Are you fooling yourself?

[mvmac]

Very few of us have access to frequent video review of our swings, and even fewer have access to frequent video review by a competent instructor.  Consequently, we don't really know what we're doing, we know what it feels like we're doing.

Do you not have a camera on your phone?

You've gotten some good advice so far, I'll just add

[RH31]

I'm offering this as a question in relation to how we change our swings.  Very few of us have access to frequent video review of our swings, and even fewer have access to frequent video review by a competent instructor.  Consequently, we don't really know what we're doing, we know what it feels like we're doing.  When we try to change something, our feedback is is our feelings, not an actual image of the change.  The only "factual" feedback we get is the results, the contact and the flight of the ball.  The way I've phrased this to my friends is that we use our brain to try to fool our body into doing things the right way.

As an example, One of my swing faults is an overlong backswing.  If I can see the clubhead out of my left eye, erratic shots will follow.  It doesn't "feel" anything other than normal.  So when I practice, I try to feel like I'm 45 degrees short of parallel, still with a full shoulder turn.   If I turn to watch a shadow, I know that I'm around parallel when I do this,  so the feeling is significantly different from the reality.  This is that I mean by "fooling myself."  Practicing with the "45 degrees short of parallel" feeling helps this new feeling seem normal.  Then when I'm on the course, I'm trying produce a normal-feeling swing..

Does anyone else take this view towards practice and swing changes?  Or, on the other hand, do you think that you really do understand what you're actually doing in your swing, and in your swing changes?

I do, and it doesn't work for very long. Then again, I've taken many lessons and haven't seemed to been able to make that pay off consistently either.

I've more or less conceded to myself that I'm a fundamentally inconsistent player. My swing doesn't change so much as my grip, aim, stance etc., gets sloppy and this causes a different path, angle, plane or ???? creating poor shots. I'm to the point where I want to get instruction using video, but I don't want to relearn all the basics I don't seem to apply well to begin with.

FWIW, I used to have a long and across the line swing when I was a lot younger. I opened my stance slightly to get my club online at the top and flushed it all summer long. Best year I ever had playing the game and I "fixed" it by myself.

[Stretch]

In my opinion, unless you are practicing with a camera for monitoring or with some kind of physical enforcement for the specific change that you are trying to make (alignment stick in the ground that you have to stay over/under, ball between the elbows, whatever you need), then you are wasting your time. Anything else is just training yourself to hit it incrementally better with the swing that you already have -- which is a game of diminishing returns for most of us. Only wish I could get back even a fraction of the time that I have wasted trying to dig it out of the dirt on my own with this feel or that feel or the next feel -- and if you put them all on video you wouldn't see a scintilla of difference.

To butcher the well-known legal saying, a golfer who coaches himself has a fool for a client.

[M2R]

I am not sure I understand the question totally but I find the evidence that something is indeed changing more in my really poor swings and/or poor contacts, not in anything I am working on or doing.

What I have begun to notice over the last year is that thin and toed shots tend to fly shockingly well compared to what I am expecting based on past experience. At first I just passed it off as a fluke but over time began to realize that my thin and toed shots are flying totally different and have adjusted to that as being the new norm or standard. I have not changed any equipment in four seasons so that is not the change.

What I take away is that even though I do not perceive any progress something must be changing.

I am not sure I agree that the only "factual" feedback we get is the results of ball contact and flight. Maybe when the work is done this might be reliable or factual but during working on something I would try not to care one way or the other (unless contact and flight were the specific things being focused on).

I could make a swing with the element I am trying to focus on but make poor ball contact and I would judge that a success. Or I could make a swing that totally violated the fundamental thing I want to focus on but make compensations to hit the ball fairly solid and I would judge that a failure.

I sort of felt this same sensation going to school. While taking a class it felt fairly hopeless and I thought I would never get the subject, it was hard going. But as new classes built upon and used the material from previous classes somehow, at sometime without my even being aware of it my facility and grounding in those previous subjects became solidified.