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What I Learned at the Top 100 Instructors Summit That Will Help you in 2012

A few months ago I attended the Top 100 Teaching Summit in Orlando Florida. The Top 100 Teaching Summit happens every two years. I haven’t missed one since Golf Magazine started putting them together. In my opinion, it is the best venue to learn about different aspects of the teaching industry. The two day summit encompasses presentations you would think would make up a teaching summit of that caliber. There are presentations about biomechanics, full swing, short game, putting, transferring changes from the range to the performance on the golf course, etc.

Part of what makes the summit great is the participants. This year there were approximately 75 attendees. When you put some of the most dedicated instructors that are all interested in learning from each other so they can help their students to a greater degree, you ultimately will get a great outcome.

I took away many great ideas this year, but one of the best things was a clearer understanding of why it takes students a long time to change ingrained patterns in their swing or any part of their game. I also have a better understanding as to why after a student has seemingly made a change and has broken a bad habit after some time, the old pattern seems to creep back in at least to some degree if not all the way.

Without a clear understanding of why it is happening, it can be very frustrating to a player and even an instructor.

The reason for that phenomenon is that when a person first learns to do anything there is a lot of conscious thought as the brain is telling the body how to move. After enough repetition your brain starts to move from the conscious to the subconscious. Once that has happened, the person has actually created a myelin. To keep this in an understandable language, imagine a myelin as a neurological pathway, kind of a road map of your brain, telling your body how and in what sequence to move to create an action. A myelin exists for anything from writing your name, to swinging a golf club. Once that initial myelin has been formed it never goes away. It will always be there.

What can a player learn from this? A number of things. First, you can’t break old habits since they will always be there, so don’t expect to break them, or worse feel like you are failing when they seemingly work their way back into your game. What you can do is create new myelin (new habits or patterns of movements). To do that you have to have an intellectual understanding of what you need to do, then a clear picture in your mind, which is why I am a firm believer in video. When I use video in a lesson, it’s not so I can see a student’s movement, it is so I can help them to see and therefore create a clear picture and understanding of what needs to be changed. Once that’s accomplished, the next step progresses from learning to doing, which means feel. A player has to connect the dots of intellectually understanding something to putting it into a motion or movement. Once they begin to feel the difference from old to new, they need to repeat it enough times consciously that they start to do it in the subconscious. Once that happens they have created a new myelin.

Now to apply the principle to the golf swing; let’s say a player over rotates their arms, in effect opening the club face and allowing the club to get too inside in the backswing. The correction would be to learn to decrease the rotation of the forearms keeping the face more square to the path as well as keeping the club head on the correct plane. The feel may be to keep the club head outside of the hands with the trail palm hinging more toward the ground. A drill maybe to put a water bottle two feet behind the ball on the proper path so that when the club is swinging back it knocks the bottle over. Enough repetition done correctly and the player has created a new myelin. Well done, mission accomplished, except that’s just the take away. We still have the rest of the swing to deal with. As a player progresses to other parts of their swing, the original myelin of the old takeaway could come back out and usually does.

I guess if you look at this information the wrong way it could be discouraging, which is certainly not my intent. My intent is to get people to embrace the reality of change. Starting with a clear understanding evolving into a feel repeated enough times, a new subconscious habit myelin can be formed. Does it mean that the old habit won’t ever come back, of course not! But that’s okay, once a player is made aware they are falling back into an old habit, it isn’t a change that has to happen, it’s just accessing a different myelin. After that happens enough times, the new myelin can actually become the dominant myelin. That’s where progress is really starting to happen.

Bottom line, learn to embrace the reality. It takes intellectual understanding, feel, repetition of the proper movement, patience, and time for real change, but it certainly can be done. Also a word to the wise; if you know a new player, especially a junior, there is nothing more important than quality instruction in the beginning. Ten good lessons could replace 100 lessons in a player’s future and greatly increase a player’s ultimate potential and enjoyment of the game in the future.

Make 2012 the year you start to get better for life. Embrace a plan and an approach to improving for the long term. Once you get on the other side of it you will be very happy you did.