The Dan Plan - 10,000 Hours to Become a Pro Golfer (Dan McLaughlin)

[Abu3baid]

44 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

I disagree, a number of pro golfers play their entire careers without any back injuries.  Individual swings place stress on different body parts.  Tiger had a pretty violent swing that also placed a lot of stress on his left knee and eventually damaged it.  

And a lot more amature golfers play their entire "career" without back injury as well.   In fact, statistically a lot more armatures play without back injury than pro golfers since the number of pros are such a small population of the entire golfing world.

http://www.hughston.com/hha/a.golf.htm

Quote

Golf is usually considered a low level activity, but golfers often suffer serious injuries. Over 50% of touring professionals have had to stop playing because of injuries. The motion of a golf swing, if done incorrectly, can cause injuries in many parts of the body. A golf swing involves a large trunk rotation and requires you to move both shoulders through a wide range of motion at very high speeds. Unlike professionals, amateur golfers are not as conditioned to make these motions. However, both amateur and professional golfers commonly injure their backs, elbows, shoulders, and wrists. If you have injured any of these areas, you may need to be examined by your family doctor or orthopaedist. 

 

 

Don't know how accurate this is, but give me sometime to research more.  My point still stands is that someone can't just simply blame the swing flaws Dan has in his swings for his back injury.

[Lihu]

7 hours ago, Abu3baid said:

20 hours ago, flopster said:

Dan's swing to me looked very contrived at times and his unwillingness to tear down all the flaws and start over with solid fundamentals I believe ultimately led to his injuries, here's a guy spending 30+ hours a week swinging a club in a way that can hurt him eventually and in fact did, he had all the time in the world to undo the flaws and swing a club in a more proper form which imo limits the chances of injury, if there is one thing we can take away from this is if your going to dedicate a lot of time practicing get a lesson first and periodically as often as possible, Dan like many people thought he could figure it out on his own and discarded instruction when funds got tight which was the worst decision he could have made.

 

The back will give out even if your swing is flawless.. The whole golf swing is an injury waiting to happen..  Even if he had a perfect swing that doesn't mean he wouldn't have injured himself, nor does it mean that he would have reduced his chances of injuring his back.  I personally don't think there is a relationship there.  ie Tiger Woods (flawless swing)

At least in my case, I used to get injured swinging at balls the wrong way. Now, I can really go after the ball and not hurt myself. I'm sure if I really really went after it I could hurt my back, but I think I would hurt more things than just my back.

 

2 hours ago, newtogolf said:

I disagree, a number of pro golfers play their entire careers without any back injuries.  Individual swings place stress on different body parts.  Tiger had a pretty violent swing that also placed a lot of stress on his left knee and eventually damaged it.  

True, I think good mechanics reduces the chances of injury because you are putting in only effort to make an efficient swing.

[nevets88]

17 minutes ago, Lihu said:

At least in my case, I used to get injured swinging at balls the wrong way. Now, I can really go after the ball and not hurt myself. I'm sure if I really really went after it I could hurt my back, but I think I would hurt more things than just my back.

True, I think good mechanics reduces the chances of injury because you are putting in only effort to make an efficient swing.

 

Please start a new topic in the fitness and exercise forum about this.

[flopster]

5 hours ago, nevets88 said:

 

Please start a new topic in the fitness and exercise forum about this.

True some of us are talking about personal experience with back injuries caused by golf but it all stemmed from my belief his swing mechanics may have had a significant impact upon his injury, I think Dan overdoes it most of the time for what his body can handle and would have been better served with a focused strengthening program to increase core strength and flexibility along with a dedication to learning a golf swing with sound fundamentals, instead he thought he was cruising right along through 10hdcp down through 5 hdcp and hit his wall for what his talent/abilities could produce with flawed mechanics, instead of having the courage to undo his swing which for the vast majority of golfers knew would never get him even to scratch he chose to plod on thinking he could somehow figure this out (which never happens) and then ultimately hurting himself very badly. In my opinion he needs a MRI done to see where the damage happened a chiropractor is not going to fix this, what most need to realize is that Dan is doing a lot more practicing with flawed mechanics and this was a train wreck waiting to happen.

[Lihu]

The key in the article posted by @Abu3baid  is if a golf swing is done incorrectly it can lead to injury.

My guess is that Dan injured himself from overturning his spine especially in the follow through.

[bkuehn1952]

 Follow

Dan McLaughlin‏@thedanplan

@SherlockD2 just getting back into it. Have a couple rounds planned this week, first time for two rounds in a week for months. Good things!

 

 

6:14 PM - 3 Apr 2016

[nevets88]

Imho, bad info. I get a lot done at home, with a mirror, or even with video. Those short 5-10 minutes practicing the full swing add up. And there's the continuity of it, it's at home, so it's easy to do, so you do it, you keep reinforcing those feels.

 

[paininthenuts]

On 4/21/2011 at 0:43 PM, Fatgigi said:

interesting! if i were a millionaire with nothing else to do i would give it a go!

I have the hours in the day, but not the life span. Perhaps I will take up poker or modeling 

 

What is more interesting is the likelihood. It's my belief that there are several components before anyone can become good enough to be a pro. 

1) Practice

2) Coaching

3) Natural ability

4) Luck

Points 1 I have time for, but at my age it hurts to much. Point 2 I can't afford. Points 3 and 4, I have none.

Edited April 4, 2016 by paininthenuts

[RandallT]

Still no updates. Hmmmm.

Regarding the topic of making great athletes, here's a professor discussing the issue in his class. He puts up an open poll to his class and some hilarity ensues. There's a long period after he opens the poll that he's just saying "ok" as he scrolls through the answers streaming in. Then he has a decent riff on some of the answers. He didn't see perturbed at all by some of the spoof answers.

Deliberate practice made the list, but it seems like most answered with some form of genetics.

 

 

[nevets88]

Said he'll play, then radio silence.

[RFKFREAK]

Just out of curiosity, what was bad about his swing mechanics? 

Anyway, I'm not a fan of his and think, for the most part, that he's just trying to spin this as being a "success."

[DrvFrShow]

If Dan herniated a disc in his lower back, The Dan Plan is done.

[Faksakes]

Golf is hard. Anyone think his back injury is related to his brain?

[newtogolf]

8 hours ago, Faksakes said:

Golf is hard. Anyone think his back injury is related to his brain?

It could be, many people tend to avoid facing their shortfalls head on or making them public.  

When I was a personal trainer I'd have clients "disappear" for months at a time, only to find out they went off their diet and training program, gained weight and were embarrassed to show up until they lost the weight on their own.  Basically they decided that not showing up was a better alternative than admitting their  setback.  

Dan may have had a back injury and has since recovered but his swing is worse than it was and he's not comfortable with showcasing it or documenting the setback on his site so he's still claiming to be injured.    

[Lihu]

55 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

It could be, many people tend to avoid facing their shortfalls head on or making them public.  

When I was a personal trainer I'd have clients "disappear" for months at a time, only to find out they went off their diet and training program, gained weight and were embarrassed to show up until they lost the weight on their own.  Basically they decided that not showing up was a better alternative than admitting their  setback.  

Dan may have had a back injury and has since recovered but his swing is worse than it was and he's not comfortable with showcasing it or documenting the setback on his site so he's still claiming to be injured.    

 

It's also possible that he is still injured and can't swing as fast as he did before. Dan doesn't sound like the type of person who would not be comfortable showcasing his swing no matter what it looked like. He seemed to always think his swing looked pretty good anyway. Another thing is you can't really tell how well someone can score by their swing. You might possibly be able to tell the difference between a bogey and scratch, but not that accurately. We have some very decent swings from 14 to 20 handicaps on this site, and we also have terrible looking swings from 3 to 5 handicaps. Some people can simply manage their flaws better than others.

My guess is he'll just play rounds and start reporting them when he is no longer injured.

[DrvFrShow]

Even without the back injury, Dan didn't have the distance off the tee to make it on the tour. His driving distance was below the average PGA distance. Yes you can work out and all that, but after a certain age you're limited in what you can do. He's at the age when most professional golfers are at the end of their touring careers and he hasn't hit scratch. He peaked already and started his fall off. 

My guess is that Dan is done. He's approaching 40 and has a back problem. I think he's seen his plan has failed. 10,000 hours works if you don't have any set backs and have the athletic ability to do it. But the time clock is another matter. He'l start playing again when he's physically able to play again, but whether he enters tournaments or reports rounds is another matter.

Becoming a professional golfer these days requires one to start as a youth.

[Jeremie Boop]

Not for nothing, but I almost feel like I would have had a better chance than Dan. Even if I started now I'd probably be able to surpass where he is in a shorter period of time. And I'm not particularly good. It's been awhile since I was in this thread but there was some discussion about how much higher his anti-handicap was and some question about how legitimate his actual handicap was at that point. Could be that I'm fooling myself about my potential or downplaying how good he is but looking at how much his handicap fluctuates seems strange. Especially since the most recent ones are from a year ago when he went from 3.9 on 3/15 to 5.5 on 4/15... I didn't see anything after that.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Jeremie Boop

[Lihu]

20 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

Not for nothing, but I almost feel like I would have had a better chance than Dan. Even if I started now I'd probably be able to surpass where he is in a shorter period of time. And I'm not particularly good. It's been awhile since I was in this thread but there was some discussion about how much higher his anti-handicap was and some question about how legitimate his actual handicap was at that point. Could be that I'm fooling myself about my potential or downplaying how good he is but looking at how much his handicap fluctuates seems strange. Especially since the most recent ones are from a year ago when he went from 3.9 on 3/15 to 5.5 on 4/15... I didn't see anything after that.

Going from a 3.9 to 5.5 is 1.6 strokes. That's not really a lot.

I'd guess even after all that's been said (including by me) and done that he probably did have a legitimate handicap. To the people who think he was an 8 to 10 handicap, I really can't imagine him playing as bad as me. . His driver swing speed was measured to about 106 which is faster than my average, and he has a combine score in the high 60s low 70s which puts him at better than scratch potential. Statistically, he's a much better golfer than I am right now. Maybe now that he's injured, I could beat him some of the time.

Combine score table: