Imagine, for a moment, that you’re assembling some furniture, the kind that comes in a box with instructions. It can be any kind of furniture: a desk, a chair, whatever you want—it’s your imagination.
But then you get to the point where you need to use that tiny little wrench that comes in a plastic bag. It’s annoying because it’s hard to screw stuff in with such a small wrench. So after a while, you get frustrated, so you go buy another wrench, and things become much easier.
Well, it’s because of a thing called a Moment Arm—a concept in physics that is best described using that wrench analogy. The longer the distance between the place you’re applying force (the handle, in this case) and the object you’re trying to twist, the bigger the moment arm. It’s why you can twist things easier with the bigger wrench: It has a longer moment arm.
Golf swings have moment arms, too. And just like wrenches, the longer the better.
How do you do that? First, look at the golf swing of Josele Ballester, who won the U.S. Amateur Championship last week.
The Titleist Performance Institute shared a fascinating video and article from Ballester’s visit to Titleist Performance Institute. When they looked under the hood of his golf swing, they found that Ballester creates a moment arm more than double the PGA Tour average.
He does this because as he transitions from backswing to downswing, Ballester shifts his lower body aggressively towards the target.
You can use the spectators in the background for reference, or the line, which is drawn directly up from inside his left foot.
After this aggressive weight shift towards the target, Ballester begins pushing back off the ground, towards the sky.
It’s the difference between his body’s center of mass and the direction he’s pushing that creates the moment arm, as the team explains in the video below. Because his weight shift was so aggressive, when Ballester pushes back off the ground it creates a big moment arm, and therefore more power with less effort.
By positioning his body to push against the ground further from his center of rotation, Jose “creates a long wrench.” His moment arm was 13″ whereas our PGA TOUR average is about 6″
Use Ballester’s move as inspiration, and a reminder of the essential three-step move that you need in your golf swing (which Golf Digest Best in State teacher Joe Plecker breaks down here):
Practice that move, because many amateur golfers often don’t shift enough. That shortens their wrench and causes a myriad of other problems.
A big shift, followed by a big rise, is how you get that same “easy power” which Dr. Greg Rose highlights in Ballester’s golf swing.
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