It is possible that all I needed in the past week was to rest the muscles and shoulder that I’ve been rehabbing after being stricken with Frozen Shoulder for the last year.
I was scolding myself for having neglected my range of motion and resistance band exercises for the last couple of days, but I was physically and mentally fatigued by the work – anyone who has done extensive rehab for an injury or from surgery will attest that working through the pain can be mentally draining.
At any rate, I hadn’t yet done my rehab work this afternoon when I just picked up the Momentus Heavy Iron to do some pivot drills (club across the chest) and also some back swings.
There was the usual pain at first, but when I had warmed up the shoulder and surrounding muscles, I was able to make full pivot back swings with a fully shoulder turn and club shaft at parallel, and to also swing down and through.
I kept at it between breaks, and I have just sat down at the computer having made several full speed swings with the Heavy Iron.
Full range of motion and very little pain (not enough to interfere with the motion going back, and none from the top down), and I am looking at a trip to the Tracer Golf facility on the weekend or early next week to try a half hour of easy driver swings!
Even better, I am swinging with the Post-Modern model I’ve been working on and it is all falling into place.
I’ve established the setup and hip/leg action that will allow a full back pivot with fully turned hips and a barely-raised leading heel (it seems to me that it isn’t separating at all, but I’ll wait for the video to analyze the exact motion) and a full down swing with both heels flat at impact.
Again, the flat trailing heel at impact is something I’ll have to confirm with video, because you can’t be sure of the exact body positions while in motion.
This isn’t something I’m doing deliberately, either – you can keep the heels down for either the leading or trailing foot when swinging, as I’ve discovered – what I’m getting is swinging without a thought to keeping the heels down, and still getting that flat-footed action into the swing bottom.
What makes this happen is the precise mechanics one uses. For example, Mike Dunaway had varying degrees of trailing heel lift at certain times during his swing life, as this is a raised heel at impact:
Definite heel lift and slide release into and through impact there, and absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Here, we have the trailing heel coming up into impact but very remaining very visibly on his trailing foot until the step-around finish:
… and then the impact position and step-around finish action that I have experienced when swinging the SwingRite with all of my effort and ability:
Again, the positioning of the setup and the pivot and down swing actions dictate the movement of the feet during the swing.
When you don’t think about anything and just swing without a conscious effort to control the foot action is when you know you’re replicating a certain model.
I will continue the rehab work with full swinging included and then I’m heading for the Tracer Golf facility – from there, it will be back outside at the range!
This is going to be a great spring and summer, I think, and I’m delighted that WAX Nation is here to enjoy it with me.
More to come!
WAX Golf 