hi this is Mike Renato with athletic motion golf on this episode of pros verses aEM's we're gonna compare the professional golfers with the amateur golfers see if we can't find a few more yards off the tee by looking at how the right knee flexes [Music] how could you start the video because you know me flick can be a hot topic sometimes that we don't have a preference we see great golfers extend the knee flex the knee it really doesn't matter to us but I do want to point out point out why that can be so misleading so when I first saw this image I've showed this to a few people and they pretty much said the same thing I see a golfer who's slightly straightening his knee that our tour average is a three degree loss in knee flicks and that's kind of what I see in this image here now the difficulty with that is that to really see me flex with a camera right we're all used to seeing knee flex talked about you know based on video images or still images from a camera that camera really needs to be right that camera lens locked right on the center of the knee joint and then it needs to rotate the camera needs to rotate as the knee rotates that would be the most realistic or true version of seeing knee flexing in the golf swing especially in the backswing but what we're usually left with is just kind of this generic down-the-line view we're fortunate here with Gears is that were able to put a number with this so this is the same golfer the same exact swing we can see starts with 19 degrees of knee flex but what actually looked like to me when I saw it was that he was losing flex he's actually gaining flex to the point well of 9 degrees almost 10 degrees of flex gained I saw about a 3 degree loss so he can be very deceiving especially when you start looking at you know legs Underpants baggy pants it's just deceiving to look at but again this isn't necessarily about the backswing we really don't care as far as if a player loses or gains flex because both styles are in the Hall of Fame we're more interested in the downswing and that's what we want to literally focus on in this video and we're gonna look at this benchmark here of address the top of the backswing and then where the player regains his knee flex his original right knee flex which in this case he increased his knee flex going back sand that doesn't apply and then where both knees kind of level out and share the same amount of flex and want to pay special note while we're on this frame of where the hands are the hands are roughly belt high waist high with the club head still way up above the golfers shoulder and then we also want to make a look at where his rotation is so at the top he's - 46 degrees of rotation and then down here by the golf ball he's basically 47 degrees open so it's a very close mirror image backswing to him but now let's take a look at our second pearl here and I think it was important to use two pros just to show both sides of the coin because you know again right knee flex can be kind of polarizing topic we don't care we just want to show you how both can work so we see this golfer start roughly an identical amount of knee flex but he's actually going to straighten his knee going back and then we can see at the top he has almost 20 29 30 degrees of rotation in the backswing and then look at how quickly he regains his knee flex coming his original knee flex coming down so we see golfers straighten the knee going back you know various amounts they put that knee flex back in very very quickly then we're gonna scroll him down to where both knees share the same flex roughly right here and we can see again his hands are roughly waist high club head still way up there by the shoulder and then as we scroll him down through to impact we can see again it's almost a mirror image I think he's got five degrees more open than he had closed in the backswing so let's compare those movements with what we typically see with an a move all right so this gentleman came in with a very common complaint then he just wasn't hitting the ball as far as he felt like he should be but he's in his mid 50s and he was right he should be hitting the ball farther so let's take a look at how he moves so we see a very early straightening of the right knee gets to the top of his backswing he's got a maxes out at 56 degrees of rotation and in kids to the top of his backswing at 54 degrees of rotation 10 and a half degrees and his right knee flicks so we're gonna see him gain that original flex much later than the pro example and then if we scroll him forward to where both knees are the same flex we're gonna see something very different we're gonna see the club head for the first time way down there by the golf ball hands kind of top of the thigh versus the pro examples both of them where we didn't see the club head at all was way up by their shoulder and the hands were much higher and then we're gonna scroll down into impact and we see kind of a similar thing with the knees and you can see where he's got 34 degrees open at impact coming from minus 54 at the top of the swing so let's compare in a little more detail why this golfer wasn't getting the distance relative to what we've seen so far so I think it's important to kind of reiterate a point that these two swings apart we're not just comparing one particular pro versus one particular end instead we're using two swings to represent a very large data pool with kind of each classification of golfer and you know we have to show you two swings would be no video so we're just pulling these two out as representations of what the overall data poll shows so this is again this is not one pro versus one am it's just a representation I think that'll make I think it'll be more beneficial to you as you're kind of thinking about your own swing as you're watching these with that in mind so if we take a look at this but this golfer on the right our amateur golfer he's really bought into the idea of you know more rotation will give him more distance and that's pretty common you know it makes sense you got a pros do a lot of rotation they hit a farm why don't I hit a lot of rotation so I hit a fart or two the problem is you know we've all probably heard of the term empty calories I certainly have there's a lot of empty rotation out there and depending on how you rotate and more importantly when you rotate on what that does to the forces you're applying in the golf swing really determines if rotations gonna help you hit the ball farther and this amateur it he had empty rotation cuz all of this rotation really wasn't helping him if we scroll him to the top we can see he has a significant amount more rotation in his pelvis than their pro does and what you're not seeing is this is his torso rotation which was plus 35 compared to the pro as well so it's not a physical issue with regard to flexibility or ability to demonstrate rotation in a golf swing that was keeping this golfer from hitting it farther it was his ability to time the forces that happen in the golf swing and have them happen early enough to take advantage of them to produce more distance so if we scroll them through we'll look at where they regain flex see the art Pro does it much sooner so which puts him you know it's a quarter of a second for the downswing so it's already got him behind the eight-ball relative to the time and that's the big point here to consider and then if we're taken to where the knees regain the same flex of the downswing what's cool about this landmark is that this is also if we're looking at the forces that a player's generating and putting into the ground to help him rotate to help him you know shift his body certain areas that really coincides with this point in the downswing where the knees kind of regain flex and if we look at the screen here you can see how very similar knee flexes for both golfers a big difference in rotation plus the am right so the am is positive in the rotation far more than the pro and very similar knee flexes so high is this golfer not generating more speed than it currently is well look at where the club head is we actually can't see it but the club head is way up there by the pros shoulder that gives him time to not only peak these forces but it gives him time to translate that and the club head speed our amateur is not piqued his forces yet and he has zero time for those forces to show up as club head speed so a significant difference in where these two golfers are reached this kind of same flex me position in the downswing and it's something that we see so often it's not a physical limitation you just see our amps got way more rotation and had way more rotation in the backswing he's just so late generating the forces needed to produce club head speed that and to the point where he's actually he's actually maxing out his forces for club head speed generation well after impact so he's getting zero benefit from it and if we scroll him down to impact we see almost identical rotation amounts right so this am did what he want to do we got way rotated in the backswing way rotated open thirty five degrees open just like our pro but look at the knee flex differences da Rams demonstrating that kind of saggy knee syndrome or both knees are kind of just laterally coasting through the golf ball very little force generated to produce club head speed and we can see the scissoring effect that you see in all great ball strikers where our pro is demonstrating and it simply it's not a physical issue I promise you that because we changed this and to look so much more like the pro relative to these numbers and his club head speed did increase it's because of when it's the timing the wind is so important when you're looking at gaining rotation rotation for the sake of rotation does it guarantee you anything it has to be a useful rotation you don't want those empty rotation calories and your golf swing and this is a big way to look at it because it can put a tangible marker on when this stuff happens and if you're late putting those forces into the ground to generate the club head speed you're not going to see it in ball speed you're not going to see in distance thanks again for watching if you have any questions or comments please leave them down below also if you haven't already done so click on the big golf ball you'll get the latest videos just as soon as they're released [Music]