Golf swing technique improvement

As an old golf pro once said, “The problem is not learning the new; it’s forgetting (unlearning) the old!”

If you have ever tried to fix a persistent problem with your golf game you will know how true that is.

Like when you last tried to change your grip, correct your putting action or make a swing change, you had to concentrate hard; you made more errors; it took so much time due to mental confusion; and the experience was frustrating and unpleasant.

Thankfully, all those skills coaching sessions appear to be paying off. You practice and practice and your technique on the range shows obvious improvement.

However, as soon as you are out on the golf course and under the stress of competition, your game falls apart and you revert to those old, wrong, ways.

You wanted to change but your brain would not let you change. In the case of your ingrained golf technique problem, you were the prisoner of habit. By a process of psychological interference, your old learning has disabled your new learning.

Cognitive science tells us that whatever we have practiced and learned is protected from change. When the new golf swing you are trying to learn is different from the old swing, your brain instantly detects this conflict and generates habit pattern interference to protect and preserve the old swing.

That's why old habits die hard!

Eventually, you will succeed and make the change over to the new swing but biomechanical experts say that it can take up to 2,000 practices before the new swing consistently replaces the old one. This is called the “adaptation period” and we have all gone through that misery.

Professional golfers are not immune either. In what is known as the dreaded “performance slump”, excellent technique carefully refined through years of hard work is suddenly and inexplicably lost.

Currently available coaching methods do not adequately address the issue of habit pattern errors very well. This is because conventional golf coaching tends to emphasize exclusive practice of the correct knowledge and skill, i.e., via hours of repetition or drills.

Admittedly, practice and drills are an essential element when learning new skills, i.e., when there is no old incorrect way that might interfere with learning. However, practice is much less effective when trying to change an established technique fault because habit pattern interference gets in the way of improvement.

Clearly, we need a better way.

A different approach to learning and improving your golf game, developed in Australia and adopted by a growing number of coaches and sporting professionals at institutes of sport here and overseas, is Old Way/New Way^® Learning.

Old Way/New Way^® Learning is a special way of practicing that greatly reduces the mental interference from old habits and therefore accelerates your learning.

Instead of spending weeks or months of frustrating practice, with Old Way/New Way^® Learning your swing technique can show 80% or better improvement after just one or two concentrated practice sessions.

This improvement persists and is more or less permanent, depending on how often you practice your new way. Importantly, the new swing will transfer more readily to competition.

Best of all, the entire process is easy to learn, blame- and stress-free and very user friendly.

Chris Graham has a Level 3 AAA rating with the PGA of Australia. He says this about Old Way/New Way,^® the technique correction method used in Golf Swing Improvement:

"With Old Way/New Way^®, practice times are reduced, swing changes come faster and there is no falling back to old ways under pressure of competition."

Golf Swing Improvement is a self-paced golf technique improvement routine designed for golfers and coaches at all levels from beginner up to professional.

Golf Swing Improvement uses the Old Way/New Way^® Learning method, the same rapid technique improvement method used so successfully by Olympic coaches and sports professionals and well reviewed by the Australian Sports Commission.

Golf Swing Improvement and Old Way/New Way^® Learning can improve all aspects of your golf game, both physical and mental, not just your golf swing.

For golf coaches, Old Way/New Way^® golf technique correction can enrich your coaching experience and greatly improve your coaching effectiveness.

The Golf Swing Improvement routine short course is now available on CD. More in-depth training in Old Way/New Way^® is available via our online course or in group training workshops.

Golf Australia, June 2006 issue, reviewed Old Way/New Way^® Learning and showed how it can improve your golf swing.

Golfers please note - before changing any part of your golf game you should seek expert advice from a golf pro.

Become the golfer you always wanted to be!

Quickly improve your golf swing technique and other parts of your game with Old Way/New Way^® Learning.

Case study: Golf swing improvement

I have worked with a pro and even have a video of myself, good and bad. I am actually coming over the top not topping the ball. The main cause is that I do not make a full turn ie: get my weight on my back foot, resulting in a reverse pivot. A couple of keys that are precursors to the failure to get the weight back are that I am jumpy rather than still at address, and that I pick the club up rather than drag it back.

I have been given drills such as turning in a doorway, turning without a club etc. and used them but I cannot seem to overwrite the reverse pivot completely. Many of my shots are great form however my bad ones, and they come up randomly though usually on the tee box, are caused by this problem.

What I am doing wrong is a reverse pivot caused by not getting weight on back foot, right thing to do is get the weight back through a full turn, difference is not enough weight on back resulting in a lunge in the downswing leading to inconsistent contact witht the ball.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am at the results of the golf swing correction using O/N. I followed the protocol exactly as you described, going through 15 minutes of my old motion and then 15 minutes of the new motion at home last night without using a ball or club. This morning I went to the range and did the following:

1. Warmed up, as I always do flipping a dozen or so pitching wedges.
2. I grabbed a 5 iron and laid out a dozen balls. I used my old takeaway, swung and said that is my old way. I used my new takeaway, swung and said that is the new way. I then noted the difference in the two was by saying."In the old way I started the takeaway with my shoulders, much of my weight was still on the front foot and the ball was topped. In the new way I started the takeaway with my hips, there was a lot of weight on my back and the ball had a high trajectory, though pushed as opposed to draw/pull." I repeated this six times. The only material difference in the differences statement were that I hit two pretty good shots in the old way and I drew 3 of the last 4 new way shots by adjusting my hand position.
3. I kept the 5 iron and grabbed 10 more balls. I attempted to hit each ball in the new way and did so 9 of 10 times. I hit the old way on the fourth ball administerd a correction and nailed the last 6. Were all 9 soaring 190 yd draws? No, but they were all soaring around 180 -200 and were 2 pushes, 2 straights, 4 draws and a pull. The one old way was a 140 yard topper that never got higher than 4 feet off the ground.

So what does this all mean and where do I go from here? I am most interested in your views. Here are mine. I was very excited after I hit the last of the 10 balls and it was difficult to leave the range. After all, I had hit a total of thirty four golf balls (less than a third of my normal quota), a dozen of which were warm up pitch shots. I hit 9 of the last 10 solid, which is an unheard of number for me. Upon reflecting on the session my first thought was that I did so well because I wanted O/N to work. I dismissed this because I have wanted a good consistent swing for lot longer and lot more yet never had this result. Interestingly enough I shared the exercise and the reflection with my partner and he reached the same conclusion. I am playing a game on Friday and will be eager to see how this translates to the "playing field." Obviously I was very aware of my old way and had done the new way before, just not very consistently; Does this have something to do with the success rate I experienced? What if my awareness was not as keen, what if I had never taken a full turn? Would the results have been as dramatic? I will keep you posted and look forward to your comments.

Thank you for your kind words and feedback. I am very pleased with how this course is going. I agree completely with your concept of incremental change in sport skills. You need to understand the whole but can only build a good swing or technique by refining the component parts. In this case we were able to identify my inability to get the weight to my back foot as the number one problem in my swing. Now that I have that knocked out I can move on to refining some other areas, ball flight, distance control etc.

Golf Swing Improvement Protocol—what will it do for my golf game?

Golf Swing Improvement is a short self-paced protocol that will provide you with information, demonstrations, and step-by-step instructions so you can start using Old Way/New Way^® to help:

• improve your own golf technique and/or
• improve your coaching effectiveness if you are a golf coach.

The Golf Swing Improvement practice routine can:

• teach you the fascinating theoretical background of Old Way/New Way^® Learning
• show you how it has been used to quickly correct golf technique and other performance problems in golf
• show you two step-by-step video demonstrations of its use with a golfer to correct a golf swing fault and a putting problem<
• teach you to prepare your own golf skill correction routines that you can use in many different golfing situations; and
• show you how to use Old Way/New Way^® to speed up your golf technique correction and recover more quickly from performance slumps.

Golf Swing Improvement is available as a Flash-based online course.

Golf Swing Improvement uses the Old Way/New Way^® Learning method which is well grounded in psychological learning theory and is verified by experimental research published in international refereed professional journals. Furthermore, the record of its success in practical situations stands unrivaled. Old Way/New Way^® is also very user friendly - it won't frustrate you or make you feel inadequate.

Applications: Sports technique correction in golf. Team communication. Sport transitions.

Golf swing improvement protocols

Price and ordering

Online course $59. Online course with implementation support $395. Workshop price on application. Secure order form.

Customers: Golf swing improvement protocol

• Australian Golf Teachers Federation (Australia)
• Professional Golfers Association (USA)
• Professional Golfers Association of Australia
• Golf Queensland (Australia)
• Queensland Academy of Sport (Australia)
• Range Riders (Canada)
• JK Golf Gmbh (Germany)
• Transformational Golf (Australia)
• The Farm Golf (USA)
• Golf Your Way (Australia)
• Midland Golf (Australia)
• Regency Park Golf Course (Australia)
• Research Institute for Olympic Sports (Finland)
• Asian Canadian Golf Academy (Canada)
• Australian Institute of Sport (Australia)
• Box Hill Golf Club (Australia)
• David Milne Golf Academy (Australia)
• Golf Your Way (Australia)
• New Zealand Academy of Sport, North (New Zealand)
• Swedish Golf Team (Sweden)

Disclaimer

The organisations listed on this page received training in Old Way/New Way^® Learning Systems. This does not imply that these organisations endorse Old Way/New Way^® Learning Systems or that they endorse Personal Best Academy or SimTrain International. Neither does it mean that Personal Best Academy/SimTrain International endorses these listed organisations. Customers who have indicated that they do not wish to be listed here do not appear on this page.