WATCH: How slow-motion training can lead to more power and consistency
Eddie Fernandes has made big changes to his swing (and his power and consistency have gone up) by mastering the key moves in slow motion before he speeds them up. Everyone should use this kind of slow motion training to make real changes to their swing!
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Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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geohogan
Dec 13, 2018 at 2:21 pm
The placebo effect works successfully more than 30 % of the time.
If that is good enough for most golf instructors, it will probably be good enough for you.
Then believe slow motion, internal focus on position of body parts will improve your golf swing and do it religiously. Placebo effect is more dependent upon doing it religiously
rather than repetitions. Amen.
shawn
Dec 10, 2018 at 5:20 pm
OK duffers… here’s the Hogan ‘secret’ to this slow motion drill. Before you can do a proper slow motion drill you must first have a proper fast motion swing. This slow motion ‘drill’ is useless to help learn the fast motion drill because the two are dynamically and neurally different. It only confirms you have a proper fast motion drill and may help mentally. Don’t waste your time if you think it will repair your faulty homemade swing. End of story.
shawn
Dec 10, 2018 at 11:00 am
Slow motion training does NOT lead to more power and consistency according to biomechanical research. So why do hack instructors promote such misleading information? Clickbait for the gullible?
Ray
Dec 9, 2018 at 10:07 pm
Looks amazing. Total Sadlowski in slow-mo. Amazing flexibility in that turn with no momentum to help. Impressive. Does he have the fast twitch to run in full speed??
shawn
Dec 10, 2018 at 5:15 pm
Good point, Ray, because this slow motion ‘drill’ is fraudulent and a show-off display of body control mimicking the golf swing. The neuromuscular pathways are not the same for slow and fast golf swings. So what’s the value of this ‘drill’ other than showing off to the uncoordinated ignorant m a s ses?
stevek
Dec 9, 2018 at 8:04 pm
Swinging slow motion has no relation to a fast swing because different muscles and neural pathways are used for each swing speed. So what is the value of swinging a golf club slowly? Now if he was slowly swinging a weighted steel rod that might be useful for muscle toning.
ogo
Dec 9, 2018 at 6:59 pm
Forum Swearbot Filter Alert: The filthy word “repe t i t ion” is deleted!!!!!!!!
ogo
Dec 9, 2018 at 4:53 pm
What a pile of utter rubbish being promoted by a couple of ignoramus ball beaters pretending to understand kinematics and kinetics and ingraining the neuromuscular system. They are biomechanical quacks!!!!
john jarosky
Dec 9, 2018 at 5:22 pm
Really ogo? Youtube ‘Ben Hogan Coleman video’. Mr Hogan did this exact drill for most of his career and then after.
ogo
Dec 9, 2018 at 6:54 pm
Okay, john…. how many repetitions per day and how many days must you do this slow-motion ‘training’ before it is engrammed into your neuromuscular system?
100 times daily for 100 days… for 10,000 repetitions maybe? As for Hogan, it appears this ‘drill’ was useless if he had to do it for most of his career.
ogo
Dec 9, 2018 at 6:56 pm
Okay, john…. how many repet i tions per day and how many days must you do this slow-motion ‘training’ before it is engrammed into your neuromuscular system? 100 times daily for 100 days… for 10,000 reps maybe? As for Hogan, it appears this ‘drill’ was useless if he had to do it for most of his career.
John Jarosky
Dec 10, 2018 at 10:49 am
The two guys on the video are sharing information they feel will help improve golfers. Its a fantastic drill for sequencing and club face awareness and why Ben Hogan practiced it for 50 plus years. That alone at least places some validity to what they are saying. Great…it’s not for you. Move on to the next article. Its not my place to say your comments are both arrogant and ignorant. I’m sure people can see that for themselves.
shawn
Dec 10, 2018 at 11:04 am
There is no proof that slow motion training will help golfers improve. Hogan’s swing must have been fragile if he used this ‘drill’ for 50 years, or he was an obsessive-compulsive neurotic doing useless habitual habits. The opinions of the two instructors is superficial and incomplete.
john jarosky
Dec 10, 2018 at 11:19 am
Shawn, fair enough and in a way really that is not my argument. Is there really ‘proof ‘ of anything when it comes to golf swing mechanics? The Hall of Fame is full of different backswings for example. My personal belief is if you believe something will work in your golf training, there is a very good chance you’ll see improvement. And this is one of those drills that has some merit at the very least. Would Ben Hogan have been Ben Hogan without this drill? Probably. The reaction of some people on a video that has had merit to one of the greatest players to ever play the game is quite humorous and makes the comments sometimes better than subject discussed.
shawn
Dec 10, 2018 at 5:04 pm
John says: “My personal belief is if you believe something will work in your golf training, there is a very good chance you’ll see improvement.”
But this slow motion ‘drill’ is not ‘training’. It’s useless repit i tion that looks good so it must be good. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You are invoking the “mind over matter” argument and that’s what most rec golfers with homemade swings believe if some unqualified instructor and a neurotic pro does it too. The video is innocent at best and unprofessional at worse, or both.
geohogan
Dec 13, 2018 at 2:12 pm
@john jarosky
One example of proof is Dr Gabrielle Wulf research corroborated by others in the her field, that external focus has positive results in motor skill performance
in comparison to internal focus(on body positions, fast or slow motion)
People dont realize, that the subconscious controls all complex movement, by a complex preprogram, built by billions of neurons. A singular intent(external focus) initiates each preprogram.