| I was thinking about this this morning, about how to tell the difference between a one-plane swing versus a two-plane swing. The first key thing to foucs on is what is meant by plane in the descriptions.
When you address the ball, imagine a flat piece of plywood sitting on your shoulders, perpindicular to your spine. That is your shoulder plane. Then look at your arms. Imagine a a piece of plywood from your shoulders to your wrists, and that will be the plane your arms will be working with.
Now, when you swing, if the planes of your shoulder plane and the plane of your arms plane remain locked at the same angle to one another, you are on one plane, and have a one-plane swing. In this type of swing, you can almost guarantee that the upper arms will stay the same distance of separation from the chest, hence that is why Vijay Singh practices with the towel in the armpit--if his arms disconnect, the towel drops and he will know he is getting away from the one-plane swing he wants.
In a two-plane swing, the arms are free to work away from the chest, and if you look at the planes formed as I described earlier, at different points of the golf swing you'll see differences in the angles of the planes to one another.
The important thing to gain from understanding the differences between one-plane and two-plane is that some tips do not work with both swings. I'm a two-planer and if I were to try to keep my arms from disconnecting from my chest like Vijay, I'd seriously mess up my swing, my timing, and would be wasting my practice.
Another way to identify if a swing is one-plane or two plane is to watch where the hands remain postioned relative to the plane formed by the shoulders. In a one-plane swing the hands at the bottom of the swing will be the same distance from the plane of the shoulders as they are when the hands are at the top of the swing. In a two-plane, the hands will likely travel from underneath the shoulder plane to above the shoulder plane when the hands reach the top of the swing.
I hope these descriptions are accurate and will help anyone who is trying to understand this topic.  |