Sports biomechanist Dr Sasho MacKenzie reveals the best – and worst –
ways to increase distance
Why is it that when we swing our hardest, the ball often flies even shorter than normal? The issue is when we try to increase distance, we don’t understand the moves necessary to crank up clubhead speed. This paradox is what we recently discussed with one of golf’s leading biomechanists and founder of The Stack speed training system, Dr Sasho MacKenzie. The following excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
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What are some common speed-killing moves?
The big one is casting from the top. If you decide to uncock your wrists and get the clubhead going really fast before your lower body does anything, that’s a speed killer. Is that transition sequence feeling effortful? If you get the clubhead going early, it feels like you’re putting a lot of effort into the swing, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate to higher speeds. If the club feels really heavy and you’re applying a lot of force to it early in the downswing, that’s not the best way to generate speed.
Another common one that can happen with very athletic folks is keeping too much speed in the body. It’s especially common for baseball players, and it promotes a slice. We don’t want the body moving that fast at impact. We have to get some speed into the body early in the downswing by using the ground effectively, but then we want to get the speed out to the club.
I have to put some caveats out there. For most people it’s not very helpful to think, Stop the torso. I do think it’s helpful to think, Sling the arms, or think about getting the speed out to the club.
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What should your grip pressure be throughout the swing?
I’m a big advocate of light grip pressure, and I’ve got a simple test that everybody can do: grab a golf ball, and I want you to throw it as fast as you can. The first thing people do is get loose at the wrist and then throw it. Next, grab a golf ball with the same level of pressure on the ball that you have on your grip, and now throw it. If your grip pressure is too tight, you’ll notice it really impedes your ability to get the speed out to the golf ball.
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Some golfers are afraid that speed training will injure them. What do you say to them?
I would say you are more likely to injure yourself just playing golf than you are speed training by taking airswings. There is a ton of evidence that hitting buckets of balls off a mat causes tendonitis. Why are you more likely to hurt your wrist when you hit a tree root versus the ground? Because the forces peak really high, really quickly, and the club stops quickly. That’s the extreme, but imagine pounding divots. That’s much more likely to induce an injury than taking airswings.
Photo: getty images
