Optimum Challenge Point and Golf

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?

Well all I can say is that when hit the range, never knowing about this article I always switch up the clubs quite often anyway and also my aiming too and just about everything.

Whether its physical or mental or both its always - Do this and do that, don't do this and don't do that, do this but do it that way, do that but don't do it this way. practice like this and not like that but then do it like this when things are like that. Everything, every way upside down, inside out, and backwards. And many times the opinions and studies and advice is contradicting even when from reliable sources. Right or wrong I just don't know.

I'm not trying to sound mean at all but I just sometimes get tired of it all. Whats really right or wrong with any of it and who is really to say what is best? What works for some doesn't work for others. I just don't know and I don't think anyone really does. If you find something you believe in and/or want to try and are comfy with the decision then go for it. In the end that's all that matters.

Like me and a million other people, you also want to get as good at golf as you can so like me and a million others you read and gather info and listen to advice and try this and try that. We may under do things and we may over do things, may make it too complicated or keep it too simple. Everyone is so very different and the advices we receive are very different . I am convinced that anyone is either going to poses the ability to get good at golf or they aren't. Hopefully you will be one of the luckier ones and find what works best for you and have good success doing it.

Like rollin, I have always switched clubs regularly on the range as my thinking was that you don't hit the same club twice in a row on the course, so hitting the same shot with the same club 10, 15 times didn't feel productive to me

I have seen it mentioned in the past on here about imagining you are playing your home course and play the club you would use for each shot - so for me it would be a 4i, 9i/PW depending on how straight the 4i is (my 1st hole is a dogleg left at around 200-210yds with trees left and OOB right), then I would hit a driver or 3W followed by anything from a 7i to 9i for the second hole.....and so on. Then every once in a while I would take out a wedge and hit a little chip towards an imaginary target to practice those shots when you inevitably miss the green

TheDoctor said:

Like rollin, I have always switched clubs regularly on the range as my thinking was that you don't hit the same club twice in a row on the course, so hitting the same shot with the same club 10, 15 times didn't feel productive to me

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Speak for yourself :bye:...

All the article really said was "don't stand there and hit it god and just beat balls out there." Slow down and focus on your swing chnage.

So much in golf depends on your stance and aim that if you stand in one place and hit balls you miss setting up to the ball carefully when you stand in one place and rake balls over and hit them rather than setting up to each shot like you do on the course.
To add to that, beating balls on the range is a bad plan for improvement. Its gets unfocused and looses its purpose and ends in hitting balls just getting through the bucket so you can go home.

Tedfroop said:

All the article really said was "don't stand there and hit it god and just beat balls out there." Slow down and focus on your swing chnage.

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That's really not what the article was about at all. It is about a a method for learning (the Optimum Challenge Point) that applies to much more than golf. It's more a theory about how the OCP can apply to golf based on what happens to short-term and long-term memory when trying to learn the correct swing. Studies of the OCP in areas other than golf have proven that it's actually easier to commit something to memory when you are being challenged because the challenge itself overloads the short-term memory, forcing your long-term memory (and subconscious/muscle memory) to take over.

Having the (correct or best possible) golf swing for a golfer become subconscious/muscle memory is what makes that golfer better.

I just wanted to put up a quick update. I tried this Mon and Tue during two 1 hour range sessions and saw some success with short irons, especially in being able to come back to a certain distance shot and retain the feel of the needed swing size to make the shot.

I saw less success with the long irons, but nothing major. I typically mis-hit my 3/4 iron more than my 5-PW anyway. I also still struggled with the 3W and Driver, but I normally struggle with them and was working on changes with them too.

Just another update. I've had a few more practice sessions in and feel like this method is helping me. I played a round today and still had 7 penalties with the driver, but 2 were from snap hooks. My normal miss is a big slice. I also had 2 beautiful draws that were close to straight down the fairway and were measured at just under 260 yards.

I think this practice is forcing me to build some confidence with the driver, in that I know I can hit it well which is leading to less over thinking on the tee box. Also, switching through clubs and targets is helping me maintain a more consistent tempo across all of my clubs.

I have not been doing this the last session or two with my short game and could tell today. Short game mishaps probably cost me 9 strokes in today's round.

http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2014/12/youve-been-practicing-golf-all.htmlThis is another article expressing the exact same idea, but with a different title for the theory - "contextual interference effect." This article also says random practice worked far better than blocked practice and was confirmed with tests (baseball, not golf though). But they say it applies because it has to do with how the brain learns, not the specific activity you are trying to learn.

Just read the same article. Good read. But how do you explain the best players in the world are where they are? I would say most of them were on driving ranges practicing with 100s of balls and I assume hitting many of the same shots. I see what you are saying and it makes sense to me but nothing can replace hitting 1000s of balls and grooving in a good swing thought.

Awkward silence said:

Just read the same article. Good read. But how do you explain the best players in the world are where they are? I would say most of them were on driving ranges practicing with 100s of balls and I assume hitting many of the same shots. I see what you are saying and it makes sense to me but nothing can replace hitting 1000s of balls and grooving in a good swing thought.

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They are saying that you groove that swing thought by making practice more difficult. You can still use the same swing thought while rotating through clubs and targets. All the research is indicating that doing more difficult things allows you to learn faster than if you take the easy route (regardless of what you are trying to achieve).

Maybe the best in the world aren't just the best from drilling 1000's of the same shot. Most say that they spend the majority of their practice time hitting random/multiple distances/targets. Very few say they spend a lot of time doing blocked practice.

Blocked practice has it's place, but it seems like it's better suited for beginner golfers and for the early stages of a swing change for experienced golfers. After that, you take those same thought and put them into practical application.