The Natural Golf Swing by George Knudson, Lorne Rubenstein

manipulations. You’ll realize that you are letting yourself get out of balance. Let the club flow. That’s the key word: LET.
    The intensity of your target awareness will also contribute to your sense of when you have completed the loading motion. It operates in conjunction with your sensitivity to balance. You know that your objective is to make a motion toward the target. You’ve fixed the image of the target on your mind’s eye. And since you are so aware of the target, you also sense when it is time to start moving toward it, that is, to begin the unloading motion. This will happen sometime toward the end of the loading motion, which is why I say that loading and unloading are part of the same motion.
    Consider this: centrifugal force and inertia are allowing you to make a pure, uninterrupted swing motion. As you are carried back, having a free ride, really, you sense that it is time to move to your target. To do otherwise would be to compromise balance. Your intent to move to the target and your acute sense of balance ensure that you won’t go too far while loading. You’ll know when it’s time to start the unloading motion just as you know when you’ve gotten out of balance while climbing a hill. Golfers are surprised at how sensitive they can become to their own errors; but it’s a sensitivity we all have.
    The end of the loading motion comes, then, when the mass has developed all the potential energy it wants, under the condition of balance. You sense when this has occurred, and so you begin the unloading motion.
    You begin the unloading motion, then, while still loading. Your target awareness induces you to do so. If you weren’t focusing on your target, you would have no reason to complete the loading motion. You might very well continue back, where you would dissipate all the energy you accumulated through weighttransfer and rotation. Target awareness is the stimulant that helps you click in to the latter part of the loading motion and the initiation of the unloading motion. The clubhead changes direction because you have transferred weight to the finish position.
    Let’s examine the loading motion more closely. We’ll look at what you need to learn and what happens on its own: the voluntary and the involuntary, as I like to call these skills and actions.
    First, we have assumed a starting position in which we are oriented toward our target. We’re in place; we’ve pre-determined the arc and plane. We now need to set ourselves in motion in such a way that we will maximize the arc and remain on-plane.
    We initiate the swing motion by shifting weight to our right foot. This is the means of moving the clubhead. When we walk, we don’t shake or turn our upper body. The upper body follows the beat of the legs.
    We are aware of our balance and posture, and to maintain these elements we allow ourselves to rotate around the trunk. Our hands are passive or quiet, but actually set in motion by weight transfer and rotation.
    “Passive hands” is not meant to suggest inactive hands. It’s just that we don’t consciously do anything with them.
    But how do we keep the hands out of the swing? Aren’t they lively devils that want to get into the act? Aren’t they our only connections to the club? Doesn’t that mean we should
do
something with them?
    This is precisely the point. Our hands will be as active as we need them to be if we
let
them move along with the rest of the body.

    The loading motion.
Top left
, left arm extends, right elbow folds.
Top right
, head moving as it will.
Centre
, natural wrist cock.
Bottom left
, left heel comes up during rotation.
Bottom right
, full rotation.
    For the moment, pick up a golf club and address an imaginary ball. Let your weight go from your left foot to your right foot. Did you notice that your hands moved along with the weight shift? And they moved in a pure path. You didn’t have to
put
them anywhere. They went along for the ride. A golfer can do marvellous