Prior to the training session
Initialy I didn’t expected to training this weekend. But after the Golf Course on Thursday, I thinked a lot about my technique and I had a few understanding that I wanted to testing on the practice range.
Those things come from observation of my technique on the golf course that I don’t like:
- My upper boddy is too active
- While my lower body doesn’t turn enough
So I started wondered, would it be possible to hit the ball while doing eveything I can to delay my upper body rotation.
Because as far as I am concern, I think I keep my upper body farily neutral during the downswing. Except may be for the downcock move during the transition.
So I started testing stuff in my appartement, to figure out a solution. And some Idea came up:
- Push-left and pull right shoulders during the transition while shifting weight to the left, keeping the sensation that the upper body is lock in full backswing position
- Push-left and pull right shoulders during the downswing and rotating my hips as much as I can until impact, having the sensation that my upper body retain everything until the release just happen, without me doing anything about it
So I decided to go on the range to test that. But my Whoop app, told me that I was still low on recovery as you can see
I decide to go there as relax as possible, only to hit wedge. Trying to keep my heart rate as low as possible. My goal was to not hit any shot with my heart rate above 100 bpm.
So let’s dive into the session.
During the practice session
- Let’s start with the technique part:
So I primarly hitted my Gap Wedge, then a few 7 Iron to finish.
I applyed what I was thinking about, I had bit of difficulty. It wasn’t very natural at first, but then I manage to apply it. What is strange is that I go the feeling to have less control over what the ball does.
I got less often dead straight shots. But on the other end I think my overall consistency has improved. Yes my good shots were less good but I didn’t acutaly had very bad shots. And I think for now this is the most important. Focusing on never made mistake by avoiding bad shots.
For Now good enough all the time is good enough.
Also I found that for now it’s more important that I am focusing on it during the downswing. And not so important during the transition.
After 20 balls or so of GW, I took my 7 Iron, for the last few balls that was left. I hit a few shots and suprisingly enough I was hitting push draw.
Don’t get me wrong, this is by far the trajectory that I like the most. But this was too much curve for a 7 Iron in my opinion. I like my Irons shots to be as close as possible to a straight shot.
So I started thinking. What could cause that ? I tought that my be during the transition, my arms was falling too far behind me. So I started focusing on keeping them in front of me.
As a result, I start pushing my shots consistently. So I started turning left more, like for hitting a fade while thinking about keeping my arms in front of me during the transition. And I got a perfect fade.
So what can I deduct from that ? My normal swing create a push draw and if I compensate I can create a perfect fade. And I start relise that it could be an actual exercice to work on my base swing.
So like a scientific, after an hypothesis you need to evalutate it. So I decide that if it we true, then the last few fade I hitted, had trained me to reduce my curve on my push draw, and so I was expected if I hit a normal shot, to have a push draw but with a lot less curve one it.
I made my swing, on my last ball. And I got the expected result, a perfect almost dead straigth shot with my 7 Iron. Very interesting.
Pretty happy with how this session went. But there is still something I am not satisfied about my swing. During the back I got the feeling that my hips are turning too much. This is something to analyse at home and start making some hypothesis on how to fix that.
- And now for the heart rate analysis:
Goal was reach, I got and average bellow 100bpm. But that was difficult. I am so used to have a very high heart rate during practice session, that changing habit is not that easy.
Each time I hit a shot my heart rate goes up about 10-20 bpm. So then I need to wait for a minute or tow in order to reach a normal state.
Each spike in heart rate you see on the graphe correlate with a shot, and the big one, correspond to shots I hitted before I took the time to reset after the last shot. like the one at 30min and the one around 40min.
I found it very interesting that I can have a summary of my session just by looking at my heart rate during it.
Something I wish to try next time, is to use the live mode of the application whop, to film myself on realtime and see the heart variation.
So that’s it for today see you next time 😉