Is the wrist hinge automatic?

It is often stated that if you start with the right grip, the swing’s momentum will automatically hinge and unhinge the wrist. The teaching pros who advocate that momentum is sufficient to hinge and unhinge the wrist leave out some very important aspects of the swing.

Is momentum, however, the key to changing and unhinging the wrists? Not according to the laws of motion as found in physics and biomechanics. Nor does it agree with the laws of learning. For example, when you are first learning the golf swing you may have been told or found out on your own, that it is impossible to have a long backswing to get the club shaft parallel to the ground without the wrist cock.

In addition, you probably experienced the feeling of an easier and more effortless backswing if you cocked the wrists as you were taking the club back. The reason for this is that you created a shorter lever arm (length of the arms and club shaft) which is conducive to greater speed of movement. This is what allowed you to move the clubhead through a longer arc and with greater acceleration

In the backswing, the wrist action is not powerful and does not require great strength. However, you do need sufficient flexibility and strength of the muscles to execute the cocking action and to hold the wrist angle (approximately 90°) as you begin the downswing.

Thus doing a specialized strength exercise to develop the muscles as needed in this action is a good idea, especially in initial stages of learning the golf swing. By specialized it means that the exercise duplicates the exact actions as they occur in an effective swing.

Unhinging of the wrists, also known as breaking the wrists or uncocking the wrists, is far from being automatic on the downswing in the early and even to a good extent, in the later phases of learning the swing. Only when you have sufficiently strengthened the muscles in this action, especially in a more explosive manner as in the ulna flexion exercise with the Strength Bar, will it become fairly automatic.

By automatic it means that the action will happen without you having to think about it. Understand that in the early stages of learning the swing, you must do considerable thinking about not only the wrist cock but also the wrist break as they occur in the swing. It is only with a sufficient number of repetitions do these actions become automatic.

Not only must you develop the correct feel for the actions but the actions must be integrated into your neuromuscular system. This is why you must repeat the actions (with specialized strength exercises) many times before it becomes automatic. This requires considerable concentration on each of the actions as you are learning and improving them. Keep in mind that this cannot be done while playing!

This is especially true of the wrist break (ulna flexion) on the downswing. Not only does it take full concentration to learn but also to master the timing of the wrist break (unhinging) in relation to when it begins and when contact is made. Understand that the wrist break is the most important aspect of making good  contact for maximum effect in regard to distance, accuracy or special-effects.

To learn more about the wrist action in the golf swing, read Explosive Golf. Not only does it have pictures taken from live digital video showing the action of the wrists on the backswing and downswing but it also shows the exercises that are needed to strengthen the muscles in these actions. These exercises are perhaps some of the most important exercises you can do for accuracy at contact.