How I Approach Teaching
“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening - and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.”
How we learn is extremely complex
The golf swing is one of the most dynamic movements in sports, so I have spent many years and thousands of hours consuming everything I can about motor control and the biomechanics of how people learn. I want to make learning golf as easy and accessable as possible, to produce results as fast as possible. There is more than one solution to every road block, and everyone learns a little bit differently. When you break the learning process down, how we acquire skill can be viewed as a process of dynamic stability.
Whether you are young or old, new to the game or an advanced golfer, it does not matter, my process is the same. My lessons are structured into 3 parts:
You will receive digestable information about the movement itself
I will apply constraints to make the movement easier to learn.
Then I will offer challenges designed to help you develop and strengthen the motor pattern/s
Progressing in skill
In the early stages of learning a new movement, I reduce the degrees of freedom by 1) limiting the number of moving pieces, and 2) keeping things simple, so you can focus on the essentials that are specific to that movement pattern. Once a golfer begins to master that pattern, I then introduce more refined and complex movements. These more nuanced movements develop functional variability, which is what allows you to adapt to changes within the performance environment. Once this has been mastered, then we move onto the final stage: producing specific, desired results across a variety of environments and conditions.
OWN YOUR GAME
An important goal for me is that a student leaves with complete autonomy (aka ownership), both intrinsic (internally) and extrinsic (externally).