interval of lessons

[MK7Golf21]

Hey guys, I know everyone is different but what do you think is a good interval when you start taking lessons from an intructor say the first 5-8 lessons? Once every week, two weeks a month?

[RichieHunt]

Depends on what you're trying to learn, your practice time and methods of practicing.

I highly recommend that you get a good camera, hopefully a high-speed Casio. That way you can take lessons and then when you go to practice you can check and see if you're starting to do what the instructor went over.

I think you need to keep working on what you went over in the last lesson until it either improves to where you want it to be or it regresses. The difficult part is when you're plateauing because sometimes you just need to keep working at it and you'll finally get that breakthrough and master it. But other times you're just not quite understanding what needs to be done. Ideally, you would want to progress at whatever you're working and then move onto the next lesson. If that takes a week, fine. If that takes 3 months, so be it. But, without a camera you're really inhibiting how much you're actually learning.

I know that before I had a camera I would base the lesson on how well my ballstriking improved. And at best I would improve my ballstriking early on in the 'honeymoon period', but then I would regress and eventually look at my swing on camera and see that I haven't made any real changes in the mechanics.

In general, with a camera and some diligent work, you should probably take a lesson once every 4-6 weeks. If you're changing the grip, you'll probably want to work on the grip for 2-3 weeks until you feel comfortable with it and then go back for a lesson to work on the other stuff. Do that for about a year and then look to make the intervals larger between lessons. If not, then you're probably getting stuck in a rut with the instructor. That happens because we all have biases and things we can't see. From there, if you generally like the instructor's philosophies, I would try and seek out another instructor with similar philosophies and hopefully a different set of eyes can help you figure out what the first instructor could not see.








RH

[MK7Golf21]

you have some good points, I think if your practicing atleast 3 times a week and not getting something after three weeks, its time to go back for more help on that issue anyway. I agree, definitly need to film your own swing to see if you are making the changes. Ive been doing the once every 2.5 weeks and will probably cut back to once a month or so after about 8-10 lessons, should have covered most bases by then

[hotsauce26]

it takes time for a player to understand the concept, and then more time for the player to incorporate it into their swing (uncomfortably), and even more time for it to become an unconscious movement. that being said i feel that after 2-3 weeks of thought and practice is a good time to check back in on your progress. you may have interpreted the instructor's advice the wrong way, you might be overdoing certain feels that the instructor taught you, etc...

ditto on the camera though. feel is not real.

[golfingal]

[quote name='Redjeep83' timestamp='1394650947' post='8857013']
what do you think is a good interval when you start taking lessons from an intructor say the first 5-8 lessons? Once every week, two weeks a month?
[/quote]

At what skill level to start? Depends on how much you work on your swing in between lessons really, and how much desire there is to improve.

Generally speaking though, my thought is that the higher handicap player should probably go much more often than an advanced player. Sure, weekly if they are really working on the swing and practicing a lot (3 days/week or more).

The reason I say this is they will be less likely to really know what's going on in their own swing, and therefore struggle to know what "right" feels like when making changes. If they don't have continuous monitoring via lessons, they are just as likely to develop new bad habits or fall back into old ones. Beating balls without having a clue is pointless.

For the advanced player I think a tiny change can be learned more quickly, but take a lot of reps to engrain. This probably can be done with less monitoring,less frequent coaching.

Parting thought - I've witnessed this - the higher handicaps are often higher because they just don't [b]really[/b] want to put in the work, and rarely or never actually practice - so lessons don't help no matter how many they take. Others are just not able enough to go beyond their current level. It's a total waste of money for these folks - they would be better off just playing more and learning to get around better with what they have. I'm guessing the greater percentage of lessons given fall into these categories.