Jumping up at impact

[Captain112]

Please can you help me ? it feels very bouncy. I’m sure there’s lots more wrong though.
 

First one is a standard swing and usual outcome, second is what felt like a good strike. 
 

 

 

 

as you can see very inconsistent 
 

 

 

 

Thank you!

[joedizzy1978]

The amount your pivot is contributing p6-p7 is the main difference between the two swings. Theres evidence of forces when we see movement.....or the lack there of when theres an absence of change. Observe the difference in your lead hip and knee in both swings p6-p7. Feet have to keep pushing in a multitude of directions....if not, the arms and hands take on too large a role. 

[tthomasgolfer605]

If you look at your posture just before you put the club up to the ball, your posture is very good. Your balance points are thrown off by sitting on your heels when you move the clubhead into the ball and your spine sits up a bit too much. Posture is very important and little things can throw things off. 

[Captain112]

Thank you both!

[Valtiel]

There are a number of small things going on here that require diving into some detail to break down. First, @tthomasgolfer605 is right about posture/foot pressure:



If you watch your feet closely as you're settling into your stance you'll notice that you really rock back into your heels. This contributes to a number of the problems that occur downstream. It's a bit of a read, but I did a breakdown on why this is important here as it relates to where pressure needs to be at various points in the swing to enable correct rotation so please check that out. You however do several things different than the player in that thread that contributes to what you're struggling with so lets get into that:



This is really deceiving because if you squint everything looks totally fine, but two things stand out in context. One, you're rotating "correctly", but since we know you're starting in your heels that's ironically a little suspicious. If we look at your front foot closely we see heel pressure increasing a bit again, so even though it isn't obvious you're actually getting yourself into a bad position in terms of pressure distribution for reasons I went into in that linked thread above. Basically your left foot is getting stuck in a position going back that you need time to reverse later. 

Also of note is your very straight right arm and lack of right wrist hinge. It seems like you're trying to keep the club in front of you via locking that arm while your hand/wrist stays passive. Ideally that arm should be folding a bit at this point with the right hand hinging upwards somewhat. Later we'll see that your backswing ends up really long and this is likely part of the reason why, the other being to buy time to correct the lower body pressure stuff. 

 

Up to the top it's again a similar story of "looks good, but...". I'd be really curious to see a face-on view here. You're finishing your lower body turn in a way that's maintaining depth, but that's obviously involving a pretty big squat/sit move. Probably too big, and IMO this is often caused by not having your pressure where it needs to be so you're crunching down to get a better connection with the ground. Speculative, but this does coincide with the first move towards getting pressure where it needs to be on your left foot (ball of the foot) so i'd be curious to hear how conscious this squat move is for you or if it's just something that happens. 

Regarding the arm swing, we see it getting really long at the top. That second frame is normally as long as you'll ever see in high level golf with a mid-iron, and you go an extra tick beyond that and get beyond parallel while appearing to lose a bit of connection with your left hand there. Face on would be helpful here too to see when/where you're hinging and whether or not it's excessive. It's definitely "late" per your stiff right arm and no upward wrist hing halfway back, but the rest is obscured from this view. 



Into the downswing we see the hands/arms accelerating and the lower body starting to lag behind. You're turning....kind of, but the hands are accelerating a lot faster than you're getting into that left leg and clearing. If we look proportionately at your hands/arms and your left knee....there is a lot of movement in the former and not much in the latter. We see this a lot with people implementing exaggerated squat moves....they do them and then kinda get stuck there as they try to turn this whole flexed lower body looking making a big U-turn in an old Cadillac. It's this slow, lumbering move that upsets the sequence of the downswing. We'll see the effects of that next. 



As you near impact you're still too flexed/squatted with the lower body as we can see both your feet rolling towards the target and your right hip starting to raise. This is all "late" stuff as I mentioned which a face on view would be easier to show/explain. Your hips are starting to thrust up and to the right (towards the ball) and you're starting to back up to make room. In a "correct" sequence you've gotten left earlier than this and are clearing back and away from the ball to some extent to make room. 



Through impact we see you really trying to keep your hips/right leg back, but the thrust forward right after impact shows which way your hips were *trying* to go. You're managing early extension as much as possible here basically, but it's all a product of sequencing being late for the reasons i've described. 

Overall I would start with the following:
1) Address pressure....get it off your heels and into the balls of your feet
2) Backswing rotation....keep pressure centered or even slightly toe side on that front foot going back. Don't let yourself move towards your heel
3) Backswing hands/arms....let your right arm fold and replace that with getting your right hand hinging upwards
4) Transition....with the left foot ready to receive pressure ideally you don't need to squat so much to use the ground, but overall i'd prefer to see face on video before commenting much more there as it's hard to tell exactly where your pressure is getting to and when from this view. 
 

[Captain112]

9 hours ago, Valtiel said:

There are a number of small things going on here that require diving into some detail to break down. First, @tthomasgolfer605 is right about posture/foot pressure:



If you watch your feet closely as you're settling into your stance you'll notice that you really rock back into your heels. This contributes to a number of the problems that occur downstream. It's a bit of a read, but I did a breakdown on why this is important here as it relates to where pressure needs to be at various points in the swing to enable correct rotation so please check that out. You however do several things different than the player in that thread that contributes to what you're struggling with so lets get into that:



This is really deceiving because if you squint everything looks totally fine, but two things stand out in context. One, you're rotating "correctly", but since we know you're starting in your heels that's ironically a little suspicious. If we look at your front foot closely we see heel pressure increasing a bit again, so even though it isn't obvious you're actually getting yourself into a bad position in terms of pressure distribution for reasons I went into in that linked thread above. Basically your left foot is getting stuck in a position going back that you need time to reverse later. 

Also of note is your very straight right arm and lack of right wrist hinge. It seems like you're trying to keep the club in front of you via locking that arm while your hand/wrist stays passive. Ideally that arm should be folding a bit at this point with the right hand hinging upwards somewhat. Later we'll see that your backswing ends up really long and this is likely part of the reason why, the other being to buy time to correct the lower body pressure stuff. 

 

Up to the top it's again a similar story of "looks good, but...". I'd be really curious to see a face-on view here. You're finishing your lower body turn in a way that's maintaining depth, but that's obviously involving a pretty big squat/sit move. Probably too big, and IMO this is often caused by not having your pressure where it needs to be so you're crunching down to get a better connection with the ground. Speculative, but this does coincide with the first move towards getting pressure where it needs to be on your left foot (ball of the foot) so i'd be curious to hear how conscious this squat move is for you or if it's just something that happens. 

Regarding the arm swing, we see it getting really long at the top. That second frame is normally as long as you'll ever see in high level golf with a mid-iron, and you go an extra tick beyond that and get beyond parallel while appearing to lose a bit of connection with your left hand there. Face on would be helpful here too to see when/where you're hinging and whether or not it's excessive. It's definitely "late" per your stiff right arm and no upward wrist hing halfway back, but the rest is obscured from this view. 



Into the downswing we see the hands/arms accelerating and the lower body starting to lag behind. You're turning....kind of, but the hands are accelerating a lot faster than you're getting into that left leg and clearing. If we look proportionately at your hands/arms and your left knee....there is a lot of movement in the former and not much in the latter. We see this a lot with people implementing exaggerated squat moves....they do them and then kinda get stuck there as they try to turn this whole flexed lower body looking making a big U-turn in an old Cadillac. It's this slow, lumbering move that upsets the sequence of the downswing. We'll see the effects of that next. 



As you near impact you're still too flexed/squatted with the lower body as we can see both your feet rolling towards the target and your right hip starting to raise. This is all "late" stuff as I mentioned which a face on view would be easier to show/explain. Your hips are starting to thrust up and to the right (towards the ball) and you're starting to back up to make room. In a "correct" sequence you've gotten left earlier than this and are clearing back and away from the ball to some extent to make room. 



Through impact we see you really trying to keep your hips/right leg back, but the thrust forward right after impact shows which way your hips were *trying* to go. You're managing early extension as much as possible here basically, but it's all a product of sequencing being late for the reasons i've described. 

Overall I would start with the following:
1) Address pressure....get it off your heels and into the balls of your feet
2) Backswing rotation....keep pressure centered or even slightly toe side on that front foot going back. Don't let yourself move towards your heel
3) Backswing hands/arms....let your right arm fold and replace that with getting your right hand hinging upwards
4) Transition....with the left foot ready to receive pressure ideally you don't need to squat so much to use the ground, but overall i'd prefer to see face on video before commenting much more there as it's hard to tell exactly where your pressure is getting to and when from this view. 
 

Wow I did not expect such detailed help, thank you very much!
Everything you’ve said makes sense and thank you for providing a list of things to work on.

 

I will try to get a face on view once the rain stops here 

 

thanks again!

[Captain112]

20 hours ago, Valtiel said:

There are a number of small things going on here that require diving into some detail to break down. First, @tthomasgolfer605 is right about posture/foot pressure:



If you watch your feet closely as you're settling into your stance you'll notice that you really rock back into your heels. This contributes to a number of the problems that occur downstream. It's a bit of a read, but I did a breakdown on why this is important here as it relates to where pressure needs to be at various points in the swing to enable correct rotation so please check that out. You however do several things different than the player in that thread that contributes to what you're struggling with so lets get into that:



This is really deceiving because if you squint everything looks totally fine, but two things stand out in context. One, you're rotating "correctly", but since we know you're starting in your heels that's ironically a little suspicious. If we look at your front foot closely we see heel pressure increasing a bit again, so even though it isn't obvious you're actually getting yourself into a bad position in terms of pressure distribution for reasons I went into in that linked thread above. Basically your left foot is getting stuck in a position going back that you need time to reverse later. 

Also of note is your very straight right arm and lack of right wrist hinge. It seems like you're trying to keep the club in front of you via locking that arm while your hand/wrist stays passive. Ideally that arm should be folding a bit at this point with the right hand hinging upwards somewhat. Later we'll see that your backswing ends up really long and this is likely part of the reason why, the other being to buy time to correct the lower body pressure stuff. 

 

Up to the top it's again a similar story of "looks good, but...". I'd be really curious to see a face-on view here. You're finishing your lower body turn in a way that's maintaining depth, but that's obviously involving a pretty big squat/sit move. Probably too big, and IMO this is often caused by not having your pressure where it needs to be so you're crunching down to get a better connection with the ground. Speculative, but this does coincide with the first move towards getting pressure where it needs to be on your left foot (ball of the foot) so i'd be curious to hear how conscious this squat move is for you or if it's just something that happens. 

Regarding the arm swing, we see it getting really long at the top. That second frame is normally as long as you'll ever see in high level golf with a mid-iron, and you go an extra tick beyond that and get beyond parallel while appearing to lose a bit of connection with your left hand there. Face on would be helpful here too to see when/where you're hinging and whether or not it's excessive. It's definitely "late" per your stiff right arm and no upward wrist hing halfway back, but the rest is obscured from this view. 



Into the downswing we see the hands/arms accelerating and the lower body starting to lag behind. You're turning....kind of, but the hands are accelerating a lot faster than you're getting into that left leg and clearing. If we look proportionately at your hands/arms and your left knee....there is a lot of movement in the former and not much in the latter. We see this a lot with people implementing exaggerated squat moves....they do them and then kinda get stuck there as they try to turn this whole flexed lower body looking making a big U-turn in an old Cadillac. It's this slow, lumbering move that upsets the sequence of the downswing. We'll see the effects of that next. 



As you near impact you're still too flexed/squatted with the lower body as we can see both your feet rolling towards the target and your right hip starting to raise. This is all "late" stuff as I mentioned which a face on view would be easier to show/explain. Your hips are starting to thrust up and to the right (towards the ball) and you're starting to back up to make room. In a "correct" sequence you've gotten left earlier than this and are clearing back and away from the ball to some extent to make room. 



Through impact we see you really trying to keep your hips/right leg back, but the thrust forward right after impact shows which way your hips were *trying* to go. You're managing early extension as much as possible here basically, but it's all a product of sequencing being late for the reasons i've described. 

Overall I would start with the following:
1) Address pressure....get it off your heels and into the balls of your feet
2) Backswing rotation....keep pressure centered or even slightly toe side on that front foot going back. Don't let yourself move towards your heel
3) Backswing hands/arms....let your right arm fold and replace that with getting your right hand hinging upwards
4) Transition....with the left foot ready to receive pressure ideally you don't need to squat so much to use the ground, but overall i'd prefer to see face on video before commenting much more there as it's hard to tell exactly where your pressure is getting to and when from this view. 
 

 

Here’s the face on view

[joedizzy1978]

On 7/20/2025 at 10:03 AM, joedizzy1978 said:

The amount your pivot is contributing p6-p7 is the main difference between the two swings. Theres evidence of forces when we see movement.....or the lack there of when theres an absence of change. Observe the difference in your lead hip and knee in both swings p6-p7. Feet have to keep pushing in a multitude of directions....if not, the arms and hands take on too large a role. 

Seeing face on, I amend my original post to now include p3-p7 for pivot involvement.  

[Valtiel]

3 hours ago, Captain112 said:

 

IMG_1683.mov 30.51 MB · 3 downloads  

Here’s the face on view

Cheers! Some of what I expected that has been discussed a lot recently so i'll link that content. A recent thread here, and the linked content within my reply as a breakdown of the topic here. 

What you're doing isn't as severe as those two examples, but it's the same overall pattern with the same overall diagnosis as a problem and what to understand and do to fix it. 



Rotationally you start your swing by turning your trail hip without shifting laterally...



And then you shift laterally up to the top of the backswing. Per the second link above, this is backwards. It feels intuitive but it's "wrong" in that it doesn't set you up to shift well in transition and thus you end up late and compensating. When we start our backswing by bumping pressure *ahead* of rotation, then use the pressure to rotate and stabilize or even push back forwards a bit then we're setup to transition well and with less effort. When we do the opposite and turn first, then shift, you're going the wrong way basically. All the details on that in the second link above. 

Quick question though, did you just take this video or is it old? Your backswing doesn't look as long and i'm not seeing the big squat move. Either you made an adjustment already (which looks pretty good!) or you weren't doing those moves if this video was older. 

Edited July 22 by Valtiel

[Captain112]

9 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Cheers! Some of what I expected that has been discussed a lot recently so i'll link that content. A recent thread here, and the linked content within my reply as a breakdown of the topic here. 

What you're doing isn't as severe as those two examples, but it's the same overall pattern with the same overall diagnosis as a problem and what to understand and do to fix it. 



Rotationally you start your swing by turning your trail hip without shifting laterally...



And then you shift laterally up to the top of the backswing. Per the second link above, this is backwards. It feels intuitive but it's "wrong" in that it doesn't set you up to shift well in transition and thus you end up late and compensating. When we start our backswing by bumping pressure *ahead* of rotation, then use the pressure to rotate and stabilize or even push back forwards a bit then we're setup to transition well and with less effort. When we do the opposite and turn first, then shift, you're going the wrong way basically. All the details on that in the second link above. 

Quick question though, did you just take this video or is it old? Your backswing doesn't look as long and i'm not seeing the big squat move. Either you made an adjustment already (which looks pretty good!) or you weren't doing those moves if this video was older. 

Thank you once again!

 

this was yesterday after reading through your advice 🙂 

[Captain112]

 

9 hours ago, Valtiel said:

It feels intuitive but it's "wrong" in that it doesn't set you up to shift well in transition and thus you end up late and compensating.

also, i had the hackmotion on which shouts at me 🙂 

 

the static hips are actually an intentional bad habit. when i shift properly i feel like i cant get back round fast enough so I tend to hit way behind the ball. keeping my weight over my left foot seemed to help with that a little bit. 

[Valtiel]

8 hours ago, Captain112 said:

Thank you once again!

 

this was yesterday after reading through your advice 🙂 

 

7 hours ago, Captain112 said:

 

also, i had the hackmotion on which shouts at me 🙂 

 

the static hips are actually an intentional bad habit. when i shift properly i feel like i cant get back round fast enough so I tend to hit way behind the ball. keeping my weight over my left foot seemed to help with that a little bit. 

Yeah a lot of people get stuck in that bolded sentence there. What I would speculate is that you are *not* shifting properly which is why you're getting stuck. What you're doing now is the very common intuitive compensation for that which is restricting your initial shift so you get "less stuck", but in all likelihood what you were doing before was simply shifting for too long. If you had an older face on video we could confirm that, but my guess is that it would show you shifting more initially but still shifting towards the back leg in the latter half of the backswing like you are now. Restricting your initial shift reduces how stuck you get, but critically you're still doing the thing that ultimately creates that "stuck" which is not stopping your shift in time. This was just being talked about here.

There is a broader topic in this that I want to make eventually called something like "Don't shut it off, fix it and do it right" or something like that. It is extremely common to attempt fixing "wrong" moves by just shutting off the movement instead of fixing it, because the player doesn't realize that difference between the two. The most common ones being what you described here (shutting off your initial pressure shift) and shutting off wrist hinge and getting super wide when dealing with flat/inside takeaway issues. The actual fix being to learn how to shift/how to hinge your wrists properly. To do more of the "right" moves because it's not enough to just shut off the bad ones, you gotta replace them with good ones too. 

[slytown]

Like @Valtiel indicated, you are essentially out of sequence. You get to the top and then your lower body goes too quick and you get stuck. When you get stuck, the hips are too forward, the club steepens, and the face opens, forcing you to jump like that to square the face and shallow it. SQUATTING IS OVERRATED.

 

I would simply work on tempo. You get into a good position at the top, but the squatting move is killing your tempo. Work on simply turning shoulders, lifting the arms, dropping the arms, turning the shoulders. It may help to do drills that are continuous motion so you can get a feel for matching your rotation and arm swing. You can also isolate those movements as well and still hit the ball solid. Start slow and just work on the feel. Then you can ramp up the speed to a full swing.