==================================================== Newsletter - Issue 166 Date 04/10/11 ==================================================== ==================================================== TCT Quick Tip - Plan The Work, Work The Plan ==================================================== For my GCC golf team, I follow up tournaments with a performance self-evaluation and improvement questionnaire. The replies are usually pretty much on the money from what I observe as far as the areas for improvement goes, but the first time around the plans for improvement were lacking. Here's what I told my team, it applies to any golfer that really wants to improve. "If your plan for improvement isn't specific, it's not a plan - it's just a thought, and a thought without a specific action plan is just a dream. The world is full of highly talented people that never self-actualize because they are dreamers, not doers. Plan the work, work the plan. If you are serious about improvement, you have to plan the day, the time, and the specific actions for your personal practice sessions. Right down to the minute. This is especially important for those of you that are working in addition to going to school. Tight schedules magnify the need for great planning. If you are serious, you won't take short cuts. It just doesn't work for golf ... and if you are unwilling to make sacrifices, then you just aren't serious. Some of you guys have fantastic talent. Give it your best shot now before you get saddled with so much responsibility in life that you really don't have time to devote to practice. Right here, right now, is probably the best time for most of you to give it your best shot. Take advantage, talent is a horrible thing to waste. Plan the work, work the plan." Enjoy, Tom ==================================================== Golf Tip: Practicing For Improvement ==================================================== This tip is a bit lengthy because a self anointed "swing guru" got me all fired up! I read an interesting article on the internet about swing improvement from a self anointed "swing guru". The concept for his article was great, but some of his opinions were so far off from what science has proven in respect to the swing, that I had to email him and let him know about it. I'm still waiting for a reply, it's been a few days, I'll let you know if he gets back to me. In the meantime, it inspired this article on practicing for improvement. Much of what I state herein is from my research from sources such as The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and another book I'm reading currently, Concentration and Other Mental Skills for Sports, Life, and the Arts by Dr. Gerald A. Walford and Gerald E. Walford. Each of these books is well worthy of a read or two. Muscle memory - in fact, muscles don't have memory. It's the brain that has the memory. Practice allows the motor skill to occur more efficiently and automatically. Repeating motor skills, such a swinging a club, causes "myelin" to form around the circuits in your brain that guide the motion and make it occur faster. When learning a new motor skill, such as getting the club to a certain position in the backswing, the brain must control the movement in the same way each time. The brain senses the motion by feel in your muscles and nerve endings. So, it's important that you practice new moves correctly. Here's the technical version of how the impulses travel the neural pathways from the brain to the muscles ( according to Dr. Walford ): the impulse goes along the axons to the dendrites, this is where co-ordination develops. The impulse must then jump the synapse ( space between neurons ) to the correct neuron for the correct pathway to the desired muscle. Correct practice will get the impulses to follow the desired pathway. Therein lies the value of correct repetitions done slowly at first, then faster as "myelin" builds up and allows the movement to be done faster yet still correctly. There are no shortcuts, it takes time and lots of reps. Coyle ( The Talent Code ) states that it takes around 100 reps to start building the neural pathway initially, and my personal experience has reinforced that number for me. Obviously, 100 reps is a good number to shoot for in practice. The best way to do that is to time 10 reps, multiply that number by 10, and set your cell phone alarm accordingly. Counting reps to 100 is too difficult to do. For putting, you could just lay out 25 balls and take that many reps from four different spots. That's from four different spots, but not necessarily to the same target if you are on a real putting green. Chuck Quinton - RotarySwing.com - has done extensive research on the biomechanics of the golf swing, and he states that it takes 3,000 to 5,000 reps to embed a swing segment into our brain. His research is well documented. Here are a few ways to make your practice more efficient. 1. Repeat the motion frequently, make time for 100 reps minimum. 2. Motor skill researchers have determined that external cues are more effective than internal cues. The brain and body are better able to react efficiently to external cues than to the internal cues of what the body needs to do. An internal cue is one that focuses on a particular part of the body, such as "rotate the hands through impact." An external cue is one that focuses not on the body, but on an external object such as the club. A more effective swing cue would be "square the clubface at impact." "Toe Up to Toe Up" with a mini club in your hands while swinging would be a great way to practice a crossover release. Buy a club ( 8 iron ) at a garage sale and cut it to 24" for indoor swing practice. Wrap some tape around the shaft for a grip, or wrap some masking tape around the shaft then slip a grip on. It's a great training aid. "Thumbs Up to Thumbs Up" is just as effective if you are making swings without a club, but with your fingers and thumbs stretched out. Your thumbs effectively become an external cue. 3. Work on NEW swing motor skills more without hitting balls than while hitting balls. The brain and body need to learn the new motion. ( This is exactly how we do a major portion of our indoor practice for my GCC Golf Team ) .... Hitting balls means at the range where you can follow the flight for a significant distance. Hitting balls into a net or gym curtain qualifies as not hitting balls for the purpose of this tip. Hitting balls at the range can add immediate negative feedback ( hitting really bad shots ) which will sabotage your practice. Your brain will attempt to revert subconsciously to your old swing - an existing old neural pathway - which has been more successful in the past. BTW, old swing tendencies ( old neural pathways ) don't go away, they just get de-prioritized by new swing tendencies ( new neural pathways ) that have been established and reinforced with sufficient repetitions. 4. "Swing practice" swings should be short to long in swing length, and slow to fast in swing speed. Devote some practice time to swings that are shorter than normal. Shortening your swing should be the first default action for identifying a swing problem. 5. Always practice with expectations of incremental change. Swing changes take place gradually, rushing your practice is actually counterproductive. You've got to learn to walk before you learn to run. "Slow practice will get you there faster." Actually, I just read a book by that same title, written by Ernest Dras. Break the swing down and practice it slowly in small portions, kind of like a weight watchers for swing improvement, which leads us to: 6. Focus on only one change at a time, and be patient. Golf is about learning a swing or technique a little piece at a time, then stacking the pieces for the finished product. 7. Last but not least - enjoy your practice, it's the time when we each get to create our own masterpiece.