily I had the Faults and Fixes section to lead me straight to the perfect video for my ailment.


hello everyone and welcome to the recap of my first practice session in phase 2 and what I want to focus on today is a little bit of tempo and sequencing I looked at a lot of my swings and I can find some good and bad and some old habits that we saw in my phase 1 sessions but I want to talk to you a little bit today about sequencing because it may be a little bit hard to pick up on video but after you watch my first practice session you'll hear me say this a lot and I kind of want to explain what I was meaning by that when I look at my swings I obviously look at it from the ground up and inside out and today my issue that I had at the driving range was a little bit of staying in sync I had a tendency to save the shot a lot with my hands now that we're starting to introduce the release and feeling that clubface rotate I've played enough golf and I have enough ability of my hand with my hands to manipulate the clubface to return it back to square to hit a decent shot but I was doing that too much during this session and I really want to start to work out of that you'll notice that the better shots that I hit were the ones that I said I allowed the club to release it was very passive I didn't have to work a lot and the misses that I had predominantly tended to be pushed and a little bit thin and I want to talk about why I was doing that how I'm going to go about fixing that if we look at my swing on the left hand side there are a couple things I'd like to clean up my posture a little bit get a little bit slouchy right there but as I start to go back I'm going to look at my typical or my usual checkpoints I'm going to make sure that as the club works into the takeaway position I'm seeing that logo on my chest and ensure that I'm rotating not just swinging my arms and hands and then as I work up to here I'm going to get mad at myself because I got a little bit too big and I know you at home will understand this one this is the feeling real I almost got my lead arm to parallel to the ground even though it felt like I was only taking the club to nine o'clock so that'll be something that I hone in on as well but the big one is right here in my transition as I started to come down I didn't have a big push off my trail side which is typically going to be the culprit for this issue but my lead hip started to race open and so with my lead hip starting to race open I had a little tendency to get under the plane and as I started to work into the ball I had to use my overwork my hands to get the club face square and this one right here in particular was one of my pushes and one of my thin shots it may not be very apparent to the naked eye what's going on here but I can feel it and I can start to see this club starting to get a little bit below my trail forearm starting to work a little bit from underneath you can see my trailer I'm getting a little bit behind my hip right there but this is what I kept referring to as playing catch up my legs were trying to race out ahead and with my legs trying to race out ahead my arms and hands were left a little bit behind my club was a little bit under plane and then I had to manually square up the face too much and this is what led to my push thin shots and I really want to start to work that out of my swing is this because of adrenaline anxiety is it because in my phase one session I had to work really hard on posting up and getting my hip to clear I think it's a combination of everything it was my first foray back in a while we're starting to allow for a little bit of speed see a little bit of distance in the shot and I think I just started to get a little bit too aggressive and the aggressiveness of my legs in this smaller shot forced me to overwork my arms and hands too much so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say okay my predominant miss is the push shot now in phase two what's gonna cause me to push it if you go over here to the website and you go to the list and you go to phase two go to faults and fixes all right I'm struggling with a push today well what do we have here under push we have getting stuck my trail arms getting a little bit stuck I need to work a little bit better on that sequence but the big one that I'm gonna focus on the next time I go out to the range is this video right here how to fix the two -way miss now you'll see on this thumbnail right here you know Chuck's showing a big push off the trail foot lifting the trail hill too early and so you can see the trail hips coming in and the club's working up from under plane I'm not doing it to that degree but in essence this is the same mistake I'm making I'm not moving through my positions and allowing the club to square up itself I'm driving just a little bit too hard which is getting me a little stuck hitting that little push block so when I go out to my next session this is going to be what I focus on I may have to tone down my hip work at first I don't really care about a ton of distance right now and in fact I felt like in looking at my target out there that I was hitting it too far initially I'm gonna need to do a better job at making sure that I walk off or I shoot my target distance isn't the big key right now I need to button it up and I need to make sure that my strikes are more consistent now I didn't have that kind of crazy dispersion but I really wasn't pleased overall with what was happening in the swing I don't like the timing game and you really shouldn't have to think about timing in the swing because you should be allowing the club to work for itself you move through your positions and checkpoints the club's going to rotate around the heel and take care of all the good business for you and I had a little bit of timing in here and I shouldn't be banking on my hand eye coordination or timing to hit my window or hit my target the next time I go out what I'm going to focus on first so I'm going to focus on getting back in sync I'm going to try to button up a little bit of the backswing it's okay for it to get a little bit longer in phase two a little bit longer than the nine o'clock club parallel to the ground but I want to try to button that up a little bit I'm going to make sure that my yardages are a little bit toned down but the big one is I want to get rid of this push I want to get rid of this thin push and all it is is me just racing a little bit with the hips so I get a little bit jammed a little bit underneath and my hands have to catch up we look at it from the face on and as we go through here I move into my takeaway position making sure I got a little bit of weight that I have that rotation it's still the same thing my first initial swings my takeaway was stopping in a much better position but as the day progressed on as I started to sweat more the swing got longer as you as I was showing you on the down the line my lead arm is almost parallel to the ground right now and I really want to tighten that move up and that's just the you know adrenaline kicking in I'm hitting some you know bigger shots but I I want to tighten this up but I want to use this face on for example because this was a pretty good strike on one of my trail hand let goes and you'll see my initial transition right here I just gave myself a little bit more time I wasn't in such a hurry to get the hip open I really had a good sit into that lead side which was buying a little bit more time for my arms to come down and start to work in front of me we have a video on the site called the dump truck and the drag racer and in that video Chuck will talk to you about how you know the legs as they start to work um the legs are going to represent a little bit more of a dump truck it's in there you know big heavy torquey they take a little bit more to get off the line and you kind of have to give them time to get into position and so you'll see right here that as I start to transition I just bought a little bit more time to allow my arms to hands to work back down and as I worked into the strike I got the hip the tiniest bit out ahead but we'll see that I let go with my trail in hand right here and I allowed the club to release we can see the fingernails right there the clubs rotated over the chest thing nice and quiet but I didn't have to save anything I basically just had to let go of the golf club and let it square up would I like my lead hip to be a little bit clearer absolutely but we know that that's going to be a battle that I'm going to fight all the way to getting into full swing we could have a little bit cleaner NGA but I do like the fact that my chest stayed very quiet through the release my lead arm working like a pendulum in that independent release but it's hard it's going to be very hard for me to get that pendulum independent release if I'm always playing catch up my trail foot doesn't have a whole lot of lift to it nor did my down the line version and so that's why it may be tough to spot but it was it my instinct was telling me something something's a little bit off and as soon as I get on video I saw it in the blink of an eye that I'm just racing a little bit I'm I'm not staying enough focused on like I was in phase one moving through the positions not a whole lot of mechanical talk today but more of stay in rhythm stay in tempo when I go out to my next session I'll talk about it during my practice session I'm going to probably tone things down a little bit just to start getting the club to kind of freely swinging a little bit more and not feeling like I've got to make the club work harder to square up I shouldn't have to we right now I shouldn't be fighting any kind of timing demons and you really shouldn't fight any timing demons in your swing one thing I want to show you before I go when you watch this session I had a good laugh at this when we look at this swing and this was one of the ones that I didn't hit very well I hit pretty heavy and I had a good laugh about it because this was a let go of my trail hand and I felt like I almost let it go before I even transitioned which kind of threw everything out of sync and you'll see on that swing that as I started to get beyond the takeaway watch my trail hand right here I started to let go of it before I even finished my little backswing right here and so that's why as I started to come down even though I made a pretty good hip move you'll see I'm kind of holding on for dear life right here the face is open the glove logo is facing the camera so I know that that club hasn't squared up yet and that's where I kind of got that kind of leading edge diggy fat shot you can see me laughing on the camera right there but I there was one of the first swings that I looked at when I got home I wanted to see if I really did let it go even before I transitioned and sure enough I did so I will see you on another range session I'm going to focus on getting rid of that thin push and if you're struggling with that thin push at home use the push section in the faults and fixes under phase two it's the exact video that I'm going to work on to start getting the club squared up hit a little bit more compressed shots but stop kind of pushing it pushing it off to the right any questions comments let me know I'm going to get back at it it's great to be back I hope this helps a little bit I hope you enjoy the first practice session and I'll definitely see you in the trenches

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Arthur
Hi Craig, You seem to have progressed fairly quickly in the session from taking trail hand ‘off’ to keeping trail hand ‘on’ the club at impact. At what point did you decide on that, or will you be alternating with each as you move through the process?
September 15, 2022
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hello Arthur. That will stay in the mix for most of my sessions. I wanted to challenge myself since the release felt good. I will more than likely warm up with those every time.
September 15, 2022
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Luc
When you saying in you face view that your shoulders stay closed at impact and shortly after it's not cause by the right hand not being on the club anymore?
September 15, 2022
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hello Luc. The shoulders will stay pretty close to square when letting go of the trail hand. The will have a little movement. But, the more the trail hand stays on the club they will have to follow/open.
September 15, 2022
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M. (Certified RST Instructor)
Good morning Craig! Love your very detailed analyses of your first session in phase 2. I envy your skill to boil this down to the one thing that needs to be adressed to improve your swing. In my practice session I also often experience the same problem, where I also "race my, senior age, , hips". The one specific feeling I then have is that I missed the feeling of completing my weight shift/sitting on lead leg, before I post up and release the club. The 2 things that help me to correct this are, (1) raising my arms a little more at end of backswing, that give me a little more time for downswing or (2) focus on starting my downswing by bringing my lead knee back above my lead foot. Both help but I am not sure witch one is best? Looking forward to your next video. Marcel
September 15, 2022
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hello Marcel. Allowing the arms to have more elevation will buy you more time. However, I'm worried they may be working a little bit to independently back and more of a band aid fix for your issues. I think the sit/proper lead knee external rotation to the lead side is a better function to work on. Thank you for the compliments!
September 15, 2022
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Mark
Love the analysis and can learn so much from that. Interestingly, and maybe I'm wrong, you seemed several times about being too quick and what I noticed in this phase video, when you took a practice swing, your tempo back and through was about the same. Then when you get to hitting the ball, the backswing is that same tempo, but the forward swing in noticeably faster/quicker and I'm wondering if that's what it should look like at this stage or should the forward swing with the ball there be the same? My analogy is kind of like Ernie Els where to my untrained eye, both forward and back appear to be similar in tempo: o-n-e-t-w-o where to my eye with what you are doing now it seems like: o-n-e-two. Am I way off on this? Thanks for doing all this and again, the analysis is great and what can be learned from that. Mark
September 14, 2022
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Thanks Mark. Very happy to read you are enjoying the videos. The typical full swing ration is about 3:1 backswing and down. I shouldn't be perfectly matched at this stage, but I could use a little more tempo like Els. this is what I will be focusing on in my next session.
September 14, 2022
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Kim
Great to see you swing and see your self assessment. You are just as hard on yourself as you are on me! Lol! Certainly I can learn from what you are going through. Appreciate it!!
September 14, 2022
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hello Kim. Thank you. Believe me I am usually an unhappy camper with my own assessments . Get healthy soon! Appreciate the post and look forward to you getting that post up
September 14, 2022

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