Arturo:
In the context of Gallwey's "Awareness Mode (and Skills)" for adults specifically, do you believe the golf swing is best taught by swinging a golf club?
My concern is attempting to learn the complexities of the golfswing just swinging a somewhat lightweight golf club that does nothing much to overstress and train the human body, nor feed forward the necessary and correct skills to provide the sought after feedback feel. Years of repetitive swinging of a lightweight object doesn't really "groove" neuro-muscular pathways efficiently, so I've found.
I have both of Gallwey's books -- The Inner Game of Tennis/Golf -- and both essentially promote the concept of "mind over matter". Nothing on technique, only psychology. Since I applied his tennis book to my athletic tennis game, all I did was practice a lot and then reinforced it with competition and confidence. Golf doesn't lend itself to external competition in a dynamic setting, it's sort of 'static'... stand and swing the club. And yet, most all golf swings are "home-made"...!!!
I exclude children from the learning of golf, and tennis, because children just grab a racket and swing away with abandon until they get to the point of deciding it's futile.. and then hopefully you can catch them willing to accept gentle encouraging instruction. If not, they just say "It's no fun!" and instinctively reject it. IOW, children want to learn the "whole gestalt" without the pain of practice... unless their buddy does it and they do it together. Children are not ... contaminated humans, yet...
Dear SteveT,
Nice to hear from you again, and 'feel' we have made good and sincere progress communicating from the depth of your question, and some of the details, ie., "feed forward, awareness, feedback feel".
Unfortunately, my efforts in 'learning and training' are really hypotheses-only at this time, since I have almost NO formal education and very little experience in the sciences necessary to understand these two areas.
However, believing FULLY that inconsistent TEMPO/RHYTHM, and/or dynamic unbalances are responsible for ALL swing faults, I have engaged with several learned sports scientists to open up the subject/thinking of "how long does it take to IMPROVE to be a golfer with varying degrees of capability.
It's easy to see how answers to YOUR questions would play a significant role in this broader 'macro' question, so therein lies my sincere interest, too.
IMO, or even more diluted, what I think, based on these last 5 years of experiences with 50-100 golfers, and focused on HOW AND HOW LONG TO IMPROVE, I do have some very strong indications/trends. In partial answer to your questions, for the LEARNING, I have ALWAYS used just the golf club and IMO it is intuitive, and often demonstrated professionally, that other devices could, should and certainly ARE being used for training.
So in learning, Steve, what I have found (but in pure scientific terms, still MY hypothesis), for ALL golfers except children and other real beginners, is as indicated above, their ability to improve is TOTALLY controlled by their capability to create and repeat consistent TEMPO/RHYTHM, and to be sufficiently athletic to be able to swing in ways that allow increases of lower body, upper body and shoulder complex dynamic stability.
My apologies for being SO repetitive in almost ALL my posts, but my hypothetical OVERALL conclusion is that these areas ARE CRUCIAL for improvement to happen. The documented evidence that the 'average handicap' of ALL golfers has not changed significantly since inception IMO, is pure and sufficient evidence that something very significant has prevented this growth. To my satisfaction, the apparent absence of the importance, and therefor the lack of teaching golfers this as the first , top and ENABELING prioriyty, IMO is the sole reason for the universal lack of improvement.
So, back to the point regarding the opinion/studies of sports psychologists in helping break thru this barrier, so far I have made virtually NO progress. However, the evidence from the efforts before contributing to this blog, and the positive results indicated by those trying increased stability for the first time, are to me growing evidence that we are on to a significant potential break thru in HOW a golfer can again improve, and IMO very quickly when compared with historical evidence. What I am referring to is the often stated 10,000 hours etc. to develop an 'elite' habit.
My response to this , but in NO way agreed to by the few sports (learning) psychologists with whom I have discussed this, is simply, develop the FOUNDATIONS/CORNERSTONES of consistent TEMPO etc, etc, and then ALL the finer aspects of learning shot making/shaping will take FAR fewer than the 10,000 hours noted in most of the 'learning literature'.
As a demonstrated sub set of how long it takes to 'learn' to increase lower body dynamic stability, ask Brian, Billy McKinney, Jon Hardesty or Chris Como, all part of this team, and all with personal experience in this admittedly, but to me CRUCIAL area.
