What we did during this session was to make sure Adam had a feel of swinging longer clubs as well. The biggest problem that I get when students see me is that they will often say that their shorter irons are working well but once the clubs move past a 6 iron and especially the woods, the result starts to get considerably worse. This is what was happening to Adam. He could feel great comfort with his eight iron but was struggling with his longer irons.
The reason why I focus a lot on the 8 iron is because it's a good intermediary club that is not too short or long. It is a great club to practice with as it won't tax you too much and this swing will form the basis of all swings that you do when playing golf. The reason the results are different when going down to a longer club, is that the bad habits rear their head more as you don't have as much forgiveness. This is due to the clubs being longer and with lesser lofts.
The key to mastering your longer clubs is to still perfect the shorter clubs because if you are truly making the right changes in your swing, then the longer clubs will get better. All I had to do with Adam was to make sure that the changes, in particular his path remained the same as he picked up a 5 and 6 iron. At the beginning he went back to his old swing (most likely because the club was heavier) but after I pointed out that his path went back to over the top, I got him to imagine he was still swinging with his 8 iron and to come more from the inside..
This is a real key to starting to master your longer clubs. Once the swing is moving in the right direction, I will then get the student to use a longer club whilst imagining they still have an 8 iron in their hands. I will even go a step further and have them also do half swings (where the hands on the backswing finish half way up your torso, see picture below) wile also gripping the club softer so they can have the feel of swinging the club, rather than hitting at the ball. Students will often get very surprised with the results as not only do they strike it better, but as a consequence often go further. This is because timing really increases.
What I mentioned to Adam was from now on to start incorporating practice with longer clubs as well. Start by practicing with your PW & SW followed by 8 and 9 and then every 6 balls start to incorporate the longer clubs. At the beginning, try and hit every club and then after some practice, you can use every second club. Each time you go down, make sure you imagine you still have a short club in your hands and even feel like you are doing a half swing. If you're still still not timing it well, then go down to a quarter swing.
This was again a very good lesson with Adam as he starts to understand how to incorporate his rhythm with all clubs in the bag.
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