Coaches' philosophy?

[Blackjack Don]

Perhaps "school" is better than philosophy. In my Buddhism studies and practices, there are three divisions, or traditions, or schools of Buddhist thought and teaching. My tradition, which I chose after studying the other two as well, is called Theravada, which is practiced in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka--Southern Asia. Zen, and all it's forms, came later and are northern. The third is Tibetan. They share some basics, but they are also quite different. I think golf instruction might be this way, too.

I have fallen into what might be called the "dynamic swing school." The Golf Machine, Ben Doyle, Bobby Clampett, and my pro, are all teaching from this tradition. I'm quite happy with my Theravada and dynamic swing. I'm just curious if there are other "schools," and what they might be.

[iacas]

I have no idea what you mean or how one could possibly classify swings into schools, outside of what is already done: S&T, Hardy One-Plane vs. Two-Plane, Leadbetter A-Swing, etc. etc. etc.

I think that labeling things like this is more often used as a way of pigeon-holing people, and I'm generally not a fan. People in ALL groups will overlap and do a LOT of the same things. And there are great and lousy instructors in all camps of a reasonable size.

Every golf swing is "dynamic."

P.S. TGM isn't even a camp per se, as technically TGM (had it continued it would have evolved significantly, I believe) covers every swing.

[CarlSpackler]

You forgot the Minimalist Golf Swing @iacas.

[mvmac]

Yes there are many other philosophies or schools out there. Here's a few of them 

- Hogan school: basically Hogan was the best ball striker of all time and every single position of his should be copied. 5 Lessons is the bible, take every word literally and never dispute it. Also Hogan's secret will fix your swing and work for any player regardless of skill, body type, ability (even though there is no consensus on what the secret it).

- Modern school: resist and coil, create the most X-Factor to produce the most power. Make sure to have a good release by rolling the right hand over the left. Good posture means sticking you ass out, arching your back, puffing out your chest and barely being able to see the ball at address. 

- Swing your swing school: Your swing doesn't suck, you just haven't found "it" yet. Just stay positive, hit a lot of balls to reinforce your crappy instincts and "it" will happen.

- Old School: Everyone should raise the lead heel on the backswing, golfers before 1970 swung the best and knew more about the golf swing than today's players. 

- Short Game is more important school: 70% of shots are inside 100 yards so spend 90% of your time working on the most basic, easiest and least separating aspect of your golf game.

- Stack and Tilt school: Andy and Mike are never wrong, if you hit up on the driver you'll never be able to find it, if you don't hit a push draw you suck, fully support research and learning new things as long as it doesn't conflict with Andy and Mike.

- Fact based school (not sure what else to call it): Every golf swing will have it's own individual traits but there are commonalities of great players that we can identify and learn from. Focus on one or two important pieces that will have a "domino" effect on other parts of your swing. Use biomechanics, technology and stats as tools to help golfers prioritize, save time and play "smarter". Keep communication, swing feels or cues simple and encourage golfers to come up with their own feels. 

[CarlSpackler]

You also have the school where you improve your scores by taking mulligans, foot wedges, or otherwise defying the rules to improve your score relative to the scratch golfer. This is the most prevalent school of golf though.

[Blackjack Don]

Okay, maybe I'm not getting it across what I mean. It might be too complicated, too. Ben Doyle, I guess, started teaching from The Golf Machine. Forward swing bottom, flat right wrist, load, lag, etc. Bobby Clampett and Brian Manzella are two others who teach this. That, in my mind, is the dynamic swing school. 

I was thinking the positions of the swing might be another? I'm not sure if this is old school. I don't know enough about stack and tilt to know if that would be a different school of thought than Ben Doyle's model. I'm not talking either about those who go off on their own way and think some wacky stuff, which I don't know but have no doubt are out there.

It would help students to know where the teacher comes from, what school he teaches, and how he agrees or disagrees with his own school and others. I have disagreements with Theravada, but still think of myself as a member. It's considered the old school, but that's not why I follow it. I follow it because it does more right than what I think is wrong.

Clampett doesn't talk at all about positions or A-something or P-something else. I assume these are different philosophies.

[iacas]

33 minutes ago, Blackjack Don said:

Okay, maybe I'm not getting it across what I mean. It might be too complicated, too. Ben Doyle, I guess, started teaching from The Golf Machine. Forward swing bottom, flat right wrist, load, lag, etc. Bobby Clampett and Brian Manzella are two others who teach this. That, in my mind, is the dynamic swing school.

Brian Manzella will take every opportunity (even if he has to create them himself) to bash TGM. He learned from Ben Doyle but, wow, he's very much moved away from TGM publicly since then.

I work with Chuck Evans, one of TGM's foremost experts, and Chuck helped create 5SK. He almost bought TGM at one point in time, in fact, after Homer died.

And again, every golf swing is "dynamic."

33 minutes ago, Blackjack Don said:

I was thinking the positions of the swing might be another? I'm not sure if this is old school. I don't know enough about stack and tilt to know if that would be a different school of thought than Ben Doyle's model. I'm not talking either about those who go off on their own way and think some wacky stuff, which I don't know but have no doubt are out there.

It would help students to know where the teacher comes from, what school he teaches, and how he agrees or disagrees with his own school and others. I have disagreements with Theravada, but still think of myself as a member. It's considered the old school, but that's not why I follow it. I follow it because it does more right than what I think is wrong.

Clampett doesn't talk at all about positions or A-something or P-something else. I assume these are different philosophies.

Look, I'll say this as nicely as I can, while still being true to myself (i.e. fairly well to the point): this isn't an area you can really talk about because it's not an area in which you have any real expertise or knowledge.

For example, calling something "A6" or "P4" doesn't mean you have a philosophy. In fact, there's a direct line from TGM -> Mac O'Grady, and from Mac O'Grady there are branches that touch on a bunch of different instructors or other trees like Mike Bender, Mike Bennett/Andy Plummer, me, etc. Mac O'Grady came up with "P1" through "P10" but he started out as TGM as anyone.

But at least your question gave us @mvmac's hilarious response.  So thank you for that!

[Wanzo]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

But at least your question gave us @mvmac's hilarious response.  So thank you for that!

wait, that was facetious?  hahaha.

[GolfLug]

2 hours ago, mvmac said:

Yes there are many other philosophies or schools out there. Here's a few of them 

- Hogan school: basically Hogan was the best ball striker of all time and every single position should be copied. 5 Lessons is the bible, take every word literally and never dispute it. Also Hogan's secret will fix your swing and work for any player regardless of skill, body type, ability (even though there is no consensus on what the secret it).

- Modern school: resist and coil, create the most X-Factor to produce the most power. Make sure to have a good release by rolling the right hand over the left. Good posture means sticking you ass out, arching your back, puffing out your chest and barely being able to see the ball at address. 

- Swing your swing school: Your swing doesn't suck, you just haven't found "it" yet. Just stay positive, hit a lot of balls to reinforce your crappy instincts and "it" will happen.

- Old School: Everyone should raise the lead heel on the backswing, golfers before 1970 swung the best and knew more about the golf swing than today's players. 

- Short Game is more important school: 70% of shots are inside 100 yards so spend 90% of your time working on the most basic, easiest and least separating aspect of your golf game.

- Stack and Tilt school: Andy and Mike are never wrong, if you hit up on the driver you'll never be able to find it, if you don't hit a push draw you suck, fully support research and learning new things as long as it doesn't conflict with Andy and Mike.

- Fact based school (not sure what else to call it): Every golf swing will have it's own individual traits but there are commonalities of great players that we can identify and learn from. Focus on one or two important pieces that will have a "domino" effect on other parts of your swing. Use biomechanics, technology and stats as tools to help golfers prioritize, save time and play "smarter". Keep communication, swing feels or cues simple and encourage golfers to come up with their own feels. 

That........ about sums it up the state of the union. Nice post, funny or not.   

[iacas]

37 minutes ago, iacas said:

Look, I'll say this as nicely as I can, while still being true to myself (i.e. fairly well to the point): this isn't an area you can really talk about because it's not an area in which you have any real expertise or knowledge.

To be clear, there's nothing "wrong" or "bad" about it. It just is and nobody really would expect you to grasp the stuff involved in this.

[nevets88]

47 minutes ago, Wanzo said:

wait, that was facetious?  hahaha.

I'm gonna save that. It's kind of a how not to spend your hard earned dollars on a bad pro.

There's also the you're not flexible enough you need to dedicate the next 6 months in our strength and flexibility program to get your body up to snuff.

Oh and the golf's not complicated school. It's all simple, just follow these one sentence new age sounding directives. People with their cameras and their sciency data geek stuff make it too hard. It's really simple.

[mvmac]

1 hour ago, Blackjack Don said:

It would help students to know where the teacher comes from, what school he teaches, and how he agrees or disagrees with his own school and others.

From my experience pros generally have a bio on their websites or social media page that goes into that. Or you can watch videos of them giving tips and lessons to get an idea of their teaching philosophy. Or heck just ask them 

2 hours ago, Blackjack Don said:

Forward swing bottom, flat right wrist, load, lag, etc. Bobby Clampett and Brian Manzella are two others who teach this. That, in my mind, is the dynamic swing school. 

I would just call it the TGM school (which Brian is longer a part of and hasn't been for a while). Dynamic is too broad because there's dynamics to every swing. The intent behind TGM was great but it's outdated information. Homer wanted it to keep evolving but it's been "stuck" for a number of years.

[Blackjack Don]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

To be clear, there's nothing "wrong" or "bad" about it. It just is and nobody really would expect you to grasp the stuff involved in this.

That's why I was approaching it from a "student" point of view. The reason I was asking was to get some idea of whether a pro was good or not. I lucked into a good one, who was happy to find out I'd been reading Bobby Clampett's book. Then he could talk to me about stuff like load and lag. I've also seen much contradictory teaching on the Web. I was trying to get a handle on that. 

Thanks for the background history. I enjoy learning all I can. Where did I hold myself up as an authority? That's way far away from where I was going. Now, if you want to talk Buddhist philosophy, I can keep up. I'm not going to encroach on your field.

[Rainmaker]

What about The Golf Channel/Youtube school of Golf?

Learning from short instructional videos is the best way.  Many of the videos will be contradictory but this is how you end up with "the full picture".  A golf swing can be diagnosed and corrected just from the information contained in a Tweet.  Extra emphasis on strange teaching props.  Make sure and  buy the latest gear to help improve your game.  There's a training aid for that!  

 

[CarlSpackler]

I could write a book about "secrets of golf" and pay a few pros to endorse it. With enough money, I could get McCord to pitch it in an infomercial. People are so desperate to get better at golf, they will make 4 "easy" payments of $39.99 to try about anything.

[nevets88]

2 hours ago, Rainmaker said:

What about The Golf Channel/Youtube school of Golf?

Learning from short instructional videos is the best way.  Many of the videos will be contradictory but this is how you end up with "the full picture".  A golf swing can be diagnosed and corrected just from the information contained in a Tweet.  Extra emphasis on strange teaching props.  Make sure and  buy the latest gear to help improve your game.  There's a training aid for that!  

 

That's pretty much the ask random strangers to fix my swing without showing them any video while explaining my problem obliquely because I don't know any better and/or don't want to pay and I want to get better in 6 seconds without any effort or research school.

[Blackjack Don]

Last summer I took a lesson, and wasted $65. The pro did nothing for me. He didn't fix my swing. He didn't change anything. He watched me swing, and provided a couple of band-aids. The moment the lesson was over, I went right back to where I was, $65 poorer. This put a real bad taste in my mouth for golf instruction, which I've been overcoming ever since.

If my question was ridiculous, I assure you, the reasons behind it are not. If anything, the responses have shown that this is needed by a lot of folks. Paying a professional golf teacher is a crapshoot.

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, Blackjack Don said:

Paying a professional golf teacher is a crapshoot.

Do your research. There are good ones out there. Not a lot. But enough.