The Dan Plan is Officially TPI Certified

I am officially TPI Certified now!

So cool. The certification test was much harder than I thought and took me about an hour to answer 20 questions. The test covered everything from diagnosing potential swing faults by watching videos of golfer’s swings to describing what potential swing characteristic someone may have based on physical limitations and how to improve upon those physical aspects. After reading through the 220+ page manual a couple of times this past week I feel that I have a much firmer understanding of swing mechanics as well as new ways to improve upon my own swing.

I am getting a bit tired of hearing myself talk about golf specific swing stuff so won’t go into too much detail, but the biggest weakness that I see in myself is my right glute muscle not firing enough to post up properly late in the round. It gets fatigued and I start losing posture while finishing my swing. Knowing this and how to strengthen the muscle helps me become better at finishing rounds. There’s nothing worse than playing 14 good holes just to fall apart at the end and the cause of this is usually either mental or physical fatigue (or in a lot of cases a bit too much beer I’m safe from that syndrome, though, as I don’t drink at all).

If you don’t know the cause you can’t figure out how to fix it. TPI addresses the physical swing and helps golfers pinpoint specifics to work on. If you are around Portland I would love to get some practice in and do some free TPI Screenings. Let me know and we can meet up at Heron or somewhere around town. I’m new at this so it may take a little while to do one, but if you are willing to work with me we can figure out how to help you improve.

Speaking of improving, I had another lesson with Bruce Furman yesterday and it was an awesome one. We have been focussing on the takeaway for a couple weeks now and it is looking better. The next step is getting my head to move away with the backswing a bit during driver swings. And, I am going to focus on building some swing speed.

For swing speed I am going to do a drill that the TPI guys told me during the two-day seminar in Seattle. I asked TPI’s Lance Gill what was a good way to gain some speed and he told me to get a heavier driver and a lighter one. Swing the heavy one ten times as hard as I can, then do that with the lighter driver and finish the drill with ten full swings with my gamer. The heavy driver builds power, the light one speed and then your gamer translates those into your actual swing.

I have done that for a couple of days as well as some Jane Fonda-esque glute exercises. I’ll stick to this routine for the next couple of weeks and see if there are any number changes on TrackMan. Right now my driver is about 105-107mph when I go at it pretty decently. That needs to be about 112 to really compete.

I suppose I ended up talking about my swing again I promise that there is more to this than golf mechanics and will have some good juicy personal blogs soon.

There is so much happening with The Dan Plan at the moment, but all of it is up in the air. Instead of talking about potentials I want to wait until things get concreted. Soon there will be some big news.

13 Responses to "The Dan Plan is Officially TPI Certified"

Memphis Heat says:

June 6, 2013 at 11:33 am

How does one become TPI certified? What’s the process?
Richard Hayes says:

June 6, 2013 at 12:40 pm

I don’t live anywhere close to the Portland area, any chance you would be willing to review some video of my swing? I’ve been reading up on TPI and found someone in my area who is certified, but I simply can’t afford it. It might be good practice!
thedanplan says:

June 6, 2013 at 12:56 pm

I believe the only way is to attend a TPI Level one seminar and then pass the online test they give after said seminar.
thedanplan says:

June 6, 2013 at 12:57 pm

I’m always up for looking at swings, but I cannot promise anything and wouldn’t want to try to predict too much from it. I would advise you to get screened if you are having some issues. Feel free to shoot me the video and I’ll take a look and perhaps be able to refer you to someone. Where do you live? I bet there are a few TPI guys around you that could potentially help.
Marco says:

June 6, 2013 at 1:19 pm

do you still intend to become a playing pro on the pga tour or are you trying to become a coach later on
greets
Richard Hayes says:

June 6, 2013 at 3:33 pm

I’ve been working on a few things, but I’m actually pretty happy with my swing right now, I just want to get another perspective from someone with a trained eye and a solid foundation in swing mechanics. I think that given you’re experience with the Dan Plan and the time you’ve spent with your coaches that you fit that bill quite well. Btw, I’m in Joplin, Missouri. I did a search through the TPI website and found one guy in town that is certified and a few more up in Kansas City or over in Springfield. Anyway, I’m mostly just looking for a little feedback to see how accurate my own observations are and if there is anything else I should be tweaking. Also, CONGRATULATIONS on the certification!
Richard Chen says:

June 7, 2013 at 6:42 am

One way to swing for more distance (ie. to get greater clubhead speed) is to swing the clubhead to greater distance.

In physics, moving the clubhead faster can be equated to swinging the clubhead farther. Most driving ranges have flag sticks set progressively at 50, 100, 150, and 200 yards in a row. As described in a prior post, the ball will go approximately three times the distance of the imaginary clubhead distance (when the clubhead is imagined to detach from the bottom of the driver shaft just before the clubface hits the back of the ball, and the imagined detached clubhead is visualized to fly at the low level of the ground (skimming the ground, and then roll along the ground down the fairway.) Thus if the driver clubhead is visualized and imagined to be swung to the 50-yard flag, the ball will go approximately 150 yards (ie. 3 times 50 equal 150.) If the clubhead is visualized to be swung to the next 100-yard flag, the ball will go approximately 300 yards (ie. 3 x 100 = 300.) Thus, both the 150-yard and 200-yard flags can be ignored. The practical aiming targets of the swinging of the clubhead is to swing the clubhead to between the 50-yard and the 100-yard flags. When the target of the clubhead swing is aimed to be exactly between the 50 and 100-yard flag, the clubhead is to be swung to 75 yards, which provides approximately 225 yard drives. When the clubhead-swinging-aiming-distance is increased by 5 yards to 80 yards, approximate 240 yard drives are produced. When the clubhead-aiming-distance is increased by another 10 yards to a target of 90 yards for the clubhead swing, approximately 270 drives are produced (ie. 3 times 90 equal 270 yards.)

Similar to setting up to putts, when the target hole is visualized in the minds-eye during setup, the targeting point for swinging the clubhead to down the fairway of 80 yards is visualized in the mind during setup, and throughout the swing. Both the direction, and the distance of the targeting point down range are kept in the mind, which are similar to the visualization used during putting.

Additional ways to increase distance besides the traditional way like using weighted driver like using a weighted-donut have been discussed by the top players. Nicklaus in his video said that once he replanted his heel of the leading foot at the start of the downswing (he lifts his heel of the leading foot a fair amount during the backswing,) he swings all out right from the top (by contrast, Woods book describes “pouring” on the power, later in the downswing.) Having good and swift enough action of the feet will in general speed up the whole swing to result in increased clubhead speed. Standing closer to the ball during setup will allow the arms to swing close, and straight down across the body with increased speed to produce more clubhead speed automatically without using more energy according the the physics law of the conservation of angular momentum, providing more “free” clubhead speed for just standing closer to the ball during setup (assuming standing too far from the ball to begin with, which Venturi said most golfers stand too far from the ball based on his observations.) A good grip by both hands, both in form and in “light” grip pressure (as if throwing a ball) is important to generating clubhead speed.
Mark says:

June 9, 2013 at 3:58 pm

Dan why did you remove the post about CECC and possibly not being reinstated? Seems odd, youre transparent, do share
Clay Ballard says:

June 11, 2013 at 6:07 pm

Nice job on the elevation. Leverage is one of the biggest keys to power. Looking better all the time.
Clay Ballard says:

June 11, 2013 at 6:08 pm

Sorry, this was supposed to be in the other TPI blog, with the before and after pics.
TMK says:

June 15, 2013 at 4:46 am

Hi Dan. You mentioned your right glute Mm challenge and selfish as people are (and LH too), I identified myself in it with the same problem with rotating properly and not sliding. What kind of excercises did you do specifically and is your right hip tight as well? Thanks and good luck with your project!
Simon Schmid says:

June 21, 2013 at 9:41 am

Why don’t you put the TPI Certified logo somewhere on your site, like one does with awards (or HTML certificates ^^)? Also, congratulations!
Robert Locati says:

April 22, 2016 at 5:29 pm

Dan – I live in the Portland area and have been looking into the TPI certification process. I would love to buy you a drink, meet up at the range, play a round and chat about it anytime. I’m also on GolfWRX (thegeekgolfer) website. There’s some good discussions on your progress and process on that site. Good luck on the ‘Dan Plan’ and best success.

- Rob

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