"5 Minutes Daily" Practice Challenge (April 2016)

[iacas]

Welcome to the April Practice Challenge for 2016! The rules are the same as always:

• Make a somewhat detailed post describing your practice every day during the month.
• No back-dating or pre-dating posts or practice sessions.

Detail what you did for at least five minutes of practice (indoors or out, with or without golf balls, etc.). Some of you have been slacking on this - give details.

Enjoy and practice hard!

[Lihu]

More wrist loading drills.

I am loading my wrists in my first move, then taking it "locked" in place to the top. Then do the downswing originating in the legs and hips and letting it release somewhere after parallel on the downswing. Trying put various lag points in addition to parallel.

[adam3553]

Range and mirror work today. Im working mainly on my backswing. Im trying to stop my arm lift in the backswing by letting my pivot raise the arms. A check point for me is to have my shoulders at 90* when I get to P3. Im also being conscience of not having to much wrist cOck esp. late in the backswing. I feel like Steve Stricker but in reality Im nowhere near that.

[boogielicious]

More mirror work. Focused on A4 to A5 and getting that shaft flatter by getting my hips more forward and my right elbow more in front.

[MiddleTees]

Short yoga routine to stretch then slow mo backswing drill in barn.

[WUTiger]

Went out at lunchtime and practiced putting for 15 minutes. Did a few longer lags to start, then focused on 3, 5 and 10-footers. I want to control distance and speed better this year with length of backstroke.

I was using KickX golf balls, and they really roll out smoothly from the putter face. I can really fell when I hit it squarely. Also: the parallel alignment lines seem to fit my eyes well.

Another point: I want to make sure I "hold" my forward stroke after impact to ensure good form.

Lots of things going on - 15 minutes a day is about all I can do until mid-April, when I launch my season.

[Lihu]

8 hours ago, Lihu said:

More wrist loading drills.

I am loading my wrists in my first move, then taking it "locked" in place to the top. Then do the downswing originating in the legs and hips and letting it release somewhere after parallel on the downswing. Trying put various lag points in addition to parallel.

Played 18 at my town's course with my son. As the greens were punched, we both putted more than half of our total strokes. Son shot 79 with 42 putts with 14 GIR and I shot 89 with 46 putts with 6 GIR. We're posting both, me to GHIN and he posted to his team coaches. One birdie for me with one more attempt less than 8 feet. He got 3 birdies with one tap in from an 8 foot eagle putt on a 513 yard par 5. He hit pin high in 2 on the 535 yard par 5, and almost drove 3 greens.

I nailed one good drive on the 18th, it was all carry.

A couple videos were taken, but not sure if I can edit them before leaving for China. Possibly while I'm in China in the evenings.

Note that putting is not a glaring weakness for either of us.

[Avalanche]

Swung by the practice green on the way to work.  Practiced chipping and short pitches for 20 minutes.  Been practicing my short game a lot lately.  Mostly with my 7-iron for chipping and 52-08 gap wedge short pitches.  Can't do much practice putting. They just aerated the practice green yesterday.   Pachinko putting!

[Guest]

Did the minimum today, just 5 minutes putting in the living room.....also remembered to charge up my new game golf, plan to use it Sunday.......with putting, just working more on keeping the ball further forward in my stance and keeping a smooth stroke.  We finished out month-end at work, long day.

[onthehunt526]

I am already out, but I'll try to get the rest of the month.

4/2/15:

I've working on holding my shoulder inclination, for the last week. I "stand-up" a bunch in my swing, so I started standing a little further from the ball to get try to get the feeling, I don't need to "dive" for the ball.

I did the "shoulder pitch with driveway sticks drill" for 5 minutes this morning. I'm trying to not flatten out my shoulders at the top of the backswing. It's difficult when you get to the top and see your shoulders are pointing way out in la-la land. I will continue to work on this, because I believe it will make me more consistent. I know it's not going to happen overnight, I've got a long way to go.

[Lihu]

Backswing transition, and backswing transition while maintaining steady head.

Doing the takeaway and kind of bouncing my arms at the top as slowly as I can to reduce the amount of "stoppage". This helps me slow down my tempo in a natural way. I do this three times per swing with the first 10-20 warmup swings.

Exaggerate the feel of wrapping my arms around my body while at the correct inclination and maintaining that inclination while keeping my head steady.

Doing these as slowly as I can, then letting it go naturally when I make my actual swings. Never feeling rushed at any point in time. Slow and steady.

[Avalanche]

Hit the practice green for 15 minutes this morning.  They sanded the green which took *some* of the pachinko action out of it.  Still had some weird bounces though.  Practiced chipping and short pitches with my 7-iron and gap wedge from five spots around the green, hitting three balls to different holes.   Wind blowing 25 mph, and about 47 degrees out.  Not very good golfing weather.   

[Lihu]

3 hours ago, Lihu said:

Backswing transition, and backswing transition while maintaining steady head.

Doing the takeaway and kind of bouncing my arms at the top as slowly as I can to reduce the amount of "stoppage". This helps me slow down my tempo in a natural way. I do this three times per swing with the first 10-20 warmup swings.

Exaggerate the feel of wrapping my arms around my body while at the correct inclination and maintaining that inclination while keeping my head steady.

Doing these as slowly as I can, then letting it go naturally when I make my actual swings. Never feeling rushed at any point in time. Slow and steady.

My stance is probably too narrow. I tried to narrow it at the range with mediocre results. When I got home I tried to widen it to the width of my shoulders and the swing felt better. Too wide and it felt too restrictive.

[MiddleTees]

Short yoga routine to stretch, then 65% spent on Steady head drill. Looking for feeling of right shoulder dropping down and around to center of rotation, while keeping head steady and feeling stretch on right side. Slow mo swings in barn. Then 20% spent on green side chipping motion, also in barn.

Focus on Full Swing practice.

[WUTiger]

Practiced on takeaway.

Did A1-A2 drill, then A1-A4 drill. Did three sets of 10 (A1-A2 then A1-A4) with one-minute break in between.

In the mirror, I got the feel of what a properly positioned A4 looks like: rotate shoulders and hips back as far as they will naturally go*, then stop. But, when I did it without the mirror, I felt myself trying to reach back for a little extra.  This "little extra" is what throws me off-balance in my infamous Member Swing video clips.
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* I'm doing this while still keeping a slight flex in my right (back) knee.

[adam3553]

Mirror work and mapping the backswing is what I did today. My main checkpoint in the backswing is to have my shoulders at 90* at P3. All of this is to help me shorten up my swing. I worked on this for an hour or so then worked on my putting in the living room by doing the coin drill.

[DeadMan]

Went outside into my background, worked on pitches and chips with balls for about 20 minutes. Trying to land the ball between two alignment sticks I put on the ground. Next time I do this, I'm going to keep score of how many balls I land between the alignment sticks and try to beat it. 

Going to try to do this for the rest of the month. With a new baby at home, I don't really have time to get out and practice much, so trying to do 5 minutes a day might be an okay substitute. More of my time will be devoted to short game, because my full swing is in decent shape right now. When I only have 5 minutes, I'm going to be working on a feel I'm working on for my full swing (clearing hips better and getting my right shoulder down faster).

[Rainmaker]

Garage practice today.  I've been working on too many things and got myself to where I can hardly put the club on the ball.  So, today, I went to my garage area, plopped down 3 balls and hit them with my 7iron, using my pre-shot routine on each one, trying to visualize teeing off on a par 3 hole I'm familiar with . . then I went back to work.  I did this 4 more times today .. and am about to go do one more.