Look at the Take Away

         This isn't the first blog I've written comparing golf to Kung Fu, and it will not be the last.  Sorry, not sorry,

        I've recently had some more lessons to work on my swing to gain more consistency.  I have most of the pieces I need, and I had a suspicion that something was going wonky in my swing.  In particular my back swing.  Although I did not have the knowledge or tools to fix it, so I sought out a professional.  Sure enough, it was my back swing that was causing issues.  Issue one, was I was extending too much on my backswing, which was breaking my lead arm, leading to mishits on the downswing.  Issue 2, which was more for my driver, was I was bringing the club back too close to the inside, causing myself to get trapped and forcing an over-the-top swing path.  Both easily fixed by shortening my backswing, and swinging a bit wider.  Am I perfect now?  No.  But I need time to make this swing consistent.  I'm already striking the ball much better, and I am mitigating my misses.

        All of this really made me think of my Kung Fu, and how our set-up or our move before can really influence what happens next.  Our bell block knife defense last night reminded me of this.  I wasn't quite fully committing to that bell block, so my lead foot was turned out, causing an initial adjustment before going into the open x.  Solution, was to fully commit to the bell block and be in a good stance, making the open x stance quicker to get into, as I did not need to pre-pivot that lead foot.

        There are lots of other instances of this in our training, especially in our forms.  Our body's are smart, and they know what we want to do, and they'll do it as efficiently as they can by how we set them up.  For instance, my driver.  My body knows it wants to hit that darn ball, but if I don't set myself up correctly, my body will hit that ball in any way it can, just not the way that I want it to.  Same goes with our techniques.  You want your body to throw that kick, but how it comes out (power, stability, recovery), all depends on how we set-up beforehand.

        My point, always good to look at the move and set-up before when trying to diagnose something that isn't going quite right.