Swing speed study

I wasn't planning on posting today, but i went out and collected some data and wanted to share that with you. As part of my off-season training and a way of tracking improvement in my body and swing sequencing I am doing a study on my swing speed as it relates to:

1. Improved core strength and stability
2. Improved sequencing and timing

I am taking data samples of 3 different clubs, Driver, 5 Iron and 9 Iron, with 10 swings each. I am then averaging the speeds of the 10 individual swings for each club to get my average swing speed with that club, and also taking the Standard Deviation of the sample set for that club as well. So i will have 3 average club head speeds and 3 standard deviations for each trial group. I will probably only take these measurements at the beginning of the off-season and at the start of the new season because i want to take the measurements consistantly and outdoors hitting real golf balls to a target. This should yeild me the best representative sample.

Today i collected the first Sample set, my start of the off-season set. This is the data collected today 11/20/11.

Club                  Average Swing Speed (mph)                   Standard Deviation

Driver                           101.1                                                      1.370
5 Iron                             87.9                                                       6.154
9 Iron                             79.6                                                       6.915

As you can see i am most consistant speed wise with my driver, which is actually completely opposite of what my hypothesis was. I figured with the greatest length club, and the fact that this is my most inconsistant club, my swing speeds would have been everywhere but they were very close. My irons were horribly inconsistant. On that note i should mention that my 9 Iron data is probably slightly skewed because i had two shots with swing speeds in the low 90's (90+92) that really raised my average swing speed up a bit. I should have discarded those two swings and took two more, but i wanted to stick with just hitting 10 swings. What i am going to do next time is eliminate outliers during data collection.

I am also adding a small video of what my swing looks like at the present. When I was hitting balls i was actually striking the ball quite poorly and I am actually kind of glad I took this video while swinging poorly because it shows how my over active head rotation  hurts my swing. I rotate my head and then lift it out of the shot and loose my posture. You will also notice the excessive forarm rotation and how the club is laid off at the top of my backswing. So now that I have gotten to see my swing faults (these listed and early extension are my faults, and what i work on in my game) I will have a better idea of what i should be doing during the off-season to correct them.