Lesson 2 - Lessons Learned

So yesterday I had my 2nd lesson with Tim at GolfTEC. Previously, Tim had me focus on my grip, my stance at address, and stabilizing my lower body. I think I've come a long way in those areas, but I know I still have a long way to go. It's starting to get complicated with all the things I have to think about... and I'm only on my 2nd lesson.

I played 2 rounds of golf between Lesson 1 and Lesson 2. I averaged double bogey on every hole. :( My score is getting worse. However, I knew this was going to happen before I signed up with GolfTEC. I'm still very inconsistent. I hit some great shots and I hit some very ugly shots. I'm still working on stabilizing my lower body. As I continue to fix my swing, my game is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but I'm prepared for it. I'm sticking to my guns to make the changes Tim tells me to make. I'm sacrificing each round of golf now as practice.

On to Lesson 2. Yesterday, we focused on my upper body. YES! (and YIKES!). Somehow over the past few years of golf, I developed this really bad habit of overturning my shoulders and dipping my upper body during my backswing. This is a big no-no. If you watch the pro's, their head is always stable from start to finish. To accomplish this, Tim wanted me to focus on my shoulders. He wanted to turn my shoulders "straight" versus "down". When I did this, the camera showed my head completely stationary. This seems like it would be a simple thing to fix. However, the problem is I don't feel the difference between turning my shoulders straight vs down. :( I do know that I have to keep working on it in front of the video cameras so I can see it when it happens. I think that after a few hours in front of the camera, I'll start to develop a feel for it. One of the tricks that I'm doing is to swing extremely slow and try not to swing hard. Also, I do feel my weight shift to my heels when I turn my shoulders straight. This is definitely a start, but I need more. Here is a great picture showing the before and after:


In the BEFORE picture (left side) you can see my head dips quite a bit. The green line shows where I was at address. On the right side, my AFTER picture, you can see that my head stayed straight. Hence, I have stabilized my upper body. The other great thing is my club is straight at the peak of my swing. YES! Now I need MORE PRACTICE!

Lesson 1 - Lessons Learned

NOTE: The information below is specific to my golf swing and is not intended to be a lesson plan for you.

Today I had my first official lesson with Tim at GolfTEC. The lesson started out with Tim asking me about and looking at the grip and stance changes we made from the Initial Evaluation. Overall, Tim said that I made great progress. He made a couple little, but important, tweaks to my grip again as I was still holding the club with a slightly strong grip.

The primary focus of today's lesson was my lower body. The areas of focus was my right leg and my hip turn. According to Tim, one of the reasons I have so much upper body movement in my swing is due to an unstable lower body. To start off with, the sensors showed that I had very little hip turn in my backswing. I was swinging with my arms and not my body. Next was to work on keeping my right leg bent and stable. I was straighening my right leg, causing my upper body to go up.

This was a major change for me. It was quite uncomfortable and tough to do. Not because it was all that difficult, but more due to body memory with my old swing. Fortunately, Tim was very helpful with this. He taught me about the Dynamic Weight Shift - which is the shifting of my weight from address to my backswing. To take it a step futher, he grabbed my right knee with one hand and used his other hand to apply the pressure shifts in my feet during my backswing. At address, the pressure should be on the balls of my feet. During the backswing, as my hips turn, my right knee should stay bent and stable, while the weight on my right foot shifts from toe to heel. I'm really oversimplifying what we worked on, but it's the best/easiest way for me to put it into words.

Here is one of the many pics from my lesson. As you can see my hip turn is much better, my right leg is bent and stable. But, my shoulder turn is still too much.

We also worked on some exercises that I could do to train my body the new things I learned today. Some of these exercises are the same ones you see the pros do on TV after they hit a bad shot. NOW... it makes sense to me of what they are trying to do! Tim recommended that I do these exercises without going to the range to get the "feel". He also reiterated for me to stop trying to work on other parts of my swing (see my previous posts) since I'm not working on the actual cause and could end up developing more bad habits. :P

Overall, I'm still extremely pleased with selecting GolfTEC to work on my golf swing/game. The experiences, thus far, have been excellent and Tim is awesome. I particularly like the way Tim explains things in detail and asks if I understood what he said. I also like the way he gives me tips on how to make the changes he recommends vs just telling me what I need to change. This is key.