Long time ago, when I started my researches, I said that arms are the most complicated area of the golf swing to describe and to find automatism with from biokinetical point of view because there are no fulcra similar to what we can observe in case of the legs/feet - ground relationship. What is even more frustrating is that it is arms/hands that create direct connection to the golf club. Until now I was looking to find some automatism by implementing torques to the arms through e.g. forming the biokinetical grip or presetting the rear elbow joint. Suddenly, when looking at certain aspect of great ballstrikers' bodies when swinging, it dawned on me that I should rather pay attention to shoulder joints and scapulae instead to the arms themselves and found something that not only is what I was looking for but, and I believe, not coincidentally, validates these concepts of mine based on torques I have already mentioned. Suddenly, the idea of treating shoulders just as a part of the main body working together with it on a plane perpendicular to the core appeared too simplistic and, therefore, wrong. Shoulder girdle lives its own life in the golf swing motion. But, ad rem...
Everyone certainly remembers that Mr.Hogan adviced to keep the elbows as close to each other during the motion as well as famous drawing with tied arms with a rope as an image. The goal was obvious -- to make both arms working as an unit. I read somewhere that Ben Hogan forced Mickey Wright to swing with tied arms as an excercise. The best thing now is that people do not need to do it anymore since they should pay attention to shoulder joints and scapulae and their movements instead focusing on the result, i.e. elbows to reach the desired goal – unification and stabilization of arms’ movement.
Upper limbs are connected to the main body through clavicles, scapulae and shoulder joints. We shall not go into details, but the main reason nature did it that way is to ensure the most effective motions for our arms. What is the most interesting part, however, is to find scenarios that would contribute to discover automatism. Shoulders/scapulae can protract/retract, depress/elevate and rotate externally/internally. What is very important a proper combination of these movements helps to reach our goal here, i.e. the stabilization of the humera during the entire golf swing motion.
Let us start with the obvious part - generally, the nature of the golf swing forces the internal rotation of the lead scapula and the external rotation of the rear one in the backswing part of the motion and the viceversa movements in the downswing part. Moreover, parallel compatibile phenomena occur, i.e. protraction of the lead shoulder and the retraction of the rear one in the backswing part of the motion and the viceversa movements in the downswing part. The problem is that these movements do not guarantee necessary stabilization of humera in 3-D reality. Unfortunately, one cannot benefit from natural limitations there since it is not possible when one shoulder/scapula performs a reverse action of the other one. We do need a stabilization element.
