Plane Perfect

[mberube]

This looks very interesting.

http://www.planeperfectgolf.com/

http://www.planeperfectgolf.com/videos.htm

You can also youtube it. I would love to try one. Maybe build one.

[BC MIST]

This looks very interesting.

http://www.planeperfectgolf.com/

http://www.planeperfectgolf.com/videos.htm

You can also youtube it. I would love to try one. Maybe build one.

Considering that the plane of the club shaft on the downswing is ideally flatter that the back swing, I've often wondered If these plane machines actually help.

[mberube]

If you look at Moe Norman’s swing for example he stays on his starting plane throughout his downswing. Never flatter…I think.

I don’t like normal plane machines either but this one forces you to stay on track from address to the top and then back down at impact maintaining your address angles. Most amateurs have the “hitting the ball” urge making the trailing shoulder too dominant causing an over the top swing. Staying in a track must be a feeling that we could build on. Don’t you think?

[BC MIST]

If you look at Moe Norman’s swing for example he stays on his starting plane throughout his downswing. Never flatter…I think.

I don’t like normal plane machines either but this one forces you to stay on track from address to the top and then back down at impact maintaining your address angles. Most amateurs have the “hitting the ball” urge making the trailing shoulder too dominant causing an over the top swing. Staying in a track must be a feeling that we could build on. Don’t you think?

Considering the shaft position as the "plane," Moe moved his hands well under the line at the start of his backswing and did not get the hands on this line until the top of the backswing. From there, they came straight down the plane line to impact, however, the shaft flattens when his hands got to hip high in the downswing. He would find this machine very troubling as it forces everything to be on ONE plane, all the time. If a golfer wants a straight or slightly right to centre (a pure draw) ball flight, the shaft must flatten below the plane line on the downswing. The enclosed shot of Jiminez shows what I mean.

The plane machine will help golfers get into an ideal top of the backswing position where the left arm is across the shoulder line AND the right elbow aligns with the plane line. However, because the machine forces the club shaft to be too vertical on the downswing, instead of flattening as it should, it still encourages an over the top motion, but not necessarily "outside in." If a machine could be built with a steeper backswing plane and a flatter downswing one, it would be ideal. How it could be used is extremely important, as it is with all drill devices, but that would be a topic of another discussion.

[mberube]

I see what you mean but most players don’t even come close to what this plane perfect can teach. The Ideal position is illustrated in you posted pic above but lets face it a very low percentage of golfers can get to that position.

I’m a mid single digit index and I’m pretty sure I’m nowhere close to that position and I was told lots of times that I had a flat swing. That being said I see this training aid as an easy way to fix lots of things wrong in my swing that I understand but can’t bring into practice or ingrain permanently.

Did you look at what all the videos? You can adjust this thing for different swing types (Flat, upright, one plane, two planes). My point of view is that it might not be perfect but it’s a lot better then how most are already swinging. I’m thinking of building one.

[sensfan63]

It's all well and good to have a device to teach you swing plane, but if you only know how to "put" the club in that position, your swing will inevitably break down in a bad way. There has to be a greater understanding of what the body does throughout the swing, and an understanding that the arms (and thus the club) FOLLOW the rotation of the body, and not vice versa.

I'm pretty sure that the device does not teach you how to rotate your body.

[mberube]

That’s exactly it. This will make a player feel what he should do. Take the inside approach for example. Just by putting a bar over the ball makes you feel and execute the inside impact. Something that lots of golfers has never felt even if he tried for years.

To say that a device teaches you to swing in a specific position and that would make you swing break down in a bad way is false IMO. When you are learning something new, with a device or not, it breaks your normal pattern. You practice it and adjust to it until you get it down.

I have learned golf using tool forcing me to do things with the club or else I would hit something and it works. It’s unbelievable the feeling you get the first time you are forced to swing differently as opposed to a pro telling you to swing differently. I strongly believe that this would help most players and would all feel trapped in it because they are way off plane at the beginning.

[BC MIST]

It's all well and good to have a device to teach you swing plane, but if you only know how to "put" the club in that position, your swing will inevitably break down in a bad way. There has to be a greater understanding of what the body does throughout the swing, and an understanding that the arms (and thus the club) FOLLOW the rotation of the body, and not vice versa.

I'm pretty sure that the device does not teach you how to rotate your body.

We have touched on this in other discussions and I agree, that the lower body must slide and turn first. Club head speed comes from the last second extension of the leverage angles of the wrists and right elbow, and there is also rotational power generated by the body.

However, I don't agree that the horizontal rotation of the body will cause a more or less vertical motion of the hands/arms that allows to the club to be put in the position that Jiminez is in above, which is the same as what Hogan did and others whose ball flight is straight or a pure draw. IMO, if both motions were learned independently, through static position and then slow motion swings, the blend of the two would see the body rotate and the arms drop. It can very easily be demonstrated that body rotation does not cause the arms to drop into the desired position.

Moe was a follower of the Paul Bertholy principles, where the body move and the vertical drop were learned separately.

[sensfan63]

IMO, if both motions were learned independently, through static position and then slow motion swings, the blend of the two would see the body rotate and the arms drop. It can very easily be demonstrated that body rotation does not cause the arms to drop into the desired position.
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Right, and that might have been something that I worded poorly.

I will try it again, and I will use myself as an example. In the past (circa 5 years ago) I had a very lateral move away from the golf ball, and then back into it. WAY too much leg action. No understanding of the relationship between body, arms, and club. However, I could still play pretty well and shoot some low scores.

Fast forward to now, and after a few years of instruction with the right guy, I now feel that I have improved my ball striking tremendously. No longer do I wonder what kind of "timing" I will have on the days that I play, because it's not about timing - it's about setup, structure, and training. You train something long enough and properly, and you'll have more days than less of good ball striking.

What's my point? Well, go back to what I've quoted. As someone who played "well enough" before, I didn't have to learn to make the arms drop, they just drop because that's what a downswing is. The arms drop. What's key, however, is that the lower body goes first, what I like to call separation.

It's kind of like what I remember you saying a long time ago - you don't shift your weight, your weight shifts. Well, you don't drop your arms, your arms drop.

[sensfan63]

That’s exactly it. This will make a player feel what he should do. Take the inside approach for example. Just by putting a bar over the ball makes you feel and execute the inside impact. Something that lots of golfers has never felt even if he tried for years.

To say that a device teaches you to swing in a specific position and that would make you swing break down in a bad way is false IMO. When you are learning something new, with a device or not, it breaks your normal pattern. You practice it and adjust to it until you get it down.

I have learned golf using tool forcing me to do things with the club or else I would hit something and it works. It’s unbelievable the feeling you get the first time you are forced to swing differently as opposed to a pro telling you to swing differently. I strongly believe that this would help most players and would all feel trapped in it because they are way off plane at the beginning.

I would call that "chasing the effect." You feel the effects of your club being in those positions, but you're not too sure how to get there once the device is not being used.

Way too many instructors do this. And that is why they don't get their desired results.

[mberube]

Funny because I’ve seen lots of pros do it on tour. Water bottles, Umbrellas, cut off shafts … Are they chasing something they can’t reproduce when the device is not there?

[BC MIST]

Funny because I’ve seen lots of pros do it on tour. Water bottles, Umbrellas, cut off shafts … Are they chasing something they can’t reproduce when the device is not there?

I believe that they are and the reason is that they don't use the devices properly. Some devices, such as the plane perfect, do the work for you, where there is no need to engage either the conscious or subconscious minds. With others, you engage only the conscious mind and when the device is removed, the golfer reverts back to the faulty swing that is stored in the subconscious. Some still believe that dong something consciously, a sufficient number of times, will create "muscle memory," that allows the golfer to swing correctly on demand. Unfortunately, "muscle memory" does not exist rendering all the work done, useless.

The following comments come from Kevin McMullen, who has a publication about what to learn in a golf swing and most importantly, on how to learn it, that IMO, is brilliant and is based on neuroscience, rather than on perception and feeling, the basis of "modern" instruction. If golfers want to change/improve their swings, there is a better way of doing it that will make the changes permanent.

"There is a big gap in understanding as to how we approach our learning and our repetition. Learning must take place that optimizes both the conscious and the subconscious AND it should replicate as close as possible the process mother nature gave us for learning. We know that if we do something once, we only retain a small part of it, twice a little more, three times about 75% retention, and if we repeat something four times, about 90% retention is possible! So when learning a new skill, we should do repetitions in sets of four.

Furthermore, we know that for performing athletic skills, the use of our conscious mind is beneficial primarily for inputting information about the skill, so that our motor-neural learning system can act on it at the subconscious level, which is where all learned motor skills are stored - (there is no "muscle memory".) When learning a new skill EQUAL TIME must be given to the subconscious to acquire, learn, process and store the information on the new skill.

When the conscious mind is actively engaged in the process of thinking and executing a skill, the ability of the subconscious to learn and process information is greatly subdued. The only way to fully activate the subconscious to the activity being learned, is to ACTIVELY ENGAGE THE CONSCIOUS MIND in some thought process totally unrelated to the skill being learned. By doing this, the subconscious is "forced into" taking the lead in the learning and processing of the new skill.

The process of conscious direction and then subconscious direction in sets of four is repeated until the new skill can be executed "on demand" without having to consciously think about it. Then and only then can a person say he has truly learned a new skill.

Most golfers never move past the conscious part or even consider the role the subconscious has in learning and executing, even though it is "in play" for many other tasks that they do on a daily basis without thinking about them. And this is the fault of both the student and the instruction."

[sensfan63]

Funny because I’ve seen lots of pros do it on tour. Water bottles, Umbrellas, cut off shafts … Are they chasing something they can’t reproduce when the device is not there?

Pretty much. The difference, though, is that they are extremely talented BEFORE they are doing these little drills. BC MIST's explanation above is bang on. If more teachers taught this way, with repetitions and slow-motion swings, the results would be so much better.

The problem? #1, most teachers don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. #2, if most teachers started doing this, the teaching device market would dry up. And #3, doing repetitons and slow motion swings is difficult. It's monotonous and tiring. It's a lot easier to swing along that plane perfect thing and convince yourself that you're making progress.

[mberube]

All that voodoo might work for some and it might work for me, I don’t know. But I started playing at an adult age and rarely played at the beginning. I have bee playing for a little over 10 years now and my index was at 4 before I got injured this year. All that learned through tools restricting my swing when hitting balls. I practice hitting balls with a device until the swing feels natural and I forget the device. I have corrected so many things in my swing that way so I know it works. Don’t get me wrong not all devices work. I’m talking about tools that force you to swing a specific way or else it will hurt. Tool that I fabricate.

We could discuss this till our face turns blue but we have two different perspectives and that won’t change.

[Bill Wood]

Call me stupid but ... wouldn't a medicus driver, or 7 iron virtually do the same thing ? As I said .. call me stupid.

[mberube]

Not at all. I have tried the medicus iron and I can swing it easily without it breaking down. It’s good for somebody with poor fundamentals. Once you get to a certain level it doesn’t do the job.

[BC MIST]

Call me stupid but ... wouldn't a medicus driver, or 7 iron virtually do the same thing ? As I said .. call me stupid.

Perhaps being presumptuous, but does the Medicus not decide what plane you swing on versus your body type and posture characteristics? Could it break down for a swing where the lead arm is across the turned shoulders at the top, and not for a more upright swing at the same point, OR vica versa? Or perhaps and early set of the wrist versus a low and slow takeaway?

[goley]

I think that the best thing the Medicus is used for is for a person that has poor clubface control. If you roll the clubface open too much or have it too closed the shaft will break.

[bobcat 2]

Considering the shaft position as the "plane," Moe moved his hands well under the line at the start of his backswing and did not get the hands on this line until the top of the backswing. From there, they came straight down the plane line to impact, however, the shaft flattens when his hands got to hip high in the downswing. He would find this machine very troubling as it forces everything to be on ONE plane, all the time. If a golfer wants a straight or slightly right to centre (a pure draw) ball flight, the shaft must flatten below the plane line on the downswing. The enclosed shot of Jiminez shows what I mean.

The plane machine will help golfers get into an ideal top of the backswing position where the left arm is across the shoulder line AND the right elbow aligns with the plane line. However, because the machine forces the club shaft to be too vertical on the downswing, instead of flattening as it should, it still encourages an over the top motion, but not necessarily "outside in." If a machine could be built with a steeper backswing plane and a flatter downswing one, it would be ideal. How it could be used is extremely important, as it is with all drill devices, but that would be a topic of another discussion.

I even think the reverse is true, ie., a flatter backswing and steeper downswing. To me steep is death in the backswing, but dropping straight down in the downswing is great. In any case, your point is true, the machine creates an abnormal move around one plane which really doesn't happen in a real swing.

[bobcat 2]

I think that "motor skills" cannot be taught. We learn to walk through feel, learn to ride a bike through feel. We cannot teach someone to do these motions or any other. We see, then copy and imitate. Because teachers over focus on positions and swing styles, we are lost in consciousness. Its like trying to write your name thinking about every move or repeating a word aloud thinking on every sound. Eventually, we cannot write our name or say the word. To get the conscious mind out of the way so the subconscious mind can feel and learn the skill is right on. Easiest way to learn golf to me is to swing anything other than a golf club and just stay in balance with your eyes closed and spent the rest of the time chipping and putting. A great short game takes all the "pressure" off the long game in confidence and tempo building.