"5 Minutes Daily" Practice Challenge

[JuanTheGolfer]

January 5 Day 5   Like others -- it is all about indoors since it is cold outside... well 47.   So continuing to work with my Momentus Strength Trainer and Impact Ball working on maintaining a steady head, turning more into my right side on the backswing AND a straighter left arm.  It will be interesting to see how several days of indoor practice translate on Sunday when I can get outside again.
 

Also worked on solidifying my golf goals for 2018 and a plan for achieving them.

[onthehunt526]

1/5/17:

279 in a row.

Cont'd indoor work with my path drill with the soda bottles today. Mostly for feedback and to build on what I practiced yesterday as today I did more of 9:00 to 3:00 swings with this drill. 86 more days to one year.

[onthehunt526]

1/6/17:

280 in a row.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here. Or a CD that skips a lot. But I continued my work on my path today with my path drill. I didn't explain this completely before. It's like the "gate drill" and you can do it on the range with tees. But this drill though it is similar, more or less promotes a draw sort of path. You set up two water bottles, your kids blocks, stuffed animals, whatever you have handy. You set one on the target side of the ball, inside of the target line by a few inches maybe 6-12 inches in front of the ball. You set the other up behind the ball outside of the target line. The object is to miss the bottles on the backswing, downswing, and follow-through. I'm pretty much to the point of using pretty much half-swings and missing the bottles. I have another lesson coming up, on my "staycation" in two weeks. (Someone got my a GC to get 5 1-hour indoor lessons for Christmas).

This particular drill is what he has me working on currently. The scary thing is, I'm nervous to see what the results are going to be on the monitor in a couple weeks.

[b101]

6/1/18 - Played 18 with a mate and didn't play well. Held it together on the front nine (+5) in spite of my driver play being non-existent, but it just went downhill from there. Struggled with the cold and was losing everything right, which was really surprising - couldn't work out why either until about the 17th. I think it was the old, poor hand path coming back, so will work on that tomorrow. On the plus side, my short game and scrambling in general was really good. I'm starting to see the low pitch and run far more and having confidence to use it on the course, which is a completely new shot for me that changes quite a lot of things. Lots to work on, but the key thing will be finding that driver swing to take to the course.

[Lihu]

On 1/5/2018 at 6:54 AM, Lihu said:

Doing more drill swings with the swing simulator. I’ve made three versions of the swing simulator. Two seem pretty reasonable, and help me with my sequencing. Trying to make it more “automatic”. Also, doing the hands 2 feet apart on a club while doing a “real swing” drill.

Taking a practice swing before my “real swing” with a really slow takeaway and transition then accelerating only after A6

Taking a practice swing before my “real swing” with a really slow takeaway and transition then accelerating at various positions from A5 to A6 to get a feel how it affects my club head speed at impact. Starting to really use my old swing speed monitor. Paired with the Mevo for actual strikes and the swing speed monitor used for practice swings gives me a good velocity profile.

Starting to use the radar sensors to pick up peak velocity position.

[dbuck]

Day 6

10 minutes of putting practice 3-6 feet. Working on alignment, stroke, follow through. Goal is to greatly reduce or eliminate 3 putts, to be 95% from 3 feet. Working on routine of align putter, take stance, slight forward press and go. Working on consistency in set up. Finished up at three feet until 3 balls in a row stay in the cup.

If time and weather permit, I may go to range later today and do a second post, but wanted to complete the commitment in the now.

Edited January 6, 2018 by dbuck

[JuanTheGolfer]

January 6 Day 6   Early part of the day working on my swing indoors.  Hoping to get out in the afternoon to work on the range.  Continue working with Momentus Strength Trainer, and Impact Ball and shortened club.  Using the 6 Steps of  Swing from the Gary Gilchrist Golf Academy, where I take lessons, I am working on position #2 (90 degrees) and position #3 (top of backswing).  Working to stay on plane going back, with straighter left arm, and turning into right hip to reduce/eliminate sway.

I break this up into 5 minute segments, 3-4 times a day, so I am investing 15 - 20 minutes a day on this... .like today!

[Patch]

Day 6. Cold with intermittent rain/drizzle.

Played 9 holes today, no practice other than some warm up swings prior to playing. Shot a 43, with no 6s. Good enough considering........

[b101]

7/1/18 - Got my evolvr reviews back from Preston and spent 20 minutes working on each of my new priority pieces for putting and full swing. Full swing was 20 minutes of mirror work on limiting left knee flex and hip rotation in the backswing - lots of slow motion feel work and checking that there's progressive movement at A1, A2, A3 and A4 (currently, the knee moves out a lot between A1 and A2 and does very little else thereafter, meaning that the wrist angles at the top of the backswing crumble a bit).

Putting-wise, more time on the mat, a few more tweaks to the setup (getting shoulders level) and lots of work on tempo.

[Lihu]

On 1/6/2018 at 8:06 AM, Lihu said:

Taking a practice swing before my “real swing” with a really slow takeaway and transition then accelerating at various positions from A5 to A6 to get a feel how it affects my club head speed at impact. Starting to really use my old swing speed monitor. Paired with the Mevo for actual strikes and the swing speed monitor used for practice swings gives me a good velocity profile.

Starting to use the radar sensors to pick up peak velocity position.

Taking a practice swing before my “real swing” with a really slow takeaway and transition then accelerating at various positions from A5 to A6 to get a feel how it affects my club head speed at impact.

Adding some acceleration at A6, but I think it’s possibly causing me to cast a bit. My PW launch angle was too high yesterday at the range.

So, I’m going to try waiting until past A6. Too bad I can’t monitor muscle contraction so I can measure where I’m actually starting to “fire the whip”.

 

Side note, proud that my son is picking up Python up pretty quickly with my tutoring right now. He’s got some knack for programming. 

[onthehunt526]

1/7/18:

It's actually 282 in a row.

Again another broken record day. Still working with my path drill indoors with my previously mentioned water bottle drill. Three-quarter swings today.

[dbuck]

Day 7

Spent a few minutes again working on driver setup/stance using tile grout lines. Purpose is to improve setup for better launch, more distance. When I line up with the ball left shoulder/left instep, face square, "two knuckle" left hand grip, I can actually see some loft on the face, which is set to 9.5. A video shows I have had the ball way farther back in my stance than I thought. From above, old position with the same grip, I saw very little loft, and in the video it appears to have forward lean on the shaft and almost no loft at address. I need to add a mirror, and additional video after the change. My left arm and the shaft are more in line, and closer to perpendicular to the ground. My hands are over my left thigh, just inside my left knee. Also working on having less tension in my arms at setup, to hopefully increase speed.

Spent a few minutes on my 3 foot putt drills.

Total time, 12-15 minutes.

Edited January 7, 2018 by dbuck

[Patch]

Day 7. Did some more chipping practice today. My focus is still on keeping eyes on the spot the ball is on after impact. Finished up with a few pump swings. 

[JuanTheGolfer]

Jan 7  Day 7   Finally got outside.  Spent 3 hours on the range working with drills from the book, "Train for Golf Like an Olympian"  focusing particularly on what I have been working on indoors -- centered head, straighter left arm on backswing and turning into the right hip.

[b101]

8/1/18 - another twenty minutes putting on the template this morning just working on tempo and length of stroke. Quite a number of these putts were with my eyes closed to try to ignore the ball (and these actually produce the best results). I’d say I’m currently going at the rate of three practice strokes on the template, then actually hitting a ball. I’m going to do my ten minutes on full swing work with the mirror and looking at that knee flex later this afternoon, but didn’t want to forget to post!

[JuanTheGolfer]

Jan 8 Day 8   Up early and have already got in my 5 minutes.. using the Momentus Strength Training and the Impact Ball..  continuing to work on turning into my right hip on the backswing, and straighter left arm with a quieter head.

[Lihu]

22 hours ago, Lihu said:

Taking a practice swing before my “real swing” with a really slow takeaway and transition then accelerating at various positions from A5 to A6 to get a feel how it affects my club head speed at impact.

Adding some acceleration at A6, but I think it’s possibly causing me to cast a bit. My PW launch angle was too high yesterday at the range.

So, I’m going to try waiting until past A6. Too bad I can’t monitor muscle contraction so I can measure where I’m actually starting to “fire the whip”.

Practicing more practice swing accelerating at or after A6 to see if I can get a whip in a methodical fashion rather than so "random". The trigger point is likely closer to A5 then my body reacts somewhere after A6.

[onthehunt526]

1/8/17:

283 days in a row.

Path drill with my water bottle apparatus again. Boy am I trying to get this ingrained. I actually took some slow full swings with it today. (Perhaps~70% speed). I did hit the target side bottle a few times at first (just clipped it the last couple times) but after making a slight adjustment, I was able to do the drill about a dozen times in a row without hitting either bottle. So I'll consider that a small success.

The main reason I've been doing this drill so much, is because the instructor I selected, thinks that getting my path more from the inside-out, will do two things. A) help me make more consistent contact (which will help me hit it further). B) help me achieve my goal of becoming a very-low single digit handicap... Me becoming a scratch is probably out of the question.