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Arms vs. Body Release in the Golf Swing
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Learn WHY rotating your body through the hitting area can slow the clubhead down and also be putting your back in harms way. No more spinning your chest through the hitting area...even if Nick Faldo tells you to do so while he is commentating.
One of my favorite parts of the golf swing is the the release.
The time where we're releasing all this pent-up energy and letting the club head accelerate as fast as humanly possible.
And a lot of golfers don't ever get to feel what a proper release feels like or even understand what it is.
And that's because there's a ton of information out there that talks about turning the body through impact as long as humanly possible and as fast as humanly possible.
Versus just letting the club head release by letting your forearms turn over.
Now why would you want to do one over the other? Let's talk about the first one.
This is what I call the body release.
Taking the chest and turning it through the hitting area as long as humanly as fast as humanly possible to move the club.
Well first of all that's putting a ton of undue stress on your spine.
That sheer force that you're rotating your spine as fast as you can through the hitting area, when there's all tons of tremendous force going through there.
You're setting yourself up for injury.
The last thing that your spine wants in life is compressive compressive force and sheer force rotating as quickly as you possibly can.
So but let's just take the injury prevention out of.
Of course that's a huge part of RST.
We don't want golfers to get injured and so many of these golf swing related injuries they're all preventable.
So we we think that's a big deal but let's just ignore that for a second.
Let's just talk about the speed that's going to be produced in the swing and where it's going to come from.
As you start rotating your body really fast you create centripetal force.
Now unless you've figured out a way to outsmart Newton the result of that is going to be centrifugal force.
Now what is that centrifugal force going to be acted upon and what is it going to do? Well, pretty simple if I go to the top and I've got these angles in here and I start rotating as fast as I can with my shoulders.
What's going to happen to the club is it's going to get thrown out away from me.
The centrifugal force is going to act on my wrist joint and release the club and so I'm going to start casting.
The last thing on earth you want to do is start releasing this wrist angle early in the swing because that's about two-thirds of your club speed.
You want to release that very late and maintain that lag and you can't do that when you start spinning your shoulders as fast as you can.
Physics are going to always win.
You're not going to outsmart Newton.
So but again let's just take that one out of the equation and look at the final last little release component.
Let's just assume that, for some reason.
You did figure out a way to keep your wrist really, really soft and maintain your lag longer.
And you overcame the centrifugal force in your swing.
Now you're going to release it at the bottom.
Well, it's going to be pretty hard to do when you're spinning your shoulders through.
Because in order for something to release, you've got to transfer energy up the chain and slow down other parts.
So as I'm spinning my shoulders through the club head is never going to get a chance to release and so I'm going to be leaving speed on the table.
In order for everything to get maximum speed your body has to decelerate just like throwing a ball.
Think about this for a second.
If you're going to throw a ball what's the first thing you do? You take a step you rotate your hips and then they're done.
You don't keep turning your hips to the first baseline.
You turn to get your belt buckle facing the catcher and then your chest is there.
It's done turning as well and then your arm releases.
But if you kept turning you'd throw it into the first base dugout.
You've got to let things decelerate.
Because that's just the most efficient way that we transfer energy up the chain from our legs and our torso, and then into the club and arms.
Now in the golf swing it's no different.
If I keep rotating through this club head will release at some point but it's going to happen after the ball's long gone.
That's not going to do you any good.
The ball doesn't care at that point.
You need to release it at the ball.
So that's really a critical piece of the swing.
But the last thing is just how fast do you think you can rotate your ribcage? Well when you're really young and fit and strong maybe you can rotate pretty quickly and make up for it.
But as you get older what do you think is going to happen? Well we're not going to rotate as fast as we can.
One you're putting a lot of wear and tear on your spine so your body's not going to like it.
You're going to start feeling like it doesn't feel very good if you haven't injured yourself already.
And then as you just get older you're not going to spin your shoulders that fast.
You're trying to take all of your guts, all of your internal organs, and all of these muscles and move this giant structure, this big mass as fast as you can.
And all I'm going to do is this.
Who do you think is going to win? Do you think I can do this faster than you can move your entire body? Of course I can.
That's where speed comes from.
That's where efficiency comes from.
All I have to do is let my hand my forearms these two bones rotate over.
Now a lot of golfers misconstrue that and get confused thinking well that's a really handsy release.
It's the antithesis of that.
My hands are doing this because the club is doing that to them.
The club is designed to work as a tool to rotate around the shaft.
If it was meant to stay nice and square the whole time they would have put the shaft in the center of the clubface.
But it doesn't work like that because it's being swung on an inclined plane.
So because of that the clubface is always rotating throughout the entire swing.
You never ever ever try and hold it square.
It's not designed to work like that.
If you try and hold this clubface square going back, which is effectively shut, guess what it's going to want to do on the downswing? It's not going to want to release.
You're giving up about eight miles an hour clubbed speed by not allowing the toe of the club to turn over the way it's designed to do that.
So, of course, we want as much speed as possible, with as little effort as humanly possible.
And we also don't want to work around the physics of how the club is engineered to work.
We want to allow it to release and so the club is what's actually turning my forearms over.
My arms are very soft and passive.
Any tour pro that's releasing the club, you're going to see that their toe of the club and the follow through is really turned over and released really hard.
Even if they tend to rotate their bodies a lot to the hitting area, they still allow their forearms to turn over because that's where their speed is coming from.
You don't want to try and all of a sudden turn your chest through and try to move your whole body faster than what you can just do with your forearms.
Also look at the difference in how much my body's got to move in the hitting area.
I'm going to get posted up.
What did my body do? I moved the club 12 feet.
My body didn't have to do anything.
How much less stress is that on the body? You can't even quantify it compared to taking your rib cage and try to turn as fast as you can to move the club.
It's silly to try and do that.
It's so inefficient.
Not only will you not hit the ball anywhere, but you'll lose speed as you get older, and you'll almost indefinitely hurt yourself.
Either putting a lot of wear and tear and stress on your hip socket or a tremendous wear and tear on your spine, and it's all avoidable.
So if you want to be efficient you must release the club by letting your forearms rotate over.
Let the centrifugal force of the club pull them around.
Keep your hands nice and soft and you'll hit the ball further with less effort.
It's a win-win for you.
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