Milo Lines Blog

Reflex In Your Golf Swing Like A BOARDER | Turn Ground Force Into Rotation | Athletics Series

Transcription

Milo Lines:
Hey, everybody. Welcome out to Superstition Mountain. Milo and Henry here on a extremely hot day. We got something in front of us. What is that thing?

Henry Fall:
Skateboard.

Milo Lines:
A skateboard. What in the world does that have to do with golf?

Henry Fall:
Oh, that’s what we’re here for.

Milo Lines:
Okay. Well, let’s get into it. So Henry, we were just inside and you were showing me some video of a snowboarder doing some cool tricks in a half-pipe and how he moved.

Henry Fall:
Shaun White.

Milo Lines:
Shaun White.

Henry Fall:
He’s pretty big gold medalist.

Milo Lines:
Pretty studly on a snowboard.

Henry Fall:
Yeah. He’s also a good skater too.

Milo Lines:
I’m sure he is.

Henry Fall:
So this video is not just about skateboard. We’re going to talk about surfing, snowboarding, awesome similarities here, just different seasons, I guess.

Milo Lines:
Yeah. And they’re all boards that you ride.

Henry Fall:
Yes.

Milo Lines:
And I stink at all of them.

Henry Fall:
I have no idea how to skate. I just tried to flip this up to myself and I almost killed myself. That was pretty good though.

Milo Lines:
Okay, cool. So what are some of the things that we saw that were similar when the guys were riding those boards? I saw as he was coming into a half-pipe and as he got ready to do a trick, I saw something. He went like this. So he was riding his board like this, and then he started to go up the half-pipe and he went into the ground like this, getting ready to do a cool trick.

Henry Fall:
Well, you have a term for that and you used this recently in another video. What term is that, for getting back into the ground sort of this?

Milo Lines:
Reflexing.

Henry Fall:
Reflexing, right. So sort of that Sam Snead look, that little bit of the-

Milo Lines:
The squat.

Henry Fall:
… squat.

Milo Lines:
It’s something that athletes do in every sport when they get ready to be athletic. So if I’m getting ready to guard somebody in basketball, I’m going to go down like that. A hitter in baseball, they load down. A pitcher when they’re getting ready to throw, they load down. It’s what we do in order to make force. We load down. So perfectly obvious or perfectly reasonable that in a sport like skating, to be able to jump because you have to be able to jump to be able to make that skateboard get off the ground, you have to go down into the ground first.

Henry Fall:
Let’s talk a little bit about some of the differences we saw though, because I think the obvious one when we looked at it at slow motion with Shaun White on the snowboard, which I’ll put up in this video, is where the movement begins.

Milo Lines:
Okay, saw it. His feet are strapped into the board first of all.

Henry Fall:
Right.

Milo Lines:
So what we saw is in order… He started to push with his legs out of the ground, but he used his upper body for the rotation, so his hips didn’t lead the way.

Henry Fall:
Right.

Milo Lines:
In this scenario, it was the opposite. It was more of an upper body led motion.

Henry Fall:
Yeah. It kind of looked like his shoulder, his left shoulder after he started this flex in the ground, the shoulder was the catapulting him into his spin.

Milo Lines:
Yeah, Uh-huh (affirmative).

Henry Fall:
All right. So it was more that way, versus-

Milo Lines:
Golf is more from the middle up and down. This was more from the middle up and then the legs kind of got pulled into the motion.

Henry Fall:
Right.

Milo Lines:
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that-

Henry Fall:
His feet are strapped in.

Milo Lines:
… his feet are strapped in and you can’t move them.

Henry Fall:
Especially on a skateboard where you really, you have to create a stable base. You cannot let the skateboard fly off and kill-

Milo Lines:
Yes.

Henry Fall:
… something. You’re trying to create or maintain some of that friction there still, right?

Milo Lines:
For sure. It was kind of a backward sequence. It would be more of an over the top sequence for a golfer, top-down.

Henry Fall:
Right.

Milo Lines:
Yeah.

Henry Fall:
Right. This goes back to your video. You’ve done one before about the upper center and the lower center, how they sequence and match up, right?

Milo Lines:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Henry Fall:
So this you’re saying is almost the opposite.

Milo Lines:
It would be reversed. In a golf swing or in most stick sports, you see the lower half moves and pulls the upper half along.

Henry Fall:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Milo Lines:
They actually even separate for a second. The lower half goes for a bit and then the upper half catches up. In this scenario, it was reversed. The upper half went and got ahead of the lower half and then the lower half went spinning.

Henry Fall:
Okay. But again, that’s because of the feet, in a way, are pinned.

Milo Lines:
Yes. If you want to have bad sequencing in golf, just make your feet really planted. It’ll probably cause you to do some things out of order.

Henry Fall:
But as far as the main similarity we saw, it was that reflexing, getting into the ground, and using our core to initiate that rotation. I know it was from top down versus bottom up, but it’s still, that’s what created that spin. It was in here in that movement.

Milo Lines:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Henry Fall:
One other thing, I like the feeling and sensation of this half-pipe. If you imagine this half pipe and I’m making my way into it, you can see how that in a way in itself, I’m starting to turn the corner, sort of come up and out of the shot into my finish.

Milo Lines:
Yeah. That can be like riding the wave or the half-pipe.

Henry Fall:
Yeah.

Milo Lines:
Yeah. Cool.

Henry Fall:
That can be a cool visual for folks at home.

Milo Lines:
There are some similarities in riding a skateboard and golf. It’s an athletic motion and those skateboarders, man, they’re crazy. Good athletes.

Henry Fall:
Are you going to hit a ball off the skateboard?

Milo Lines:
No. I don’t think so.

Henry Fall:
Slow-mo?

Milo Lines:
I don’t think that’s a very good idea.

Henry Fall:
Probably not.

Milo Lines:
But I will hit a golf ball.

Henry Fall:
All right. Well, show us how golfers should do it. Actually, you know what? Show us the wrong way to do it, the way a skateboarder would do it.

Milo Lines:
So skateboarder would be top first. So it would look like that.

Henry Fall:
That’s pretty good coordination to make it go straight though.

Milo Lines:
Good hands, man. A golfer would make it the opposite. So it’s more legs. Pelvis and the legs first. You can see there’s a lot more energy that gets into the golf club head like that. I’m not very good at being-

Henry Fall:
That way.

Milo Lines:
… that way. That’s probably why I’m really bad on a skateboard.

Henry Fall:
I’ve never skateboarded really, but I was more of a skier growing up [inaudible 00:06:32]. I love to do skiing one.

Milo Lines:
Okay, everybody, if you like this video, like it and subscribe to the channel. Also come visit us at milolinesgolf.com.

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