Practicing the golf swing in slow motion.

[Kevblue]

Anyone ever tried this with any success? I’ve just been reading Butch Harmon saying it’s by far the most effective way to make a swing change and Tiger Woods used to do it all the time.

I have to say, my slow motion swing makes me look like Ernie Els. My full swing not so much!

 

[Maninblack4612]

I do this, I get to the top, hold it & try to fix in my mind how it feels. I can also swing down from this stationary position & hit a really good shot. I find it a very useful exercise.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Think Crossfield has mentioned it more than once, along with doing drills in the mirror. I have done it, especially after a lesson to reinforce and feel the changes made. The issue I have is that its easy to do it in slow motion and feel the right positions but harder (for me at least) to replicate those at full speed

 

[Parsaregood]

Used to spend hours doing this, yes it does work, if you think your going in slow motion go slower still and slower still. The theory is it helps build muscle memory in a shorter time span than if you done the same number of swings at normal speed

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Used to spend hours doing this, yes it does work, if you think your going in slow motion go slower still and slower still. The theory is it helps build muscle memory in a shorter time span than if you done the same number of swings at normal speed

Without being contentious, but is there really such a thing as "muscle memory" in the golf swing? I can work on drills and swing in slow motion and hit ideal positions, but under real time situations on the course there are days when I can't feel my swing at all and never hit correct positions, have poor tempo and the technique is lacking

 

[larmen]

I am taking lessons again and I do that on the range 'all the time'. Well, I do my check points, then go after the ball, and once I hit a bad one or a couple of bad ones in a row I check my points again. I also check when I change clubs. It makes me realise what I forget.
What I can't do is hitting it in slow-motion or from a stop point. I know I am supposed to do that in drills, but I don't manage it (yet).

 

[Wolf]

Without being contentious, but is there really such a thing as "muscle memory" in the golf swing? I can work on drills and swing in slow motion and hit ideal positions, but under real time situations on the course there are days when I can't feel my swing at all and never hit correct positions, have poor tempo and the technique is lacking

Not contentious at all Homer I could go into how the muscle is made up of things like myofibrils that are essentially different thickness proteins covered in a sheath know as the epimysium etc and so on, but not a single muscle in the body has a memory or the ability to remember something. What real muscle memory is, is actually based on the repetition of movement and the Peripheral and Central nervous systems firing the same neurons over and over again to create repeatable patterns. That memory comes from the brain and subconscious movement patterns becoming increasingly normal because the feedback from the CNS and PNS feedback to the brain... Its one big loop of electrical stimulus effectively...

That's the DeChambeau science bit out of the way, back to the OP.

I was listening to Harvey Penicks little red book on aubidle on my drive to work last week and he was saying how he recommended do this over and over again to create the repeatable feeling you get and even do it with a heavier club to.

It's something that works for me very well and helps me to not rush my actual swing.

 

[Parsaregood]

Without being contentious, but is there really such a thing as "muscle memory" in the golf swing? I can work on drills and swing in slow motion and hit ideal positions, but under real time situations on the course there are days when I can't feel my swing at all and never hit correct positions, have poor tempo and the technique is lacking

Yes there is such a thing as muscle memory, once you can do something a certain way without thinking consciously about it that is when you have ingrained the movement. If you don't hit 'correct positions' one day it's unlikely you ever hit them, just more likely on another day you are able to time better whatever swing flaws you might have to produce better results, probably why you feel you can't 'feel' your swing. Hogan always said if your mechanics were good enough, you wouldn't feel anything had to be timed, the harder he hit it, the straighter it went.

 

[Parsaregood]

Not contentious at all Homer I could go into how the muscle is made up of things like myofibrils that are essentially different thickness proteins covered in a sheath know as the epimysium etc and so on, but not a single muscle in the body has a memory or the ability to remember something. What real muscle memory is, is actually based on the repetition of movement and the Peripheral and Central nervous systems firing the same neurons over and over again to create repeatable patterns. That memory comes from the brain and subconscious movement patterns becoming increasingly normal because the feedback from the CMS and PNS feedback to the brain... Its one big loop of electrical stimulus effectively...

That's the DeChambeau science bit out of the way, back to the OP.

I was listening to Harvey Penicks little red book on aubidle on my drive to work last week and he was saying how he recommended do this over and over again to create the repeatable feeling you get and even do it with a heavier club to.

It's something that works for me very well and helps me to not rush my actual swing.

Best golf book ever written in my opinion, the guy was golfs first psychologist and also a great teacher

 

[Wolf]

Best golf book ever written in my opinion, the guy was golfs first psychologist and also a great teacher

I'm inclined to agree with you, I remember reading it years ago as a junior I thi k around the time he passed and Crenshaw won his 2nd Masters. Since taking the game up again I wanted to read again but went the audio book route. I like how his teachings are more philosophies and relate to the individual and nor teaching a specific type of Swing.

 

[inc0gnito]

Nick Faldo (via Mark Immelmann) said if could do it all again he’d spend more time in the mirror

 

[AMcC]

I think it is a great idea, then gradually build up the speed

A similar analogy I heard was for Formula 1 drivers to cycle around the track to get a better feel for the contours, geometry etc.

 

[Dibby]

Probably another opinion considered contentious, but here goes:

Regarding slow motion, this can help understand an initial change, but ultimately you need to keep speeding it up, it's easy to move correctly with unlimited time to adjust, which is why it helps to feel a new movement, but why slow motion alone won't transfer to a normal swing without other work.

However, I think the real issue with learning and teaching golf is the obsession with positions, and particularly positions of body parts, over movement and outcomes. When humans learn most motor patterns, they do it through having a goal and adjusting to that goal. No one learnt to walk or run by consciously considering how much ankle, knee and hip flexion they had at certain points during the stride. They set a goal of "I am at point A, I want to get to point B" they then trialled and errored until this happened. Golf needs to be the same, we know we need a certain swing path, angle of attack and face angle at impact (plus a bit of swing speed). If we have a tool like a trackman to give us feedback on this, we can subconsciously adapt and try new things until we start producing the results we want. For the most part, if you generate good impact numbers, the swing itself won't look bad with regard to fundamentals. In order to do this, we need to understand what needs to be happening at impact and have feedback on this, the ball although eventually the ultimate indicator because it's what matters when we play, is not the best indicator for a non-elite player, as a good or bad result can occur due to a matter of millimetres, regardless of overall motion. Take a shank, for example, a heel hitter could barely miss the hosel and the result would be much better than an impact that was 1mm more towards the heel, yet in reality, both swing motions are just as faulty.

Final point, for some reason hand-eye coordination gets massively overlooked in golf. I assume this is due to the static ball and people thinking if you swing perfectly robotically you will return to it. In reality, during a round, apart from off the tee, you have to deal with so many different lies, that hand-eye coordination is essential to make the minor adjustments. When practising, as well as simulating course conditions, you should also train just stepping up to a ball and hitting it, or have a friend roll it to you and hit it. This has the added bonus of making it less of a static motion, the swing will become more natural.

I think sports science is slowly catching up in golf and maybe we will see more non-traditional learning ideas becoming more mainstream.

 

[Deleted member 23344]

This has the added bonus of making it less of a static motion, the swing will become more natural.

This is an interesting point. I used to play cricket years ago and was a fairly good club cricketer. A bowler could be bowling to me at 80 miles an hour and I could send the ball to the boundary with a range of instinctive shots ... but I have trouble hitting a stationary golf ball with sufficient consistency. OK, it’s a smaller ball and a smaller bat, but it’s not going at 80 miles an hour. Could never understand this!

 

[Dibby]

This is an interesting point. I used to play cricket years ago and was a fairly good club cricketer. A bowler could be bowling to me at 80 miles an hour and I could send the ball to the boundary with a range of instinctive shots ... but I have trouble hitting a stationary golf ball with sufficient consistency. OK, it’s a smaller ball and a smaller bat, but it’s not going at 80 miles an hour. Could never understand this!

In layman terms, you subconsciously know your body can calculate where the position of the ball will be when you swing the bat at it, so you trust this to happen. If you thought heavily about mechanics whilst you tried to do it, you probably would have a long time to ponder those mechanics as you walked back to the pavilion.

Similar to when you drive a car, most people after passing their tests will forget braking distances, but can still pull their car up to a stop line with reasonable accuracy, because they let it happen.

I'm not saying mechanics have no purpose in golf, that's patently untrue, but they should be for fine-tuning, rather than developing a basic motion.

 

[Deleted member 23344]

That all makes sense ... and I can see the analogy with driving and never needing to think about what your feet and hands are doing. Just wish I could get more instinctive playing golf.

 

[garyinderry]

Best golf book ever written in my opinion, the guy was golfs first psychologist and also a great teacher

I have that book sitting waiting on me. Going to get started here tonight.

 

[chrisd]

My teaching pro is a young lad and very keen on mirror drills