Today, I’ve made one critical discovery that I think changed my swing thoughts completely. I am not sure if it is positive, or negative, but I do know is that I got my swing speed quite a bit higher using a lot less effort. This discovery came to me as I was watching Bruce Lee (a documentary) and Googling the concept of his intial martial art style, Wing Chun. As some of you might know about his “One Inch Punch” and his whole concept of energy and force, but for some who don’t, its not important… but if you want, you can Google that up too. I’ve also watched this TV series on Spike with the World’s Longest Driver trying to break x amount of panes of glass, and they did a whole physics behind the power.
So, it got me thinking that if Bruce Lee can generate such power in such a short distance, his power definitely comes from an his whole body generating that power, not just his arm. My swing thoughts became a little bit of “jello arms”, keeping the wrist and arms loose. So basically I almost don’t want to use any power in my arms until the last minute of impact to the ball. I took the driver, and just bring it back and then I rotate my body keeping my hands and arms liquid until the last minute like you were to whip a wet towel to create that snap. So I spent a few days practicing it, and the first day I didn’t hit the ball properly, but when I hit it on the sweet spot, my ball went carried in the 230Y+ range and rolled to like 250+… and sometimes even further than that. I actually noticed myself not breaking a sweat, and it was so effortless — but my club head speed average about 100m while in the past, swinging as hard as I can, only got me to about 95, sometimes 105. But with the whipping action, at the highest, I’ve gotten a 112mph club head speed. It was amazing, all this was practiced in one simulator, so I knew the results were somewhat accurate, cause I would keep changing back and forth in terms of how I used to swing and the new swing.
My suggestion is, don’t try it unless you are going to practice and prepared for not hitting the ball properly. Cause it took me a while to get used to it, and now I’m using this swing/whipping snap into my hybrids and irons which also created increase in distance and height (for the shorter irons, which is amazing). The downside is that this whipping action causes me to overswing / John Daly it.
In this lesson video, Doug is helping me feel where I should stop in my back swing to keep it in control. Because this whipping method works regardless of how far back you swing. So in order to give my body and the club more control and on plane, I’m going to try to shorten up my swing.
Anyhow, I am excited for this new change, and it will definitely help me this season.
