Golf tips and drills won't bring you skills...

..but games should do it nicely.

We can't really have fun as we improve...can we?

Let me see if this sounds familiar...

How to fix your swing?

After another frustrating round, you start looking for answers.

The quest begins; you scour golf magazines, search the internet and take advice from anyone who offers. There are long sessions at the range scraping over ball after ball, enduring the pitying gaze of other golfers. Doubt floods in and you start to worry you'll never get it.

And then.

Something clicks. You find the "magic" tip. Suddenly you start to enjoy things again. Confidence returns. Golf is fun once more. You're so delighted you share your discovery with anyone who'll listen. You really feel that you've got it.

Haven't you?

Sadly, you don't. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when things start to slip, but they do. Not to worry, all you have to do is to reapply the magic tip...isn't it? But, much like a sitcom in its fourth season, the magic has gone. An unpalatable truth lies before you.

Your improvement occurred in spite of the tip, not because of it.

It's the boom & bust of tips and drills. The bogus focus on the golf swing as the sum total of golf improvement. A cycle that can repeat in perpetuity, or at least until you throw your clubs into the darkest recesses of your garage.

Frustration is the only guarantee of this approach. I know because I've been there.

This obviously isn't the case when we see a PGA pro. At least then the advice is individualised and fitted to your swing...isn't it?

Not necessarily. Some professionals are married to teaching a system, rather than focusing what an individual might already have. I'm not a golf instructor, so I'm loathe to criticise. However, I'm dubious a complete swing rebuild is what most amateur golfers want or need. Might the frustrations arising from this contribute to the number of golfers leaving the sport each year? It's certainly not a route that I'll be going down.

Or your professional may be keen on video analysis. Again, this is something I'm not sure is as helpful as they may believe. I'm not alone in this; Michael Hebron at Neuro Learning Golf, the Instinctive Golf team and Marc Solomon of Golf Made Simple are prominent doubters.

I started dabbling with golf during an illness enforced absence from work. Progress was slow, but addiction came quickly. I started following the course I've outlined above, peppered with the occasional half hour range lesson. As a return to work loomed I fretted that my hard won skills would dissipate.

But they didn't.

In fact they started developing faster than I'd dared to dream.

Some of this was a matter of reaching the threshold where the ball flew as intended that crucial bit more often...and some was due to sitting down and committing to fitting golf around work and family life.

Some of my development was down to these factors. Some, but certainly not most.

I changed how I practised.

I'd already invested quite some time listening to the Golf Smarter podcast. I'd been very impressed by a number of coaches who appeared to be advocating a paradigm shift in instruction. They wanted to move away from golf's prevalent culture and its limitations. One of their main ideas was to stop the golfer playing "golf swing" and instead get that golfer playing golf. To achieve this, they suggested that golfers start to "practice like they play". This made a lot of sense.

Why should we practice like we play?

Not long before Mrs Geek & I got married, we completed an Advanced Life Support course. This was a very busy course, covering everything from how to press on the chest through passing a tube into the larynx up to delivering the patient to Intensive Care, all over a period of 3 days. It was a mixed group of participants with differing knowledge bases, so the course had a lot of ground to cover.

What's interesting is how this was done. There was a course handbook to be read before we started, then a few lectures and a quick recap of the basics on the first day. But most of the course was running through carefully crafted scenarios designed to cover all of the relevant information.

Repeated simulation of real situations formed the basis of instruction.

The scenarios started off basic, but by the end they were getting more and more complex. The instructors were all excellent at creating and maintaining the correct atmosphere, to the point where you'd feel a genuine pang of sadness any time the dummy "died". As I'm a robust soul and had made no secret of my desire to be an instructor, my scenarios were most complex of all by the end of the course; they even had me trying to manage a situation where a pregnant woman had collapsed into a swimming pool after taking illegal drugs! It was a relief to discover the final test was a bit more straightforward, whilst still covering all of the necessary areas.

It's very different to how golf is traditionally taught.

If we'd been teaching these skills as golf is traditionally taught, we'd probably still be there. We'd be looking at slow motion replays comparing a candidate's chest compressions to an instructors, or flicking through magazines to see how to get the angle of the laryngoscope perfect.

Instead we ran through the algorhythms so often I could recite them in my sleep, and did so in situations far more complex than we would typically see. This led to a much greater understanding of what to do and how to do it. And it worked for everyone, not just those with the greatest knowledge base and experience. One of the best things was how egalitarian it was, putting nurses, doctors and paramedics on an equal footing.

Most of all, it was a lot of fun.

It's pretty obvious it's different from the traditional paradigm of golf instruction. There's good reason for this. It's an internationally recognised qualification which is paid for by the taxpayer. Almost all of the participants were government employees undertaking paid study time. It's also, as you can imagine, an important thing to get right. The course therefore has a huge responsibility to educate participants fully and in the most efficient way. It's essential the education is both efficient and sufficient. I've never heard anyone who's been on one of these courses dismiss it as worthless.

How does this relate to golf?

If repeated simulation of real life scenarios is an effective way to teach health professionals vital skills, then surely it's an effective way to learn golf? It's certainly improved my game and revolutionised my practice. Instead of aimlessly thwacking balls out into the range before scraping over another ball to hit it in the same general direction with the same club, I'm using special shot challenges which challenge me to hit specific shots to order. This is learning how to control the club, which in time will lead to mastery. Done properly, it makes the range a lot closer to the course. This makes it easier to take your "range game" to the course- a frequent lament of golfers. Quite apart from all of that, it makes practice a lot more fun, which is great for those of us who can't always find the time to play 18 but can squeeze in 40 minutes of practice.

Choose your coaches wisely.

A good coach is wonderful to watch in action. I spent a long time looking for my current coaching team, and I couldn't be happier. Their group sessions are very similar to that life support course. There's a brief discussion of the theory behind the desired actions, a run through the basics and thence to repeated simulation of "in-game" scenarios. This often progresses to harder than usual situations, or the deliberate inclusion of pressure (e.g. make x consecutive shots from y feet). Add in a bit of friendly competition and you have an excellent environment for sporting growth that's fair, fun and fit for purpose.

Increased fun, decreased frustration and the confidence that time spent practising will lead to on course improvement. What's not to love?

Let me know your thoughts. You can catch me on Twitter, but did you know that people who comment on blog posts have a 42% greater chance of being thought attractive by the opposite sex?*

*sadly, this isn't true. But it should be. And I really like what you've done with your hair today.

A cautionary note

As I start to have a more definite plan for this blog, I've been learning as much as I can. I thus found myself experimenting with Google Insight for Search.

Below is the "interest over time" chart for golf.

The sine-wave like pattern's no surprise - interest peaks around Major championships and the Ryder Cup. Despite the year-long schedule of the main tours, golf remains a seasonal game for most of us.

The really chilling aspect is the consistently downward trend. Each time a Major rolls around, fewer and fewer people are searching the world's number 1 search engine for "Golf". This cannot be a good thing.

Google is the world's largest search engine. It's 1st port of call when we seek information - a sudden increase in searches for "flu treatment" informs Google there's influenza afoot. In the US Google knows there's an outbreak before the Center for Disease Control does. It's therefore not unreasonable to use search trends to gauge public interest.

Don't get me wrong - golf will always exist. Even the Lost island had a course. If the pro tours were wiped out overnight and the major manufacturers spontaneously combusted, someone somewhere would be making clubs. There will always be a market- as long as I have breath in my lungs, at the very least.

The size of that market is what's concerning. If the decline continues there will be a lot fewer courses, clubs and coaches out there. It's not enough to say "something needs to be done" and then wait for someone else to do it.

We have to be the ones to do it.

Golf must do all that it can to maintain the level of participation. Golfers must support their clubs. Clubs must entice & retain members. Professionals must look at maximising their client's return on investment.

We must arrest the decline or face a very different golfing landscape.

Take some time. Work out what you can do to improve the situation. Buy another beverage after your round. Seek out the nervous new members at your club and do everything in your power to make them feel at ease. Cajole your "that's me finished with that stupid game" buddy back onto the tee box.

Above all, treat junior golfers as you would adult members. Make it clear they are every bit as welcome on the course as you are. If they're better than you acknowledge it; let them play through if you're having a bad day. Junior golfers are tomorrow's full members and as such they hold the key to golf's future. We simply cannot afford to drive them away.

The power of "When"

The secret of the little change that brings big results.

I can put my finger on the day my golf game started to move forward with surprising precision.

You might think it was when I started to hit my driver well. Perhaps when I regularly took fewer than 3 shots from 100 yards and in. Or even when I started playing competitively.

Important as the above steps were, they all came some time after my game started moving forward.

This step fundamentally changed the way I viewed my golf game and indeed my life.

And yet, it's so simple many wouldn't understand its importance.

I stopped saying "if"...

...and started saying "when".

Unconvinced? Consider these examples:

"If I can get my swing to a point where it repeats and is predictable" versus "When I get my swing to a point where it repeats and is predictable"

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you"

"When you can keep your head..."

It takes a future where success is uncertain and failure remains an option and changes it to one where success will happen but is a question of time and effort. For me it was the realisation I was far too motivated and keen to improve at golf for it not to happen. It stopped me saying "I'll never get this stupid game" in my darker moments. Instead I accepted that however far away it might seem, I would get better. That kept me coming back when I might otherwise have become discouraged.

You may be shaking your head as you read this. I can appreciate that this could come across as "positive thinking mumbo-jumbo". All I can say in reply is whilst I understand this point of view, my game has improved significantly after taking this step. It's a step which involves no pain, is easy to make and only you know you've made it.

After all, what exactly have you got to lose?

Are you Lost In Space?

The remedy is already in your possession.

Imagine you had a state of the art device which could revolutionise your golf. This device would require some calibration, a brief period of trial and error but after this would be the single most important tool at your disposal. It would be easy to use, cheap to run and best of all would be absolutely free.

You'd use it constantly...wouldn't you?

After all, you'd be crazy to pass up something like this. Why on earth would anyone not want to use it?

And yet most of us completely fail to realise such a system is already in our possession.

It's even thought to be older than our sense of smell.

You can't hear what it's telling you because you've forgotten how to listen and it's hurting your golf game.

It's not the sense that tells your arse from your elbow; instead it gives scrupulously precise information on where your arse is relative to your elbow. It's vital for any pursuit that involves moving any part of the body whilst looking elsewhere.

It's the awareness of the body's posture both at rest and on the move, arising from nerve sensors inside our muscles, tendons and joints. Often known as kinaesthesia or proprioception, it doesn't matter what you call it. Just learn to listen to what it's telling you.

Cultivating our awareness of this sense accelerates acquisition of motor skills. How often have you had a swing lesson, spent some time at the range working on what you thought you should be doing only to find at the next lesson you've got it wrong? Would it not be easier to remember the positions our body should be in when we're aware of how those positions feel? Are we not more likely to be able to repeat the great shot we just hit if we train our position sense to analyse and record the movement? Positional awareness is crucial should we wish to influence any complex sequence of movements.

We have in our possession a complex sense more remarkable than any GPS system and yet we're happy to spend significant amounts on gadgets whilst neglecting our intrinsic hardware. Which of these do you think has more potential to improve your golf?

Once again, I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Thanks for reading!

Go with the flow and you'll feel like a Pro

Is your shot routine a well-oiled machine?

Think of the last professional golf event you watched. Think of the final round where the TV cameras take more time over the players in contention, rather than jumping around with televisual attention deficit disorder. Think of all the times you watched players complete their shot routine. Now think of the last time you played and the routines you saw out on the course.

Imagine someone has taken the trouble to motion capture the shot routine of the entire gamut of golfers, showing them from initial planning until the initiation of the back swing. Do you think that you would be able to tell the professional from the amateur? The single digit handicap from the lucky-if-he's-28?

I'm confident it'd be obvious to anyone who took the time to look. Even if all of the golfers were replaced with a CGI Tiger Woods.

It all comes down to flow.

This dawned on me recently. I found myself behind some novice golfers during a practice round. Their skill level was immediately apparent, even from 250 yards down the fairway. The time they took over the ball was remarkable; it was obvious they were trying to consciously control every part of their swing. There were too many practice swings to count, and then a very long pause before the backswing started with a jerk and a wobble.

Please don't misunderstand my reason for mentioning this. I wasn't harrumphing about the delay, I didn't put my bitch wings up or stride forward to remonstrate.

Instead I watched, waited and pondered. It really wasn't that long ago that I was there, 18 months at most. My last attempt at a medal round has also shown that I still need to be on my guard. If I'm not playing at my best I have a tendency to slow down and try to think my way through my swing. To date, this has never made the situation any better and usually makes it worse.

Think about it - have you found yourself thinking how to do something that's usually automatic and ended up making a mess of it?

As a student, I had a lecture on the anatomy of walking - a pretty interesting topic, not least because computerised analysis of gait patterns was just starting to be used. (I'm showing my age here; we've now reached the stage when similar technology is being used to analyse the biomechanics of the golf swing).

The really fascinating thing is what happened after the lecture. Not one of us was able to walk comfortably. We were clumsily stumbling, bumping into each other as we tried to consciously control something we hadn't thought about for years. I'll never forget the smile on the lecturer's face.

So if trying to consciously control something as fundamental as walking is a disaster, what then are the chances of consciously controlling our swing leading to a good result?

I was practising chipping a couple of weeks ago, working on trying to get balls into a laundry basket. I realised that my best shots were coming when I set up and swung with swiftly unhurried efficiency. These swings were not rushed, but I'd be focused on my target, swing my eyes back to the ball, feel settled (I thought of it as "half a heartbeat", the lub of the lub-dub) then starting the swing. Once again the focus was on propelling the appropriate amount of energy to the target letting the back swing take care of itself. This was very successful, and results improved still further as I concentrated on making the routine flow as slickly as possible.

In other words, I start my swing before I start thinking. The flowing rhythm through the routine allows me to swing reflexively, with my feeling brain rather than under the clumsy control of the higher or thinking brain. Don't get me wrong, the thinking brain has a role in golf, but it's limited to the initial planning phase of the shot routine. It quickly analyses the factors affecting any given shot along with calculating which shot characteristics give the best chance for success. It then decides on the shot, the club and the aim, before handing over the baton to the feeling brain.

Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson at VISION54 probably characterise this best with their Think Box/Play Box concept, going so far as to encourage their players to put down a marker as a decision line whilst rehearsing so that they get used to the discipline of moving from thinking to feeling, of making the decision and then committing to it.

I've struggled with this a bit, as my thinking brain is used to calling all the shots. It's hovering in the background like an IT consultant watching their technophobic partner on the Internet, just dying for the slightest opportunity to take over. By flowing into the routine and executing the shot with swiftly unhurried efficiency, my feeling brain can execute the shot before the thinking brain has even realised what's happened and is still filled with thoughts of the target, by far the most useful place for most if not all of us to park our conscious attention. What do you think most tour professionals are thinking of when they swing? I'm certain that focusing my attention on this area over the winter will yield better results than trying to perfect how I swing a club.

What about you? Is your routine the well oiled machine of the low handicappers at your club? Is it consistent and fluid, running freely from behind the ball to your follow through? Or are you, trying too hard to swing the club precisely through the latest positions in Golf Monthly, or constantly trying to learn how to swing during a round? Can you identify with my experience above?

If you can, why not try it next time you're mucking about chipping. Pick the target, swivel eyes back to ball, tiny pause...then go. Watch the results. Try it at the range if it works in your short game.

It might just be an easy way to look, feel and ultimately play more like a pro.

This is what I'm going to be working on this winter. If you're intrigued and think it might helpful, please give it a go. Please let me know if and how it works for you.

(This post was a re-working of a post that didn't quite work. I'm working through PushingSocial's keys to spectacular blog posts. I can heartily recommend this program and their excellent content. If you're blogging and are new to the game or looking for a way to tzuj up your content, check them out)

A postcard from The Zone

I've been there and it's even better than we're told.

It's spoken of in terms of hushed reverence, a near-mystical destination, a Golfing Nirvana. Professional golfers struggle to define it, yet in doing so convey a sense of it's magnitude. We read on in envy, not quite able to believe that we are capable of accessing it. We feel that if we ever get there, as soon as we realise it will evaporate, never to return

And yet I've been in The Zone, so many times I've lost count. I've been there before I knew of it's existence, long before I even thought of taking up golf. And yet when I realised what it was, it didn't disappear. Techniques gleaned from golf performance coaches allowed me to consciously extend, explore and enjoy my experience.

Even before discovering it was known as The Zone I was aware that there were certain activities where I could become so engaged I'd reach a state of capability far in advance of what I could ordinarily achieve; where I could, if circumstances were correct, completely lose myself and eventually awaken exhilarated and awash with energy.

One such pursuit was dancing. Long before meeting Mrs Geek, having the Geeklets and discovering golf I enjoyed heading out on Friday or Saturday night to a club. I absolutely love music and have a very eclectic taste, so it didn't matter what was playing. Funk, soul, house or jazz (the best nights were the ones where all of these and more were on the menu) as long as you could dance to it, I would.

Now, I'd never lay claim to being the best of dancers. I tend to dance from the knees up, feet firmly planted to the floor, a writhing mass of arms swaying from side to side in front of the beat. Think of a Martial Artist who's had his feet nailed to the ground, who's fighting off opponents who proceed in a rhythmical fashion and you're pretty much there. I can't do any other style of dancing, it's just this. But what I did have was the ability to totally immerse myself in the music, anticipating it's beat, really feeling it's soul in mine. And it's an incredible feeling; when I tried to describe it to friends I found myself couching it in the same pseudo-mystical terms in which The Zone is described. ("Connected to the rhythms of the Universe" is one comment I took a long time to live down). I wasn't always able to get to this place, but when I did it was worth it. There were definitely times I lost my "mojo" by trying too hard.

Our fear is that the Zone will dissipate as soon as we realise we are there. I'm glad to say this isn't the case. Life limits me to a couple of nights out dancing each year, but I'm able to get into The Zone on almost every opportunity. I was perhaps guilty of trying too hard after first learning of The Zone. This lead to a fun but slightly frustrating night where I'd appear at the gateway to The Zone only to tense up and lose it. Reflecting on that experience, I thought about this tension and resolved to deal with it at the next opportunity. I realised I was tensing my feet and I directed awareness there, uncurled them and relaxed into The Zone. I then also tried a distraction technique I'd learned from Andy Morrison with great success ("Glued Tongue" in case you were wondering; this technique's on the free report from his website, please check it out). Any time I now feel myself losing my flow, I uncurl my toes and pretend my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. It may sound odd, but it is of course absolutely invisible to anyone who happens to be watching.

So how does this relate to my golf? Well, I'm still trying to work it out. Although dancing and golf are both motor activities, they're very different. Golf seems very on/off and isn't reactive whereas dancing is all about reacting to the music. You can also choose which songs to dance to, and choose if and when to take a break. However, the sense of rhythm and flow that dancing provides must help in golf and as I've said before one of my prinicpal goals for the approaching winter is to have my routine flowing throughout. I also press my index finger and thumb on my right hand frimly together when I realise I'm there to "anchor" that feeling to that gesture. Some may be sceptical of anchoring, but there's no way it can be harmful, so why not try?

The main benefit though is that I not only truly believe The Zone exists, but I know I can get there and remain there. This isn't some abstract obscure state that only golfing Yogis can access, it's there for us all. Best of all, I know how good it feels. I may not have got there whilst golfing yet, but I will. And when I do you can bet I'll be uncurling my toes and pretending my tongue's glued to the roof of my mouth. You won't be able to see this, of course.

All you'll be able to see is my smile.

A question

Having had a wee look at my blog stats, it seems that what garners most interest is when I extrapolate from my on course experiences to find generalisable lessons; is this something I should thus concentrate on, or should I perhaps continue to post both personal and more general posts, but promoting only the latter? I'm really not sure, so I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on the issue.