Leecommotion, the
Right-Side Swing
Part 3 - Update
Dave Tutelman
-- March 15, 2012
As promised, I'll refer to the swing hereafter as "C-motion" rather than "Leecommotion".
I started with the C-motion swing -- or at least as
much of it as I
adopted -- in late November of 2010. I worked on it through the winter
of 2011, which meant not much. We had a lot of snow in New Jersey (see
picture), and
the golf courses and even driving ranges were closed for more than two
months.
I did get away a few times for golf, and played a lot when I did. And
by early March I was able to play regularly without traveling. And I
continued to practice a right-side swing.
I found myself feeling that I was striking the ball more solidly more
often, but it did not show up in my scores. None of my rounds came
closer than three strokes to a personal best for the course. So I was
not getting a ball-striking bonus, no matter what it felt like.
I noticed a fairly frequent distance gain, but it was not consistent
nor even usual. I could not count on it, and I didn't. In March, I did
some launch monitor tests with Charlie Badami, a very good clubfitter that I have
worked with. (You will see his name occasionally in my articles on this
site.) It became clear from those tests that I got the speed bonus when
I did
not try to hit with the right hand! When I powered the hands
with a right-arm push, but had the hands
and wrists hold the lag, I got a 6-8mph boost of clubhead speed.
(On a drive, that translates to 18-24 yards of carry.) But that did not
happen when I hit through the ball with my hands. (That would tend to
confirm the analysis, which says that the benefit comes from moving the
hands "along the track" rather than delivering the clubhead to the
ball. But anecdotal tests, especially when performed by the analyst
himself, are hardly reliable data.)
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I kept with it until mid-June, when I injured myself playing golf.
There is little doubt in my mind that the right-side swing was a major
factor in the injury. It was not serious enough to see a doctor. In
fact, it was not even serious enough to stop golf; I just had to stop
making a right-side swing.
The problem was a muscle pull or strain in my right latissimus dorsi.
Powering the swing with the right arm did a few things to stess that
muscle:[1]
- Obviously it became more of a factor in developing clubhead
speed. The major right-side muscle in this motion is the triceps, but
the right lat is next most important in this regard.
- I was getting a better follow-through than I was used to with my left-side swing,
with the club and right arm pulling me around. This turned out to be a
mixed blessing. The right arm pulling the body around meant that tension in the
right lat was doing the pulling. In June, I started
getting pain in the lat during the follow-through... and only during the follow-through.
It had been a minor problem for a week or two, when it came to a head with my approach shot to the twelfth green at Howell
Park on June 8, 2011. I had been doing OK, and was fine even
with this swing until I got well into the follow-through. Then I felt
considerable pain. It was bad enough that my buddies could tell just by
looking. If I were going to finish the round, I would have to find a
way to swing where the right arm was not pulling the follow-through
around.
What I did -- and it worked -- was to go to a left-side swing where the
body pulled the club around, via the left shoulder and arm. I was
surprised I could still make that
swing, because I hadn't practiced it in over six months. But I got
through the round, and the pain did not return as long as the body
pulled the club around, rather than rather than the right arm pushing
the club through.
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My current swing[2]
I never went back! A few weeks later was my 70th
birthday,
and I made a resolution. No more swing changes for the goal of
recovering the distance I have lost since I turned 65. (That's about 2½
clubs
in the irons and 50 yards with the driver.) So I decided to
cultivate the left-side swing that doesn't hurt me, and get it to the
point of having a pretty good idea where the shot is going. What has
made it work has been (a) a tip gleaned from Dustin Johnson's swing via
Kelvin
Miyahira (yeah, I know; DJ is a big hitter, but that's not what I'm
going after), (b) some drills and philosphy from Paul Wilson, and (c) a
couple
of valuable keys from Jim McLean's book, "The X-Factor Swing". Here are
my swing keys:
- Get to a good X-factor position at the top of the
backswing. Keys to get there are:
- Initiate the backswing by turning the right hip back.
- At the top, the left shoulder is under the chin.
These are straight out of Jim McLean's book.
- Keep the left arm across the chest, from the top of the
backswing through most or all of the downswing. Kelvin Miyahira
pointed this out to me in video frames he has of Dustin Johnson's
swing. Kelvin associates this with keeping a good lag. See his article
on lag, the section on "Lag Micro Move #10".
- From the top, just turn the hips and relax the assembly
above. It should feel like:
- The hips are energetically dragging the torso around.
- The chest is pushing the left arm around.
- The club is being dragged along behind all this.
This derived from #1 and #2, plus the philosophy and
drills from Paul
Wilson's "Swing Machine Golf".
One of my favorite videos is his drill
to promote relaxing the hands and arms.
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Within
a couple of months of adopting these keys, I started approaching my
personal bests, and even establishing new ones at the shorter courses I
play. I can no longer reach a lot of the par-fours at the longer
courses, so I'm not likely to set new records there. But I'm coming
remarkably close to my old records. For instance, today (March 15, 2012) I came within
two strokes of my old personal best at Charleston Springs North Course.
And even that personal best was set three months after going back to
the left-side swing and adopting keys #2 and #3 above.
Bottom line: It's working for my scores, and I don't hurt when I swing.
In fact, it feels remarkably relaxed and even passive, except for the
hips. And that is the secret of the whole swing.
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But wait. There's more.
I
said above that I was not chasing distance any more. And I meant it.
But I am in fact getting more distance, and more reliably, from my
current left-sided swing. And I think I know why. The hint comes from the analysis of C-motion in the preceding pages.
At the right is an
update of the figure from the first page of this article, explaining why C-motion
might result in increased distance. In that section, I point out that decreasing the torque's radius increases the force accelerating the hands. The footnote
points out that the chest is seldom used as a fulcrum for the left arm,
just a way to think about "connection". But my swing does indeed use
the chest as a fulcrum to lever around the extended left arm. In that
way, it shortens the lever arm almost as much as does the right-side
swing.
When Kelvin Miyahira was showing me Dustin Johnson's move to promote
lag, I recognized that was what a full-fulcrum "connection" would look
like. When Kelvin wrote his article a few months later, he included
words to that effect.
It is probably worth mentioning here that, when I was working on my article on mathematical models of the swing, something about Sasho MacKenzie's model
clicked. I refer now to his swing optimized for clubhead speed. For the
first part of the downswing, the muscular torque is all torso. There is
no shoulder torque, the torque that separates the left arm from the
chest. That means that the left arm is being driven by what MacKenzie
calls "passive tissue interaction" with the chest; the chest is pushing
the left arm around. That is further confirmation that this does in
fact increase clubhead speed, because a computer optimization of one of
the better swing models recommends it.
Anyway, I am seeing more driving distance now, and it is starting to
reach the irons as well. It was not my goal, but as I relax the left arm
against the chest and drive around with my hips, it comes along with
the more reliable contact.
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Notes:
- The problem may have been
exacerbated by the fact that I hadn't done weight training for over a
week when it happened. So my lats had not had a recent workout. But it
is hard to believe that is the key factor. I've been playing golf a
long time; this factor occurs a couple of times a year, and never
caused a problem when I used a left-side swing.
- "Current" as of March 15, 2012.
Last
modified -- Mar 16, 2012
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