==================================================== Newsletter - Issue 174 Date 08/16/11 ==================================================== ==================================================== TCT Quick Tip - The Benefits of Freezing ==================================================== If you are playing in your club championship soon, here are a few thoughts to improve your putting right now. Freeze your head. Move your head you miss the putt, especially so if you lift your head at impact. Freeze your target side wrist ( left wrist for righties ). Move your wrist you miss the putt. On a long lag putt, this is a recipe for a three putt. Freeze your rear end. Move your butt, you miss the putt. Enjoy, Tom ==================================================== Golf Tip: How We Learn a Golf Swing ==================================================== How We Learn a Golf Swing I am a junkie for information on this topic, and as I've said before - The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle should be a must read if you want to understand how our body and brain mesh to learn the golf swing. Learning new golf swing moves without a lot of practice is pure science fiction, in spite of some websites that claim it to be a viable way to learn a swing. Psychologists and Kinesiologists have made great strides in recent years understanding how we learn new things. Because of a golf swing's complexity, the body must learn it in parts or stages, not all at once. You may have heard of the term “muscle memory”; a motion must be “stored in muscle memory” to be automatic. In fact, muscles don't have memory; only the brain does. The brain controls all motions of all muscles through electrical signals in the nervous system. Millions of neurons in the brain “fire” signals to one another, leading to the muscles. The more efficient the sequence of firing between neurons becomes, the more efficient the muscular motion. When first learning a motion, the neuron pathways are not efficient. The more often the motion is repeated correctly, the more efficient the firing between neurons becomes (automatic). The challenge in learning the golf swing, is to program the neurons of your brain to fire in the proper sequence, efficiently. This requires repetition and practice. Kinesiology scientists believe it takes: 1) About 100 repetitions for a neuron pathway to be created 2) About 3000 to 5000 repetitions for mastery (to become automatic). At first blush that seems like a lot of swings and practice, but some movements can be done relatively quickly ... and if you think about it, 100 reps a day for 50 days equals 5,000 reps. 5,000 reps equals mastery. I was teaching a hip turn motion to students today, and we did 25 reps at the rate of 1 rep per second. You could do over 100 reps in 2 minutes. That's not a lot of time in anyones book. However, that was one small move of many that must be mastered in a golf swing, one of many connected to one another. When neural pathways are established and solidified (mastery), the brain will follow the proper sequence of signals to perform the task, automatically. Just like you don't need to “think” about the proper sequence of motions in walking, the golf swing, although more complex, is the same. All that is needed is a conscious swing cue to begin, and the brain will tell the muscles how to do the rest. We must practice enough so that the brain establishes an efficient sequence of neuron firing. An analogy would be learning the most efficient route to follow in getting from one point in a city to another (without your Garmin!). Science tells us some important things about repetition. "It is a well known principle that learning is better when training trials are spaced out than when given all together," says Dr. Wayne Sossin , of McGill University in Montreal. Sossin proved that spreading the production of the neuro-transmitter serotonin over five weeks of repetition leads to better learning than a cloudburst of serotonin over a short time. That's one of the reasons that I encourage my students to do their drills in 100 repetition sessions as opposed to much higher reps in a quest for quick mastery. I actually think "quick mastery" is a king sized oxymoron, especially so as the implied concept relates to mastering an aspect of a golf swing. Other researchers, TJ Shors and her team at Rutgers University, have shown that the adult brain makes new neurons in substantial numbers -- between 5,000 to 10,000 a day. These cells are thought to be available to capture new learning - if such is presented to them. If not they die within two weeks. Use 'em or lose 'em. That means keeping your practice recurring at regular time intervals will yield the best results. Here's more on why practice and repetition are so important. There is a substance produced in the brain called myelin that acts as an insulator, it wraps around your neurons and prevents the electrical current that energizes your networks from leaking into the periphery. Brains that have thick layers of myelin think and act faster. When Albert Einstein's brain was dissected they found glial cells in much higher concentration then in a normal brain and that was about the only difference between his brain and a normal one. Glial cells produce myelin. When you repeat the same motion, it sends a signal down the pathway and it is that signal which prompts the brain cell to generate a wrap of myelin. Do this enough and you have yourself a neuro -template of how to repeat the motion - and the more you wrap it, the more efficient the performance. It all boils down to enough practice reps done correctly ay regular intervals. It's really not that overwhelming when you break it down. If you want to get good, give it a shot! Enjoy, Tom