Kevin Chin Golf Blog
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 04:36
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The State of Teaching to beginners and juniors.
We live in a video obsessed society, especially when it comes to golf. I believe one reason for this is because unlike most sports golf is not a react sport. I call it the still ball syndrome.
Every motion we make can be analyzed, from everyday activities to athletic movements. Especially when you see video at super slow motion. As teachers we should become obsessed with what the gofer is ‘thinking’ and trying to accomplish with the club to the ball, and why. We should focus less on teaching what every body part is doing throughout the swing, especially for juniors and beginners. When students become totally focused on their body parts there is a noticeable rigid uncomfortable unnatural manufactured motion produced. I don’t like to have beginners work too much with video at first because of this reason.
I do enjoy working with video for mid and low handicappers. One reason is that students can see that they may be doing things in their swing that they aren’t trying to do, maybe even something they are trying to avoid. I try to prove to them that what they are ‘trying’ to do and actually doing can be different. I use this to convince them that when watching golfers on TV the same can hold true for them. A great example of a golfer obviously not trying to do something in a swing is Laura Davies feet being in the air at impact during her driver swing. To me this shows Laura trying to swing her hands as fast as possible and the result is her feet getting airborne.
I want one goal of my students is for them to focus on what good golfers are thinking. A way for them to accomplish this is to ask questions like a child always asking why, why, why. A result I find is that when taking instruction or watching and reading instruction they have a much more educated idea of what is trying to be communicated in the lesson.
Typical students that I get that have had previous instruction are stuck on a few ‘tips.’ Most take this list of tips literally, especially beginners and juniors. Here is my take on a few typical tips.
Explanations, or different ways to look at these tips;
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Keep your head down. – To me this is trying to say that you hit through the golf ball on the downswing. Golfers typically ‘pick their heads up’ because they are trying to help the ball in the air by hitting it on the upswing. When people take this tip literally they are still looking down at the end of their swing, which actually makes it harder for their club to travel down through the ball on the downswing because the apex (lowest point of the club) of their swing is at the ball and it should be in front of the ball. This restriction also doesn’t allow their arms to go around their body.
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Keep your left arm straight. – When a student is told this what typically happens is they will stiffen up their whole left side of their upper torso. Locking their left elbow and the shoulder becomes very rigid, restricting the backswing.
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Shift your weight. – The weight ‘shifts’ naturally when you swing the club back. The issue that happens typically with this tip is that the student will laterally try to produce a weight shift, which produces a slide. Instead weight shift should be called a weight twist. Everything that you twist back has weight to it, therefore you have more weight on your back foot at the top of the backswing while not trying to purposely move the weight back.
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Swing out to the target. – The swing is a constant motion of the arms swinging around the body. Twisting is working with your bodies’ mechanics and a major producer to speed and efficiency. Not to mention the importance of arms to the ball’s direction. I tell my students that to be most efficient one non-negotiable aspect of their swing is that the arms always swing around the body.
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