Drilling for Freedom - by Danny Lee

How’s Your Heave?
- by Danny Lee

Jack Nicklaus stated that he knew in the first foot of his backswing if he was going to hit a good shot or not. What he was feeling was the force and direction of the heave:  if he set the right pace into his body from the start, it would flow easily through the rest of the swing.  The heave is the move that will allow you to do this consistently. If you refer to some of our other videos on the counter-fall, one of the main points is getting a sensitivity for how much your arms weigh.

Some of the worst advice you could get is for someone to tell you to take the club back slowly.  It is one of the biggest, yet widely accepted misconceptions in golf swing instruction. If you have ever tried holding your arms over your head for an extended period of time (perhaps when changing a light bulb) you probably realized how much effort it takes and had to immediately put tension into your arms.

With a perfect Gravity Golf swing, you want your arms to be falling from the top of the swing with the least amount of tension possible.  The best way to accomplish this is to get the tension out as soon as you can. The easiest way to accomplish this is by unweighting your arms with a brief pop of energy from the core (the heave) that will allow your arms to float to the top of the swing and then allow gravity to bring them back down. Also, pay special attention to the routing of the leading elbow when working on this move.  As a side note and fun fact, when analysts tested tapes of Bobby Jones' down-swing, it started exactly at the pace of gravity (~32 FPS²).

The heave also has a direct effect on how far you will hit the ball and how deep you will go into the Counter-fall. In essence, the heave is the move to extricate tension from your body at the beginning of the swing and initiate an effortless move.  Practicing the Gravity Golf cross-footed drills can help you perfect your heave.