Centered Swing Part 2

When talking about the mechanics of the golf swing, what I am really trying to do is simplify the process of hitting a golf ball. With the couple of lessons that I have taken in my lifetime, the instructors talked lots about hand position, locked arms and wrists, and a couple of other biomechanical positions that did not come naturally to my body.

Having a B.A. in Kinesiology (the study of human movement), the unnaturalness of the process never made sense to me. When the body is aligned and centered the process of swinging a club and hitting the ball should come easily. However, if you have been struggling in mastering the mechanics of the swing, letting go of what you either know or assume can be very complicated. This is where breathing comes in. By making the breath the focus of movement you can short-circuit the thinking process of the swing and let the body move in the manner to which it was designed.

This is why centering is so important to the game of golf. When you’re centered, your core muscles are actively engaged and ready to create movement. In preparation for finishing the mechanics of a centered golf swing, let’s take a quick look at core alignment and activation when addressing the ball.

Establishing the “V”

When standing centered at address, if you move from the belly button outward towards each shoulder you have a “V.” The raised diaphragm squares and drops the shoulders while engaging the core muscles. If you are truly moving from center you should be able to maintain your “V” at all times. Any movement that distorts or breaks your “V” is considered to be outside of center. The goal during any activity is to monitor and protect your “V” at all times.

The Backswing

Standing at address in the centered position, take a couple centered breaths while relaxing your body. Initiate your back swing by turning your back shoulder slowly so that your “V” remains intact at all times. Ideally you’ll rotate until your front shoulder is directly under your chin.

Understanding your flexibility in rotation is essential here. Anytime you rotate too far, your “V” will collapse and your head will move off of the ball. When this happens you change your contact point, causing the club face to be less then centered when it contacts the ball, causing a misdirected shot.
If you have maintained your center throughout the back swing you should be able to pause at the top of the swing and take an open flowing breath. If at the top of your backswing your breath is limited you have either rotated too far, so you’re now out of center, or you have over tightened muscles in anticipation of hitting the ball.

If you are finding it difficult to relax your body during the backswing, return to addressing the ball and take several centered breaths. Practice rotating into your backswing and relaxing the body until you can easily hold the back swing and take open flowing breathes.

Downswing

Having completed the backswing, you should be centered with your front shoulder under your chin and your head directly over the ball. Being centered you should be able to hold this position comfortably.
To initiate the down stroke, pull the front shoulder back, rotating around the axis of your spine. (You should be able to maintain your “V” throughout contacting the ball) Keep your head over and your eyes on the ball so that you can actually see your club make contact with the ball.

The rotation that pulls your club through the hitting zone will cause your hips to rotate so that your weight shifts over your front leg with a balanced and centered stance. Your navel will be pointed at your target as you hold your follow through with your head up and eyes on the ball.

Conclusion
The way I have described the swing here makes the most sense to me not only biomechanically, but also as an organic movement. As I continue to experiment and practice, I might offer suggestions and ideas on further modifications. Until then, I suggest you play with the ideas I have shared here, making adjustments based on your individual strengths and weaknesses.

Centering, In Golf and Elsewhere

In Jerry's piece from Monday, he built on his earlier descriptions of centering to describe for the first time what centering might look like in the context of golf. Did you notice that nowhere in there did he speak in the language we've gotten so used to seeing when communicating golf instruction? There was no, "Stand with your feet here, put your hands in this position." The instruction for finding the right stance was, "Does the breath flow or do it not?" The instruction for finding the right grip was, "Does the breath flow or does it not?" In many ways, that's all you need to know about the proper stance and the proper grip.

Jerry taught me centering in early September, 2015, and the more I practice the deeper the practice goes.

Here's a list of activities in which I try to practice staying in center:

  • All of them.

Which isn't to suggest that I succeed all or even most of the time. I regularly lose center. As often as I am able to remember, I check in via the breath: In my current position, can I bring the breath up smoothly all the way through my body? If not, what kind of adjustments can I make to bring more freedom and flow to the breath?

When I say that I practice centering in every activity I participate in, I mean it. Let's say I'm writing. Maybe I hit a point where the flow of words stops. I get stuck. That's a good time to notice how long it's been since I checked in with the breath. The feedback of what I feel through that practice will tell me something about what's going on with my body and my energy. Often, just taking a moment to re-center will get the words flowing again.

And how does this apply to golf? Golf is an especially difficult activity to stay centered in. Unlike, say, soccer, in which the play flows and flows, in golf, the vast majority of time you are between shots. The mind has plenty of time to start to wander. You start thinking about how you feel about your previous shot, and about your playing partner's previous shot, and what you hope to do with your next shot, and how if you hit the next one well you might be on the green in regulation, which will set you up for a birdie putt, and the next thing you know you are mentally buying everyone beers in the clubhouse after the round, celebrating the best score of your life. Which is to say, you are walking along in a story of your own creation, rather than being actually physically present in the moment. And then when you come up to actually physically hit your shot, is it any wonder that you find yourself scattered, unable to focus, with your mind chattering away?

So what do you do about it? You center.

Your mind has wandered. Okay, fine. Now then: where is the breath? Notice the breath in the body. Can you breathe in such a way that it flows freely through the body?

You can.

As you meet center, the gibbering thoughts begin to fall away. You return to the present moment.

And where else can you hit the ball from, but the present moment?

TTW- Centering For Golf

I have used the last couple of posts to begin teach you, the fine art of centering. As I wrote earlier in this project, I’m a fitness consultant who specializes in conscious movement and medical exercise. In the gym, I teach my clients to center during our very first session. When teaching a new exercise or movement the first instruction is always to ‘find center.’

To be centered is to be balanced. Balanced in mind, body, breath and heart. To be centered is to be whole. Wherever you find yourself reading this, take a moment to find center. Take a couple of breaths, feel the breath rise through your body. Now that you’re centered, let’s talk about a centered golf swing.

The Centered Golf Swing

Stance:

Center. Begin by relaxing your feet and slightly raising your diaphragm. Take a nice easy breath from the bottom up. Notice your breath as it rises through your body. Now, focus your exhale down through your body into the ground. Breathing in this manner helps to ground you physically and enhances your feeling of being balanced.

Grip:

Before we talk about gripping the golf club, grab the club you feel most comfortable using while playing.

Center. Let’s begin by taking your normal grip and taking a centered breath. Does your breath rise? If it does, you’re perfect! Don’t change anything. If you find that your breath catches and doesn’t rise freely, begin by relaxing your hands. Take another breath. Does it rise? If it does, notice where your hands are located on the club and the pressure in your grip. Practice holding the club in this manner.

If not, begin slightly repositioning your hands until you find a grip that allows you to breathe fully and easily. Once you have a grip that allows for an open flowing breath, practice gripping your clubs in this manner. This will be your new grip moving forward.

Addressing the ball:

Center over the ball with your new centered grip. Take a couple of nice open breaths. Are you relaxed standing there? Do you feel balanced and centered? If so, you’re ready to start your swing. If not, re-adjustment until you’re comfortably centered.

When addressing the ball you should be fully relaxed with an open flowing breath. If you have tension in your body or your breath doesn’t rise, take a step back and re-center. The quickest way to a consistent, reproducible swing is to start it from center.

Between now and my next post, practice the components of the swing that I have addressed this week. Before we begin talking about the rest of the swing, we need to be comfortable at address with a consistent grip.

Baseline

Now that I am healthy enough again to swing a club fully, I wanted to establish a baseline for my current abilities. I went to the practice range last Saturday with the intent to hit a few balls with every club in the bag, in order to see what I could and could not do.

I started with the putter. They've filled the holes on the putting and chipping greens (winterizing?), so I had to improvise. I keep a loop of cord in my bag to use as a landing target when chipping and putting. I pulled it out and practiced putting into it, starting close and moving further away bit by bit.

I found I was tending to hit a bit long. However, it was kind of hard to judge my attempts as "failures," per se: I was imagining a hole in the middle of the loop, and a lot of the shots I hit through the loop passed right through that imagined hole. It's hard to see a sunk putt as a failure.

I didn't practice beyond medium distance (~15-20 feet) but I was pleased with how I did. My putts tended to be on line and rarely far enough away that I wouldn't expect to sink the come-back putt. When I wasn't on line, it was pretty easy to figure out exactly what I'd done wrong. All in all, I think I've got a good putting base to work with.

Next I practiced a few chips and pitches. My best chips and pitches put my ball within easy one-putt distance. My good chips and pitches leave me a reasonable two-putt. On my bad shots, which comprise about a quarter of my attempts, I either decelerate through the ball and strike it feebly so it dribbles forward only a few feet, or else I top it so it skitters all the way across the green and into the rough on the other side. Thus, my worst shots improve my position not at all. Again, that's very useful to know as a baseline--it's clear what I need to work on.

I also noticed something important about the difference between "best" and "good." Here's what a "good" chip looks like: I visualize the shot I want to hit. I see the landing point of the ball and the roll. I hit the ball. It lands within inches of the target point, but then either rolls too far or not far enough. It's hard to see that as anything less than a very successful shot. My "failure" there is one of imagination, of experience. The distance between that shot and a better one is a better ability to visualize exactly what the ball is going to do once it hits the target point and starts rolling. I don't know a path between where I am and improvement on that front without more experience to point to a more "correct" imagination of what's going to happen.

After chipping, I went to the range. I started with a pitching wedge and moved to longer and longer clubs. Here's what I learned: I can hit a wedge and a nine-iron. Each went straight, on my aimed trajectory, with a nice loft. Though maybe they didn't travel quite as far as I'd like, they were good shots.

Anything longer than a nine-iron I couldn't hit at all. I even offered myself a 100% success rate by defining success simply as making contact (useful for this exercise but not likely to lead to much improvement in my game). Amusingly, I actually didn't manage 100% success by that metric--I took one wild swing and missed the ball entirely. As that was pretty funny, I didn't think of it as too much of a failure--anything that keeps me smiling and laughing in an athletic endeavor I'm happy to define as a kind of success.

My best shots, after the nine-iron, were with my five- and three-woods, which flew straight with good trajectories, but traveled no more than 150 yards. I found the lack of power pretty demoralizing.

I finished by hitting about a dozen shots with driver. The only conclusion I can draw is that I don't know anything about hitting driver.

So as of early November 2015, that describes my baseline abilities. Based on that, I should be able to play a full 18-hole round, score no more than 170, and then throw my clubs into the pond in frustration.

In case anyone thought that Jerry and I had set this project up to be a quick success, now you know better. At my current level, not only do I play poorly, I won't even have fun.

Now it's time to get to work.

TTW – Standing Center

Last week I went into detail about centering while seated. I hope that you spent the week practicing and experiencing the feeling associated with an open flowing breath. Moving forward, that sensation of flow and balance that comes with centering will be critical in improving our golf games.

During practice sessions, Ben and I have been working on various breathing techniques to help create an open flowing golf swing. That process starts with centering.

Standing Center:

Stand with feet hip to shoulder width apart.

Relax your feet by wiggling your toes and softening your arches. When you relax your feet your knees will automatically relax. It is physically impossible to have soft feet and tight knees.

Now gently raise your diaphragm – notice how your shoulders drop when your do this. (Your diaphragm is the tissue that separates your heart and lungs from your internal organs. It sits directly under your rib cage. To raise it gently lift your rib cage and you will feel it rise.)

Now, take a nice easy breath up through your hips and into your upper chest and shoulders. – Did your breath rise? Try it again.

Notice your breath as it moves up through your pelvis, past your belly button, through the diaphragm and into your upper chest. Now, take another easy breath. Allow yourself the luxury of feeling what an open flowing breath feels like.

When your breath flows freely from your pelvis into your upper chest and shoulders you are CENTERED.
When CENTERED you are in a state of perfect posture, with your body aligned from the soles of your feet through the top of your head.

Over the next week practice standing centered. After taking several centered breathes, close your eyes and visualize hitting a golf ball. Feel the sense of balance and flow created by centering while visualizing your swing.

Toward Effective Practice in Golf

We've adequately laid the groundwork to begin to discuss what solid, well-directed golf practice might look like.

I can tell you, first of all, what it doesn't look like: it doesn't look like what so many people do when they go to practice. A lot of people go to the range, get a bucket, plop it down at one of the tees, perhaps do a few desultory stretches, and then pull out their driver and see how far they can hit the ball.

Now, I get the appeal--it's pretty satisfying to see that thing fly 200 or 250 yards. (Not that that happens much for me.) But is this effective practice?

Let's back up, and start by asking, what are you trying to accomplish with your practice session?. This may seem rather obvious, but the design for your session will depend on your answer. If all you care about is hitting your drives as far as possible, then great, grab your driver and whale away. Maybe all you care about is reaching the green in as few shots as possible, but don't care about your ultimate score. In that case, there's no need to practice chipping or putting.

But if, instead, your goal is to play better--and I'll define "play better" as most people would, meaning "shoot a lower score"--then let's never forget: every stroke, no matter how long or how short, counts the same. A 250-yard drive is scored the same as a 20-foot chip or a three-foot putt. What does that mean for the path to improvement?

The general consensus is that the average golfer shoots around 100 for 18 holes. So the average golfer plays an average hole by getting on the green in one over regulation and then two- or three-putting. Let's divide up those 100 shots over an 18-hole round. It might look something like this:

  • 14 drives, at most. (If you're hitting driver on the par 3s, you either need a different approach or to find an easier course.)
  • A fairway wood or longer iron on most of the par 4s and 5s, totaling 14 shots.
  • A shorter iron off the tee on the par 3s and as the third shot on the par 5s, totaling eight shots.
  • A chip onto the green on almost every hole (18 shots)
  • A total of 46 putts (which equals eight two-putts and ten three-putts).

What does that tell us about our practice sessions? Just follow the math. We should be practicing putting almost as much as everything else put together, and more than three times as much as we practice hitting driver. (46-to-14 is a nearly 3.3-to-1 ratio.) We should be chipping and hitting short irons about twice as much as we hit driver. And longer fairway shots should get about as much attention as our drives.

Yet these ratios don't seem to match how most people practice. Not even close.

If you practice with these numbers in mind, it might not be as thrilling as whacking driver over and over again, but it's likely to have a fairly dramatic impact on your game.

Centering

Over that last few weeks I have shared some basic tips on centering and breathing. AS Ben and I begin moving into the nuts and bolts of this program, I thought it essential to explore the idea of centering in greater depth. The following excerpt is taken from my upcoming book on health and fitness. As you read, practice the techniques that are being described.

Wherever you find yourself reading this – take a minute, notice where your feet are. Notice your posture. Where are your shoulders in relation to your hips? Is your breath deep or shallow? Are you breathing consciously or unconsciously? How aware are you of your surroundings?

Now take a minute, put your feet firmly on the ground hip to shoulder width apart.

Have your knees bent 90 degrees.

Sit-up so your shoulders are directly over your hips.

Now gently raise your diaphragm – notice how your shoulders drop when your do this. (Your diaphragm is the tissue that separates your heart and lungs from your internal organs. It sits directly under your rib cage. To raise it gently lift your rib cage and you will feel it raise.)

Relax your feet by wiggling your toes and letting your arches soften. As your feet relax your legs will relax.

Now, take a nice easy breath up through your hips and into your upper chest and shoulders. – Did your breath raise? Try it again.

Notice your breath as it moves up through your pelvis, past your belly button, through the diaphragm and into your upper chest. Now, take another easy breath. Allow yourself the luxury of feeling what an open flowing breath feels like.

When your breath flows freely from your pelvis into your upper chest and shoulders you are CENTERED.

When CENTERED you are in a state of perfect posture. Aligned from the soles of your feet through the top of your head.

Practicing centering while sitting is perfect for our purposes. Over the next few weeks I’ll shift things to standing centered and applying it to the golf swing.

What Not to Do

Just because I know how to practice well doesn't mean that I practice well. Let me share a story of a session that was a perfect example. Interestingly, I had a conversation with Jerry before I started my practice session that should have given me the clues I needed to practice well, but I ignored them until it was too late.

It happened about a month ago, during the time I couldn't swing a golf club because of my shoulder. I had to do something to keep sane and active, so I was working on my tennis game.

I was trying to groove my groundstrokes to a new level, so I went and hit against the practice wall at the courts at the Rec Center where Jerry works.

The session went okay for a while. I was practicing my one-handed backhand, trying to hit with consistently good racquet preparation, working to generate reasonable power and, important for my development, topspin. (I tend to be very flat off the backhand side, and if I don't work on this the backhand will always be a struggle.)

I was hitting against the wall and in general I was trying to hit back to myself, shots that would be essentially down the line on court, so as to not have to move too much. I was trying as much as possible to make the need to react and move and set up my feet and center and breathe happen easily, so that I could focus on a good, well-prepared swing with a full swing-path. As the rallies would go on, the power would kind of ramp up, my control would get a little bit less, and I would find myself moving myself side-to-side, which was fun in its own way but ultimately led to more frequent errors. After a while the quality of my rallies started to decline, and I started to get a little frustrated. That was when I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Jerry before I started the session.

He had been talking about his Sunday racquetball game. He told me that during his last practice session he'd been "crushing" the ball (he was unsurprisingly pleased by that), and that during his match on Sunday he had been hitting similarly well--for a while, anyway. All of the sudden his shot quality disappeared and he started missing. For a while he couldn't figure out why and then he realized he was fatigued, so he wasn't getting the same movement and proper set-up and drive from his legs.

And then I was able to reflect that the day before I had played soccer for the first time since I injured myself, and though I was on the field for less than an hour, I hadn't played for three weeks and during that time had exercised very little. As a result, my fitness had dropped off somewhat, and so I was more fatigued than usual given the effort I'd put in. All of which pointed to this conclusion: maybe instead of ignoring it, I should actually feel the fatigue, and then break out of my obsessive must-hit-must-practice tendencies and, hey here's an idea, stop practicing, before the efficacy of the endeavor falls all the way to zero or below.

Makes sense, right?

Except what I did instead was practice serves for the next thirty or forty minutes. Will you be surprised when I tell you that it didn't go well, and I mostly missed and I got really frustrated and, instead of stopping, which is what I should have done, I kept hitting and kept hitting because I stubbornly didn't want to end in a bad string of serves. What finally got through this brick-like skull of mine was the realization that if I'm practicing while deeply fatigued I am essentially practicing to hit the ball badly, and that's not really likely to make me a better tennis player, is it?

TTW- Small Plate Solutions

I was meeting with Ben prior to my last post and we were planning, talking and just hanging out a bit. He reminded me of a story that I had shared with him over a year ago. It seems relevant to what we are trying to do here, so I thought I would share it with you.

Quite a few years ago, I had received a gift of some very beautiful pottery dishes. I really liked them but they were really big, almost twice the size of a standard dinner plate. So without too much thought, the old dishes were donated to charity and the new dishes were put into use. About a month later, I realized that I had gained some weight. Now, I don’t weigh myself often and my weight has been pretty consistent for the last 20 years, so I got on the scale and sure enough I had gained about 10 pounds.

Luckily, I know a really good fitness consultant, and started keeping a food journal like I always have my clients do under these circumstances. The problem became quite obvious after a couple days of journaling – I was eating too much. Interestingly enough, my habits had not changed during the last month. I was eating what I typically ate, and my exercise habits were the same. The only real change that had occurred in my life were the new dishes. After thinking about it for a while, I went out and bought new, normal sized, dishes and donated the pottery to charity.

You see, I was raised in a military family with 5 children. There was always enough food, but there was never any extra. Therefore, you ate the food that was put on your plate. Officially, that made me a member of the “clean your plate club.” Having been raised that way, I have continued that behavior into adulthood.

Cleaning my plate had never posed a problem for me until I was given those BIG plates. Because the plate was bigger, apparently so were my portions, and larger portions equals too many calories, which over a month or so, leads to weight gain. By switching to a smaller plate, I was better able to control my food intake and my weight returned to normal within a couple months.

Over the years, I have shared that story with many clients. The usual response is, “couldn’t you just take smaller portions or just leave some food on your plate?” Now, both of those are really reasonable choices except for the fact that I really like my plate to appear full and I have been cleaning my plate for the better part of 50 years now. That’s a habit that is very strongly ingrained into my brain. So, I could fight 50 years of learned behavior or I could buy smaller plates.

When I shared this with Ben, I didn’t realize the affect it would have on him. While we were talking yesterday he told me about the phrase “small plate solutions,” which he had coined after that initial discussion. I don’t want to put words into his mouth but I took it to mean that when making behavioral changes; rather than change the core of who we are, by knowing ourselves well, we can simply accept who we are and change some of our circumstances and create the positive change we were hoping to make.

Now, I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with the Training Tiger Woods program. Well during this training program we will be bumping into many behavioral patterns. Some will be completely ingrained and others can be solved by applying “small plate solutions.”

Between now and my next post, keep centering and breathing.

Principles of Practice via Classical Music Techniques, Part 2: Rehearsal

In my last piece, I spoke about the techniques I used to practice problem areas in musical pieces I worked on. I closed by mentioning that solving those problems out of context was not the same thing as successfully putting the solution into play. Recontextualizing the solution was a completely different skill. The process I used to achieve that recontextualizing I've chosen to call rehearsal.

Simply trying to plug the problem section back into the piece didn't work. I'd either make mistakes in sections I considered "solved" (especially as the problem section approached) or else all of my practice would fall apart once I got into that section.

Rehearsing entailed properly setting up the section where the challenge lay. I'd go back a certain number of measures before the challenging part and play up until and through that section. I'd aim for a certain momentum before I reached the section in question. Note, by the way, that "momentum" and "tempo" aren't synonyms. Generally I rehearsed at a tempo substantially lower than performance tempo, and often lower than what I had attained as my practice tempo. What I sought was the confidence and smoothness that momentum brings. In essence, the lead-in was almost a ritual to prepare myself for the problem section. Over time, this process brought the problem section back into the rest of the piece. It smoothed out the break between "stuff I can comfortably play" and "stuff I struggle with."

Sometimes at the end of my practice sessions, I'd go back and rehearse pieces that were already solidly in my repertoire. Optimally, I'd play them start to finish, but with the same approach I outlined above, that is, trying to create a certain momentum. These days, I might describe that process by saying that I was practicing grooving success.

And here is where I have to admit that, in music, I neglected that aspect. Practicing problem areas I could handle. Rehearsing the transition into a problem area, sure. But the path into learning to make actual music with my music was a real weakness of mine, if that makes sense. I sought technical perfection and would focus on that. Practice dominated my practice sessions, to the detriment of my pleasure in the endeavor and, ultimately, my greater success. And it's here that I really want to break with the past. Practice and rehearsal are wonderful and necessary, but at some point you have to perform, and at some point you have to play.