Your Golf Swing Requires Selective Tension
Your Golf Swing Requires Selective Tension
by Dr. T. J. Tomasi
Keiser University College of Golf Senior Faculty and Director of Research
Your goal when you make a golf swing is to be neither totally rigid nor completely relaxed – rather it’s to be some combination of the two.
At address, for example, you should feel somewhere between trip-wire-tense and limp, a feeling I call Selective Tension, where some of your muscles are tense and ready for action while others are relaxed.
It must be this way because your movement muscles are arranged in groups where, if one set is contracting, its antagonistic set must be relaxed; e.g,. when your biceps contract (shorten) to flex your arm, your triceps must be relaxed (elongated).
If they both contract at once or if neither contracts, the arm can’t move on its own.
The mechanism of how an expert transfers power from the ground, up the legs, through the pelvis, up to the shoulders, then down the lead arm, along the shaft and finally into the ball – involves a process of speeding up (firing) one set of muscles, then slowing that set down so the energy in them flows to the next segment.
And here’s the big point – this process requires Selective Tension where some muscles are firing and others are relaxed.
Distress, where the butterflies are dive-bombing, affects the entire body, and, because the effects are so global, it renders the kinematic sequence, described above, inoperable.
Eustress, where the butterflies are flying in a controlled formation, is a non-global stress designed for the calm execution of a pre-arranged plan (such as your golf swing), rather than the emergency reaction of the flight/fight/freeze response.
The best way to beat body-wide tension is to spot check the tension in your muscles progressively.
Start at the top and let your jaw and face muscles go limp; and don’t ignore your tongue.
Then relax your neck and shoulder muscles using a soft shrugging action. You should have an oily feeling in your wrists, with your arms hanging relaxed at address like a Gorilla. Your grip pressure, in a range from one to ten, should be about a six.
Over-all shake your arms/hands/ shoulders/legs one at a time to purge tension – the shake looks weird but works.
Combine these tension-busters with a deep abdominal breath, and you can relax into a Flow of Go.
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