Instruction
Swing Thoughts: Freedom, Automaticity and Control
The brain’s role in hitting the little white ball as far as you can into the fairway is crucial. At times a golfer’s mind will race, and other times playing golf will seem effortless.
So what really happens in a golfer’s brain in the few moments before and during the swing? Well, two things are likely to happen. A golfers will either possess some form of “constructive” swing thought(s), or his or her mind will race at a million miles an hour and hope like heck that the shot works out.
An interesting pool of research exists examining the impact that these thoughts have on performance. Led by very experienced researchers, such as Gabrielle Wulf and Sian Beilock, a number of important considerations related to skill level and attention have been reported. In the following sections, I have outlined some of the key considerations for performers.
Beginners
The above researchers suggest that golfers need to develop an understanding of the technique they’re learning. They then have to choose the crucial elements that will help them perform successfully and ensure that they attend to only those elements. In this field of research, these thoughts are known as either a skill or internal focus for attention. Without getting into the definition semantics of academic research, those terms mean that a golfer is focused on an element of the kinematic chain involved in moving body and club to make solid impact.
Why is this important? Well, at the beginner level, golfers haven’t developed enough muscle memory to go out and just “let it happen.” If they were to just give the ball a whack, chances are they would make many mistakes, and this has been demonstrated in research using a dual-task methodology (a topic for another discussion).
Experienced, Skilled Golfers (Experts)
I hesitate to use the term expert here, but if a golfer has been playing for a number of years with a reasonable degree of success and in the absence of frequent technical overhauls, he or she can fit into this group. The research suggests that at this level of expertise, golfers need to let loose. In doing so, they allow the body to automatically produce the technique they have developed through training and experience. They have developed enough muscle memory and neural pathways that their technique is ingrained.
If they were to adopt a skill/internal focus, the quickness of their performance would be disrupted and it would impact the timing and linkages in their movements. The subconscious processing of quickness is much faster than people can consciously control, and as a result any thoughts that attempt to consciously control the release of the club head or control the transition at the top will put a golf swing “out of shape.”
So, what should golfers think about? The research into attention suggests that an environmental or external focus is best for allowing ideal quickness. As such, golfers may choose to focus on an image of the target, the shot shape, hitting through a window in the sky or anything similar. By doing so, golfers are not disrupting the subconscious programming of the shot.
Developing Golfers: Those caught in the middle
These golfers’ jobs are to understand the requirements of both groups, and train in a way that allows them to transition from specific technical attention to a more global technical focus, and eventually graduate to an environmental/external focus.
All in all, for each and every golfer, approach every shot with a deliberate pattern of thoughts relevant to the requirements of the shot and your level of technical development.
Further reading
Beilock, S. L., Carr, T. H., MacMahon, C., & Starkes, J. L. (2002). When paying attention becomes counterproductive: Impact of divided versus skill-focused attention on novice and experienced performance of sensorimotor skills. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 6 –16
Wulf, G., & Prinz, W. (2001). Directing attention to movement effects enhances learning: A review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 648 – 660.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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