- Retaining and ?racing around' are they mutually exclusive ?
No, they work together fine. 'racing round' is what happens after release. For now for me personally the 'feel' of racing round is muted by the effort to 'do nothing' but it is there.
- Are you still very much single axis ?
Yes
- Is there still awareness of the ?horizontal', the ?z-axis' effect ?
Yes
- Are you equally aware of both ?retaining' and ?driving' with the trail hand ?
Only aware of retaining until after it's over. I find that if I have an awareness of driving DURING the swing, I am not retaining. Like Bertholy says - the action is totally unconscious.
- Is the ?retaining' effort concentrated at the trail index finger ?
Not for me. It's my whole trail hand
- Do you feel the ?retaining' force to be roughly constant during the release phase ?
Once release starts everything gets very 'fuzzy'. I'm trying to feel the pressure pulling in but I feel my trail arm going out but by the time I recognize this it's all over. This gets back to your 'awareness of driving' question. A rough analogy I can draw will be recognized by any that have been trained to shoot firearms - it is critical that you not anticipate the firing and recoil or you 'flinch'. I don't think the retaining force is constant after relese starts but I can't say for sure.
- Does it feel that your club head speed is much slower than normal ?
It feels slower but the ball goes further.
- Do you ?feel' as if the trail hand stays on top of the lead hand through impact ?
I don't understand this one.
- Do you consider the trail hand to be the main driving force through impact ?
I know it is but I don't 'feel' it is. Release to follow through is VERY fast and VERY unconscious. I only 'feel' after the fact.
This will prove to be an interesting one to model. You'll have to do some trial and error on the dynamics of release. What I think happens is that the rotation of the 'Keystone' is accelerated by the energy transfer from the arrested lower body shift/rotation. This extra enregy overcomes the retaining force. As the club comes out COAM decelerates the hands and arms more and ... you wind up with an cascade forcing the club out to impact
