Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover the importance of being off plane.

Yes, you read that correctly...

It pays to be off plane in your golf swing.

Now, this video is quite a bit different than my normal videos.

You'll get a really in-depth discussion of the biomechanics of the swing plane.

It explores some of the scientific work performed by Dr. Sasho MacKenzie.

I attended an in-person conference with him presenting and learned a ton about golf swing biomechanics.

Sure, the information in this video may be a little geeky, but it's groundbreaking research on how the swing works.

Here's a simplified overview of some of the points you'll learn in this video...

• Why your swing moves don't matter unless the forces created transfer to the club handle correctly,
• How your club's center of mass tracks with your net force, and
• What separates great players from high handicap players in the downswing.

Watch this video now to learn the science behind your swing plane...

And discover why you want to be off plane in the downswing!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 20:43

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, welcome back. Great to have you here today. Today we’re going to go super science-y. This is not my typical video, usually when I do videos I’m talking about more player-specific things. How to be able to improve your swing right away, how to get better technique, and to hit the ball more solid.

Now this information that I’m going to talk about today is going to be some of the most important information that I’ve seen. There’s some great PhD bio mechanists out there that are really bringing a lot of this to light.

One of the guys in the forefront with what I’m going to be talking about today is Sasho MacKenzie, I’ve learned a ton through watching his videos and attended an in-person conference with him and Phil Cheatham with the Forces in Motion workshop.

But I really enjoy learning this information. I think it’s so important to understanding what’s going on in the golf swing. So if you’re just kind of a golf geek like me, you like to know a little bit about everything golf-related, this could be a great video for you.

But I am going to get pretty deep into the science here, and I apologize if I get anything wrong. So if any of you PhD bio mechanists out there see something I may have misstated let me know, and I’ll be sure to clarify that.

We’re going to talk about what is it that really makes this golf club move. Let’s imagine I wanted to hit a draw. Where are the forces going that are allowing this club to swing more out to the right and for the face to rotate on open?

Let’s imagine that I’m going to hit a fade, and I’m coming more this way and the face is opening up. All these different things in golf, what causes the club to accelerate with a lot of speed?

How come somebody 130 pounds can rip a driver? How actually should that even be possible, and out-drive a guy that’s 250 pounds? What goes into that?

We’re going to be talking about the actual forces that are going just into the golf club. So that’s one of the first things I wanted to clarify. We talk a lot about body motions and body movements. One of the things is getting a big Power Turn is one of the things we talk about in the Top Speed Golf System.

I get that big Power Turn, I’m really loading up my hips, loading up my shoulders, getting wound up. PGA Tour players on average are getting almost 120° of shoulder turn as they’re going back.

Well, if I don’t translate that energy into the handle of the club, it makes absolutely no difference. So I make this big, huge Power Turn and then I just gradually let the club fall down, I don’t put any more energy into the handle here, my club head is not going to go any faster.

If I’m coming whatever it is with my body, let’s say that we’re talking about in the hips opening up in the downswing. If that energy from my hips doesn’t work its way into the golf club, it doesn’t make any difference.

Or my elbow, you know a lot of people are working on different elbow positions, different plane positions, all that has to wind up into the handle or it’s not going to affect your golf shot at all.

The only thing that affects what this club face does, and more specifically the center of mass which we’ll talk about here in a second, is the forces that I’m putting in to the handle.

Keep that in mind when we’re talking about anything golf related. Any golf instruction that you read out there, that you hear out there, that is an effort to change the way that I’m putting force into the handle. That’s a good foundation for what we’re going to be talking about.

Now the center of mass in a golf club is basically the balancing point. So if you took up – there’s a lot of metal out here in the head, there’s a lot more metal going down in the shaft. The shaft is fairly light, the head is fairly heavy.

So if I balance this club on my finger, you can see that I have a little piece of tape that I wrapped around the club shaft there. That’s kind of representing the center of mass. It’s not exactly the center of mass, but close to it. Then I should be able to balance this from any direction.

Now since my handle comes down in the hosel, and most of the mass of the club is out here, the center of mass is actually floating out here in the middle of space somewhere. My finger should be balancing just off the shaft.

If I had a little piece of something to grab on there, I could turn this club in any direction and it would be completely balanced, no matter which way I turn it on that center of mass.

So the center of mass isn’t actually inside the club, just kind of a side-note there. If I was to bend this club like this – I’ll try not to break my iron – if I was to bend that club like that, I would be moving the center of mass farther off the shaft.

If I was to throw a five-pound weight back here, I would be moving that center of mass from down here to way up here somewhere.

The center of mass of the club is constant for the club, but depending on if I put some lead tape, if I made the shaft longer, if I made the shaft shorter, that changes a little bit.

That’s just a side note, not all that important for what we’re going to be talking about today. But let’s just visualize for the sake of this video that that piece of tape is the perfect center of mass and that’s where we’re going to be swinging this club.

Now, anything that moves this club is a force acting on the center of mass. So if there’s nothing acting on the center of mass, there’s nothing that’s going to move it.

For example, if I’m perfectly balanced here, I have gravity hitting down at the top of this club, pulling the club toward the ground. If I was to move my finger, my finger right now is pushing back up with the exact same amount that gravity is pushing down.

Those are canceling out, that’s why this club isn’t moving. If I move my finger, gravity gets that club to drop straight down toward the ground.

An interesting side note, and I think this is some great information that Sasho MacKenzie pointed out, is that if whenever I have gravity, if that’s working perfectly through the center of mass, it’s not going to one side of the center of mass or the other side.

Gravity is kind of uniform, this club isn’t going to rotate as it falls. So if I drop that handle down, the club just drops down straight down to the ground.

When we get any kind of rotation of this golf club like we have in a golf swing, a lot of rotation, we’re putting a force that’s not working through the center of this center of mass.

So it’s a force that’s at an angle of that. A good way to envision that would be let’s imagine that I put a little extra force toward the head side, well I’m going to get rotation that way.

If I put a little extra force – here’s the center of mass, I’m going to put it on this side of it, I’m going to get rotation the other way.

That’s all kind of important to realize is that all the rotation happens, all the acceleration, the movement of the golf club in the swing is going to happen when that force is acting not through this center of mass.

I could pull straight through the center of mass. So let’s imagine I have this club laying on the ground. We’re going to forget about friction with the ground, we’re going to forget about gravity, all that stuff for now.

Let’s imagine that I have this center of mass right here, and I’m going to pull my club kind of parallel with this orange stick. Well that’s just going to track right along in a straight line.

I could push as long as I’m lined up perfectly with that center mass, tough to do when you’re pushing, because you’re constantly have to kind of be adjusting, and it would move in a straight line that way.

Same thing if I pull, gravity’s going down, I’m going to pull directly vertically. We don’t get any kind of rotation. If I started to pull to one side, or pull to another side, now all of a sudden, you’re going to start to get some rotation and some movement.

In the golf swing, hardly ever you could probably say basically never, maybe for a brief, split second here and there, you’re always pulling in a different direction that’s not directly through the center of mass.

So, let’s kind of go along with that same idea here, and let’s talk about the net force.

So the net force, like I mentioned earlier, the only way that I’m moving this club in a golf swing, doesn’t matter what my knees are doing, doesn’t matter what my hips are doing, all that matters is what direction am I putting force into this handle, that’s what moves the club.

If I took all these forces, so you have forces in your index finger, your pinkie, your thumb, your palm of your hand, all those forces, if you combine those together then that would result in one net force.

Let’s say the net force is directly that way, well then I would be moving, putting force into it that way, this center of mass would react to that.

So if you combine all these forces together, you can kind of spit that out as one direct arrow saying it’s moving this way. That is the only thing that changes the movement of the club.

Whatever you’re doing has to go through the handle, and then you could take a mid-point. So if you took a point between your left hand and your right hand, kind of found the middle of that.

If you said the net force, we’re going to assume it’s coming out that way for a lot of the bio mechanics software out there, we’ll assume that’s the net force going in a certain direction, then we can boil that down and say that’s the only thing that’s moving this club.

So there is some gravity, there is some friction between the air, that kind of thing, that’s small amounts in the golf swing that really doesn’t amount to a lot. So we’re going to kind of say that that’s the main force that’s going to be in there.

To my knowledge, the only person that I’ve seen that has kind of accumulated net force is Sasho MacKenzie, he has some great videos out there.

You can find some of those on Vimeo, where he talks about, he shows like a 3D model of this happening for those of you who want to learn a little bit more about it.

It’s pretty interesting stuff. Given that that net force is going through the handle and this center of mass is going to react to that, let’s talk about how that’s going to make sense in a golf swing.

So in the last example, I talked about how if I had my net force or the accumulation of all that forces are going directly this way, that center of mass would just track right along in a straight line.

Now if my center of mass all of a sudden gets outside of that, let’s say now my center of mass is on this side. Now I’m going to pull that exact same direction. I’m going to go ahead and pull my club down that orange stick, that direction this way.

You’re going to notice how that center of mass wants to kick in and start to line up with that. You’ll also notice as I do this, it’s not a direct motion over here. A lot of times people think about that when they’re looking at what’s call the moment, we’ll talk about that here in a minute.

Whenever I pull this club downward, that center of mass wants to start to track in and move closer to the line that I’m putting the force in, the line of the net force.

If you could imagine I’m pulling in that direction, toward my orange stick here. This would be the line that I’m pulling, so you take that net force and you say it’s going this way, an extension of that line would be what’s called the line of action.

So if I had that line extended out here, this is my net force, I’m going this direction. There’s your line of action. That center of mass is going to want to translate, kind of kick in toward this line of action.

It wants to work this way toward that line. The harder I pull, the more it wants to kick out there.

Even in extreme cases, if I pull really hard, it may even whip past that because of its momentum and then come back to it again. Eventually it’s going to line up perfectly with that as long as I keep pulling in the same direction.

So OK, Clay. I get it, there’s some science involved. Why the heck would I even care? Don’t worry, I’m getting there. I’m going to talk about how this relates to the swing.

If I turned it the other way, though, this is where the over the top moves come in, this is where slicing, where a lot of things come into the golf swing.

If I was to do that exact same motion, pull this way, now that center of mass since it started over here on this side of the line of action, as I pull down it’s going to translate in the opposite direction.

Whether I was over here pulling own, whether I was over there pulling down, either way it was trying to work toward the direction that I was pulling, or toward that net force, that line of action you could call it.

So that’s the only thing that’s moving the club in the golf swing. When we start talking about it here in a minute, we’ll talk about how that’s also going to want it to close the face when that’s off of the line of the center of mass.

It’s important to know that when that…let’s give you a good example of a golf swing now. Let’s put this to actual action here, instead of just talking kind of random ideas.

When my golf swing, I think the visual most people have, and the visual I had wrongly for a long time, is that you have kind of a swing plane here. When I make this swing, I’m going to have my hands and my club track perfectly down that swing plane.

I’m putting force, kind of like the Ben Hogan plane of glass, kind of imagine that, I’m going to put force down that swing plane, that plane of glass. This club is going to track perfectly down that plane of glass and I’m going to be the most consistent golfer in the world.

That’s kind of what I had envisioned. That’s not the way it works. If you look at pro players, another great piece of information I picked up from watching one of Sasho’s videos was if you take all the Major winners, I think he said he took about 20 Major champions that he had 3D data for.

As they started their transition, an early transition, so soon as those hands started down, if you took the direction the hands were moving, every single one of them had that center of mass below the direction the hands were moving.

They were laying that center of mass off, or that net force isn’t exactly the same as where the hands are moving, but let’s kind of pretend it is for this video. Not exactly right from science.

My hands are moving this way, that club was flatter than that. Because of that, now you have this line of action again, that’s going to want it to kick down and catch up with those hands.

So all the pro Major winners, the pro players, all but one would have that club shallower than that early downswing and kicking forward to help that club kick forward.

Now not only is it going to kick forward, it’s also going to help to turn this face and release the face when it’s going that way. So very important, that’s why you see so many high handicap golfers shallow that club out.

In the Top Speed Golf System, that’s exactly what we teach with The Move. When we do The Move, we’re shallowing this club out to get that relationship and to get that club starting to kick forward.

If you took high handicap players, and what he mentioned in his video was that high handicap players, the club shaft is steeper than that.

Let’s go to the top again, let’s say we’re over the top and now my hand path is the same direction, but the center of mass is on the other side, well what’s going to happen?

As I pull down this direction, that club’s going to fall in, it’s going to get stuck under very late, my face is working open, I’m coming down kind of over top of the ball, and I’m going to result in that big slice.

For those of you that are out there struggling with your slice, a great way to check and see what’s happening with this, so this isn’t exactly 100 percent science, this is more kind of everyday usable type stuff that we could do.

If you videotape your swing from down the line, if I was to go to the top of the swing and I was to take a line on my hands, and I want to trace down where my hand’s moving the couple of, the first foot or so in the downswing, draw a red line on that.

Then I’ll go ahead and use a demo swing here in a second, we’ll draw that red line on there. I want to get the center of mass of my club out here, I want to get it below that line. If I do that, now I’m going to have that club wanting to kick forward and release.

So the club’s actually wanting to accelerate toward the target and get a lot more speed. Now not only is the face wanting to turn over to help me get a draw, it’s going to also be kicking and accelerating the club forward due to that moment.

Again the moment, I don’t know if I explained that quite clear enough in the last one, but if I had this is my net force.

So here’s the handle, there’s the midpoint of the hands, I’m going to drag this club right there down this orange line.

The moment is the force that’s wanting this center mass to kick towards the line of action, which is this direction that I’m pulling, an extension of the direction that I’m pulling. You’ll see that start to trace along with that.

The more force I put into there, the bigger the moment and the bigger the amount of pull toward this line. You’ll notice it doesn’t go like this, though. That was a mistake that I made in my own mind when I was very first learning this.

I thought that the center of mass would want to kick directly over here toward that line of action. You’ll see how it moves down and toward that. It’s happening over a period of time.

The more force I put in there, or the harder I put force in, the harder that’s going to want to kick, the more momentum it’s going to kick.

As I put more force in the golf swing, that’s going to have more momentum working it forward. Now the last thing I want to kind of end here with, is that your club, as I mentioned before, the force you’re putting into this handle is almost never lined up in a golf swing.

At least, almost never lined up perfectly with the center of mass. It’s always going to one angle or another. The crucial thing to take away from all this, in my opinion as a golf instructor, is that I want to make sure that the timing of this is right.

It’s in the early transition that I have to shallow this club out. It’s in the early transition that I have to get this below my hands.

If I was steep coming down here, and it’s very steep in this part of the swing, and then it shallows out late, that doesn’t do me any good, because now all the momentum, the moment, I’m pulling this way wants that club to shallow out.

Is it shallowing out? Yes, it’s shallowing out a lot, but now it’s got so much movement going in the opposite direction that I have to overcome that and change my net force a lot to make a good, solid contact on the ball.

So think about this as like a wave. When does a wave start, and when does it end? It’s not really easy to tell, it’s always moving around. The big takeaway and the most important thing that I’ve seen from this as far as this is what’s called out of plane movement.

If my hands are moving down, let’s call it a plane, the plane is always moving, but this is always trying to kick forward. Once it catches up, it’s going to tend to go the other way. If I don’t keep changing the direction my force is going, it’s going to react to that.

So keep that in mind, it’s the early transition that we want to shallow this club that all the pros are doing that. If you’re coming down steep and then you say oh, look, I’m shallowing it very late, well I may be blocking that a mile to the right, I’ve got to get this early transition.

Let’s go ahead and give you guys a drill now to tie this in, and we’ll talk a little bit about the face on, it gets you kind of thinking about how else this plays into the swing.

If I was going to set up to hit a shot, and I set up my camera to where it’s shooting down my feet here, and toward my target in the distance.

When I make a swing, I want to draw a line from the top of my swing, from the butt end of the club, and I want to trace down about the first foot or so of where my hands are moving. Go ahead and put a red line on there.

I want to check to make sure in that position, so in that early transition as soon as my hands are starting down, my club is shallower than that. It should be shallower than that by quite a few degrees, if I’m only here 1° or 2° shallow, 5° shallower, I want it to be more.

I want it to be a significant amount shallower than that. Then here’s the other key, as we’re coming through contact, as we’re starting down, let’s say before contact my club’s wanting to catchup with that line.

Prior to contact, I’m going to g ahead and turn my hand force back up and to the left. So my hands are going to move up and to the left, that’s going to keep that moment working in to the left and keep it accelerating as I’m coming through the ball.

That’s a real-world way of thinking I’m going to shallow this path out, or shallow the center of mass out below my hand path, and as I come through, I’m working my hands more to the left. That actually accelerates the club squarely through the ball.

I’m not pulling the club to the left because my center of mass is shallower than that. It’s going to want to kick forward, kick straight through it. That’s a great real-world way to actually use this in the golf swing.

That’s why people talk about your hands going to the left. That’s one of the reasons we need to open up our hips.

That’s one of the reasons we need our shoulder kind of raising so as my hands move up and to the left kind of this direction, some people call it around the corner, that’s going to accelerate that club and whip it on through there.

One last thing we’ll talk about here today before I leave, it’s kind of hot out here for this black shirt, but let’s talk about when we’re looking from face on. The same thing actually happens, and I’ll leave you with one point that I’ve made in multiple other videos.

Whenever a PGA Tour player, professional golfer is swinging say 120 miles an hour, just prior to impact this net force, from what we’ve seen from Sasho’s information, is coming up this way.

You’re actually not pulling forward to it. If I was pulling forward, center of mass is here, there’s the net force, the line would actually be behind that, and it would be wanting this club to slow down.

I’m constantly keeping that net force tilting more and more back to help create that moment again, and to really accelerate that club coming through contact. So it’s pretty neat. I may address that in another video, but a recap here.

I’ve definitely learned a lot from this. I want to thank Sasho McKenzie for putting this information out there. He’s done quite a few videos on this, I think it’s really helping us as golf instructors.

As somebody myself, I’m very interested in biomechanics to kind of put all these pieces together, and to start to see the actual forces that are happening. I think this will be the instruction of the future.

Do you need to know this to be a good golfer, to be a good player? I don’t think so, people didn’t know this for hundreds of years in relationship to the golf swing, and did some pretty good golf. But I think it helps, I think it helps you to understand this information.

So somebody that’s steep starts to get a good mental picture of why they need to shallow it out and how to accelerate that club. So pretty cool stuff.

Let’s go ahead and hit one here, let’s see if I can shallow out that center of mass relationship to my hands, and get some good speed on one.