Hand seperation question

[Jay1]

I had a lesson the other day to try and resolve inconsistent ball striking with my irons, particularly scoring clubs. I was told that my swing is good but I have very little wrist break on the back swing which remains throughout the down swing so I have no delayed impact, with the club and my hands reaching the ball together.

I've been given drills to work on getting a full wristcock in the back swing and think I am getting some improvement. My one concern though is that at the end of the back swing my hands are seperating slightly. Where the pad of the right thumb rests on the left thumb, a gap is appearing.

Now I don't have very flexible wrists, which I think is some of the problem. The question is though, should I be worrying about the slight seperation or is this fairly normal.

I know one of the answers will be to ask my pro, which I will do when I see him but it's not likely to be for another week and I don't want to be practicing something that is a real no no in the meantime.

Thanks for any input

J

 

[bobmac]

Hold your arms out straight in front of you and take your grip as if you are holding a club. Then without moving anything else, try hinging your wrists so your thumbs point towards your face. This exercise will help improve your wrist flexibility. This should help stop your hands from separating

 

[Jay1]

If I hold my arms straight out in front of me and hinge my wrists upwards my thimbs only just point at the sky, let alone my face

This is also kind of one of the drills my pro gave me. Set up as normal, hinge wrists up, then make shoulder turn and have a look where everything ends up, this is where I want to be at the top of the back swing. Doing this there is no significant hand seperation, but getting there with a swining motion rather than a preset wrist cock, is a lot tougher and definitely cases some gapping in the hands.

 

[bobmac]

They wont actually get to your face, it was just showing you what direction to hinge the wrists

 

[JustOne]

If you can hold a club straight out in front of you and point it up at the sky (90 degree angle between arms and shaft) then you have all the wrist cock you need for a full and proper golf swing, that doesn't mean that you then go ahead and do something wrong when you actually swing the club though.. but if you are getting hand separation the you're doing something wrong.... probably bending the left arm, collapsing the right elbow or literally overswinging.

 

[Jay1]

Thanks for the replies.

Interesting you should mention the bend in the left arm as this is another slight fault to my swing. It's not a collapse by any means but I get a slight bend at the very end of my backswing which is something else my pro is trying to get out. The goal is to get more width, without the elbow bend, and a full wrist cock.

However, even with a dead straight left arm, If I really push for the wrist break, I get the gapping between my thumb pads at the very end of the back swing. My hands don't feel as though the are fighting each other, and my grip is good, I just get the gap between the right thumb pad and thumb. It's almost like my right hand grip is losening at the top of the swing.

 

[JustOne]

You don't need 'wrist break', here's a pic I posted on another thread.... if you over do the wrists/right arm bend you lose the 'box shape' and the grip is compromised..... the guy on the left has more chance of having 'grip separation' as you describe (right palm loosens) than myself (middle) or Tiger (right)

 

[Jay1]

But in those pictures, you and tiger both have a good 90degree angle between the club and left forearm, suggesting a good full cocking of the wrists. That's what I'm aiming for, at the minute I'm not forming those angles, resulting in too shallow an angle of attack and loss of power on iron striking.

I'm not looking necisarily looking for horizontal and massive wrist break, but I'm in need of some angles. I'll try and get a couple of vids I have up later, just to show what I'm working from.

 

[sev112]

I bow to the gods that is justone, oh and Bob too ...

But I'm surprised that inconsistent ball striking is being linked to lack of wrist cock / break
I can see why wrist cock can be good, but usually inconsistent strike comes from too many moving parts, not too few.
Personally I would be looking at excessive body movement /sway as a cause of inconsistency

But I'm not the pro
Be interested to see your swing vids though

 

[bobmac]

I bow to the gods that is justone, oh and Bob too ...

But I'm surprised that inconsistent ball striking is being linked to lack of wrist cock / break
I can see why wrist cock can be good, but usually inconsistent strike comes from too many moving parts, not too few.
Personally I would be looking at excessive body movement /sway as a cause of inconsistency

But I'm not the pro
Be interested to see your swing vids though

If there is little or no wrist hinge on the backswing, there will be no lag hit into impact.
Therefor there may be a flip with the hands causing the club to 'bottom out' before impact. Hence the poor contact and a high weak ball flight.
Try throwing anything without any wrist hinge....

 

[Foxholer]

I bow to the gods that is justone, oh and Bob too ...

But I'm surprised that inconsistent ball striking is being linked to lack of wrist cock / break
I can see why wrist cock can be good, but usually inconsistent strike comes from too many moving parts, not too few.
Personally I would be looking at excessive body movement /sway as a cause of inconsistency

But I'm not the pro
Be interested to see your swing vids though

If there is little or no wrist hinge on the backswing, there will be no lag hit into impact.
Therefor there may be a flip with the hands causing the club to 'bottom out' before impact. Hence the poor contact and a high weak ball flight.
Try throwing anything without any wrist hinge....

I think you are dealing with slightly different meanings on 'consistent'.

Fewer moving parts might promote a more consistent result for Sev, but it's likely to be consistently 'less than optimal' (bad!).

Bob is intending to have 'consistently solid/good' strikes - for which wrist cock and lag are important elements.

 

[sev112]

I think you are dealing with slightly different meanings on 'consistent'.

Fewer moving parts might promote a more consistent result for Sev, but it's likely to be consistently 'less than optimal' (bad!).

Bob is intending to have 'consistently solid/good' strikes - for which wrist cock and lag are important elements.

Consistently less than maximum, I will accept

But not"bad"

Unless you get your lag timing perfect, the loaded shaft will be unloading during the cocking process
I would suggest that allowing the shaft to load and unload, as it is designed to do, is a more consistently repeatable process than the human timing of unlocking of a wrist

But that's just me

 

[Jay1]

Bobs hit the nail on the head. I'm. It a bad striker as such, hence a half decent handicap, however my irons can tend to be fractionally heavy and even good strikes can result in a high weak flight, particularly with more loft. Woods on the other hand I think my shallow attack helps.

I'll be home in a bit and will put a couple of videos up.

 

[Jay Gee]

I've had a similar problem to the extent that you could see daylight between my hands. I was almost letting go and re-griping at transition. My fault was that I was over-swinging and bending my left arm.

I was given similar advice by my clubfitter and pro; one said to use a short thumb grip, where you have your thumbs quite close together and both pointing down the shaft. This helps restrict your ability to over do the backswing apparently and keeps your hands tighter together. The other said to simply shorten the backswing so that it feels like a 1/2 or 3/4 backswing depending on how bad your overswing is.

I haven't fully committed to the short thumb grip as I've spent all my time recently on the course rather than the range. It's one of those changes that needs some repetition to bed in properly, so I've just been concentrating on a shorter backswing for now.

The really interesting thing was that with the short thumb grip, my swing speed was faster and I was hitting down on the ball more. That said, I'm hitting down a bit more now by just shortening the backswing.

I don't profess to know what I'm talking about, just sharing what I was told in a similar situation. I'm sure there are other things going on and one thing may affect another etc.

 

[Jay1]

OK, well heres a video of my swing at the lesson I had, before any changes or suggestions

http://youtu.be/Zwwl_Vz66eU

And heres a video tonight at the course. In fairness I was really struggling tonight but even so, you will see there's not much change yet, I'm really struggling in getting the wrist hinge unless I'm forcing it in practice swings, which is when the hands seperate a bit.

http://youtu.be/WMNjPxBmY-I


Sorry couldn't get the embed thing to work

 

[Foxholer]

Consistently less than maximum, I will accept

But not"bad"

Unless you get your lag timing perfect, the loaded shaft will be unloading during the cocking process
I would suggest that allowing the shaft to load and unload, as it is designed to do, is a more consistently repeatable process than the human timing of unlocking of a wrist

But that's just me

Perhaps material for another thread, but I'd suggest timing is (marginally) less critical where there is still lag being released through uncocking of wrists through impact than where the load/unload happens precisely at impact. Seems to me the former is hitting 'down and through the ball' - as in the thought of hitting an imaginary ball 4 inches in front of the real one - while the load/unload is more the hitting at/semi flip. In both cases timing, is very important though.

This thread is actually about the cocking and uncocking and the improvement in (consistecy of) quality of strike that is the result. As Bob pointed out (though it's not the same action), if you try to throw a ball whit a locked wrist, it will not be as effective as when you actively flick the wrist from a 'lagged' position to being 'released'.

 

[Foxholer]

Apart from the wrist flexibility exercise that Bob mentioned in post #2, there's a couple of other drills that might also help.

The pump drill, Here's one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAef1L7rh0s

And turning a club upside down and swinging so that you here a 'whoosh' at its loudest as it travels through the impact zone.

That 2nd vid looks like an improvement over the first, but Driver tends to look better anyway, so may be a tad misleading.

Good Luck.

 

[Jay1]

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Bob, I've been using that stretching drill since you posted and can definitely feel that this is going to help, can really feel the stretch in the wrists, in the right way to use in the swing, so many thanks for that.

Foxholer, I like that pump drill and will definitely be giving that a go on the range as I can see the next step, once I'm more comfortable in building the angle in the wrists, will be to maintain it.

Cheers.

 

[Pin-seeker]

I'm in no position to offer advice but I've just watched the clips of your swing & it looks pretty tidy to me. it obviosly works for you (playing off 7)
Bob always seems to offer good advice when some one asks,Top man :thup:

 

[Jay1]

Cheers Pin-Seeker, It does work, don't get me wrong. However, having got down to 6 this year, I've set my sights on making it to CAT1, something I never thought possible. To do that, I need to improve my iron play, particularly in the shorter clubs wedges-7iron. My impact is just not solid enough to get consistent results, particulary when there is wind, which we get a fair bit of at out place.