Mike austin swing

The Mike Austin swing has me intrigued so I have been researching it. It sees there are several people with experience with Mike himself who are teaching the "Mike Austin" swing.

I would appreciate any feed back from people with experience using one or more of these instructors. Squish 5 posts. Forged4ever 3 posts. December 10, You use the loin muscles, the inside. Sample page from the book. I would also be interested to learn where they teach as in person lessons would be nice. I live in NY State. Bunch of parasites, move on. Do or have you used the method? Alex, Not sure what you are getting at. Are accusing me of something? It goes far for sure. From my low skilled vantage point, the secret sauce is propelling the club head with the right hand.

Centrifugal force only and you'll block it. Too early and you hook it. Hard to time imo. I don't use his method, to difficult for my body I think. There was a strong Austin thread here a while ago, and there are many true believers.

What he calls "compound hip motion" is so weird when you try it, you got to think of C7 vertebra as the stable point of a pendulum and the hips swing underneath like the bottom of the pendulum, and he recommends unloading the right arm and hand as early as possible from the top. Mike Dunaway looks really good doing the swing, but strangely he looks kinda "normal" not weird at all. Interestingly, Austin says in the linked video that in transition you transfer weight to left foot and keep the left arm across and near the right shoulder, then later he says he wants the wristcock to immediately release from top.

Quite inconsistent for me. IMO the reason he's long is because of the way he transitions with his hips and the weight transfer and keeping the left arm close to right shoulder while keeping head still. Thanks again for the feedback. It is cold with a little snow here so I have been limited to web surfing for clues and trying them in the living room.

The compound pivot or hip move seems a bit strange and I have found what seems to be a couple different hand actions described by different people. I am willing to try anything to be consistent.

I have tomorrow off so I think I'll go to a covered range about 30 miles away and play around with some of the things I have read. You use the loin muscles, the inside muscles of the waist, above the hips. The quadratus lumborum, to tilt the spine as you use the opposite spinae erectae, to turn the trailing hip. That is the compound pivot. Those contractions done simutainously from the top, set the secondary axis tilt while dropping you on an inside out path to the ball.

The modern swing is dragging it down the line. The head, the 7 Cervical, remains steady this way. This compound action allows the measurement to the ball that was set at address to be maintained throughout the swing. The upper levers, the wrists elbows and shoulders, can then be released in a consistant repetative manner using an under up and out motion.

It is a third lever that is added to the swing. There is no holding the left in palmar flexion, that becomes a reaction to the throw vs. The snap hook is a powerful shot, it goes a long way. That is what makes it repeatable. The benefits are clubhead speed and accuracy. Of course it is not easy to learn the pivot as one must break away from status quo teaching. These 5 an 6 time Champions of the open were hitting using primative equiptment.

I am not familiar with the terminology used so I will need to look them up. BUT best to learn from the man himself through his videos posted there. There is the Shauger method in California, the Marshall method in Georgia. All teach Mike's concepts and all perceive it differently. I regret to say i have sworn off facebook.

Given your user name are you associated with Squish and Turn in Pittsburgh? It is a lot simpler than what is being taught. We can PM for contact info. Was there any technology transfer that happened between Austin and Hogan?

His clubshaft crosses the line slightly at his end-backswing position - as a consequence of his inside takeaway action. Note that the toe of Mike Austin's clubhead is facing upwards at the end-takeaway position seen as a blur in image 3 and that the back of his FLW is nearly parallel to the ball-target line. This happens naturally when a golfer employs a takeaway swivel action which I described in detail in my backswing chapter and other review papers.

In all the swing videos of Mike Austin that I have viewed [6], he always employed a takeaway swivel action that gets the back of his geometrically FLW, and therefore clubface, parallel to the inclined plane by the mid-backswing image 4.

Some Mike Austin disciples claim that Mike Austin changed his approach later in his life, and that he recommended keeping the clubface more closed to the clubhead arc during the takeaway action by counter-rotating his left arm a maneuver recommended by Dan Shauger in his teaching of Mike Austin's swing methodology. To understand this counter-rotation movement of the left forearm - see my description of the " twistaway maneuver " in question number 3 in my backswing chapter. If you are interested in reading more about this particular Mike Austin swing methodology controversy - see this golf discussion forum thread [8] or read this webpage's description of Mike Austin's hand action [9].

Jaacob Bowden claims that Mike Austin used the standard rolling hand-action takeaway swivel action throughout his career, and that he only considered the possibility of using a "twistaway maneuver" after his stroke. I personally do not favor a twistaway maneuver for a golfer who is a swinger, and Mike Austin was quintessentially a swinger, who would naturally use a takeaway swivel action to get his intact left arm flying wedge onto the inclined plane by the mid-backswing.

His description is very rudimentary by my standards and he relates it to Ben Hogan's glass pane swingplane concept. Mike Dunaway in mid-backswing - capture image from his DVD [3]. In this image, Mike Dunaway has Ben Hogan's imaginary plane of glass resting on his shoulders. I think that using Ben Hogan's glass pane concept is of no use when trying to understand the swingplane concept, and interested readers should read my review paper on the Swingplane if they want to better understand the swingplane concept.

Mike Dunaway uses a standard backswing action where the clubshaft moves from the hand plane to just above the TSP by the end of his backswing. At this mid-backswing position when his left arm is parallel to the ground his clubshaft is just above the elbow plane. Note that he has a geometrically FLW and note that his left arm flying wedge is intact, and his clubshaft is roughly "on-plane" butt end of the club is nearly pointing at the ball-target line.

Mike Austin's compound pivot is regarded by many Mike Austin fans as one of his major secrets, but I actually believe that his pelvic action is very traditional. In the DVD, Mike Austin stated that he went from a two foot balance at address where his weight was equally distributed between his feet to a right foot balance at the end-backswing where most of his weight is over his right foot to a left foot balance at his finish where most of his weight is over his left foot.

Image 1 shows Mike Austin at his end-backswing position and the white arrow implies that most of his weight is over his right foot, and image 2 shows Mike Austin at his finish and the white arrow implies that most of his weight is over his left foot. Mike Austin believed that the weight transfer was primarily due to his pelvic lower body pivot action, because he kept his head and therefore upper swing center stationary throughout his backswing and downswing.

He used a clock analogy to explain the pelvic movement in the backswing and downswing. Mike Dunaway demonstrating the compound pivot action - capture images from his DVD [3].

At address, Mike Dunaway's body is parallel to the ball-target line and situated between 9-to-3 on the clock. He is standing erect during this demonstration. The backswing pelvic action involves a lateral movement of the pelvis to the right while straightening the right leg, and this causes his weight to move to 4 o'clock image 1.

That creates a "feel" of right foot balance. During this process, the left knee becomes more bent. To start the downswing, he kicks-in his right knee towards 10 o'clock and shifts the right pelvis in the direction of 10 o'clock, while straightening the left leg.

At impact represented by image 2 he has an open pelvis, and his left leg is straight while his right knee is bent. Note that his head, and therefore upper swing center, remains stationary during this compound pelvic action, and most of the body motion involves a shift-rotation movement of the pelvis and lower spine.

I presume that he means that his right pelvis lifts up as he straightens his right leg during the backswing, and then his right buttocks rotates back-and-around towards the tush line. Then during the downswing pelvic action, the left pelvis lifts up as the left leg straightens, followed by a rotation of the left buttock back-and-around towards the tush line. Mike Austin calls this dual pelvic motion which involves lateral pelvic and rotational pelvic motions as a compound action.

I actually believe that this compound pelvic action is the same pelvic action that I have described in my downswing chapter and in my The Backswing and Downswing Hip Pivot Movements: Their Critical Role in the Golf Swing review paper - although I have described it differently. As he shifts to a right foot balance, he is essentially shifting to the right against a braced right leg that straightens slightly , and that causes his right buttocks to move back to the tush line and also around to the left.

In the downswing, he actually starts his downswing pelvic action with a "left hip clearing action" where the left buttocks gets pulled back to the tush line, while the right buttocks remains close to the tush line. He may have a "feel" sensation of pushing the right pelvis towards 10 o'clock, but the reality is that the left pelvis gets pulled back to the tush line more than the right pelvis leaves the tush line - in the early downswing.

You can see this phenomenon in all his swing videos. Mike Austin's pelvic action in the early downswing - capture images fom his swing video [6]. At the start of the downswing, Mike Austin pulls his left buttocks back to the tush line while keeping the right buttocks close to the tush line where it was positioned at the end-backswing position - and this represents the "left hip clearing action" described by Ben Hogan.

The reason why the left buttocks moves more than the right buttocks is due to the fact that the left femoral head and therefore left pelvis is relatively unweighted and there is no impedance to its motion in space, while the right femoral head and right pelvis is markedly weighted, and they therefore resist motion. Image 4 shows the end of the "hip squaring phase" where the pelvis is relatively square to the ball-target line, and the pelvis has already rotated about 45 degrees to get to this position.

It is only in the late downswing, that the right pelvis moves around towards the 10 o'clock position. If the right pelvis moved forward prematurely in the early downswing, then that would predispose to hip spinning, and a golfer would also have a tendency to fall forward towards the toes of his feet and become unbalanced. I believe that the "left hip clearing action" while keeping the right pelvis back against the tush line helps to keep a golfer in balance during the club slotting phase of the early-mid downswing slotting of the power package phase.

Mike Austin's early downswing - capture images from his swing video [6]. At the same time, he is pulling his left pelvis back and around to the left - represented by the curved red arrow. Mike Austin has a wonderfully fluid pelvic action in his downswing, and it is amazing how much secondary axis tilt he develops as he shifts his pelvis around to the left in his early-mid downswing.

In the DVD, Mike Dunaway states that one should have the "feeling" of moving one's navel about 16" to the left at the start of the downswing, and that is an excellent mental image for a golfer who is trying to emulate Mike Austin's superb downswing pelvic motion. To see how superbly Mike Austin moves his pelvis at the start of the downswing, a reader-viewer should study his skeleton swing videos - where he demonstrated his swing while wearing his skeleton suit references 6f and 6g].

Mike Austin in his skeleton suit - capture images from his swing video [6f]. Note how far back Mike Austin's head is positioned at the end-backswing position image 1. Note how he keeps his head and therefore upper swing center stationary during his downswing images 2 and 3 while shift-rotating his pelvis to the left.

Note that his downswing pelvic action produces a large degree of secondary axis tilt. A golfer has to have a lot of spinal flexibility and hip joint flexibility to fluidly perform this "Mike Austin" pelvic action, but a capacity to perform it well will be very useful to a golfer who wants to be a successful long-drive competitor.

If there is one secret that is significantly responsible for Mike Austin's long driving ability, then it is probably his right arm throw action. Mike Austin called this action " throwing the clubhead at the ball ". I described these two different types of swing action in great detail in my How to Power the Golf Swing review paper. In TGM swinging drag loading a golfer generates swing power by catapulting the left arm down-and-out-and-forward towards impact via a pivot action.

That golfer can drive the ball yards with his left arm alone. Mike Austin obviously rejects this idea and he believes that one must pull-and-push at the same time, and that the right arm must supply a considerable amount of throw push power - if one hopes to hit the ball yards! So, how does Mike Austin achieve this goal?

To understand Mike Austin's downswing right arm action, one needs to clearly understand all the biomechanical movements involved in his right arm throw action.

Mike Austin believed that a golfer should throw the clubhead at the ball with the right hand - as if one was performing an underhand throw action eg. This gives a superior weight shift, a greater control of the plane and blade, and much greater clubhead speed.

The result is more energy transfer into the back of the ball for more distance with less effort. Also, because of a much longer flat spot through the impact zone and less changing of the face angle, you will hit the ball straighter and dead solid more often than any other technique. The Mike Austin method feels natural and is easy to learn. Most golfers see dramatic results in little time. Now you can learn the most efficient method for hitting a golf ball from home!