Finding the Right Swing Tempo
I was never much of a musician, but I remember a little wooden metronome that my mom had on our family piano growing up. I thought it was an interesting device, but because I didn’t play an instrument, I didn’t really understand its purpose. There was an inverted pendulum with a weight on it that rocked back and forth when turned on. When I’d move the weight up and down, it would either increase or decrease the speed of the pendulum. Later I’d learn that this was a tool that musicians used to keep the correct pace while they played a song.
It’s hard for us to measure speed without special tools like that. Whether that’s a metronome in music or a speedometer in a car, we often need special devices to measure pace. This is relevant because speed is an important part of the golf swing, but so is timing. You can have the fastest swing in the world, but if you can’t also time it, so that the club face is in the correct position at impact, you’ll never be successful.
The problem is, many amateur golfers don’t think about the timing part of the golf swing. We all want to hit the ball farther, and that requires swing speed, but the golf swing is more like a song than a 40-yard dash; you want the perfect combination of speed and timing. You need tempo.
Swing
Let’s divide the golf swing into three parts; the backswing, the downswing, and the finish. The backswing is from address to the top of the swing, the downswing is from the top of the swing until impact, and the finish is everything after impact. When it comes to tempo, we’re going to focus primarily on the backswing and downswing.
Too often, amateur golfers take their backswing too fast. In our minds, we think the faster the better because it’ll help us hit the ball farther. A lot of times it’s not even a conscious decision to take the club back quickly, it just feels natural, but that doesn’t always make it correct. Other golfers default to a backswing that is too slow. Maybe they’re overly worried about getting into the correct position, so the slow it down too much. There are ditches on both sides of this topic and you want to find that perfect middle ground.
As you know, there are a lot of moving parts in the golf swing. The goal of your backswing is to get to the top of your swing with all of those parts connected, while also keeping a rhythm that’ll translate to downswing speed.
When your backswing is too fast, it becomes more difficult to keep the connection of all those parts; your shoulders, arms, lower body, and club. Connection means that they’re all working together and moving in the same direction. When your backswing is too slow, it can be hard to transfer it all into downswing speed.
It’s also important to know that speed in your backswing does not translate to distance. For most people, slowing down your backswing is something that can help connect your swing better, improving your overall timing. Think about it this way, it’s much easier to carefully coordinate a bunch of moving parts when they are slow (relatively), then when they are sped up. So, while it’s true that your backswing can be too slow or too fast, I like to error on the “too slow” side.
Now, the downswing is where you want to focus on speed. This is where you’ll explode with power through impact in hopes of translating it into actual distance. If you’ve gotten to the top of your backswing with a connected swing, you’ll be in a much better position to swing fast through impact.
Ratio
There are a couple ways to make sure that your backswing and downswing have the correct tempo.
The first is to look at your swing ratio. This is the relationship between the time it takes to complete your backswing and the time it takes to complete your downswing. Ideally, that ratio is 3:1. This means that your backswing takes three times longer to complete than your downswing.
That’s great to know, but you might be wondering how you can make sure your swing has a 3:1 ratio. An easy way to do this is to count in your head while you swing. In your backswing, count to three and on your down swing add the number four. So it’ll look like this…(address) 1, 2, 3, (top of swing), 4 (impact).
BPM
Another great way to work on tempo is by using BPM.
I’m a big fan of the show “The Office.” There’s a scene where the employees of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company are being trained in CPR. The instructor is trying teach them about the correct pace to do chest compressions. The way she explains it is to pump to at 100 beats per minute (bpm), which is the same pace as the song “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees.
You can do something similar in your golf swing. A good tempo to shoot for is around 70bpm, so look for a song that you like that has that pace and try singing it in your head. My favorite song to use is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, which is 72 bpm.
BPM can also be helpful in using the “1, 2, 3, 4” method above. Since we can all count to four at slightly different speed, you can practice counting to four at the 70 bpm rate.