Hypothetical - If you always had live instructor supervision when you practiced...

[JetFan1983]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JetFan1983

True true, and as a fellow evolvr student myself, I would stress that they do a great job of covering the bases that need to be covered. Of course though, you and I have both had in-person and online instruction with them, so we're on a separate plane than those who have only had the online version.

James doesn't really have to explain anything to me in the video because he did that already when we met for a clinic. It's just a series of reminders really.

I would agree. I have a tendency to just hit a bunch of balls, film 20 of them, and then try to figure out what I was doing wrong when I go home. That can mean that I spend the entire time doing something wrong, or regressing on something, and by the time I go to the range again I might not remember (or at least I might not be super focused on) the thing that was regressing. It's a vicious cycle of stupidity.

Yea, I've been there many, many times myself. The battle against regression is a battle I think we all face to varying degrees. But hey, that battle would be a much, much harder fight without those evolvr/online lessons to keep one in line. Obviously I'm sure you agree.

I battle regression constantly it seems, especially after a clinic, so either way for me, the reality of improvement is going to be its own little challenge to overcome. I'll often learn so much during that one day, I'll be great for a while, but as time goes on, the improvements will slowly revert towards my old shitty tendencies. I think this can be typical of some students. It's nothing against the instructor or anything, it's just the way I am as a student, unfortunately.

Using a standard 1-10 scale, let's say a student is a 4.0 when he shows up for his first clinic. Afterwards, he might be a 5.5 or even a 6.0. As the weeks pass however, even if the student is practicing well, he can easily regress back down to a 5.0 or 4.8 or something. That's still better than he was before the first lesson, but there's a measurement of regression occurring nonetheless. Then maybe he gets another lesson, and shoots back up to a 5.5 or 6.0 or above... then the regression takes place again, and the cycle can continue to repeat itself.

Making new, good, lasting changes can take serious dedication for most people. Ultimately improvement is an upward trajectory, but there are valleys in the graph that periodically have to take place.

So going back to the OP's question for a second, yes, daily in-person work would help me tremendously in avoiding the major brunt of this regression cycle.

A poor "live" instructor could easily be beaten by a good "Internet" instructor.

Yes, agreed. Anytime you work with any instructor who sucks, whether it be online or in real life, you're walking a super slippery slope of getting worse. And in fact, the better the student is, the faster he will suffer decline IMO.

The gap between even the same instructor "live" versus "Internet" isn't always huge.

OK, that's fair. Like I said, in some instances it can be, but in others it isn't. For example, if you were working with a mini-tour pro, there's likely much less to change, fix, or explain. So in essence, helping that person through evolvr really can be just as (or slightly more) effective. And of course there are many situations like this where the gap is, like you said, fairly minimized, and that's it's not exclusive to just better players.

Obviously it sometimes is a huge gap, but certainly not always.

Internet is often less expensive, so for $250, oftentimes that's two "live" lessons versus over six months on evolvr (and thus up to 24 lessons, but more commonly about 10-15).

In other words, don't sell short Internet-based lessons. They're easier to fit into your schedule, cost less, and if done well are still a great help to a golfer's game.

True, true. That's obviously a massively important point. A clinic can cost $500 or so.

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Hopefully I didn't come off on this thread as someone who is denigrating online instruction. I don't think I was, but just in case future readers make that misconception, I'm here to nip that one in the bud right now .

But going back to my own experience, in-person lessons with a good instructor allows me to jump "several levels" in one day, whereas evolvr is much more of a slow burn. It's a good slow burn though.

That's just me and how I tend to function as a student. Hopefully other students can continue to chime in and offer their own perspectives so the thread has better balance.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Erik.

[JetFan1983]

But going back to my own experience, in-person lessons with a good instructor allows me to jump "several levels" in one day, whereas evolvr is much more of a slow burn. It's a good slow burn though.

OOPS. My fault.

For some reason, I was under the impression that the phrase "slow burn" had positive connotations to it. I just googled it real quick out of curiosity and found out it was the opposite. My mistake.

What I meant to say is, the process of learning through evolvr is a slower, but still very structured, process when compared with in-person instruction. That's obvious of course, but oops...

I really need to brush up on my idioms.