Why You Have to Put Pressure on Your Practice

If you practice and don't test yourself with simulated pressure, it will be tough to transfer your game to the golf course. Instead of grading your practice by how well you struck the golf ball, after you have practiced and are hitting the ball well, you should then add more pressure to simulate what the golf course will be adding.  It's not enough to stand there and hit great shots one after another to make your ego feel better. How many times has it stayed with you when you went out on the course? The reason is how you practice.  Most amateurs can't accept a bad shot.  "What am I doing incorrect"? Isn't that the typical internal dialogue? If you ask that after every shot, you really can go down an erroneous path.  Once you are hitting the ball consistently for your skill level you need to change your lie, change your targets and go through your routine. If you want the skill to show up on the golf course, you have to expose it during practice to different simulated on-course variables that you will encounter. You have to practice from bare lies to fluffy lies.  You have to practice to different targets and practice full shots and in between yardage shots.  The secret is adding variability because that simulates what you will be having to calculate when you are on the golf course facing the same situation. You want the shots that you practice to be a set of different variables each time.  Then you can add the pressure to your practice which is easy to do. Set a goal for the shot you are practicing and establish a consequence for success or failure or you can make a bet with a friend.  The pressure that you add will enhance the transfer of the skill to the golf course.   When you are in the comfort of the practice range, the flaws in your game are not so apparant. When you place pressure on your practice, suddenly your weak link will be exposed and usually whatever is your weakest link will break down.  That's why when you go to the golf course anything that adds a little bit of pressure can expose your weaknesses, for example, a four foot putt to win a bet with your friend, wind, a hole that is intimidating, anything that puts a mental strain on you during the round. Most people assume they are choking on the golf course.  What it means most of the time is that pressure does expose your weaknesses and most likely the skill that breaks down on the golf course is the one that is the weakest in your game.  Work on repairing that weakness in your game through practicing by integrating mental demands of decision making, pressure and simulating on course conditions.  Exposing your practice to pressure over time will lead to that skill performing consistently well under pressure and ultimately lead to transferring it to hold up on the golf course.

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Golf Myths About Practice

What are some typical myths in golf that keep us from improving?  We have all heard over the years how we have to make our new swing changes become muscle memory.  Do muscles really have memory?  Does practice make perfect? Reps, Reps, Reps. Not all reps are created equal. There are so many ways technology is assisting in helping us learn the right cause and effect of errant shots. Is that enough? What makes a swing change last and how long should it really take to get it to where you can consistently take it out to the golf course? We need to bust the myths of what most players think they need to do to make a swing change.

First, there is no such thing as muscle memory. Muscles don't learn. It's really a motor program that you are creating through practice to produce a new habit. There is a big difference between learning an athletic skill and learning a piece of academic information.  An individual can learn to solve a problem in one day because this involves cognitive learning, not motor learning.  If a coach asks a student to do something different in their backswing that's a mechanical movement, turning a physical movement into a motor program that is stored and able to be called upon under pressure will require lots of repetitions.  Golfers do not want to hear that they have to perform these repetitions.  It's the brain that learns from biomechanics and the behavior of biomechanics. It's more about strengthening your brain and training your brain not your muscles. We all know that it doesn't do you much good to be great on the range, but when you get on the golf course, your game goes south.  The truth is that most golfers do not improve because they never fully learn what they were attempting in the first place. Maybe they tested it a few times, but they did not store it in the brain and make it a part of their motor programming.  They did't train and get feedback on the things they were working on until they fully learned it. They also mistakenly practice without doing their pre-shot routine: they hit shots from flat, perfect lies; they hit shots with the same club repeatedly, practice putting from the identical spot, use artificial aids to align the shot and most of the shots are without a specific target.  How is that in any way similar to what you do when you play?

 If this sounds like you, you need to change the things you are doing in your practice and make it like how you play.  That means you need to simulate the on-course conditions in your practice.  Let's taking pitching for example, when practicing pitching, you need to make sure you are practicing on lies that are similar to the golf course, change your lie and target on each shot so you are forced to make decisions about the shot and vary your strategy each time in addition to going through your pre-shot routine.  This is how you will make your practice more like how you play. When you practice this way and keep training and getting feedback until you fully learn the skills you are trying to improve, you will be on your way to successfully transferring those skills faster to the golf course.

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