Maximize Your Limited

Practice Time

NOTE: This post is intended for intermediate to advanced players. For a novice still building a basic motor pattern, too much variability too early can disrupt the ability to acquire a basic swing motion.

THE WEEKEND GOLFER'S SNAG

Most golfers don’t have as much time as they wish to practice improving and maintaining their games. Even if you do, the approach in this post can optimize your time spent elevating your skills. More benefit in less time—right on!

How you practice is a major key to maximizing your time and gains. You can "juice" your productivity when you do get some practice time in. How? Assuming you’ve made a wise decision as to what to practice, the answer is: involving yourself actively in each repetition.

GO ALL IN

Your practice can and should be an active process. By active I mean engaged. Being more deeply engaged usually leads to greater awareness of what you are doing in the moment. In being fully engaged and present on each repetition, you generate greater understanding (and skill).

Problem solving is an excellent way to be and stay engaged. Practice is more effective when you repeat the process of problem-solving rather than simply repeating a movement. By making each repetition a problem-solving exercise, you assimilate more of the movement you’re practicing.

Research shows that introducing variability can significantly accelerate learning the time it takes to acquire a new motor movement by slightly varying the movement. This keeps your brain more engaged throughout the learning process. Only subtle variations are needed to achieve a greater gain in less time. Simple. And awesome.

You could, for example alter one parameter per shot---ball position, weight distribution at address, tempo, intent (e.g., "hit a low fade" vs. "high draw").

Each variation creates a new problem to solve, keeping the brain engaged. Also, doing so offers you contrast. Contrast is an important aspect of learning. This can't be overstated. Choosing the movement you want to ultimately ingrain is made more clear by performing slightly different movements from the motor pattern you're going fort.

Make movements progressively more challenging, at your pace, which will promote your deeper engagement in the task.

As important as contrast is to your practice, accurate feedback as to what you are actually doing is equally so. Using video, strike spray on the face of your club, closely observing all of your ball flights, a launch monitor are all excellent feedback mechanisms.

Apply the above ideas in a couple of practice sessions and observe the benefits to your productivity. It will make your practices more interesting, for sure. And it may release the creative genius within you, and you will likely begin conceiving of ways to present yourself with problems to solve.

In a future post I will share other ways to enhance your practice efforts so you can help yourself learn faster and better, and have more fun practicing the game we love.

Gerry Benton has been a teaching professional and golf performance coach since 1991. For questions or comments contact Gerry at gerry@bentongolf.com.