A Couple of Swing Thoughts

 One of the bad things about PB is that the paddle and ball don't weigh much.  You might think that was a good thing, but it allows some inefficient swings.  You can get away with them as nothing in the game requires a lot of strength.  But for long term efficiency, we must look for a good swing.

As a close reader will have noticed, I'm also the holder of a dubious golf swing.  The PB and golf swing have a lot in common.  And since I spend a lot of time working on my golf swing, there is carry over (or do you say 'bleed through?').  In either case I do on occasion have very sore hands.

I'm getting to the point here and it's a useful bit of information...

I watched the ladies' singles from the Vulcan PB tournament and I noticed on a lot of shots that the paddle hand of the gals' was bent backwards.  To make it clear in what manner the wrist was bending, imagine your arm is flat on a table with the palm down.  Now raise your hand by bending at the wrist.  That is the position used for ground strokes and serves.  If they hit a backhand, the bend went the other way, but this angle was always there.  Typically there is still some angular deviation of the paddle from the arm angle.  If your grip is anywhere close to "shake hands" this is automatic and I think desirable.

Now for the golf tie in...  There is a swing aid out there called the GEM.  I built one and could never get it to work properly due to my poor swing mechanics.  In a video today, an old time golf coach was reviewing it.  He had made items like it before going back 40 years or something.  And then they were discussing what the GEM was supposed to make you do.  Basically you have to rotate your right wrist early into a position in order to make an underhand tossing motion.  And you want that right wrist to have the same back bend as the PB players had!

In golf it's the trailing wrist with this bend - right hand for righties.  For a two handed back hand swing, it's also the trail wrist with this bend.

The bend doesn't last long as the paddle and golf club are in motion and are rotating/closing/coming around faster than the hands.  Some of the bend is there at contact.

I've always thought of the PB serve motion as an underhanded toss, but I'm not sure of this wrist bend.  I think I usually use it to generate more top spin, but I've not fully embraced maintaining the bend and rotating savagely.  And I, for sure, was not thinking of the golf swing as an underhanded tossing motion with this wrist position.  

(The alternative golf swing is to rotate your forearms to square the club.  There is some timing with this and it's done later in the swing than if you prepare for this underhanded toss motion.  The underhanded motion starts with an early, but slight wrist uncocking about when left arm is parallel to the ground, which squares the club.  After that, the swing is nothing but a body rotation.)

I think the wrist bend adds some mechanical advantage to a swing.  It looked like not all the guys used it for ground strokes.  They did use it for overheads and smashes.

I'll be teaching at the PB 101 class on Saturday and there will be time to test this out.  I did hit some golf balls in the backyard and it seems to be valid.  So you might want to see how much of this is in your swing and play around with it.  It should give you more power.

One other golf point that I stumbled across today -- it's now Monday, is that the forces that move your body forward as into a shot, need to start earlier than the actual swing at the ball.  In some golfers they are planning the "to the ball" motion by the time the club is waist high during the backswing (as part of this, the club while still rising, is probably deaccelerating up to the top).  

I think a proper PB stroke will have a lot of this early motion in it.  We've all been caught having to move backwards and then swing forward - it's inelegant, inefficient, and hard.  Next time you are starting a serve, see if you can feel the body getting ready to reverse position and how early that is in the backswing. If it's very late, I would expect a serve that is higher and weaker and feels a bit awkward.