As a full time golf coach for the last 10 years one thing that has become clear to me is that the pupils I have who are improving considerably with their game are practicing deliberately. And that is the key – Deliberate Practice. This is a term coined by a professor from Florida State University, Dr Anders Ericsson who has done more research on the subject of Expertise than anyone else. What he found was that with those who had gained expertise in any domain not only practiced, but practiced differently from everyone else. Below is a summary of his rules for Deliberate Practice with some of mine thrown in for good measure. What I will hang my hat on is that if you increase your volume and quality of practice over the winter months and decrease the number of rounds, you will improve. Here are the golden rules:

• Do a strength and weakness profile. Find out what you are good at and poor at. Most of us really don’t know. The easiest way is to keep stats on your game for a few rounds. This will tell you where you are with each part of your game. Go to www.scoresaver.co.uk.
• Split your time equally over the winter months between long and short game. Make every second session a putting/chipping/pitching session. Practice doesn’t just mean going to the range.

• It aint always enjoyable. Remember you are trying to learn new skills. This inevitably means struggle and challenge along the way. Stay with it and the learning will happen.

• Do it on your own. Find a quiet part of the range so you are not distracted, and you can become absorbed in what you are doing. Having a mate chatting to you in the next bay makes it a social occasion, not a practice session.

• Test yourself. Set yourself tests for example, holing a certain number of putts or hitting 10 drives in a row between two markers. Keep a note of your score. Are you better in the spring than you were last autumn? Remember, what gets measured gets improved.

• Get a coach. There is no question good coaching can speed up the learning process. The coach can offer valuable feedback that keeps you on that all important critical path toward your goals.

• If there is a target, there can be no technical thoughts. If there is technical thoughts there can be no target. This really sums up why we need to practice. If we practice we use conscious thought about what we are doing, wheras if we are playing on the course we need to be more target focused, ie no technical thoughts. You can’t do it all on the course. You need to practice!

Remember, simply playing golf on the course will only take us so far. We need to practice. Good luck.

“The Brain is the primary organ for learning”

- Kurt Fisher, Director of Harvard’s Mind-Brain Connection to Education Institute 

The Brain: A behind the scenes thinker, a laboratory with a view from the inside 

The Brain: Taking advantage of earlier interactions with a gradual, agile, evolutionary approach.

The Brain: Uses reverse engineering, with the experimental features of slow and steady developmental interactions.

The Brain: Incrementally develops continuous improvement.

Why talk about the brain? Because it runs the show. The brain is the gateway to learning and everything else we do. 

The term “state of the art” is used to describe the best. The brain is a “state of the art” natural non-conscious learner.

A master of anything was first a master of learning which is an accurate description of a human brain.

Learning is found in acts of adjusting, developing and recalling, which is an accurate description of what the brain is naturally predisposed to do because of evolution.

The brains ability to learn has been on display from the day our first ancestors came into being, which, is an accurate description of survival skills on display from day one.

When it comes to improving, approaches to learning are damaging opportunities for reaching personal potential when they do not take advantage of what science has uncovered about the brain’s predisposition to be a natural non-conscious learner. 

For approaches to learning to reach their potential for helping individuals encode new learning they should first be taking into consideration how the brain decodes, encodes, and recalls information. Then combine these insights into the nature of learning with subject matter content, there by making information delivery systems more brain compatible.

When approaches to learning become more brain compatible, it’s a turning point in the direction of long term learning. The brain is the gateway to learning and this reality cannot be overlooked by approaches to learning that expect to reach their potential.

” Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Albert Einstein

I wonder how many professional golfers in this day and age have this attitude to getting to the top in their sport or are there too many spoiled and pampered players happy to pick up a million a year and be done with it. Pacquiao and Margarito shared a very similar upbringing in that they were born in abject poverty, yet rose to world dominance in their chosen sport. One thing is for sure, the next superstar to dominate our sport in the way Tiger has/is will need this same desire. Food for thought maybe. Check out Pacquiao/Margarito 24/7 on youtube to hear more from both on their ideas/beliefs.

Kurt Fisher ( Director of Harvards Mind – Brain Connection to Education Institute )

And of course the above is how the golf swing is taught today. I DON’T THINK! Let’s remember that to move forward at golf, we need to understand WHAT to do ie Core Knowledge, we need to understand how the club works ie Core Knowledge. The HOW to ie LEARNING should happen without us realising it.

If we think about certain movement skills you have learned over the course of your life just consider the way in which these were committed to memory. Did you learn to move your fingers or did you learn how to use the pen? Did you learn how to use your arms or did you learn how to use the steering wheel? Did you learn how to use your arms and body or did you learn how to use the mop?

In the same way as this, we are not training our body in any way in order to play this game well. We are learning how to use the golf club. The more clearly or understanding is of WHAT we have to do with the club, the more APPROPRIATE our body motion becomes in order to fulfill the task! I appreciate this takes a leap of faith, but when the penny drops, learning this game will happen more quickly and more easily!

So a couple of ideas to increase our core knowledge of how the tool for the job works:

The golf club swings in a circle around our body.

This circle is not verticle( a ferris wheel ) and it is not horizontal ( a merry go round ) but somewhere in between.

The club moves down, out and forward into the ball.It is still going slightly down as it reaches the ball.

The clubhead moves faster than anything else. It has the longest distance to travel.

The shaft arrives before the clubface at impact. The shaft always leans forward! This is efficient application of force.

These ideas will help you move forward. The body does what it is told, when we understand the TASK and we understand the CLUB! Good luck.

                   Early January for me is definitely a time for both evaluation of the year just passed and for setting goals for the year ahead.  One question that i am thinking about often is how do my pupils prepare as best they can for the forthcoming year? And how can this become their best year ever on the the course. In many ways January is the ideal time for this due to the lack of golf that most of us are able to get. When we are in the middle of the golf season we are that busy playing the game either in medals or friendly games that we stop thinking, planning and preparing.

                      So below are a few ideas to think about that i’m sure will help you make these next 365 days as productive as possible from a golf point of view. Who knows, next Christmas could see you handicap at it’s lowest point ever.

                      Step 1. Evaluate 2009. Write a written story about the year just passed. It only needs to be a couple of paragraphs. What were the high points, the best parts, the wins? What were perhaps the low points? Get a clear picture of how you showed up for the year.

                     Step 2.  Set the theme for 2010. For example, “This will be the year that i master the short game”, or ” The year i learned to take my range game to the course in medals” or ” 2010- the year i played the game with real freedom”. Keep an eye on this theme on a weekly basis.

                    Step 3.   Have 2 big goals. Perhaps these are to get a certain handicap, qualify for the club championship, play for the county, turn professional or break 100 for the first time. Basically, what motivates you most about playing?

                   Step 4.   List the big 4. Now think about the 4 things that absolutely must happen between now and next new year in order for step 3 to be realised. Write these down as simply and as clearly as possible.

                  Step 5.   Sequence the big 4.  Now break these into quarterly goals. Where do you want to be after each quarter in order to hit these big 4 at the end of the year. This clarity will help you practice more effectively and use your lesson time more efficiently.

                 Step 6.   Refocus every golfing day. Each time you go to practice or play what are you doing to move toward step 3 and 4 . Perhaps warming up better than lastyear, perhaps spending 10 minutes after the game practicing your putting, or committing to focusing better on the course. Spend just 2 minutes before you head to the course to decide this. The game is much more than simply the score we come in with.

                  Step 7.   Become devoted to learning. I have found time and again that many golfers who are not improving are the ones who are always trying to fix something in their game. Try instead to look at it as things to be learned. What new shots do you want to be able to play this year that you couldn’t last year, ie a high draw, a long bunker shot, a punch shot. Perhaps read a golf psychology book to understand how the games best players prepare for tournament day. Just let me know if you want to know what the best ones are. We are all exceptional learners, we just have to tap into that mindset.

                            As ever keep me posted on how you are getting on with your golfing journey. To your golfing success.

At the last count there has been over 9,000 books written on how to play the game of golf. That is many, many pages on the act of swinging a stick around our body. And to make matters worse, one piece of advice seems to conflict with another. So how are golfers supposed to make sense of it all? It is safe to say that golfers the world over are drowning in information, yet starving for some wisdom.

At some point in 2010 I will give my 11,000^th golf lesson. And after watching and observing this number of people over the last 10 years certain things start to become clear. There are certain bits of information that really help people move forward, really useable information. And there are other bits of information that seem to lead to greater confusion and poorer performance. So what is this useable information? Well fortunately it relates to only 3 elements! But we will come back to what they are in a second.   What these 11,000 lessons have made me think about is how we learn other movement tasks, such as writing, using a toothbrush and hammering a nail. If these tasks were all learned the way golf is learned by many, we would still be struggling to master these basic skills. So what information do we need to perform the act of hammering a nail? Do we need to be told how to move our arm correctly? Or do we need to understand how to use the implement properly ie the hammer. I think we all know it’s the latter. So, in a sense we are not trying  to learn to move our bodies correctly, the body moves to accommodate how we think the tool for the job works. For us the tool for the job is the golf club. So when we understand firstly how the club works and secondly, what it is actually doing as it is swinging, then we are in a position to make progress with our game and swing.

   So back to the 3 elements. The golf club has a shaft, a head and face. If we change any of these 3 elements then the flight of the ball will change.  For example, if we swing the club straight up our body will not turn. If we swing the club low around our body, the body will turn excessively to accommodate. All the time our body is responding to what the club is telling it to do. So as we develop our core knowledge of how the golf club works our golf swing starts to develop in a very natural way. So next time you go to the range, try these insights out for size. They are simple, have been the same since the game inception ( due to the fact that the golf club is essentially the same ) and are not open to debate. Not even amongst golf pro’s. Don’t try and explore them all at once, just the ones that seem most interesting to you at this point.

At address the club is not designed to have the shaft pointing up at the middle of our body. It is designed to lean forward, towards the inside of the left shoulder.

Impact and address are not the same. We are not trying to return to the same place at imact that we occupied at address. The shaft will lean further forward at impact.

The bottom of the swing is not the ball. The bottom of the swing ( Divot )  occurs after and slightly below the ball. Therefore the clubhead is still travelling downwards as it meets the ball.

 There are no straight lines in the golf swing. The clubhead swings on a circle around our body. Don’t try and take the club straight back from the ball.

As you start down towards the ball, we don’t throw the clubhead at the ball. Instead leave the clubhead behind. The clubhead will catch up. This you will feel as effortless power.

When the original design angle of the club are changed unintentionally through impact, it produces thin and fat shots.

When the face of the club is looking in the same direction the clubhead is travelling into impact ie on an out to in impact it pulls the ball left, on an in to out impact it pushes it right. Both with no sidespin.

BIG SECRET. Any effort and plans to build an effective golf swing force will be less than it could be when the design angles of the club are not taken into consideration.

         Best of luck on your next trip to the range. Let me know how you get on. Happy golfing!

                       What recent research is now showing however is that outstanding performance is the result of coaching and deliberate practice. To test this theory, two hungarian educators, Lazlo and Klara Polgar, wanted to challenge the popular assumption that women don’t succeed in areas requiring spatial thinking, such as chess. They wanted to make a point about the power of education. The Polgárs homeschooled their three daughters, and as part of their education the girls started playing chess with their parents at a very young age. Their systematic training and daily practice paid off. By 2000, all three daughters had been ranked in the top ten female players in the world. The youngest, Judit, had become a grand master at age 15, breaking the previous record for the youngest person to earn that title, held by Bobby Fischer, by a month.

                            So how does this relate to getting better at golf? What are the elements that make up deliberate practice? First of all, Dr Anders Ericcsson, from Florida State University, who has done the most extensive reasearch on expertise, concludes that all experts in any field, have done at least 10,000 of intensive practice. That certainly blows the theory by manufacturers who promise their club will work miracles out the water. Secondly, all experts are made not born. Nobody is born with a talent gene. Because there is not one. So everything we see the top players doing on television during tournaments is ‘learned’. Third, more experience does not neccessarily mean we will be better. We all know many golfers who were scoring 100 ten years ago. And today, they are still scoring 100. Fourth, experts practice deliberately.This means seeking out the areas that are not working and improving on them. Not, as many people do, work on the areas that we are already good at. This means seeking out real, specific and often painful feedback. For golfers we must know what we are good at and what we are not.  Keeping accurate stats is very helpful in this regard. Fifth, real experts not only practice differently, they think differently.  The great player Ben Hogan once said, “While I am practicing I am also trying to develop my powers of concentration. I never just walk up and hit the ball.”Hogan would decide in advance where he wanted the ball to go and how to get it there. Sixth, use coaches and mentors.  This can help in a number of ways. They can help us to practice properly which is not always a natural thing to do, this can definately accelerate the learning process,  they can offer construcive feedback that will help us avoid going off course. And the best coaches are the ones who can help us identify where we are weakest, and push us on to greater levels of achievement. And ultimately, the expert coach’s role is to make himself redundant, ie he has created a self reliance where the golfer is able to self coach. Finally, little and often. What Dr Ericcsson also found is that the experts in any filed could only sustain 4 -5 hours of intensive practice per day, before the quality would drop. I would say for most 50 balls beats a 100 at the range most times. But make the 50 last as long as the 100 usually does, taking into account what Ben Hogan said above.

                         So if we make a promise to ourselves that 2010 will be the year that we start to practice deliberately, we could find that it will be our best year yet on the course.