How can a good practice session promote a consistent swing?
Unfortunately, a vast majority of Golfers rarely experience a successful practice session. As the hitting of golf ball after golf ball is just more time spent stacking new compensations on top of already engrained compensations.
And these compensations are the leading cause of your inconsistent golf swing. The more you have … the less likely you’ll be able to align them in the 2 seconds it takes to swing.
If you’re a skilled Player with only one or two compensations – they will frequently align to produce a good shot. Three or four compensations … not so much. Five or more compensations … your consistency is limited as you have adopted the proclamation of: “it’s that one good shot that brings me back.”
As an Instructor, there might not be anything that impresses me more about a Golfer than their ability to be able to go to the driving range with a Practice PLAN. This shows me how serious that Golfer is.
Unfortunately, since most Golfers have never been taught how to practice … they are limited to doing what they see other Golfers do. Which is to hit golf ball after golf ball as they continually fiddle to find something that works!
“Monkey See … Monkey Do”
Yet, this continual hitting of golf balls without a PLAN is doing nothing more than giving you false hopes when you go on that streak where you hit four or five great shots in a row. Thus, causing us to mistakenly think “I’ve got it … I think this is the swing!”
Because this brief “I’ve got it” moment is then followed up by 30 minutes of unbelievably bad shots where you say “wow, I can’t even hit the golf ball. Where did my swing go? It feels like I’m doing the same exact thing.”
The reason you were able to “get it” for that fleeting moment was that all your compensations aligned for those four or five swings. Purely based on a combination of you having talent, as well as luck and the law of averages – your bad habits will align every-once-in-a-while to hit a small series of good golf shots.
But sooner rather than later – you’re going to hit a string of bad shots and say to yourself: “I feel like I’m swinging exactly the same as I did on the good ones …. why wasn’t that a good shot?”
And the answer to your question is that you have too many compensations in your golf swing that you have developed from hitting ball after ball.
That’s where a Golfer that has a Practice PLAN allows themselves to improve. They know what drills they need to work on. They know what they should be feeling while practicing these drills. They know they should be continually looking at the results of their previous 6 shots to refine what they need to focus on while using the drill.
The Golfer that is just hitting golf ball after golf ball is putting all their efforts into engraining more bad habits that will permanently place these inconsistent compensations into their golf swing.
Anyone that wants to improve needs a Practice PLAN. If not … you’re just adding more compensations on top of your existing compensations … hoping that one day your good streak will last more than four or five swings.
The Monkey is putting in the effort to hit golf balls, yet all they are practicing is engraining the bad habits they need to get rid of
The Player has a Practice PLAN
Go ahead, Be a Player!
Regards,
Marc Solomon – Your Instructor For Life
www.GolfMadeSimple.com