I had a great lesson last night with one of my regular students! It started out with my student explaining that he had experienced a bad practice session the night before. He had evidently lost control of his ball flight and was unable to create a good solid ball strike at impact.
Many times as I have written in prior posts, a student will have a bad practice session when they start hitting balls, (practicing), improperly. Yes, there is an art to real, effective practice. You must focus if you are going to have a successful session!
I wish I had the proverbial, “nickel”, each time I see someone start their practice, “gorilla swinging”, with their driver. I would be a rich man even with the deflated value of today’s nickel.
There was a happy ending to the lesson, and my student was very happy to reinvigorate his commitment to “slow and deliberate” practice. It was very easy to see in just a few swings why his practice had turned into a train wreck. When my student first came to me we discovered that he was what I call an “arm swinger”. We have put in many hours trying to start the backswing with chest and shoulders. We are very close to habituation of this important movement. The lesson, however is that for some unknown reason he did not start the practice session focusing on this important detail. Who knows why, but we all get distracted at times. In this case, one whole practice session was destroyed.
The problem was easy for me to diagnose, and in just a few minutes progress was achieved. It proved to be one of his best lesson sessions, and I am quite sure that with a little “deliberate practice”, this digression will not reoccur.
The moral of this story is, “have a plan for your precious practice time”, and conduct it with “intention”, including some “slow and deliberate” motions to begin. This little bit of pre practice focus will pay huge dividends.
Keith Haley Golf 