#131: Putting Together Your Personal Puzzle

Because they don't know their own puzzle. They don't know what's going to help them balance out their, their pattern. And they're maybe been trying to self diagnose and problem solve but they're focusing on the wrong things.

And welcome back to another Par Train. I'm one of your co hosts, Evan Singer. Matt Cermak is here with me.

How we doing, Ev? We're back. I mean we've really never stopped.

We don't stop. The par train makes the hardest game in the world look easy. And a lot of us when we're on the par train, we don't even know why it's easy. It just is. Right? Well, the point of that show, point of our show is to understand why so that we can apply that those learnings to other things in our life and become better. On and off the course we feature interviews with PGA Tour pros, bestselling authors, CEOs, coaches like Erica today and more. So you'll get the motivation to keep chugging and the tools to enjoy the ride. Before we dive into this interview with Erica, Matt, I don't know if you heard, but our friends at Roback just dropped their hoodies again. Again, guys, these performance hoodies sold out so fast. There was so much anticipation for them. Took months to get them back in stock. Now they're back and honestly, I'm not going to lie to you, I haven't gotten a new one yet and I'm a little hesitant to tell you guys to buy them before they sell out again because I'm afraid that's going to make them sell out before I get mine. But guys, I'm going to tell it to you anyways. Get a performance hoodie and use our link in the show notes to get 15% off your order@roback.com no promo code needed. It'll auto apply in the car or hit up our social accounts at the Par train on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, you name it, we're there. Instagram and Twitter are the most active and we will always have this link in our bio make it easy for you guys. Okay, Erica Larkin give you guys context number one teacher in Virginia, best teachers in the state since 2014, best young teachers in America, top 40 under 40 since 2012 to 2019 in Golf Digest. So one of the best in America. And I really enjoyed our conversation with Erica. I think she provides a lot of interesting unique takes on her website and YouTube and Instagram. I believe it's at Erica Larkin Golf on Instagram. She Does a lot of fun stuff and a lot of feels like we talked about dead arms and jelly wrists and these things that just give you kind of a different take on how to have the best swing for your game.

What a great resume she has. And it's pretty interesting. She was self taught and Clayton College Division 1 and was around a lot of PGA Tour teaching professionals. Kind of hung around the game and learned to teach it. But she's a great mix of old school and new school ev. Right. We're talking about some of the original swing concepts from the 1930s, viewing the clubhead. Right. And also about some of the science and the biomechanics that have been developed over the last 20 years. But what I love about her and you guys gotta really listen in, is this idea of no tension. Tension ruins our golf swings. Everyone's every golf swing. Right. Whether your mind creates it, whether a bad fundamental. But I mean, we need to be more cognizant of this. And she really breaks it down, you know, about take a deep breath, stop to chill. Like chill out with your grip pressure. Right.

Baby bird.

Baby bird. So no, I really think anybody. Too often the modern golfer is too worried about learning the system, learning the perfect move and trying to be somebody they're not. Like Dustin Johnson, right?

Yep.

What about no tension and good tempo and, you know, making an athletic, athletic move? So great episode.

Yep.

Yeah, I really connected with playing more. We play conscious golf, but how can we play unconscious golf? How can we do our work on the range based on some of the things she talks about? And then how can we get out there and let it fly right, versus hanging on and trying to play swing out there versus the game. So definitely listen to the end, guys. A lot of good stuff on this one as always. Guys. Give us a subscribe so you can be updated when new episodes come out. Follow us at the par train.

Give us a tweet. Give us a. Give us a tweet.

You know, I love how you say give us a tweet instead of tweet us, but you might have age or something.

That is a Twitter, you know.

But yeah, guys, as always, thanks for hopping on board. Stay well. Hit them straight. And if you don't, what do they. What do you got to do?

Sarm? Just remember to enjoy the ride.

Enjoy the ride, guys. Take care. Erica, before we get into this, first I just have to thank you because I was watching some of your edutainment videos, which are great, by the way, and I just wanted you to know that the you're off plane playing off of the. You're so vain was literally stuck in my head and my girlfriend's head all day yesterday. She's literally still this morning singing the song. So I just want to thank you for bringing that to our household.

Oh, you're welcome. I'm sorry for the. My attempt at decent vocals here.

Yeah, you guys got to check it out if you haven't seen it, but no. So we're really excited to have you on the show. We know you grew up taking the subway. Now you're on the par train. You and Matt both played college golf. You and I both majored in marketing. There's a lot of parallels. We'll get into it. But I just wanted to know, from the marketing standpoint, selfishly, I have to ask, did the marketing actually help you become a better communicator and teacher? And I want to understand the impact of some of that training and education versus playing in college and being a competitive player yourself and how the two kind of play off of each other as a teacher now.

Yeah, it's interesting question. So I do think that I have a unique skill set in that my. My brain is definitely more creative in that marketing brain. I feel like I'm always, you know, coming up with new ideas of how to do things, but that also plays into being a coach and problem solving all the time. So I also have sort of an artistic side to myself. I think growing up, I always embraced performing arts and fine arts and playing music. And so I just was always doing things like that, putting myself out there and being very comfortable on a stage, presenting in front of a camera. So that doesn't really bother me at all. If anything, I enjoy it. So I think that theatrical artistic side, combined with my understanding of what clear communication really means and getting your message across to the person that is either standing in front of me or on the other side of that screen. The visuals and certainly the cues that I'm trying to get across in my coaching is really the perfect storm. I think that's why a lot of the stuff I do works well or. Or rings a bell with a lot of people. It's practical, but it also is very relatable. And I find a lot of different ways to show ideas, and I really just think it's sort of a marriage of all those things from my background that have sort of come together in this unique way.

That's great. Erika. Yeah. Welcome to the show. You know, I've got to point out how you teach watching your videos and Your style is very similar to how I learned how to play golf for my coach growing up. And I saw, you know, you grew up in a city in New York. I grew up here in Chicago, I guess urban golfers, so to speak. But you were self taught until, you know, 15 years old. So talk to us about what you know, inspired you to start to think about teaching and how you developed your philosophy, which will get a little more into.

Sure. So I grew up being introduced to the game at a fairly young age, but by parents who didn't play golf. So they just took me along for the ride with them to pitch and putt and the driving range, whatever we were trying to figure out at the time. So it was really an exercise in the three of us. I was an only child just trying to have fun and enjoy this new activity together. And we had transitioned from actually playing quite a bit of tennis on the weekends and recreationally into more golf. And we did both for a while. But then golf kind of took over, especially because my mom and I really played a lot more golf. She really also enjoyed the sport. So we learned together. And that is to say that my dad would order a video series and we would literally watch it together. Or we would watch golf on TV on the weekends and try to pick up what the players were doing. And in the age of old, school camcorders. This is 1990ish. We filmed ourselves swinging in our apartment and just would play back the video and see how we looked. And that process was really helpful to understand the golf swing from a fairly young age or at least try to understand it from what was available at the time. Pre, YouTube, pre. Really any formal golf instruction that I had. So I don't know why, I mean, I was in so many other activities as a kid, why my parents didn't jump right into formal coaching. But because, you know, junior golf wasn't nearly what it was today. There just wasn't as much out there. Plus, we were learning the world of golf. They were not country club kids. They didn't know what was really out there. And again, you couldn't just pop on Google and type in like local golf instructor and find something. It was a matter of word of mouth and like literally looking up YouTube or yellow pages ads and things like that. Right. It was much harder to kind of get involved, especially the fact that we were in the city doing it. We weren't out in the suburbs with neighbors that were already involved and things like that. I mean, I was the only kid I knew that played golf other than when we maybe went to a course and happened to see somebody else that might be there with their kids. So we really were starting from scratch and kind of figuring out as we went. And when I finally got involved with the Met PGA in New York and the junior golf programs there, you know, then we got pointed in the direction of, oh, hey, here's a coach that's involved with junior golfer. Here's somebody you should meet. Or we're having this clinic next weekend, you should come out. Or this nine hole event. So through the PGA in the section of New York there. And like those great professionals, they are the ones that really helped facilitate us learning the game and introducing us to the right people and the right resources. So that was kind of how the journey began. But when I finally got introduced through some of the tournament golf I was playing to one professional, he really just offered to help, mentor and give me some lessons. Honestly, just out of the goodness of his heart. I think he connected with the fact that I was a city kid and we didn't really know a whole lot and he saw some potential in me. So we gravitated towards this guy, Frank Darby, and he was just a really great influence in my game. When I got to be a teenager, he helped lead me through the college process. He was working with other juniors at the time that were looking to try to take the next steps with their game. So it was just this little, you know, really blessing and gift that we met him. And he was again a city kid himself. So there was just a great friendship that developed. I still talk to Frank. He's still in the business. He runs a. He's on a Sirius XM show. I don't know if you've heard on course with, with, with, with the guys on, on PGA Tour Radio, but Frank and Brian Crowell. So he's still around and very active in golf. And that was really kind of the first foray into golf instruction. And because of his mentorship, he pointed me in the direction of what to read and better things that I could be looking at and understanding. And he would have me come out and play golf with some of his collegiate players that he was working with. And just learning from others that way really helped me. But he gave me a really good starting point into understanding some fundamentals that I had questions about. And. And then he also helped me get my first job in the golf business, at which point I worked for a really amazing professional in the Met section, Mike Gilmore, who was a great player. He gave me some Coaching. When I was home in college, I started to understand how to work the ball. He had a fitting card. I started learning about equipment. He had the first video, called it the NEAT system. It was like basically software on this old, you know, piece. One of the original software programs. I remember the.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah. So the NEAT system, I wasn't just in enamored because I could finally, you know, look at my swing compared to other pro, you know, professionals that were in the library and draw lines. And I would be done with my shift at work and use his equipment to film myself and go back and spend like hours I would just get lost on his computer just looking at swings. And I just was always a golf swing nerd and didn't really give myself enough credit for that until much later. Like it was just part of the process. I just enjoyed doing it and always really admired, admired golf instruction. When I did see it, whether it was on TV or in magazines, I just, I just, I just liked it. I liked studying it. So that's, you know, why I say I was self taught and then had these different influences on a very basic level that, that helped me understand golf swing. And then when I got through college and was had this marketing degree and knew I wanted to be in golf, I started working more on the operations side and got sucked right into teaching by a couple colleagues at these golf courses that I was working at. And knew at that point that that's where I should really focus my energy. It was coaching and teaching and I still had this passion for, you know, understanding and loving golf swing. So I went, kind of followed that path and got my PGA certification that took a couple of years and was happy to work at a private club and develop junior programs and ladies programs and really get my hands dirty into real, like formal coaching. So that was pretty, pretty great transition from, you know, my college life and playing in college and then trying to, you know, figure out how I was going to be in the golf business into actual teaching. And it didn't hurt to have all that other, you know, experience along the way. But ultimately I ended up where I think I belonged.

Yeah, Erica, there's so much interesting stuff to unpack there. I think the thing that comes to mind, first thing is I am similar to you in the sense that I love looking at swings, I love understanding who does what. But I think that the challenging thing, I'm a seven handicap, Matt's a scratch, he played in college, I played baseball my whole life. Took up golf later is how do. And hopefully we'll get into this today. But how do you go from seeing. It's very hard to see swings and understand what people are doing. But the how, the how is the tough part and feel and real is so different. How do you go from looking at so many swings and learning to then actually put some of that to practice? How do you then translate it to swing yourself?

For my own game or for people that I'm teaching?

Either or.

I think that I did enough experimenting with what certain ideas felt like. I would always try new things that I feel like I have good perspective on. Number one, what it's like to try to make a change because I was always self fixing and self diagnosing and know what it takes to actually try to make it happen over a period of time. So the discipline of that. I also have a fairly diverse background in other activities. I did dance growing up and gymnastics and I was a swimmer and I played a little soccer and I think that just the various activities that I was involved in as a well rounded athlete and also again the performance background. I just have a good variety of experiences in life that I feel I can pull from. When I'm trying to come up with a analogy or okay, this feels like fill in the blank. When I try to do this move, it feels like this. And it could be something totally random that other people wouldn't be able to connect the dots. But again, I think that I just have this diverse background in life experience for many reasons that luckily I'm able to somehow problem solve like that and relate to different things in life outside the box of golf. So I think that's what helps me help myself but also help other people because when they come to the lesson T and they say I am, you know, I'm a musician or they say, you know, I do this or that for a living or my background was in field hockey or this or that. Like I just, I guess I can try my best to relate to that person and their history in movement or in life and just figure out how I can take whatever it is that we are trying to do and change and work on and make it relatable to that person. And in the process of doing that, that's where some of my crazy videos on social media honestly come from. Because they come from that practical experience on the lesson T relating to an individual. And I figure if this is one person, then there's got to be more people out there that would understand this comparison or this feel or this relationship. So I just take that as inspiration and Then try to bring an idea to life in my own way through my videos. But that's kind of how I look at it. It's like, okay, here's a problem. Let's diagnose it. That's honestly the easy part at this point, seeing what's going on, measuring it with these different devices and stuff is the easy part. Then saying, okay, how do we fix it? I have certain patterns that I see often, but I have my favorite approaches to fixing certain issues. But then taking that fix and relating it to the person standing in front of me in a way that they can understand. There are multiple ways of saying the same thing or showing the same thing to get a result. So maybe it's a field cue, maybe it's a visual cue, maybe it's an analogy. It's just. And I try different things with students to see what clicks. And when something clicks, it's like, magical. And it might take me a couple of tries. I know I'm in the right zone with what we're working on. It's just always sometimes a little trial and error as to which cue is going to be that magic bullet that's going to help this person the most. And also, am I getting to the root cause of what they're doing? So we can kill three or four birds with one stone. That's really even better. Best case scenario is, can I find the thing that's going to help this person solve several issues? What's that first domino that's affecting the rest of their movement? Let's tackle that. Let's really find a way that we can focus on that and create some change and then see the other pieces fall into place.

It's very interesting to hear you talk about teaching to different students and different personalities. I had three brothers growing up, and we'd all just sit on. Sit on a lesson tee together with one coach. And he'd have to communicate different to Matt than to Joe. Right? Some. Usually I was more of a visual learner, Right. Like, take me to video. Joe might not do video for three straight lessons. Or, you know, depending on the day, how we were feeling, how we were emotional, combative. Right? It always kind of. You take that moment. Very often times you go get lessons from people, and it's that same thing every. Every time, right. It's just, let's get the video on the first. Let's warm up. Get the first video on the couple swings. Break it down. And I don't know, it just feels very organic to what you're describing. You know, and that's by knowing a lot about your player or your student, right?

Oh yeah. The interview is so important. Trying to understand where they're coming from, what their level of skill is as just a person and then as a golfer, their abilities, their inabilities, any physical injuries they may have, history of that side of it and then where their brains at, what are they focusing on today or what have they been thinking about, what are their intentions as they're moving? Because sometimes it's not so much that they can't make a change, they just have the wrong intentions of what they're trying to do. So understanding that golfers concepts like what, what are you showing up here with today on this lesson tee that you know, we can talk through and understand better or differently. And when you change what you're trying to do, that makes a world of difference. Sometimes, you know, it's, it's, you can spot where the mechanical change needs to be. And I could describe that, but if I don't ask the question, why are you currently doing what you're doing? It doesn't, it's hard to break habits and make changes because they, let's just say this is a simple example, but if somebody has this. Overwhelming but like general thought that they have to keep their head super still at a certain point in their swing, like let's say they've been told, you know, make sure you're looking at the ball. Well, okay, for how long? I've seen golfers look at the ball for way too, try to look at the ball for way too long to the point where it affects their release mechanics and their body rotation through impact. And so we might be trying to resolve a weight shift issue or something else in their swing or contact. And if they're trying to do what I'm asking them to do, but they're still really stuck on the fact that they, you know, even subconsciously are trying to keep their head in a certain position. It might be blocking their ability to move in a different way. So like trying to play detective a little bit and, and ask the right questions to get the golfer to be honest about what it is that they, they understand or what they think about the golf swing. Like, how do you, how would you describe a golf swing? What are you trying to do? Because if you can communicate with me, you know, what you think about a golf swing should be, then I can say yes or no on some of those points and interview your people properly to really get to the true intention of what they really think about what a Golf swing should be. So when people show up and I and I ask them to make a change and they're having a tough time making change, it could be because their concepts about what they think they should be doing are a little bit off. What one person should be doing is also different than another based on their physical abilities or inability. One size does not fit all and me being the professional, I have to try and take charge of putting this person and pointing this person in the right direction to focus on the right things for them because they don't know their own puzzle, they don't know what's going to help them balance out their pattern because it's different for them than the next person. And they're maybe been trying to self diagnose and problem solve, but they're focusing on the wrong things or they're not picking elements that match up with what they're currently doing. So that's for me to help. That's why people come to lesson, you know, to get that, that expertise and I can sort through that for them to point them in the right direction and be that consultant.

Definitely. Well, you talk a lot about tension in the golf swing, how much of an issue it is for everybody all the time. And a lot about tension really and manipulation. They kind of go together. And I've also listened to you talk about, you have a lot of old school methodologies that you pull from, but you've also certainly studied biomechanics side of the game. And I guess maybe we'll call more new schools of thought. But I guess if we start kind of looking back a little more old school, you talk about Ernest Jones, which I love. What's one or two things that teaching philosophies that came into the game, let's say in the 50s and 60s, like the Arnie and Jack era, that are never going to go away or that maybe are more prominent now than they were in the last 15, 20 years. Old school philosophies, so to speak.

Yeah, I think that you know, those guys were so timing driven the swings of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s one, their equipment was a lot less stiff. When you talk about way old school equipment and then you got all these steel shafts that came on the scene, you know, so like equipment is a big deal. Golfers are going to always especially athletic individuals are going to do the best they can to manage the equipment that they have. And even though I'm sure there was elements of club fitting in the Jack and Arnie days, it's a lot different now. And I think that the swings have reflected that golfers are much more fit now. You know, we look at this through the biomechanics lens and an anatomical lens and say, how can we move most efficiently? Those guys were playing a lot more on feel and timing and rhythm. So I think we are so into science now, and we've got everything sort of dialed in and we can split hairs on numbers and movement patterns. We can measure everything that it's really awesome. But at the same time, there's still an art to this sport of how you feel and how you shape shots and especially around the greens. I mean, touch and artistry when it comes to short game. And so there's still always going to be an element of that. I think that years ago that really carried golfers farther. People that were just naturally had better hands and were diligent practicers and could obviously repeat their pattern at the end of the day, could play great golf. But there were some pretty wacky patterns back there. And if you could take the old Arnie swing, the old jack swing, and measure it when they were in their prime, measure it today on modern technology, it would be super interesting to see how they would stack up to some of the modern swings. I bet they hit a lot of similar checkpoints, but they got there a different way for them. They moved in a way that probably was repeatable for them in their body. And some of those guys sustained injuries over the years and some didn't. It's an interesting thing. Now we try to put people in positions where we feel like they're going to prevent any injury long term. Plus, hey, do these other exercises and do the strength training program and mobility program and you're going to achieve longevity. But those guys, some of them had a lot of longevity too. So I don't know, I mean, they, some guys struggled with back issues, some guys didn't. You know, you even look at like a Freddie Couples. I mean, he had such a graceful swing, but it was very much, again, timing based that under pressure it was hit or miss for him. So, you know, golf's a fickle game. The more we break it down in a sciencey way, we're learning things and we theoretically are, put it, making our bodies more machine, like in the way we move and hopefully able to repeat things regardless of our timing or regardless of our, of our mood on a certain day. Like, you know, I mean, but I don't know, I still think that for the average golfer that the lessons of old school are still very applicable because we don't have the time to dedicate to being this like perfect prime example of the most efficient golf swing ever. We're not doing this for a living. So how can we play and make it feel good and, and use those concepts of, of being more tension free and allowing timing to work for us and forcing things less and you know, relying a little bit more on just kind of the feels of momentum and getting awareness for our club swinging around us. Like those things could carry an average golfer much farther than putting a lot of time and energy into maybe like hitting a certain position. That's textbook.

That's what I was just going to say. I think what we've seen is the science based golf swing is really, it's a lot of information for people. They really don't have enough time and it's trying to find perfect positions and that's actually really has made people's short games worse or just not any better because you have no imagination at all or no artistry you're talking about or really understanding, you know, how to, you know, you use your hands, have that a feel component and you know, three or four shots every round can be saved around just how to approach a 10 yard pitch over the bunker. Right.

Right.

To me that it's just people get. So they're just taught such a system based golf swing where they almost. Even if you. They don't, they don't know how to approach the short game because they're not taught.

Yeah. And they, and they don't know how to handle adversity. Meaning you know, we get stuck on the driving range on an AstroTurf mat trying to do something in particular when really out there on the golf course you're in all different situations. You know, the more people can get themselves on the course to practice uneven lies and different kind of lies and obviously different lies around the green. Thick stuff, tight stuff, sit the ball down, sit the ball up, try different clubs, open the face, close the face, shaft lean. You know, experimenting with knowing your tool and how to apply it to the situation that you're in is course management. That's strategy. That's playing the game. And we get sucked into, and even I do too, we get sucked into teaching and coaching golf swing and we forget about teaching, you know, golf game. And that's really important for, for all players. But even the average, you know, weekend golfer is, you know, we say hey, you are, if you're not practicing, you're never going to get better. But then again, if you don't play golf and apply Any of your skills to the golf course and you're only stuck at the driving range, you're probably not going to get better anyway. So it's like you have to find this balance between having a repeatable enough pattern that allows you to have good misses, honestly, because it's a game of good misses. You know, if you have decent misses, it's not about being perfect all time. It's about making a swing that you can ultimately try to repeat even under pressure and applied to different lies all over the golf course and in adverse conditions. And a lot of, you know, variety with, with how you're going to hit these shots in different situations. If you can figure out more of that, you're going to be a better player. Yeah.

Erica, it's interesting. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on something. I've experienced a lot, I'm sure others have too, is the balance of wanting to get better, leveraging video, leveraging technology, but also not going to the course, assuming that what you have that day is inferior. Meaning I know that I do a lot of common things that a lot of golfers do, which is I'm using too much hands and arms. It's very timing based. It's why I could shoot a 75 one day and a 90 the next. It's infuriating. And you're trying to be more consistent. Yet if I'm trying to learn rotation, it's very hard to try and unlearn something I've done for 15 plus years and then go to the course and play. You know what I mean? Sometimes when you're working on things, it's tough to find when you're going to take it to the course and not feel like you're regressing. If you go and play with the old thing you've been doing all these years because that's the best way you can hit the ball. So it's. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Because as a coach, you're trying to learn repeatable, consistent motions. But at the same time, you know, that stuff takes time to learn. And what you take to the course and what you don't is sometimes really tough and, and having confidence when you feel like maybe what is working for you is fundamentally inferior. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think you're talking about, you know, when the process of adapting a new motor pattern and when can you really just let go and it becomes that unconscious confidence. And that is a process, you know, it can take quite a bit of time, more time and energy than the average golfer has to give it. So we all play a lot of conscious golf. That's kind of the sad truth because if you think about PJ Tour and these guys making little changes, the amount of time they dedicate, I mean, they could spend a whole season making a small change and they still have to be also conscious about it. When does a change really become a part of you? I think it's through reps. I think it's through the right kind of practice where when you do practice, you are putting yourself in game like situations as much as possible to simulate pressure and test your application of transferring those skills, your ability to transfer the new skill, the new move with now something on the line, Whether it is just a game against yourself or a friend. Maybe it is, you know, nine holes and it's some kind of a challenge that you're, you're trying, a scoring challenge or something that you're keeping track of out there on the golf course. But I think that being able to start with a little dry run on the practice range is good when you're working on something new and then give yourself some kind of a benchmark as to, okay, here's 10 shots. I want to try to get this many out of 10 to a certain target or within a certain boundary, right, left, short, long, whatever distance or dispersion or target is, and see if you can do it, you know, with the new stuff and if you can start to achieve your goals in practice with the new motions and you have more confidence to bring it to the course and hopefully think a little less. But I mean, you still, I think, have to be conscious for quite a while if you want something new to stick. And I don't think of it as trying to get rid of old patterns. It's always about, you know, a new pattern replacing an old pattern. So as soon as you make a change to do something different, it's a domino effect. If you're working on rotation in your swing 100% that your backswing and transition might also be changing as a result of the other stuff, you know, or vice versa. If you're working on something in your backswing, then the rest of it's going to be like changing. It's not one thing ever. It's. It's a full, complete movement and pattern of, you know, little moves all put together, right? So you can't just isolate a change. It's holistic. And really, it's not about changing the motor pattern as much as it is creating new patterns. And so the More. You can just keep laying wraps down in that new pattern and then start to build confidence through game like training. You're on your way. But it's definitely. It takes a while. It takes a lot longer than what people want to want to hear.

So let's dig into rotation for a second. I feel like this is something that I walk up and down the range. I was there last night in Los Angeles, and everyone is doing the same thing, right? Almost everyone is throwing their hands over the top because we have a club in our hand. And we're taught from a young age that you swing a club. We're holding it with our arms. Obviously, we want to swing it with our arms. Right. And yet I feel that that's the thing that everyone is trying to do right now, yet it's so hard to actually do it. So what do you think is a key for someone that has never really. Matt's working on rotation. I'm working on rotation. In your students and your teaching, what is a helpful key for people to rotate more?

Okay, well, first we have to identify rotating. What? Rotating your kneecap, your hips, your chest, your arms, your club face. Like, what are we rotating? Because everything's rotating. But what's the focus on or what's lacking, what's deficient, what's over rotating, what's under rotating? Because it's. We're. We're rote. We're globally are rotating. But then, as you well know, too, things are happening in an axis. We're bent over the ball trying to do these things. And not everybody rotates the same amount if you just measure things statically. So when you say rotation, be a little more specific in that. What are you talking about?

Yes, sir. I would say hip and body rotation. Right. Taking the arms out of it a little bit more.

Yeah, go ahead. I think you said that.

So if we're talking about hip and body rotation, then what I would say is, without a golf club in hand, what is your baseline amount of rotation that you're able to achieve with balance slowly. And that's kind of a one thing you want to be aware of. So I would do some body drills where, you know, you're standing without a club, maybe arms on chest crossed and engulf posture and test to see your ability to rotate your hips independently, your shoulders independently of your hips, understanding your ability to control those two important parts of your engine. And, you know, for some golfers that are tighter, for whatever reason, whether they physical limitations, they just need to stretch more, whatever, they have pain, they have A history of injury, you know, they may not achieve the range of motion that another golfer could. For some golfers, it's more that they have to learn how to control those pieces independently. If you cannot move those two pieces independently, then we're talking about also being realistic about what you can do, which is moving everything together. And that totally changes the equation of how your swing is going to look and how you need to be moving other parts in relation to it. If you have an engine that everything moves together, hips and chest, back and through, that's different than if you have this sequence of hips, chest, hips, chest, winding up and unwinding in that sequence, because one creates a lot more lag. If you have the right amount of natural lag developing as you're unwinding your body with good sequence, then things will time themselves up pretty well. But where people get into trouble is when they try to add rotation. They either are their sequence changes, and now they have an issue with timing of where their arms in the club are coming in from. They might add rotation, but they might do it too much with the hips or too much with the chest. Also, they might push the envelope as to how much more they think they need. But if you go beyond what your range of motion is, other stuff starts to break down. For example, now we have maybe a lead ankle that's rolling or a knee that's sliding out in the effort to add rotation that you, you can't balance or that you can't achieve. So we have to be realistic in how can we move, what is our max rotation with balance and where we're not compromising other elements. And understand whenever you add rotation that it is again a domino effect. So you add rotation. Where does that now put the club in space? Is it actually causing it to come out more in front of us, or is it actually allowing us to create more lag if we let it? In a perfect scenario, when we add rotation of the body, the arms are followers and they lag behind, as does the wrist and then the club head. There's a point when you are unwinding that you max your rotation coming through impact, and the body needs to balance or you're going to spin out. So when that point happens, that acts as a brace for everything to get catapulted through in terms of arms and club, and all that lag releases out. So rotation is definitely complicated. And if I was to simplify what is happening, certainly the engine is turning. But if you add more moving parts and you start separating those pieces of the engine. Now it becomes, okay, how much separation, when is it happening? Is the sequence of that unwinding pattern which is the most important? Is that sequence good? Is it happening in the right order? And then when does rotation end? Because there's a point where it has to come together to deliver the club out to the golf ball and to ultimately catapult the club and transfer speed from the body to the club for sure.

Well, do you want to.

Yeah, I got a quick follow up. So, Erica, it's funny and I know I didn't give you a ton of time. I sent you our swings just as like context in case we got into it. But it's funny how Matt's going to laugh because I find that myself included, golfers can get down a rabbit hole really quickly. Of here's the fact, right? If I know, okay, my hands and arms are way too active. The club's basically swinging me. Therefore I'm very inconsistent and timing based. How do I get more consistent with my ball striking? So then some people might focus on less arms, right? And like quiet arms, keep the arms up instead of pulling down. That's something you could try and work on. And then I feel like the other side of the coin is focus. Don't think about the arms at all. Try and focus on body and foot pressure and hip rotation. And sometimes I get into the trouble of I love this stuff. And we interview people like you a lot. And so I selfishly try and take learnings from some of the best teachers in America. Right. And I feel like a lot of golfers are my situation where you go to the range and you're trying all this different stuff and you're confusing yourself. Because that day, am I going to focus on less arms or am I going to focus on more body? And it's just too much. And so I just threw a lot at you. I'm going to pause and let you put me into place a little bit.

No, I think what you said is valid. You have to find what works for you. That's the thing, right? I mean, the sense of. The sense of quieting your arms is by default, meaning that the body is more dominant, right? So when you take manipulation or the feeling that your arms are kind of dead or that your hands are really passive and quiet, well, then you are ultimately switching your focus somewhere else. Because to focus on the sensation of dead arms, you have to let that happen. You don't make that happen, right? So if you're. If you're letting that happen and your arms are Just responding. Then it is then a switch of focus to like the body leading the way. That's more my preference anyway overall because I don't really like active arms and hands. I think that leads to a lot of manipulation of the club and the club face. So, you know, it's one in the same how you think about it, how you frame it based on your history. As I was saying earlier is, is, is there's no right or wrong. You have to experiment and see what gets the job done for you, what creates a good feel that you can replicate and relate to and try it for several practice sessions to see if it's sticking long term. That's the goal, is to find something that's a good theme for you that allows you to tap into better performance more often. You know, I hate to say it, but there's very few swing thoughts that last forever. Right? But, but general themes like that are good. I mean, you can't go wrong thinking about tempo. You can't go wrong trying to remind yourself to take some tension out of your swing. I mean, I don't think that you can do too much of that. Those are good reminders. Those are good kind of general feels and themes and cues that can really only ever, I think, help people play better. But it is, it's a journey and it's about experimenting with what works for you. And it's amazing how many different ways you can try to get the same thing done with golfers. Endless, for sure.

And YouTube is sometimes not your friend.

Right, right, right. Sorting through all those thoughts.

But I. When you talk about tension and manipulation, I feel that tension comes from manipulation and manipulation comes from being out of position. So yeah, if I come, I've always had an issue with kind of laying the club off. It's kind of actually who I am. It's not a bad thing. But I always, you know, struggled kind of growing up, I'd have it, I was a laid off swinger. And then keeping the tension out and keeping, you know, the angle strong, coming down and kind of lose it up with bottom out. And my body would stall, I wouldn't rotate. And I was relying a lot on timing. If somebody comes to you with a laid off move, are you going to try to spend more time getting that club down the line and on plane so you can eliminate the manipulation and ultimately the tension? Or can you find a way to work with somebody's kind of natural instincts like a Rickie Fowler. Right. Or a Jerry Kelly? These guys that are laid off because none of Us, as you know, you see students every day. We don't many of us look like Davis Love, right?

Or the first. Yeah, the first. The first thing I would try to figure out is why is the golfer laid off at the top? Are they like, again, is it an intention? Are they thinking that that's where they're supposed to be? Do they like the look of that? Are they pushing their hands in a position that's like making the club be more laid off? Do they think they need to be flatter for some reason and it's not matching up with the clubs that they have in hand? You know, to me, a little bit of a laid off backswing doesn't bother me because ultimately on the way down, you know, generally like to see a little bit of a shallowing action kind of in transition anyway. So if you're already a little shallow at the top, to me it's not a big deal if it's for the right reasons, which is you're just relaxed and the way that the club is kind of falling back maybe on that trail hand. And so like no big deal. Um, so it doesn't really bother me. Now I'm looking at club face because if you've got a really laid off position, the club face is really out of position. That could be. You're asking for then a corrective move after that on the way down. But a little bit, you know, can, can be doable and then from there, if depending on again, the golfer, if they're sort of more laid off earlier, well, then they need a more aggressive steepening move coming down later. Which if we want to do that in a most natural way and eliminate that move coming from the hands to steepen the shaft to get it to cover the ball and avoid the fat miss and stuff, then where else can that energy come from to direct the pitch of the club more out at the ball? Comes from body rotation and making sure that your body is covering the ball properly too. So it's. If the club is out of position, is it just the club or is it the club and the body?

Sure.

And when I say, is the body out of position? I'm picturing somebody that maybe has too much side bend or is like hanging back or leaning back and their chest and their head are too far behind the ball. There's things that people do in their transition that create those angles, like slide. If the lower body's sliding out and there's too much lateral motion for too long in the lower body, well, now the upper body's out of position. Now the club's too shallow. So there's your domino effect. So where do you find that moment where you can, like, change the dominant, the rest of the domino pattern coming through? So it might be a transition move, it might be something a little bit later that you have to sort of get into a little more aggressive rotation. Sooner or later, it really depends on the golfer's move. Like, when is the breakdown starting? When is the compensation being initiated? And if you look back a couple clicks in the swing, you'll probably find it. And then, you know, you want to sort of cut the head of the snake off there. So I think that that's the process I go through is like playing detective again and saying, okay, here's this pattern. Clearly this person is coming in too shallow, and they're sliding out. So where and how can we get the club to be in a better position? Probably means that the body needs to be in a better position. So if we're checking boxes and the body's in really good positions and the club's not, well, then there is some kind of a problem in the hands and the wrists or an orientation, the intention that the golfer has that they're trying to put the club into these places, and it's not working, and they're again, getting in their own best way. So I think, first, where is the club? Second, where is the body? And then, whenever possible, assuming that there's not a huge amount of manipulation happening really early in the swing, you can kind of tackle it a certain way. But if the golfer is very, very handy from the start, you almost have to go back to the beginning and start to take some of that out of there. It's like, get the poison out of the swing and reveal. Reveal what that true swinging action of the arms really looks like. Then you'll really see how the body is either functioning or dysfunctioning. But you almost have to do the big reveal and say, okay, if we can really let go and really soften those arms and wrists and see now what happens, it's going to show us the real you, and then we can fix that pattern. But if the hands and wrists are constantly involved, compensating for the body being out of position, you have your answer there, too, for sure.

Too often, I was told as a kid, too much tension, too much tension, you're too tight. And, you know, back to Ernest Jones, just for a minute, like my dad would always say, you got to swing the clubhead, right? And that was calming to me. Right? And my coach would Say that, but that's a very, you know, he was thinking about that in the 30s. Right. So what does, Erica, what does swing the clubhead mean to you today and to our listeners out there? Because I always felt like that was a very, very calming. But it's the art of the art and kind of feel side of the game. So what do you think about it in 2021?

Sure. Swing the club head or swing the weight of the club, right, is really an external cue that is twofold. It's like both external and internal at the same time. External meaning that you're focusing on the fact that where the club is in the space around you, being in touch with that. When people grip it really tight and they are swinging fast and hard at the ball, they. They aren't really aware of the club around them in space. So just taking that, you know, a little bit of tension out of your swings, potentially it could be slowing down your pace a little bit. It could just be where your attent, where your focus is, where your attention is. If you're actually feeling the weight of the club, because you're not death glass warping it and you're aware of it, then now you can be aware of where it is up here, too. If you're not experiencing kind of the weight of the club and where it is around you, it's really hard to sometimes make a change of where you want the club to be. So for you, if you know that you're laid off but you're not experiencing that, it's hard to make a change. So if you have a different image of where you want to put the club, if that's the spot in your swing that you know you're working on and you know you want to put the club itself higher, well, you can mentally direct your energy to a different place, and your body will respond to get it there. When you think about how you want to use a tool, whether it's a fork and a knife or a hammer, you know how you want to present that tool. You know where you're trying to move the tool, your body maps out a plan to get it to go there and to do the job, you're not consciously thinking about how to make that movement. So that's part of Ernest Jones and swing the clubhead, where the club head is in space and having awareness for that. For me, too, though, the internal aspect of swinging the weight of the club is feeling the club and also, I think, feeling that I'm letting the club swing and that my engine My body is doing a little bit more of the work and that I'm letting those arms and the weight of the club swing around me, that my body is kind of getting the swing into motion. So because of my teacher brain and my urge to always understand it from that perspective, I want to know the how and the why of how we're getting this swing moving. And so those answers are in, where does your energy come from? And where does your speed and your motion start? The club is just this. It's just the tool. How do we get it going? Well, your body gets it going. It doesn't just magically swing itself. What is moving and what are the cues to get this thing moving? If we need cues, for some people, again, if they just picture the club swinging in space, they start back and they do this very naturally. And for others, they need a little bit more how and why. That's where I've tried to break down the process of what a true swing really is. A swinging action is where it comes from and how to make a swinging action as naturally as possible, possible from places that are going to limit the actual. Limit manipulation as much as possible.

Yeah, that's interesting. Erica, this is my last question, and then we'll let you go. We've talked to other coaches about this. We're trying to get more and more women on the show because we think this is really important, and more people need to, frankly, look at women golfers when trying to replicate swings. I mean, if you think about it, a lot of our issues, especially in male golfers, is we've got these bigger vanity muscles, right? We've got big forearms, big biceps, pectorals, which can overtake the swing. And I feel like maybe we should be talking more about a Nelly Corda and trying to replicate that because she's so much better at utilizing her whole body versus, like, a Dustin Johnson, who's like a freak of nature and has a move that not many of us can replicate. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that and maybe how people can maybe use the LPGA Tour, you know, as a model, maybe more than the PGA Tour. And then I'd love for you to tell people where they can find you and get more information.

Yeah, I mean, Dustin Johnson is such a athletic freak specimen. I mean, he's so good and how he moves, and with somewhat unorthodox pattern there, he's able to make it work. Women and men are different, both in our brain chemistry, our center of gravities are different. Like, there are a lot of physical and mental differences. So I think it's hard to compare. But I would say that because you look at these like top male golfers, the reality is the average weekend golfer, recreational golfer, even the better lower handicap ones, their games are probably more relatable to in terms of speed, you know, distances they hit the ball, and even, I'll say tempo, like LPGA professionals. So it's. LPGA professionals are probably more relatable if you're looking for swing models for the average golfer in general. But there are still differences. So you have to, I think, at the end of the day, find somebody that their swing in their body type is closer to you. And I hate to say mimic, but at least create a fair comparison. So it would not be fair for me to Compare myself to dj2 totally different body types and physical abilities. But, you know, for me to compare myself to Nelly, sure, that would be a more fair assessment. And if you're a guy, I mean, depending on your build, some guys are really, you know, thicker up top, and some women are really thicker up top. Like who, you know, what body type do you are you most close to? And finding somebody that might move like you a little bit more could be helpful. So I would look at it that way. I think the women do a great job of not overpowering their shots as much. They're maybe a little bit less aggressive overall with muscling the ball. But then again, as time goes on and Bryson sets the standard for what power is in the game and on the women's side, some of these gals are just bombing it. They don't always look like they're going after it like Bryson does, but they certainly are hitting it plenty far. They're very efficient with the way they move. There's certainly an amount of grace in a lot of the women, and so there are good lessons to be learned there for sure. And on both sides, there are great players to emulate. And I don't think it's a this or that. I think you just got to find somebody that you really relate to that is built like you and you can use them to help maybe compare a swing model around. So that's how I would probably frame that. And to answer your question, as far as finding me, I am always available on social media at Erica Larkin golf Instagram and YouTube and Facebook, and I am happy to have you guys visit my website@ericalarcin.com and there's plenty of information there about my programs, teaching programs, golf schools, and my book as well, called the True swing. All available through my website. Encourage you guys to check out golf fanatics as well. I'm a part of a new team of coaches and a really cool platform there, and I have weekly tips that are awesome on there as well as, you know, you can find some stuff on social media that I'm always posting. So that's. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Awesome.

Well, thanks so much for a lot of good nuggets.

Yeah. Thanks for coming on, Eric and Erica. I want to say when you guys go to Erica Larkin.com definitely look up the top 10 swing feels. You kind of mentioned the dead arms. There's jello wrists. There's a lot of stuff in there that I found really helpful and interesting, and that's the type of stuff I think you could take one thing and go play with. Right. Or one thing and go to the range with and see how it works for you. So a lot of good stuff like that. Thanks again, Erica. We'd love to have you back on at some point, and we'll be rooting for you through the Instagrams and other things.

Oh, thanks so much. All right, thanks, Erica. Thanks for having me, you guys. It was fun chatting with you. Good luck with your show. We'll talk to you guys later.

All right, take care.