I’ve been blessed in my life to not suffer from frequent or severe headaches (other than those from hangovers in my younger days), and that’s a good thing when looking at golf-related content online.
I hate headaches, and were I prone to them, I’m sure that I’d get them daily just consuming modern golf swing content.
I’ve already talked about how there was no such thing as a “Snead Squat,” because the position is just a transitory one:
… as you move from the top of the back pivot into the down swing, which you can see with my swing below:
Modern Golf has taken the “Snead Squat” myth and is now saying that squatting in the middle of your down swing will allow you to “push” against the ground – which is where I fall right off the train, because none of this makes any sense.
You are swinging a club down into the impact area and swing bottom – how does “pushing against the ground” help you move a club downward?
You push against the ground to lift something, and as I’ve had to painfully point out, the club will come up on its own after reaching the swing bottom, and nothing that happens after impact will have any effect on the ball.
Watch this clip, if you will, and ask yourself what on earth is accomplished when you squat, which is an action of relaxing the legs enough to let them bend and lower your body – at the same time you’re saying you’re “pushing down?“
This pro talks about “pushing down” while he’s just relaxing his legs to make himself squat, so what exactly is being pushed?
You can’t push anything other than upwards from the ground, but if you’re squatting, you’re not pushing. You push to get out of a squat, not to create one. This is simple physics that a 9 year old can grasp.
To make things worse, the narrator ends by showing Tiger Woods when he was practicing what looked like Tai-Chi on the golf course:
… and if you’re using Tiger Woods, who completely destroyed his knees and back playing golf, as an example of anything other than what not to do in a golf swing, you’ve already lost me.
What’s at play here, in my opinion, is that the current hot catch-phrase that must be used to get the modern swinger’s attention is “push” and “push against the ground,” and other variations using the word “push.”
Before, you had other catchphrases such as “using the ground” or “vertical lift,” but there’s always some hot new phrase that gets passed around and beaten to death until something else replaces it.
Right now, it seems to be “push.”
Even when, as this pro golfer performs his squat, it has absolutely nothing to do with a pushing action.
Even worse, the narrator states that you don’t just squat, but a combination of squatting and turning through the shot will make this move “explosive and efficient.”
How Does It????
How does squatting and turning do anything “explosive?”
I’ve already shown that the Flying Foot golfers on the PGA Tour have among the flattest launch angles you can find, so you’re not adding vertical lift to the ball by “pushing up” and jumping around through impact.
These are all injury-avoidance compensation moves as I caught Bryson DeChambeau admitting yesterday.
You actually naturally “push” against the ground when using a sound, mechanically-correct golf swing, and you do that with your leading leg and foot – not to leave the ground or to jump around, but simply to support your weight as you transfer it fully to the leading leg through impact:
If you put a pressure plate under my leading foot during the swing, it would register the least pressure at the top of my back pivot, and the most pressure as my trailing heel begins to come up through impact and my foot slides – of course, my leading leg is “pushing against the ground” at this point – it’s called “standing!”
I hope that’s not a headache I feel coming on.
WAX Golf 
“You push against the ground to lift something, and as I’ve had to painfully point out, the club will come up on its own after reaching the swing bottom, and nothing that happens after impact will have any effect on the ball.”
It’s another involuntary motion that the modern golf swing geniuses have turned into an exxagerated purposeful complication of the swing.
You sir: Hammer – Nail
What’s more egregious is that many are taking the idiosyncrasies and outright swing flaws of successful golfers and asserting that these are secret “keys” or “moves” to include in a golf swing.
I avoided that by comparing at least a dozen of the best swingers ever, and throwing out anything that was unique to any particular swinger. What they had mostly in common (posture, grip, stance, pivot action etc), I kept as part of a model. And if I thought later it didn’t fit, I took it out.
The Flying Foot is a compensation, and saying it is anything but that is absolute rot.
I laughed all throughout reading this blog,this “headache” topic was dealt with in a very humorous way.
I try to infuse some humor into these discussions, silly – if you don’t laugh, you may weep. I prefer to laugh 🙂
” This is simple physics that a 9 year old can grasp.” For all the talk of how golf has advanced,and they know more due to modern science,I’ve yet to see any evidence to persuade me of that.
Golf Swing mechanics and the proper knowledge of such have regressed severely with the advent of the internet, in my opinion. It’s ironic, because I’ve learned most of what I have through the internet, but it’s also filled with nonsense and absolute rubbish regarding anything on earth, as a negative.
I believe it’s the worst with golf because golf has always been taught and played as a “feel” kind of thing. Suddenly, there’s cable television and the internet and most of the people who played golf and are now pundits, most of the golf instructors you see talking on the TV or in articles – they don’t have the technical knowledge of kinesiology and now have to explain why Justin Thomas’ foot flies around through impact. Or explain why Sam Snead appears to be squatting in the middle of his down swing in a still pic.
What you get are people who have no clue what they’re talking about but, because people listen to them as they can or used to play to a decent score of golf or drive a ball long doing it their way, start to pull things out of their behinds to explain mechanics.
Just my opinion. But in all other sports, huge money is spent on analysis and technical improvement using proper science. Golf is still in the “feel” era and the only “scientific” input you get are people using scientific analytics and equipment and telling you nothing more than what a particular successful golfer is doing in their particular swings.
Worse, people are earning kinesiology degrees studying and breaking down the Modern Golf Swing, which is mechanically-unsound and this analysis should last exactly one session, ending in “Well, this is mechanically-unsound, so don’t do it.”
And they also butcher the analysis of the Classic Golf Swing. “Too many moving parts” should come with a laugh track if you watch what the Modern swingers are doing to hit a golf ball.
Getting a degree in how to do something improperly and cripple yourself and/or others who listen to you, could only happen in golf.
I do not know if this is the case in Canada or the US,but in England people have to study golf at university (unneccessary use of money and time,but hey that’s politics for you) to become a pga qualified coach,and I don’t think kinesiology or sound technique is even taught from what I’ve seen.
“I believe it’s the worst with golf because golf has always been taught and played as a “feel” kind of thing. ” Yes,that’s how it used to be. Finding the secret in the dirt is an exhilirating feeling that the laziness of easy access to information is making virtually extinct.
“Golf Swing mechanics and the proper knowledge of such have regressed severely with the advent of the internet, in my opinion. It’s ironic, because I’ve learned most of what I have through the internet, but it’s also filled with nonsense and absolute rubbish regarding anything on earth, as a negative.
This is my experience absolutely.The internet has been a blessing in that it gives you access to classic players (my favorites: Burke,Watson,Payne,Knudson) and students of the golf swing (Dunaway,Austin,DJ Watts ),but it’s also negative in that it’s full of mostly garbage that harms.For my first six months of golf,I followed the modern golfers and youtube gurus,and I did not enjoy it.My back,knees,and elbows were constantly sore to the point where I was having to apply a heat pack weekly (at 22!) just to ease the pain from swinging a stick.I was so close to quitting altogether.IMO a lot of coaches and youtube gurus need to be sued for public damage.
Every golf coach should have to keep a picture of Tom Watson, Jackie Burke, and Mike Austin in their pro shop,and a pocket book of kinesiology and physics with them as an official law.It is at present the best way I can think of to change the game for the good.
Maybe this is is all a result of modernity? Few things in day to day life these days require finesse and deep thinking. Technology just does it all and at a quicker pace than any human.
I can’t argue with anything you’ve said here, silly.