Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

In this swing tip we’re going to look at how best to develop your motor skills when you’re playing golf. So initially whenever you’re making a golf swing it is a lot of different independent movements, so you’re trying to smooth out into one complex swing. So there is a lot of information that you’re having to process mentally as you go through the golf swing. If you’re introducing new training to golf swing and you are trying to alter your sequence of movement, I think the first thing I would suggest for you to do is to slow the whole speed down.

So start to work on making on the movement correctly but at a much slower speed than you normally would. So if we took 10 as being your normal full pace swing, so if I hit a shot out at a normal full pace, if we call that a 10, if I’m now trying to introduce a new movement pattern into my swing, so say for example I’m trying to work on my downswing and I’m noticing that I’m using my arms too much, and I’m not getting my lower body into the downswing at all. Then what I’m going to do is I’m just going to step away from the ball and I’m just going to really slow that speed down.

So if that full speed is a 10 the first few practice swing that I’m going to make of this I might only swing a two, okay I’m going to really make a slow motion swing here so I’ll swing the club back working on getting into a good backswing position, but then as I swing down I’m really going to start working on being able to rotate my knees took to the target, then rotate my hips towards the target so I can feel my right heel is starting to come up the floor.

I’m keeping the club head inside the target line and then I’m releasing the club by rotating my body, releasing the wrist and creating this very stable line and solid left side and you can see here at impact. So I’m going to start doing that at maybe a speed of two and I’m gong to start hitting balls out with just that speed of two. So basically I’m looking to hit a mini golf shot I’m taking all of the distance out of the shot, so I’m going to swing back really keep it controlled, just moving very slow so I’ve now got time to process the motor skills I need here.

So I can start to instruct myself to rotate my knees to the left to rotate my hips to push off my right heel, looking at it and feeling the club coming down a long the target line as I turn and then I’m just going to hit out. And it really doesn’t matter how far that ball goes; it’s the fact that you’re doing it so slowly. So if you think of all those instructions and we actually timed how long it’s taking you to process mentally the instructions you want to achieve, it would take quite a few seconds and in your downswing or in backswing got one second to swing back and a split second to swing down.

So slow the movement down to giving yourself a chance to process the motor skill that you’re looking to achieve. Once you start to get feel for that movement very slowly and at conscious level so you’re able to process it, and you’ve hit five or so shots quite well just with that very slow swing, then just nudge the speed up slightly. So now you’re going to swing maybe more a five, so this is more of a half swing.

So what you’re going to do now is to process that information into a more compact forms so that instead of instructing yourself, so independently and quickly and rather than saying to yourself turn your knees at the target turn your hips lift the right heel up keep the club inside the target line, now release the wrist into the straight line position, you’re going to be able to process into that, oh do that. So you’re starting to compact all the information you need to get across to yourself into a much simpler format, so then have a go at moving up with the speed. So we’re just going to hit it half speed pace then.

And again if you’re starting to find that you’re hitting successful shots at that speed then look to moving it up maybe to a seven out of 10, and just gradually build the pace in. But if any point you find that you started to lose control with your body movement, your sequence or you’re not seeing good results from the ball flight, then just go down to a lower speed level and start to build the feeling up again.

The other tip I would give you for improving your motor skills when you’re playing golf, is don’t try to do everything all at once if you going to stay at full speed. So just focus on achieving one particular swing thought and then if as a number you had six issues that you want to improve in your golf swing, improving one of them and just focusing on that so you’re actually learn it rather than know it, and that means you’re doing it over and over again even if you’re not thinking of it you can then bolt the next issue that you wanting to improve onto that.

So very quickly over a few weeks you’ll have made six changes rather than trying to make six changes all at once, not getting any of them because you’re too confused there’s too much information and you don’t know what to focus on, so you end up learning none of them. And then at the next session you still need to learn six things again and then you’re going to get frustrated because you’re going to feel you’re not moving forward.

So two tips there to help you improve your motor skills, number one; totally slow the movement down so that you can process all the movement if you’re working on the complete swing, and then gradually build the speed in which you’re successful, or if you want to keep the swing at full of speed just work on improving one issue at a time and add the next bit onto it. And that should get you improving your golf in no time.