Swinging shaft only

[Maninblack4612]

A recent video showed Joe Miller, long driving champ, swinging a shaft without a head as a means of developing a high speed swing. He explained that, obvious really, the faster you swing the club the higher the ball speed. Phil Mickleson was seen on Sky the other day on the practice ground doing exactly the same thing. I'd never heard of this before but I think I'll give it a try & see if it helps the muscles to work faster. There may be something in it because I know a few young, muscular players who don't seem to be able to hit it anything like as far as you'd think they could & the elite ladies prove that you don't need big muscles to hit it a long way.

 

[Capella]

Yeah, Peter Finch made me do this when I saw him for lessons a couple of years ago (I think we used an alignment stick instead of a shaft, but the effect is the same). You get a bit more of a whiplash effect that way, allowing you to feel and hear where the point of the highest acceleration in your swing is. If that comes to early, it doesn't matter much how fast you swing it, you have wasted your energy before the impact. So it is actually more helping to find your tempo than making the swing "faster"

 

[r0wly86]

A recent video showed Joe Miller, long driving champ, swinging a shaft without a head as a means of developing a high speed swing. He explained that, obvious really, the faster you swing the club the higher the ball speed. Phil Mickleson was seen on Sky the other day on the practice ground doing exactly the same thing. I'd never heard of this before but I think I'll give it a try & see if it helps the muscles to work faster. There may be something in it because I know a few young, muscular players who don't seem to be able to hit it anything like as far as you'd think they could & the elite ladies prove that you don't need big muscles to hit it a long way.

Interesting idea, not heard of that method before.

There's a lot of different types of muscle strength, which may sound strange. Generally there is strength, power, and mass. There are related but different and you can have a lot of one without having much of the others.

Muscle mass is just size i.e. body builders have a lot of muscle mass. Muscle mass is linked to strength but not as some people think completely dependent. You can relatively small muscle mass and a lot of strength which comes down to density rather than size.

Strength is what we would think, the ability to lift objects, that simple if you can squat 100kg you are stronger than someone who can squat 90kg.

Power is the ability to contract your muscles quickly in an explosive movement. Basketball players who can jump several feet of the ground and have a lot of power in their legs. As I said before you can have a lot of strength without necessarily mass, likewise you can have power without mass of strength.

We refer to this as the power/weight ratio which is why you can see some skinny people do quite ridiculous things.

Swinging a golf club is power move as I have explained it above. You are contracting your muscles in an explosive movement to bring the club through quickly. As you have said you have seen big strong guys not hit anywhere near where you'd have thought, this could be down to timing or it could be because they have a poor power/weight ratio.

So in essence if you want to train your muscles to deliver a faster club head then you need to train them to be powerful and explosive. The swing a shaft may do it, as may some exercises, generally we do plyometric exercises to create more power so in the upper body, clap push ups etc where you stretch the muscle down and then explode up as quickly as possible.

To be the absolute quickest you would need to work on strength and power

 

[Orikoru]

Not going to question the methods of pros but I'm surprised that that's any use. I would have thought without the weight of the head the swing would feel completely different anyway. i.e. I doubt my swing would even look the same without the head weight.

 

[Deleted member 21258]

I went though the speed training about 2.5 years ago and have posted about it on the forum a few times. Its works and gets you swinging faster for sure.

I reckon going back to my 30s looking at my carry distances I was swinging at mid to high 80s mph, then gave up golf, came back to golf alot fitter a decade later and was swinging at 90-92ish, then did speed training, got upto 105mph (over one winter, it just used to feel mental swinging that much faster and took me about 6-9 months to find okay dispersion again, also swung slightly slower so the speed ended up about 100mph). Must take the brain a lot of time to adjust to the new faster feelings(bit like driving on the motorway and then driving at 30mph). I am back upto 102-103 and it feels slow. I did no other things apart from swinging as hard(fast) as I could, one arm swings with a broken shaft and so on. Practise swings I can swing from 110 to 120mph, only twice recorded my personal record of 109mph with a ball, if only I could get my practise speed swings as my real swing

I did not do any other training or strength stuff. Was the most fun I have had in golf, gave me a complete buzz like a really hard workout does.

 

[pendodave]

Haven't seen the vid, but I recall from a crossfield vid that what his (jm) coach recommends is a speed stick/tour stick - it looks like a shaft, but has weight at the end. The weights can vary to allow speed and strength to be developed.

If you want to see it, I think it is the distance video in his perfect drive series - Lee Cox is really good.

 

[pendodave]

Just seen Darren's post. Lee Cox says the same - the best way to swing faster is to practice swinging faster!

 

[Trapdraw]

The things Joe Miller and Phil were using are super speed golf training aids, they are shafts with a weight in the end. They come as a set of 3 and I think one is 10% lighter than a driver another 5% lighter and the last is 5% heavier than the driver. There are drills to complete over the course of a few weeks. People say they are good and increase speed.

 

[Hobbit]

Apparently, there's speed muscles and there's strength muscles. Exercise the speed muscles, at speed, will increase the ability to generate more speed. Simples.

Conversely, look at a body builder. Absolutely stuffed with muscle but usually very slow runners. They've worked on different muscle sets.

 

[Dibby]

As said by a few before, people often confuse force and power, but they are not the same thing. Most people train in a gym to generate maximum force, this won't carry over so well to golf. If you train for power there will be more carryover for golf.

It's a myth that more muscle will make you slower or less flexible. Providing you train in the correct way, you can be big, strong and fast, you just have to focus on powerful movements like snatches or jumps. If you only ever do max force movements like deadlifts or squats, you will be able to generate a lot of force, but not apply it quickly.

Look at this guy, he is 105kg (16 1/2 stone) yet look how easily he moves over 180kg, how fast he moves to get underneath it, and how flexible he is whilst at his lowest position - if you are not convinced, try to get in that position with a broomstick or your driver to see how difficult it is without even having to support any weight.

[video=youtube_share;i-aj-Ce3ghQ]https://youtu.be/i-aj-Ce3ghQ[/video]

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Saw the Crossfield video as part of his Perfect Drive series and it makes sense. Not something I've ever tried (maybe I should). Looked at the Superspeed weighted sticks and blown away by how much they're charging. Over £100. No ta, not at that price or anything like it

 

[Jamesbrown]

I’ve had the shaft only drill coupled with the step through drill.
It does work, you will see gains.
Swing two clubs left handed and right handed as hard you can like 10 reps. You have to do this everyday though.

 

[Moquillo19]

Isn't it just like holding the shaft by the head and swinging the club upside-down to perfect the whoosh sound at the bottom of the swing? I warm up doing this.... Don't hit the ball a million miles but it gets out there.