Swing change blues ...

aenemated · September 21, 2019

Working with a swing coach finally to help get me to my goal of 5 or better by end of year. It's just a small correction to work on and I've already seen the benefits but I'm still in that "making it automatic" phase. All I can say is thank god my short game was on today!

How long does it take for you guys to get to the point a little change becomes part of the groove?

Golf Scientist · September 21, 2019

Depends how drastic the change you are making. If you're making a change in your setup you should get results instantly, and it's just a case of repeating it until it becomes second nature. If the change is grip, posture, alignment, ball position, or balance at setup you have a good chance of making it automatic relatively quickly. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but...If you're not actually changing the cause, but making compensating movements that fight physics the bad news is that it would never become automatic. Some tour pros have said they felt like they were making drastic changes (Nick Faldo and Kegan Bradley being two examples), but on video the change only shows to be a difference of an inch or two. For tour pros who completely overhauled their swings (Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, and Nick Price being three examples) it took years before their new swings became automatic, and they say they still have the bad tendencies creep back in when they take significant time off, or don't check it every so often.

Muscles don't have memory, but the brain has neural pathways that control muscle movements. If you repeat something 100 times you will have established a pathway that can be relied upon to be able to be repeated with focus. Once that has been repeated 3000-5000 times then it will be able to be repeated without focus. If you're trying to replace something that has already been performed more than 5000 times you'll have your work cut out for you. :/

aenemated · September 22, 2019

> @"Golf Scientist" said:

> Depends how drastic the change you are making. If you're making a change in your setup you should get results instantly, and it's just a case of repeating it until it becomes second nature. If the change is grip, posture, alignment, ball position, or balance at setup you have a good chance of making it automatic relatively quickly. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but...If you're not actually changing the cause, but making compensating movements that fight physics the bad news is that it would never become automatic. Some tour pros have said they felt like they were making drastic changes (Nick Faldo and Kegan Bradley being two examples), but on video the change only shows to be a difference of an inch or two. For tour pros who completely overhauled their swings (Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, and Nick Price being three examples) it took years before their new swings became automatic, and they say they still have the bad tendencies creep back in when they take significant time off, or don't check it every so often.

> Muscles don't have memory, but the brain has neural pathways that control muscle movements. If you repeat something 100 times you will have established a pathway that can be relied upon to be able to be repeated with focus. Once that has been repeated 3000-5000 times then it will be able to be repeated without focus. If you're trying to replace something that has already been performed more than 5000 times you'll have your work cut out for you. :/

I don't feel it's particularly drastic - really just fixing my takeaway to keep the club in front of me. It FEELS like the clubface is going back closed and I kinda feel like I look like Matthew Wolff at the top but when watching the video evidence, it looks great - very on-plane, clubface square at the top.

I was able to get it pretty solidly repeating during my first range session; but that was about midway through a second bucket - by that point, I was hitting the ball better than I ever have. Played the little executive course near me yesterday morning and it felt OK, better than I expected it to go for the most part but I know I need to put some more work in. I figure I was probably just overly tense putting it into play with so little work so far.

Anyway - thanks for the info!