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There is an interesting article in this months (Dec 2014) Golf magazine titled "Take the Range Bucket Challenge" by Dr. T.J. Tomasi that really struck a cord with me. I couldn't find the article posted online yet, but it essentially talks about the ideal practice regimen. He says you reach this ideal practice regimen through use of the optimum challenge point (ocp), which can apply to anything, not just golf. The idea of the OCP is that if you practice the same thing too much in one sitting it sort of becomes "easy" for that sitting which allows your short term memory to be primarily functioning during the activity. This inevitably leads to only partial retention and is, in his words, why many golfers kill it on the range but hook/slice it out of bounds on the first tee when you try to take what you've learned to the course (this is me 100% of the time). He says that through studying the OCP in golf he's determined that you should fail roughly 30% of the time during practice to keep it challenging. He says the challenge will over load your short term memory, making your long term memory pick up the slack. So his suggested routine is to start out switching clubs and targets every 10 swings. Once you hit the target area you are trying for comfortable 7 out of 10 times increase your difficulty. The next stage is to switch clubs/targets every 6 swings, and then finally every 3 swings.
I often tweak my swing on my own during a range session or my instructor does it during a lesson and then I practice striping the tweaked shot down the target area of the range with the thought that I'm ingraining the right moves. But I struggle a ton off the tee on the course. I regularly warm up before rounds and leave the warm up after hitting a few really nice draws with my driver, but then almost always hit a push or a push-fade out of bounds on the first fee tees. After that it's a mix of unintentional fades, a handful of draws, and nearly whiffed topped balls that go 20 yards left and out of bounds (amounting to 6 or more penalties and 12 strokes or more on my card per round).
I've already begun stretching my lessons out to every two weeks or longer because I'm just not retaining some of the needed adjustments/tweaks like I use to. I'm going to follow this routine for the next few months and count out 10 balls per club and be more target oriented. Before I'd pick two flags/poles on the range and try to hit between them with the driver as if in between them was an imaginary fairway. I'm going to try and start aiming for a flag/pole even with the driver to try and narrow that aiming room down. I've done this already over the past month or so with my irons and have seen improvement with my wedges and short irons. I've also rotated clubs more frequently during range sessions before and found that (at least for that session) doing so has helped me with my tempo. I tend to over swing with the longer clubs/driver and trying to slow down to switch back to a wedge after the driver or when going from a wedge to the driver seems to help keep that tempo more consistent.
Anyway, what do you guys think? Anybody have success trying to switch up their clubs/routine more often during range sessions?
I often tweak my swing on my own during a range session or my instructor does it during a lesson and then I practice striping the tweaked shot down the target area of the range with the thought that I'm ingraining the right moves. But I struggle a ton off the tee on the course. I regularly warm up before rounds and leave the warm up after hitting a few really nice draws with my driver, but then almost always hit a push or a push-fade out of bounds on the first fee tees. After that it's a mix of unintentional fades, a handful of draws, and nearly whiffed topped balls that go 20 yards left and out of bounds (amounting to 6 or more penalties and 12 strokes or more on my card per round).
I've already begun stretching my lessons out to every two weeks or longer because I'm just not retaining some of the needed adjustments/tweaks like I use to. I'm going to follow this routine for the next few months and count out 10 balls per club and be more target oriented. Before I'd pick two flags/poles on the range and try to hit between them with the driver as if in between them was an imaginary fairway. I'm going to try and start aiming for a flag/pole even with the driver to try and narrow that aiming room down. I've done this already over the past month or so with my irons and have seen improvement with my wedges and short irons. I've also rotated clubs more frequently during range sessions before and found that (at least for that session) doing so has helped me with my tempo. I tend to over swing with the longer clubs/driver and trying to slow down to switch back to a wedge after the driver or when going from a wedge to the driver seems to help keep that tempo more consistent.
Anyway, what do you guys think? Anybody have success trying to switch up their clubs/routine more often during range sessions?