How We Learn to Move

First, let us recognize the distinction between professional tournament golfers and recreational golfers (including the skillful, the average, and the beginner). Let us recognize the physical difference between some of the best athletes in the world and the average everyday ‘working-for-a-living’ golfer. Professional golfers’ physical capabilities and their practice protocols are vastly different from recreational golfers.

So, now that we have established and recognize the vast difference, does that mean that “recreational” golfers cannot produce some amazing results based on their capabilities and potential? Of course not!

Knowing that we cannot devote hundreds and even thousands of hours that tournament golfers must do to refine an athletic body and a repetitive golf swing to preserve and improve their livelihood, I encourage you to take a different perspective on ‘improvement’ and ‘refinement’ of your golf swing and your golf game.

Below are some excellent books on learning golf, learning motor skills, and improving your golf game – which may be of great help to recreational golfers. The common theme in these books is the support of awakening natural instincts through play, fun, exploration and self-discovery.A few of the outstanding books are: Play Golf to Learn Golf (Michael Hebron), The Dance of Golf (Joseph K. Morgan), Positive Impact Golf (Brian Sparks), Educate Your Brain (Kathy Brown), Play (Stuart Brown), and How We Learn to Move (Bob Gray, Ph.D.).

I’d like to share a few words about How We Learn to Move. A dominant theme throughout the book is the importance of learning through variability and adaptability rather than trying to implement the “correct” mechanics of movement through repetition. The subtitle of the book, A Revolution in the Way We Coach and Practice Sports Skills, provides a map to the theme of the book. As an athletic coach educator, Gray begins with these questions: “How is sports practice and coaching becoming more creative and fun – giving athletes the opportunity to explore and support their own individuality and creativity? Why is it time we move away from the idea that we learn through boring repetition of a skill in an un-game like practice environment?”

Gray devotes an entire chapter to the biological fact that “we are built to produce and detect variation.” As a coaching educator, he suggests, “Exploration, creativity and individuality are encouraged……We need to let performers explore, try things out and let them find solutions that work for them……All learners have their own intrinsic dynamics and individual constraints……We need to think of optimality in terms of adaptability……Repetition is not only not the key to becoming skillful – it is impossible. And you (yourself), not a coach or instruction, are the ones with the answers.” 

Regarding coaching, Gray states, “ An effective coach should attempt to design practice environments that foster exploration and promote self-organization rather than prescribing a solution for the athlete……Coaches need to accept that in a complex (biological) system they cannot possibly know what the optimal movement solution for an individual athlete will be. They can only help them find it for themselves.” 

This philosophy supports the theme throughout Awaken Your Inner Golfer and  what the instinct-awakening golf exercises in Awaken are designed to do – to awaken YOUR inner golfer and find YOUR flow – not someone else’s golf swing or an instructor’s requirement for “correct” golf swing mechanics. We are individuals and each of us has unique movement and golf swing dynamics. Our job is to discover, honor, and value our uniqueness. That is the type of “refinement” for our golf swing that we need to do!

So, in closing, I again urge you to utilize the concepts of play, fun, exploration and self-discovery in your golf practice, filled with variability. We play games! They are intended to be fun!!