Fixing your power outage
Wow! This player is a student of mine who is 5 feet 9 inches tall and 160 pounds. I call him Power Pack because he just kills the ball. Note the coil he makes — it transforms his body into a spring filled with levers ready to blast open through impact.
The trigger that releases all the pent-up power in his coil is “hitting the wall,” aka, running the right side over the left at high speed. For maximum power, every golfer needs to build a wall that promotes a collision.
You won't become a good player until you can effectively self-correct on the golf course. To do that, you need to be able to assess the problem, then fix it.
One round wrecker is the sudden power outage: Out of nowhere, you lose the zip in your swing. Studies show that what you image in your mind cues up behavior, so being able to call up the correct images of how power is manipulated is the start of a turnaround that can save your round. Here are a few tricks to try.
1: Switch on the power
tick/tock. Here's a simple audio image to help turn your power switch back on: Your weight shift and the clubhead should travel in the same direction. I use a dog clicker to train students when to shift weight. During the backswing (tick), both the weight and the clubhead move away from the target; during the downswing (tock), your weight and your clubhead move toward the target. If you don't do this, your swing will be mostly arms and hands, and that leads to a low-power impact.
2: Generate, transmit and deliver: Imagine a generating station located on the outskirts of town. Here the big turbines generate the power that's transmitted via power lines, then dumped to the end user. In the golf swing, the turbines are the large muscles of your hips, back and legs. Your shoulders, arms and clubshaft are the transmission lines where levers ratchet up the power until your hands release the energy to the end user
the golf ball.
3. Own a release: A horse and rider arrive at a 7-foot wall at top speed when, suddenly, the horse stops, catapulting the rider over the jump. The image that's important for your golf swing is that the wall causes the release. Basically, you want to run your right side over your resisting left side at high speed. Power may look smooth when the pros do it, but don't image smoothness; it's two turns, back and through, with an explosion in the middle.