Do You Practice?

If your answer is, "Every time I warm up for my round," think again.  Practice is very different from warming up.  It involves deliberate, specific effort to build the three skills critical to lowering your scores: ball control, decision making and self-management. (If you don't recall them from Truth #1 click here.) Warming up before a round should simply help you get in touch with skills that you already have.  It doesn't qualify as practice because you won't perform the repetitions required to create a new motor program. Therefore, it will have no long term effect. 

Truth #5 - Practice is a Must

Practice is a purposeful activity designed to enhance skill and it does have long term effects.  As Dr. Rick Jensen says, "There's no way around it, practice is a must." Concepts you've heard from your coach simply won't show up on the course until you've practiced enough to turn them into a habit. 
 
Because golf involves motor learning and not simply cognitive learning, it requires repetition to take those concepts, store them as a motor program in the brain, and be able to call on that program and "send it out to the muscles" on the course. Sam Snead said it well when he said, "Practice puts brains in your muscles."
 
Practice is like farming.  You don't see the rose on the day that you plant the seeds, but if you do it correctly, with proper sunlight and water, you WILL grow a rose.

What's Our Prescription for Practice?

Practice is repetition, with feedback. It's taking that concept you learned from your coach and drilling it. It's using a training aid to provide feedback. It's reserving some time each week to work toward achieving your goal. It's sticking to something long enough to master it - remember Truth 4?

After each lesson at our school, students leave with lesson notes.  The notes are the "prescription" that covers both what and how to practice.  We also help our students by recommending feedback devices (training aids) that help develop the particular movement or skill that is being worked on.  This season, we've even upgraded the targets on our range to help our students better understand and assess their ball control.

Shoot Lower Scores This Season

If you have visions of playing to a lower handicap than you currently have AND you are prepared to practice, don't waste any more time.  Come see us so that you can be sure that you are following Truth 2 and practicing the right things in the right way.  Just like the rose WILL grow, our students who practice DO get better in measured and meaningful ways.