Practice fatigue: what's your cue to pack it in?

[Hategolf]

31 minutes ago, jamo said:

I'm never really willing to spend the money to go past the point of feeling tired, so that's an easy answer. 

Easy for you to say with a 1.5 index.  I don't want to spend the money either but I'd rather spend it at the range rather than playing a nice course and have pretty terrible score. 

I would be happy just hitting balls on weekends a day before playing a round. Unfortunately to get better i either hit lots of balls or take lessons no way around it. 

I stop practicing when I feel I am making no progress. Then I'll go chipping and putting for free. 

[Hardspoon]

I don't think I've ever hit enough golf balls to feel fatigued from swinging. Most I'd ever hit on the range is maybe 75 or so...usually it's 60 (medium).

I do stop practicing earlier when I stop being able to achieve what I want to, whether it is a drill or solid contact or a backswing piece.  That usually only happens if I'm tired or sore or sick.

I have been fatigued from playing, but that's only due to walking on a very hilly course or 36+ holes in a day.

[shanksalot]

I never hit more than a bucket of balls.I take breaks during my practice sessions. If I hit a few shaky shots I stop hitting full shots and go back to hitting just 1/2 shots to recover my tempo and rhythm. If none of that works I just stop hitting and go over to the practice area where I can hit chip shots and bunker shots. Then practice my putting and then go home and come back another time. Getting tired leads to practicing bad swings and I have a enough of that when I am not tired. 

[easyjay39402]

I restrict my full swing practice sessions to 35 balls. Beyond that, I begin to lose my concentration. I spend an inordinate amount of time on my alignment and setup with each ball. If my grandson is around, I ask him to take photos of my setup and analyze it with me.  My swing normally works just fine IF I get the static parts correct.  When I hit a ball, it usually is with the image of a particular shot that I will need on one of my problem holes. (I keep stats that help me understand where and why a round went south.)

Now, I love pitching and will spend a lot of time around the practice green with my wedges, setting up and attempting interesting shots.  On the other hand, I despise putting (the bane of my game) and force myself to hit 50 putts before exiting the putting green - usually having missed 45 of them.

[gregsandiego]

15 hours ago, Club Rat said:

Everyone's situation is different with the person they work with.
Are you taking lessons from someone you have built a repertoire with?
A quick phone call to an instructor would usually enable them to juggle their schedule for a check up.

Consider alternating this routine. Play on Saturday, lesson on Sunday.
This would give you time to let the work sink in though the week and additional time for practice.
Do you experience many thoughts while playing the day after taking a lesson?
 

I think that's a really good idea. I'll try it sometime this year. 

 

 

[Buckeyebowman]

On 3/18/2013 at 7:50 PM, SoundandFury said:

Just out of curiosity: how do you know when fatigue is starting to mess with your swing?

 

for me, it usually sets in after I've hit more than 150-200 balls in a day (two sessions). I start either shanking, hitting waaaay fat. No fixing it. It's takes a ton of discipline to not keeping banging away to try to get it back again.

 

How about you guys?

I'd say maybe you should stop at 100! You want to groove good swings, not bad ones! Heck, maybe even stop before 100. Consider this, when have you ever hit 100 full shots in a round of golf!

Quit while you're ahead!

[dkolo]

I'm still teetering on the cusp of finding the shanks again, so if I hit a couple of those in a row, and I've made sure to cover my go-to checklist, I call it a day. Or I'll hit a couple of wedges from a different tee box to reset my mind if I have a bunch of balls left over. But I don't want to make a bad thing worse.

[DaveP043]

When my beer is empty, I stop practicing.

To explain, I'm not working to change anything specific with my swing.  My "practice" is intended to reinforce good habits with set-up, alignment, and tempo, and I try to do that once a week.  I go to the club, get a beer from the tavern, and go to the range.  I'll warm up and work through my swings, using alignment sticks or clubs on the ground, trying to maintain consistent tempo with all clubs, taking my time, and sipping the beer occasionally.  It usually takes around 45 minutes to finish the beer, which seems to coincide pretty closely with my attention span.  So when the beer is gone, I'm usually starting to get a little careless with my swings, so its time to quit.

[Kalnoky]

If I'm just chipping, pitching, and putting, I can practice for hours. Maybe 4 hours. When my vision starts to play tricks on me or if the sun goes down (usually concurrent events) that's when I stop. 

@iacas said something the other day that really resonated with me. Something about how if you take enough bad swings you'll eventually start making consistent contact with a bad swing. Bearing this in mind I stopped hitting multiple buckets of balls. Now I take 4-5 balls to warm up and check my problem spots using the mirror. Then I'll hit maybe 10-15 balls and try to hit every one as perfectly as I can. If I can hit 3 in a row and I feel loose, with good divot, good ball flight, and good distance (by my lowly standards) then I stop hitting balls. Then I double check in the mirror one last time. This takes maybe 35 minutes. 

[Buckeyebowman]

6 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

When my beer is empty, I stop practicing.

To explain, I'm not working to change anything specific with my swing.  My "practice" is intended to reinforce good habits with set-up, alignment, and tempo, and I try to do that once a week.  I go to the club, get a beer from the tavern, and go to the range.  I'll warm up and work through my swings, using alignment sticks or clubs on the ground, trying to maintain consistent tempo with all clubs, taking my time, and sipping the beer occasionally.  It usually takes around 45 minutes to finish the beer, which seems to coincide pretty closely with my attention span.  So when the beer is gone, I'm usually starting to get a little careless with my swings, so its time to quit.

That sound like a good plan! The next time I'm at the "Golf Dome" I'll ask if there is beer available. The last time I was out there I bought a small bucket, 30 balls. I started out by warming up well, and then hitting some half swing, "knockdown" type shots.

Then I graduated to full swings, and hit those quite well. I only brought my 7 iron. It's far too early to consider "working through the set", I just wanted to get out and swing a stick.

I'd hit a shot and then walk around, stretch, and observe others, then go hit another ball. To me, this mimics the usual rhythm of a golf round in that some time elapses between shots. I'm not out there trying to crank out the bucket of balls as fast as possible!

It took me a good 45 minutes to an hour to do this, which is much faster than most rounds of golf. Beer would certainly make this more enjoyable.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Buckeyebowman

[Rainmaker]

I practice in short spurts most of the time.  I have a mat and net in my garage . . on a typical day I'll go out there 3 or 4 times a day for 15 minutes each time.  

Probably because of this - I feel like I can't make it through a large bucket at the range . .100 shots is at least 25 too many for me.  

My cue to leave is as more mental than physical...I'll start hitting poor shots and notice that I'm lacking the focus I had at the start.  I'm not really thinking things through...I'm more "going through the motions".   I guess I've been there enough to know that practice is done...whether I quit hitting balls or not.  

At that point I'll try to hit one more good one and then leave it at that . .usually I just clear my mind, take a step back and try to hit one in "playing mode" . .ie . .not thinking mechanical thoughts...clearing my mind of my practice routines, picturing myself on the first tee, etc.  As soon as I hit a good one - to kind of leave with the right picture in my mind . .I leave.  If a good one doesn't come within a handful of shots . .I just quit..but usually I can get a good one to go home on, lol.  

  

[Ks golf]

I can hit balls all day long if I just have to hit them.

But when I concentrate on the grip , alignment, target area and keep in mind a repeatable shot pattern I want, then I can hit about 100-150 balls. And 150 is pushing it. But this kind of practice is always better, for me anyway. 

 

A month ago ago when I was struggling with my tee shots, I went back and just focused on getting center contact, from my irons to my woods. I had to make someone remind me again and again that optimum contact was primary objective for the time being and nothing else. I managed to fight out that rut and now take great care in my practice, especially the ball flight. Pushed shots keep me up at nights ! 

[Lagavulin62]

Usually when I start losing distance I know I am tanked. The reason I believe is because my swing begins to get too "army" and I am not powering my shots with my lower body. As I return my shots to the low irons after hitting the longer clubs is when I most notice it. Because this time of year I don't hit as much as I would like I'm good for about 50 balls max. The good news is that as I have gotten older I don't need to hit that much to feel like I'm in tune. 

[Kalnoky]

3 minutes ago, Lagavulin62 said:

Usually when I start losing distance I know I am tanked. The reason I believe is because my swing begins to get too "army" and I am not powering my shots with my lower body. 

This is good for me to remember.

[Buckeyebowman]

On 1/27/2017 at 5:18 PM, Lagavulin62 said:

Usually when I start losing distance I know I am tanked. The reason I believe is because my swing begins to get too "army" and I am not powering my shots with my lower body. As I return my shots to the low irons after hitting the longer clubs is when I most notice it. Because this time of year I don't hit as much as I would like I'm good for about 50 balls max. The good news is that as I have gotten older I don't need to hit that much to feel like I'm in tune. 

When you lose your legs, you lose your swing!

[uitar9]

Spending more time this winter with partial swings , irons and wedges. Maybe hitting full swings 15 to 20 times. Seem to be able to 150-200 balls with no fatigue. Full swing tires out this ole dog. Just learned that this winter