Practicing Until I Can't Get It Wrong

Written on 3-10-21.

        We head to Lakewood tomorrow!  After a year and about a half, we will get to hug Mom and Dad.  It is going to be a joyous reunion, and I am sooo looking forward to it.

I just talked with Joe tonight, also, and we hope to get to see them on Friday possibly, but Mom and Dad are definitely the priority.

We are getting ready as much as we can tonight, so we can have a fairly early exit tomorrow.  B is going to work the full amount of her half-day, but then we are on the road.  Part of my To Do List tomorrow is dropping off my clubs at Don’s to have my new GGA grips put on, and that is a nice transition to write about golf, so…

On to golf…

Like I just wrote, I am leaving my clubs with Don while we are in Lakewood, so they will be all done when I return.  I plan on bringing my equipment for doing the drills over there, since I won’t be playing golf.  I have my version of the ABT, the Single Plane Trainer, a golf glove, and my Perfect Impact Club.  I am bringing my putter and a few golf balls.  I even packed a jump rope for some cardio, since we will be away from our treadmill.  I hope to do two days of cardio, one lower-body workout, and two days of completing all of the drills from the 14 Day Perfect Practice Plan, minus going to the range, of course.  That is plenty.  I am not going to bring all of that stuff and then not use it.

I am watching a webinar on the single plane swing called...

Plane Talk with Todd Graves tonight.  I chose to keep my membership going for one more month, so that ends the extra money I had for my birthday and helping the Edgertons move out of the cabin home.  I e-mailed Chandler to let him know I haven’t gotten any feedback from the last videos I sent in.  We will see what he says about that.  Paul Tessler, a coach there, asked me to send in another video of the “chopstick” drill after I worked on it a little bit, so I did.  I even included props to help me like the impact bag and a shaft that went through my belt hoops to show my much my pelvis is rotating.  I plan to use the membership to the limit in the remaining month.

Todd is talking about how he has his coaches help the students at their academies tonight.  He is listing the keys to the proper sequence.  Here they are…

1. Address and Grip

2. Positions (including the difficult finish position)

3. Transition

4. Sequence (Speed comes in here)

5. Finish

This is the Moe Norman single plane swing model, and this is the formula.  He says this is insider information.  He is saying people don’t do it one step at a time like this.  They just try it with a little bit of info, but they are already swinging away from the start.  If you work in the order stated above, it will be easier.  Actually, that is what happened to me.  I did my best to learn it on my own, but I needed the proper feedback at all of those steps/positions.

He now teaches address and then grip.  He learned about five years ago that was a better way to teach.  Isn’t the body position just as important as the position of the hands on the club?  How about the shoulder?  Moe called it orientation.  Tilt first, orient your body, and then put your hand on the club.  Get your body into position first, put your arm into a line, a little bit of rotation with your lead hand, and you’re good.  

He is saying the lateral shift of the pelvis is the destroyer of the golf swing.  Hey, I do that!  That’s not good.  I need to not move my trail leg at all in the back swing.  I need to continue to brace around that leg to help with my rotation of my upper body.

The foot position affects the knee position which affects the pelvis position.  Get the backswing correct, and you can push toward the lead hip the right way.  He is saying “stable trail leg” a lot.  If I get that right, the transition will be in the proper order.  

The separation of the lower body and the upper body is what creates the speed.  He is moving on to the braking system, and he feels coaches do not talk about this enough in the golf swing.  His first move from position 2 is the push into his lead knee, the bump forward with the lead hip.  

“Amateurs practice until they get it right.  Professionals practice unit they can’t get it wrong; where it’s the only thing they know.”