So part of the reasons I started writing what happen in my training is to keep track of my thinking and emtions.
And this training… I just didn’t want to write about it. But aknowledging your emotion is important. Otherwise you start denialing what happened and rationalise.
So let’s be honest and talk about what happened
Things I thought I understood before training & Training Plan
The major things I thought to understand was about the transition. Where instead of waiting for the backswing to finish. I wanted to try to stop my backswing early to set the club as soon as possible. And then finishing the backswing during the transition by extenting my left arm to the sky while I am shifting my weight to the left.
Then I also made some new assumptions:
- Backswing: Set the club as early as possible as I shifting by to the left my weight
- Downswing: Keep my left arm behind my right know and hip on the way down
- Release: Keep rotating to keep bring the club more and more inside until it release by it self
So the training plan was simple I wanted to try that to either validate or unvalidate my assumptions.
Training session
- Unvalidation of the main assumption
Fail training … Not actualy, because understanding what not to do, might be as important as understanding what to do. Even tho you feel like you wasted your time.
What I am refering he is about this assumption: stopping the backswing early to then finishing is during the transition.
But that’s a mistake. Because during the transition we want to shift the mometum of the movement from up to down. But if during the transition, you just keep moving the upper body up as your lower body mode down. Yes you create a big strech but you are not switching the momentum.
Which when you enter in the downswing phase feel realy strange. The primary reason is that you break muscle integrity, which cause you to be in a very weak position. So when you try to accelearte during the downswing, you just can.
And this is what I felt, a complet inability to execute my downswing properly. I got weird and inconsistent ball flight.
- Rotation issue
There is also an other point that start to come to my awarness about the way I rotate.
I don’t know how to explain … But It’ s like I try to move my left hip away from the target as quickly as possible. which cause my left sid to over rotate. And also my left left to stay bent instead of extending.
And bascialy cause my upper body to rotate slitghlty over the top. and as a consequence, losing my lag early.
Those of course are just hypothesis to try to solve and issue that I have for a will not.
As you can see on the picture, I have my body that rotate a lot but my arm are trapped behind me. I am realy struggling to find the balance betwen rotating and keeping the lag.
Because in the past I tryed to solve it by keeping my body quiet and let my arms fall in from of me, but it didn’t work. That’s why I came back to learn to rotate more. But now I know the answer is else where.
And I think it’s in the was I rotate. My new assumption that I am going to test in the next training is to have a more inline rotation motion. What I mean by that is, instead of trying to rotate my left hip behind me which cause my overall body to over rotate, I am going to just try tu push back into the ground with my left leg 90° from the target line in a straight line.
Rotation while happend as a consequence. But that’s not going to be a conscience focus. Which will help to keep the upper body quiet to maintain lag longer on the way down.
Downswing Summary: Pull straight back the left hip, and push the right hip toward the target, while keeping my left arm behind the right kne and hip.
So it look a bit more like that:
Instead of like that:
As we can see his left hips is almost over the left feet, where mine is way behind.
- Feedback on my emotional state
Two things happen that I didn’t expected during this session:
- I was wrong – Didn’t see that coming :p
- I got upset about someone who asked me to move the camera so he can use the practice range spot where they were one just 10m futher
Let’s forgot about the second one and focus on the first one, which the most important.
I generaly consider my brain to be a figuring out machine, which is generaly right in regard of the current information available. But clearly that’s an ego things.
Because if I don’t have all the information and I am wrong. I can reject the responsability. Which is not a good thing. You should always be willing to take full responsability over your current circumstances.
So because I have this unrealistic image of myself, to be a man that can figure out anything. When I don’t, when I think I figure out something but actualy I didn’t, part of myself get uppset that I am not living up to the high standard I have put on myself.
It’s like I always say to myself that, “You should be the smartest”, “You should know the answer”, “How come are you that stupid”, … I put tremendous amount of pressure on myself to know the truth or discovering it quickly if I don’t.
All of that are self valuation issue. I see myself better that I am currently, therefore when reality kicks back, I start feeling strong negative emotions.
So this session hitted right in this spot, to trigger those emotions.
- Heart Rate
As a final thought, I let still look at my heart rate during this session
So during this session I manage to keep my heart rate in the intended range for optimal performance. But somehting interesting happen.
Because today I had a very high recovery score, has you can see.
Which primarly correlation, if I understood whoop techology well, to and efficient response of the symathetic and parasympathetic neural system.
And this is what I hav observe compare to the previous session.
During this session, everytime I came back to 110bpm, which is what I am looking for to hit a new shot, my heart rate drop extremely quickly. And by the time I setup, lot of time during the session my heart rate was bellow 100bpm.
Which mean, and that’s an assumption, that when you have a high recovery score, the time needed to calm down and reach an heart rate basis physiological state is quicker.
Also an other observation is that once the momentum is one, in either direction it tend to continue until a significant shift and in the neural system balance occur and move in the other direction.
I am saying that because multiple time, I have reach a low level of heart rate on downward momentum. I hit my shot, but surpringly my heart rate just stabalise. Which is unusual.
Genearly speaking when I hit the short my heart rate increase immediately. But here, the calm down process was so strong sometimes during the session that actualy hitting a shots just put a break to the downward trend of my heart rate, but didn’t reverse it.
Yeah, just some observation. I don’t know yet how usefull they are, but they are interesting anyway.
The only things I can think of is about the relationship between the recovery and the performance on the golf course. Because what we want is to perform well all the time and not just when we have a high recovery score.
So if this is true that high recovery is correlated with high score on the golf course. I assume that could have a like to this ability to relax and calm down quicker. So after each walk, you calm down quickly, to focus on the shot and execute it to the best of your ability.
This is something intresting that I might need to take a look in the future.
Conlusion for next session
Find a new way of rotating my hip so I am shifting more my weight and that allow my upper body to stayed more quiets.
For the reset we will see.