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Jim has been coming to see me for quite a few years, and has experienced a nice progressive improvement. The lesson you see here is quite advanced relative to where we started, when he had his club face completely shut throughout the swing, his right arm pulled way behind him at the top, and a noticeable outward widening of the right arm in the forward swing, all of which led to his main problem of having his hands approach impact well away from his body and way wide, leading to a sweeping blow and a lack of impact compression with any shot where the ball is on the ground.
As is usually the case, there was a combination of problems both conceptual and physical. The conceptual issues had to do with understanding just how the ball needed to be struck in order to achieve higher quality contact, then understanding what kinds of positions and movements would allow for the possibility of that happening, then physically getting the body to feel what it needed to do and the difficulties in doing what was necessary due to lack of mobility. The conceptual part is the easier of the two: most of my students are intelligent enough to grasp the concepts once they are explained. Sometimes it may take a few different approaches to the same material, but eventually most players could at least explain what they are trying to do to someone else. The physical part is more demanding, but the real point is that none of the movements have to be perfect in order for improvement to take place. If we can get the pattern to change we will succeed. In order to do that the body has to feel the difference between the old and the new. I need to do a lot of pushing and pulling, hands-on instruction, to create the new “feel” and to get the student to focus on the sensation of muscular activity, since old habits are engrained and have little “feel” except that that’s what hits the ball. Most times the new movements are more difficult and physically stressful, which makes sense since the body usually will opt for an easier path to solve a problem such as hitting a golf ball. However, when positive results occur, the golfer will learn to look for the new feelings, as new neural pathways are being created to take the place of the old ones.
In most cases, and Jim is an example of this, the rate of improvement accelerates as the student gets through the initial work. In other words, when the tweaks don’t feel as drastic (even though they may be) it is more likely that we can work them in more quickly.
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