Golf practice, a high quality program must focus on mind, body and swing. Focusing on just your golf swing could be the source of what is not working. A quality golf practice program is more than swinging a golf club and trying to hit the golf ball a 100 or 1000 times a day or week. If anything this could be harming your swing and worse causing you unnecessary injury.
Remember Your Golf Body Too!
Especially if you already have muscle imbalances or tightness, or joints that are tight or restricted, or postural instability of any kind. Something like 53% of male golfers suffer from low back pain. Shoulders, hips, knees, wrists, elbows, neck, and feet injuries are common.
Lessons cannot compensate for this. Nor can hitting balls at the range. Physical conditioning specific to golf is essential for having the right foundation to start with to build your swing and game on. Otherwise are are simply working against yourself.
So there are 3 areas you need to educate yourself about, get properly assessed for and have a modelling program to build a strong and powerful game built on precision, timing, accuracy and skill.
Your Golf Body Practice Program
Firstly, get your body assessed. Things to look at that are golf specific are muscle and joint flexibility and balance, postural stability in setup and through your swing. You might have short muscles, tight joints or musculo-skeletal mis-alignments to work on. You may need a corrective exercise program to build stability and flexibility first. Followed by an ongoing program for building strength and power.
Golf is seen as a sport of relaxation. It can be very relaxing mentally. Golf is highly athletic sport on par with soccer, football, baseball, hockey or martial arts when you consider the repetitive, high impact nature of hitting 40 plus highly explosive shots using virtually every muscle and joint in the body in rotation. So, physical conditioning and a sound center of gravity is extraordinarily important as a foundation for improved sustained performance.
Build A Solid Golf Swing Routine
Secondly, a program to build a repeatable swing. A solid, consistent routine that produces a consistent square impact on the ball. And building routines for your short game and putting too. It is about consistent timing and rhythm as well as the time frame of execution.
Build Golf Mental Toughness
Thirdly, but not least is building a strong golf mental game. Your mind and body rule your emotions, attitude, decisions, course management, thinking, strategy, focus, attention, perceptions, awareness on the course. Build a strong discpline for the task at hand. Playing as few shots as possible. It takes diligence and concentration.
Your Golf Practice Program Should Focus On This Too
So, once you have your golf swing fundamentals and set up sorted there are more important things to focus on.
Such as:
- Building a strong pre shot routine.
- Focus on playing to a target.
- Learning to relax.
- Get your balance and alignment right.
- Focus your eyes and thinking on the target.
- Play for accuracy instead of distance.
- Tap into your natural swing and rhythm.
- Learning your distances.
Think It Through Plan For Success
My point here is if you take a bit of time and planning up front, you can save a lot of time and frustration down the track. Golf is a mind body and swing game as well as skill. It is a wonderful challenge and a worthy pursuit.
By the way make your equipment is fitted to you as well. Do everything possible to set yourself up for optimal results rather than working against your self on every which way.
