Triad of Learning

During my first lesson with a new student, I like to introduce the Triad of Learning.  Simply put, you have to See It, to Do It, you have to Feel It, to Repeat It and you have to Understand It, to Own & Trust It.   We talked about the importance of pictures above, but how exactly do you do that?  Simple...Watch yourself!  We use video on the lesson tee, but you can use a mirror at home or your shadow outside to check yourself.  When working with golfers, I am constantly putting them in the correct position and having them see where they and the club are.  JUST LOOK AT YOURSELF…you can see if you are in the correct position.  If you don’t know where the right positions are, then it’s time for you to take a lesson!

 

Second, You Have to Feel It to Repeat It.  Keep in mind that when we are changing the swing motion that we often feel awkward and uncomfortable. That is OK.  What you feel is not real….it is a perception!  Uncomfortable is not wrong, it is new and different.  And Different Is Good!   Also, too often golfers focus on what contact “feels like” when we make impact with the ball.  The problem with focusing on impact is simple…contact is an effect, not a cause.  If you hit the ball in the center of the clubface, it’s going to feel good and when you don’t, it’s going to feel bad!  There is no useful information there that will help you hit the next shot better.  Golfers need to focus on three things when out practicing and playing.  Focus on what your muscles feel like as they stretch and release during your swing.  Focus on muscle feels during your set-up as well.  “Do you feel athletic and ready?”  should be a guiding thought as you prepare to hit each shot.  Second, focus on pressure (what is pushing, where).  Feel specifically how your body weight (pressure) moves back and through, not just from right to left, but where the weight is moving (pushing down) within each foot as you move through the swing motion.  Also, FOCUS ON YOUR GRIP PRESSURE.   When we are out practicing and playing we instinctively grip the club tighter and tighter shot after shot without realizing it.  I am constantly reminding students to simply relax.  Remember the harder your try (gripping the daylights out of the club), the worse you do!!  We all know this, but we still do it!  It is instinctive and we are creatures of habit.   The last thing we can feel is a fancy term called proprioception, which simply means that we know where our body parts are in 3 dimensional space.  This is the most challenging as often times we think our body is one position, but it isn’t.  When you look at yourself, be sure to associate that visual picture with what you are feeling in your body at the time.  As students of our own golf swing, we must be self-aware of what our body is feeling during practice and identify the difference between new, correct motions and old inefficient ones.

Do the Drills.  Practice the drills that you learned during your lessons.  Drills reinforce correct feels and force you as a learner to master the new motion.   Most golfers really don’t practice the drills they learn from their pros.  They do them for 10 shots and that’s it.  Tour pros do them for hours.  Be patient with the process, because Process is Important!  There are no shortcuts.  The fastest way to creating and feeling the correct new motion is to go through the learning process correctly and doing drills!  If you really want to accelerate learning, you must connect a visual picture with a physical feel. 

You see learning is actually the process of (self) discovery where information is coming in from the eyes and body (See and Feel).  It is about the flow and direction of information.   Consider for a moment, a sponge and water; the sponge is the brain, the water is information.  When you as a golfer associate pictures and feels as you practice, information is flowing into the brain just as the sponge absorbs the water.  You don’t have to do anything to help the sponge absorb…you simply need to pay attention and stay out of its way.  Too often golfers “think” too much and simply try to tell their bodies (in words) what to do, imagine squeezing that very water out of the sponge that was absorbing it just a moment ago.  Information is flowing out from the brain just as the water is squirting from the sponge.  I like to ask students…”Have you ever learned anything when information is going OUT of your brain?”   Think about that for a minute.  This is how most golfers practice and learn.  Is it any wonder that you haven’t improved, if the whole time you practice is by telling your body what to do?   How well has that worked for you in the past?  Are you learning as fast as you like?  Focus on what you see and what you feel and you will discover that you will learn much faster; 3 to4 times faster by all the research studies.  And, isn’t that what you really want?

Lastly, you must Understand It to Own It & Trust It. “It” is the golf swing…your golf swing.  You must understand the WHY of golf…period. Why does the ball fly the way it does?  The good news is there are really only 3 factors that contribute to ball flight.  Where the CLUB FACE looks controls ball curvature (hooks and slices), the CLUB PATH or the direction the club swings during impact controls the initial starting direction the ball must take when leaving the club (pushes and pulls) and finally the CLUB ANGLE or the up and down motion of the club through impact determines proper contact (fat or thin shots and heeled or toed shots).  There are only 3 Ball Flight Laws and YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THEM.  They are simple and they will be discussed in detail later.  The first golf book I ever read at age 10, I got at the Independence, Iowa public library.  I liked it so much, that I kept it.  I told the librarian I lost it and paid her the replacement cost.  It was written by Jack Grout, an old teaching pro at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.  I still have this book today.  The beginning of the book is all about ball flight laws.  I studied this book and the ball flight laws religiously at age 10 and they have served me well ever since.  These laws serve as the bedrock of my foundation as a golfer and teacher.  If you learn to watch the ball, it will tell you what you are doing in your swing…period.  You simply have to ask yourself…why?   Would you like to know the title of the book???   Let Me Teach You Golf As I Taught Jack Nicklaus.   Is it any wonder that I kept this book to myself and studied it and formed my own game around it?

Take 2 Practice Swings

I would like to recommend that you make practice swings an important part of your learning process.   Because Process is Important!  I have a simple rule…”If you hit a poor golf shot, take two correct practice swings before you move on”.  This may sound too simple, but think for a minute the last time you were out on the course or range.  Consider the last bad shot you hit…the first thing you did was to slam your club on the ground in disgust, say a few choice words to yourself (maybe maybe even out loud!) and quickly move on to hit your next shot, because you wanted to fix your last golf swing!  Right Now!!  Your brain immediately went to hit (fix) the next shot before the last shot even hit the ground!  STOP!!!!!!  Stop right there!!!   Don’t go any further!!!  DANGER!!!  DANGER, Will Robinson!!!  This is where golfers make that critical mistake and stop learning and start thinking and forcing their swings.  You are fighting your instincts here and it is not easy.  Take a moment to clear your mind and ask yourself…why did the ball just do that?  Then take a couple practice swings so that you can “find your swing” again and get back on track to trusting the motion and yourself!   Keep in mind…you can find your swing…you can lose your swing…but you can’t fix your swing.  We always try to “fix” it or “figure it out”.  Think about that for a moment…have you “fixed” golf swing so that it never misfires?  Has it ever worked in the past?  Maybe for a day or two; but have you ever permanently fixed it?  Remember, the more you try to “fix” it goes right back to the old adage that the harder you try…the worse you do!  We already know this.  However, I watch golfers spend countless hours trying to “fix” something that isn’t broken.  What is there to break?  NOTHING!  They simply haven’t found the right swing motion…because they aren’t asking the question Why??   They aren’t watching themselves do it…and they aren’t paying attention to what their bodies are telling them.  In the end golfers struggle for hours, wasting time and energy only to get more frustrated at their lack of improvement.

To improve long term as a golfer, you need to understand why the ball flies the way it does so that you can understand your swing and find it consistently.  Good players do this when they practice and the best players do this every shot, on the course or during practice.  But first, you must understand the basics of “why” the ball curves and flies offline. Learn and understand the 3 Ball Flight Laws and you will go a long way to understanding and permanently improving your golf swing.   Please, please, think about what you are trying to do….before you go out and do it!  Remember:  Process is Important!!