Dramatic Changes

[iacas]

Here's a general tip that applies to you when working on your swing.

If something an instructor asks you to do doesn't feel unnatural, exaggerated, weird, or perhaps even uncomfortable, you're probably not doing it enough.

In other words, if doing something your normal way is a 1 and doing it the correct way is a 10, you may need to feel like you're doing it like a 20 just to do it at a 4 or 5 level.

If you try to do it at a 9 or 10 level you're probably only doing it at a 2.

They're called "habits" for a reason. The point is to change your habits, and change is "unnatural, exaggerated, weird, and perhaps even uncomfortable" for us.

[Shanks A Million]

This is more true than words can say, and something I've been harping about for ages. If you're not feeling it to the absolute extreme, you're not even close. The new golf pro here was amazed at how quickly I did what he asked me, and I explained that if I felt like it was 10/10, then I was about 1/4 of the way there.

I would say most people are still trying to hit the ball when they make a change. Bad idea. If you don't duff, shank, skull, and whiff a few balls, you're not really making a change (well, very low handicaps may not do this, but even the pro here told me he had the shanks for nearly 3 months once after a major swing change while he was a pro). Habits are hard to break.

[SpringBokVol]

Great advice. Over exaggerate the change so you can actually feel what is required.

[rebby]

I agree with this but I also think that it's a 2-way street (and I've told my instructor this). I'm there to seek his advise on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. When he indicates that something needs to be changed, that's what I'm there for. First I make sure that I fully understand what's he saying. If I don't understand what he's asking me to do, I can't do it. Second, I make a few practice swings (or movements, or whatever) to demonstrate what I'm interpreting to make sure that it aligns with what I'm being asked. At this point, I want him to speak up if I'm over or under doing it. If I'm not giving him what he wants, I want to know that so that I can make a bigger/smaller/different adjustment. If I only meet him half way, we're going to waste a lot of time effort to get all the way there. Likewise, if I over do the change that he's asking for, all we've done is introduce a new swing fault. From that point, we work on "grooving" the adjustment. I want to know what the "new move" feels like so that I don't waste time practicing the wrong thing over the next week or two then be forced to start over.

I'm guessing that this post was directed more for your "average" student than for your low handicappers but, it's just as relevant for us as it is for them. Maybe I'm just naive but I'd like to think that (generally) lower cappers are better at making the adjustments that we're asked to make and have a better understanding of how it's going to adjust our ballflight. Then again, perhaps a high number of low cappers are even more resistant to change due to a concern that it might hurt their game???

Am I approaching this in a manner that makes things easier on my instructor? Bottom line, I want to play better. My instructor can help make this a reality. If he suggests a change, I want to fully understand the change and make the correct adjustment. If that one change takes the entire lesson, so be it. I'll schedule another lesson at a later date to address other issues to assure that I'm fully grasping each and every one of his suggestions. In fact, immediately following my lessons, I do a quick recap with my instructor to make sure that I understand everything that we discussed that day (and previous items from other lessons that I may need additional work on). This information is then transferred to my "golf journal" so that I can continue to address each of these points every time I get out to practice/play without forgetting a single detail. I then track my progress on each point (ie: changes in ballflight, how it feels, any new tendencies, etc). At the onset of my next lesson, I'll give my instructor a summary on these notes as a starting point for that day. Rinse and repeat for the next lesson.