Distance Question

hi Brian
i think your Trebuchet is a good example.
it has a slow moving spine like your hips movement and turn and the hinge is passive ie "the rope" like the way your wrists work.
it is similar to the ping man or the iron byron golf robot.
cheers
bill

All those mechanical devices require no force be generated within their "arms" or "hands". All force is generated by their "core". They also require zero manipulation of their "hands" and "arms" to release precisely through the sweet spot because the force is applied in a manner to drive the "arms" along the desired path. So called passive hands and arms.

Other sports are not being taught much better to the average person, it’s just that the precision and efficiency required is much higher in golf and thus technique is more heavily weighted. Most other sports are reactive so more manipulation of the basic moves are required and so there is a much higher tolerance for variation from the most efficient and repeatable technique.

To put it simply....golf is harder.

IMO the slow moving of the core only acts the get the arms and wrists into the correct position with some suitable inertia, the real speed is created when the wrists are whipped through creating enough shaft and head-speed to drive the ball forward. The small circle speeds the large circle.

Couldn’t agree more. The rotating core, acting against the ground, driving a linkage system. An engine for power and a transmission to convert the power to speed.

You might as well compare the golf swing to the 'Iron Byron' swing machine as well as the Trebuchet. Are you gentlemen forgetting that the human body is powered by muscle? So you can not compare us to wooden or steel machines.

hi cyc
the iron byron and the ping man both put the club face on the ball in a similar manner to a real golfer. and its how the R&A and the PGA measure golf balls and to some extent golf clubs. golf balls are limeted to fly a certain distant if hit perfectly and the use robots to hit the ball.
clubs go through the same process when being first made. you can design a club on a computer but they try it out first on the iron byron or the ping man before a real person gets to play it. the principles are the same in the iron byron and the golf swing. small wheels driving bigger wheels to generate more power like a gear box.
cheers
bill

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I am not comparing people to machines, I am saying that the mechanics of a trebuchet uses similar leverage principles to that of a golfer. The joints in our shoulders, wrists and arms do not hinge exactly like iron Byron or the trebuchet but we can learn something about the optimum way to hit a golf ball from their kinematics.

Look at this:

http://www.paulwilsongolf.com/index.htm

I think the reason why Ochoa outdrives most amateur golfers is indeed all about technique. But I doubt that technique explain why she also outdrives some of the men on the PGA tour, whose technique is presumably as good as hers. To explain that, I think we have to look at more subtle physiological factors, such as FT muscle tissue.

Fred Couples commented on this awhile ago and said technique is the key for him. I have a feeling he is right because I never have had a fast swing speed so I keep working on technique..haven't found it yet though..lol

hi
with most of the pro women golfer the seem to swing and let the golf club do the work and this makes there swing often look slower and smoother than most of the pro men golfer.
i always get the impression watching the top women golfer that they swing through the ball where the top men golfers seem to hit at the ball more.
the women seem to extend there arms more on the back swing like there pushing the grip away from there arms.
cheers
bill

I agree, and I think I made a similar point some time back in criticizing the "skill 3" as the source of power in the golf swing. It is this trebuchet action that does it. Stroboscopic photography shows that, contrary to our intuitions, the hands move more slowly as they get close to the impact position. This slowing of the hands, like the stop beam of the trebuchet, causes the angular momentum of the moving arms to be transferred to the club, which we call the "release." The rotation of the club face during the release is a side-effect of the way our joints are constructed.

This raises the question: If this is so, then why not just stop the hands altogether when the arms are pointed at the ball, to get maximum transfer of angular momentum? The answer is: If you could master the timing of this, it would work and would generate tremendous power. And there was one British golfer, whose name I forget, who did swing this way.

Getting back to the original question... It remains true that the faster the hands are moving as they approach the impact zone, the more angular momentum is stored up, to then be transferred to the club head in the release. So you have to ask yourself, how many degrees of arc are there between the top of the backswing and the release point? In a flexible person, such as Ochoa, it could be 180 or so.

Note that since we do not have a stop beam like a trebuchet, the slowing of the arms through the impact zone has to be done by braking action of the muscles. Therefore, between the top of the backswing and impact, the hands must accelerate *and* decelerate. So a bigger swing provides more time for this to happen. Still, even 180 degrees isn't a huge amount of space and time, and this is why some people, with the right kind of muscle composition, are better at it than others. Those FT fibers specialize in precisely this kind of rapid acceleration and deceleration.

__________________
Todd
Philadelphia, PA
USA

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing. ~Phyllis Diller

hi Todd
think you might be mixing up a catapult up with a Terbuchet. a Turbuchet does not have a stop beam and the weight swings like a playground swing and that just swing the arm back and fro, there is no stop as the force of using a stop beam would break up the arm of the Teubuchet.
when a Teubuchet is fired the hangmans noose slips of the end and fires the rock away at a greater force than a catapult could and it's down to the sling effect and the arm swings forward till the weight on the end starts to swing back again. the weight is just a big box filled with rocks and its free to swing on the short end of the arm.
the Terbuchet is just a slingshot on a long arm.
a Catapult does use a stop beam and has an arm like a big spoon Greeks use to use it with fire. often called Greek fire.
cheers
bill

__________________
ping zing2 metal driver
ping zing2 metal 3 wood
ping eye2 1 iron
ping zing2 3/9 irons
ping ist 47% wedge
ping zing2 52% s/wedge
ping mb 56% wedge
ping c10 G2I broom handled putter
top flight "T" golf balls
white ping bag

Hi Tod,

I have used this video a few times but it does show nicely how the arms and hands can be used to maximise clubhead speed:

"Slow the inner, speed the outer" is a good summary of the transfer of angular momentum. The slowing of the hands through the impact zone is hard to believe until you see the stroboscopic photos--and even then it's hard to believe.

This is also why when we swing "hard", i.e., try to keep accelerating the *hands* all the way through the ball, we often get a wild slice. The release happens too late, the club face is still open, etc. I'm an expert at those.

I wrote three articles here on the swing "Plane & Path" 1, 11 and 111. You may find them of some interest?

here is the last one on speed:
http://www.golf-tuition-online.com/c...ath-111-a.html (Plane and Path 111)