Feel vs. Real: How to Practice Better

You may have heard of the title phrase before, but do you understand how to use this to make your practice sessions better?

Feel, a kinesthetic sense, or what some call proprioception, is more important in golf than in any other sport I've participated in.

The reason is twofold: one, the club is out of our eyesight for most of its journey - we don't have eyes in the back of our heads. And two, when the club is in front of our faces, it is simply moving too fast to be seen as anything but a blur. And when you swing at tour speeds, you don't even see that.

So we must FEEL the clubhead.

Now if feel was real, we could watch a Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus video one time and be set for life. But in reality, you're doing only what you think is your version of Tiger's swing. And more often than not, you are far away from the real product.

This is where visual feedback becomes crucial. It comes in many forms - a friend's or coach's eye, a mirror, a still photo, a video, or a slow motion video. It is imperative that you consistently use one or more of these feedback forms when you practice. We need to fill in the blanks and see what we are REALLY doing, not just what we think we are.

In my vast experience hitting golf balls, I have found that for me, if I am attempting to change a behavior in my swing, I need to feel something 5 TIMES different in order to make the correction. Let me give you an example of this.

Say I was swinging about 5 degrees out to in, causing me to cut across the ball and hit pulls and slices. In my wildest dreams I want to play a baby draw with a club path of 1 degree in to out. This is a net difference of 6 degrees. But yet if I feel like I'm swinging 6 degrees different, I hardly change my pattern at all!

Not every golfer is like this. I have found a small percentage who will actually swing as much different as they intended. But it goes for probably 95% of us.

Back to me. Instead I will need to feel 6 times 5 or 30 degrees of change. I must attempt, on the range at first, to swing a full hour further right than normal, which will be very awkward and intimidating at first. It might feel like I'm swinging straight at the trees on the right! But feel is usually not real.

Instead my ball will take off 5 yards right of center and gently draw back in to the middle of the fairway.

Now don't get me started on the exaggeration principle of practice!

Good practice is hard. Leaving your comfort zone is more important than actually hitting good shots.