Instruction

What you should actually be focusing on while practicing golf

Published

8 years ago

Jan 14, 2016

How do you make changes in your golf swing? There are a lot of different ways, but all too many golf lessons begin with something like “Change the way your wrist moves,” or “Your hips should be shifting like this.”

This might sound like a good start to most of us, but not to Dr. Gabriele Wulf. She’s a professor of kinesiology at UNLV, where she studies how to help you best learn new skills. What Dr. Wulf has found is that when it comes to teaching motor skills (e.g. a golf swing), providing instructions that focus on the body have a negative impact on performance and learning retention.

Internal Focus vs. External Focus

Dr. Wulf’s primary area of research is intentional focus. More specifically, she compares the differences between internal focus and external focus.

Most golf instructors and coaches promote internal focus without realizing it. They cause a student to focus internally anytime they provide instructions that refer to body movements or a coordination of body movements (e.g. “shift your weight to your left foot”).

In contrast, instruction related to the effect on an implement, such as the ground or a golf club, promote external focus (e.g. “Push against the left side of the ground”).

The difference is subtle, but studies show that motor performance is often enhanced immediately when focus is placed externally rather than internally.

The studies to back it up

In one study, two groups of novice golfers were each given the same initial set of instructions.

The internal focus group was then asked to focus on the swing of their arms, while the external focus group was asked to focus on the swing of their club. The external focus group performed better right out of the gate, and also did considerably better in its retention tests.

But what about advanced golfers?

The experiment was repeated with members of the UNLV golf team, who had an average handicap of 0. Again, one group was told to focus on their arms and one group was told to focus on their club. The results shows that even expert golfers did better when they were asked to focus externally on the club motion.

You can hear Dr. Wulf describe these studies in an interview here.

Why it Works

How could such a subtle adjustment in instructions have such a significant impact on performance? According to Dr. Wulf, focusing internally forces you to consciously try to control your movements. This causes you to constrain your motor system, which disrupts overall fluidity.

On the other hand, external focus allows you to take advantage of your body’s unconscious automatic control processes, which lead to movements that are more efficient, fluid and accurate.

Another one of the key reasons why external focus may be so effective is that it directs your attention away from your body, and reduces distracting, self-conscious feelings. As a result, learning and performance are both sped up.

Shifting to external, focus-based thinking and instruction

To date there have been no studies showing any positive benefits in motor learning from instructions with internal focus. In fact, evidence leads researchers to believe that any reference to body parts is detrimental to motor performance and learning, however, the focus can change depending on the level of player.

Highly skilled golfers benefit from focusing on areas farther from their body, such as the trajectory of the ball. Novice golfers, on the other hand, should maintain their focus closer to their body on areas like the club or the club face.

As it pertains to golf specifically, Dr. Wulf suggests that people make a concerted effort to maintain external focus throughout their entire pre-shot routine. She also stresses that you should only have one external focus at a time. Because most of us are so accustomed to providing and taking instructions based on body movements, this language shift might be tricky at first and may take some creativity… but the benefits are well worth it.

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

1 week ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

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

Published

1 month ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

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.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

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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