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How To Enhance Your Learning Experience on The Lesson Tee - Part 1  Email this Article to a Friend
David F. Wright, Ph.D., PGA Having the right mindset when you arrive at the golf course is critical to receiving the biggest benefit from your golf lesson. Rushing to the lesson tee with without taking time to beforehand to prepare mentally ... is a waste of time and money. This point may seem obvious, but there is a truly physiological reason for this. A state of nervousness or sense of urgency will cause changes in your nervous system that will impede both positive learning and performance. This will not only disrupt your swing tempo, but it will dramatically lower your ability to retain the information from your lesson. Because our ability to concentrate diminishes as anxiety levels rise, retention of new information is diminished. A basic knowledge of a few simple principles will increase your consistency in both practice and play. 1) When you are relaxed, your ability to concentrate increases, which results in enhanced learning, memory and performance. Before going to practice, play or take a lesson, develop a routine of breathing, relaxation and concentration exercises. My books on Relaxation and Concentration features many techniques that work both on and off the course. The accompanying CD audios actually guide you through these techniques to help you get into the proper mental state for learning. 2) Learning and memory are most efficient when behavior is executed in the correct order. Let's assume you have come to take a lesson from me in writing poetry. During your first lesson I give you the fifth verse of an eight-verse poem. At the second lesson I give you the fourth verse. For the third lesson I give you the first verse and so on until I have given you all eight verses, out of order. In the ninth week, I ask you to recite the poem in sequence, verses one through eight. You will recite the poem with hesitation after each verse and considerable thought. The same principle applies to learning golf. The average golfer practices the "verses" out of sequence by just practicing the end part of their routine - the swing. This practice "out of sequence" making everything much harder come swing time on the golf course. To get the most out of your practice time, you should incorporate your entire routine on every shot. Picture the following. We are on the range, warming up in preparation to play. We are hitting one ball after another looking for that feel. Suddenly it clicks. We can't miss. We have found "IT", the magic bullet. But when we get on the course, we have lost that feel. Why? Quite often it is because we have not practiced the full sequence of our routine in warming up. We left out critical components of our routine - things like standing behind the ball, seeing the shot, feeling the swing and aligning ourselves to a precise target, among other necessary checklist items required to hit a good shot on the course, where it counts.. When you find that "right" feeling on the range, blend it with your full routine. As you walk behind the ball and begin to blend the feel, you might struggle for a few swings - but it will come. When that happens, you are ready to play. By the way, Johnny Miller called the days that feeling stays with us the whole round -- WOOD -- works only one day.
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