CHAPTER 7
WORLD-CLASS WEDGE TRAINING
If you chase short-term results, you’ll often feel lost in your pursuit of a better wedge game. Developing the necessary skills demands working in a specific way and experiencing certain things, both of which cannot be circumvented.
One of the first lessons I teach a new student is that what you do today doesn’t affect what happens tomorrow—it affects what takes place a month from now. It’s a comment on the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective when you train, and on the discipline required to stay on point and allow the cumulative effect of your efforts to work their magic. The Danish-American photographer and social reformer Jacob Riis said it best: “When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Improvement isn’t an epiphany. It’s a process, but what does the process for developing a world-class wedge game look like? Obviously, it includes a technical component, a skill-development component and a mental/championship-feeling component. But how much effort do you need to expend? From my own experiences as a struggling mini-tour player, I know that simply “putting in the hours” isn’t the answer, and that doing so can actually make you worse. Effective training is about adopting a smart approach to improvement and getting the most out of the time you do invest. At the competitive level, everyone practices. Those who train correctly are the ones who reap the greatest benefit.
So let’s add two more components to your training. The first is an intensity component. When you practice, it’s critical to lock in on your intent at every moment. Working with such high intensity and focus requires significant mental energy, so you can’t do it well for a very long period of time. This means you need to practice less than you think. The second extra component is a structural one. There are two goals to training: 1) to confirm that you’re executing wedge fundamentals correctly, and 2) to enhance your physical and mental skills. As the intent of what you’re trying to accomplish changes (from confirmation to enhancement, and vice versa), so should the structure of the time being invested.
THE RIGHT STUFF
Most golfers don’t consider the need for balance in training. They typically spend too much time on one side of the spectrum or the other. Those who dwell too much on skill enhancement are so-called “feel players,” which in my book is code for “I don’t have a clue what to do and it’s too hard to pay attention to fundamental details, so I’ll just ignore them completely.” (I understand the rationalization, but not the label—everyone plays by feel. That’s what golf is.) At the other end of the spectrum are the “technicians,” or players who have fallen overly in love with mechanics. These golfers believe that having perfect technique solves every problem. (“If I could just get my right arm in the correct position, I’d be scratch.”) They train like robots chasing their own elusive picture of perfection, which changes so often that they fail to reach any destination at all. By failing to balance their work on fundamentals with skill development (the “art” of playing golf), technicians tend to hit the proverbial performance wall.
Personality plays a role for sure, but neither approach on its own can optimize and sustain performance. Great wedge play is science and art. Having perfect mechanics means nothing without the ability to feel shots, adjust to varying conditions, or play with confidence. Likewise, the ability to focus on the target and see your shot will take you only so far if your mechanics aren’t worthy of your trust. You need both sound fundamentals and the ability to feel the shot and target to be great, and this mandates a structural mix in the type of work you do. LPGA Tour legend and ten-time major winner Annika Sörenstam got it right when she said that one of the reasons she succeeded where others failed was that she “always paid attention to her intention” when she practiced.
BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF BLOCK PRACTICE
When your intent is to work on your fundamentals, you’ll benefit more by performing what coaches call “block practice.” In block practice, it’s critical to put yourself in a pure learning environment—in other words, whatever you’re working on must be repeatable, and there must be an available mechanism to confirm that you’re doing it correctly. Working on getting the club to move up the shaft plane in your backswing while standing next to a mirror is a great example of block practice. The benefit of block practice isn’t solely about learning “how to do it,” as most technicians believe. The fact that you’re confirming that you are “doing it” is the important part. Learning a new move may take hundreds of repetitions to get right; confirming it may require only five or six. After the initial learning phase (which shouldn’t last much longer than a few weeks), you should transition to short bursts of block practice (daily bursts for tournament-level players) while applying forethought and focus to make it pay off.
If block practice is essential, why isn’t more of it better? According to an article by Dr. Noa Kageyama in his Bulletproof Musician blog on the contextual interference research by Manhattan School of Music professor Dr. Christine Carter, repeatedly doing the same thing over and over is not in line with how our brains work:
We are hardwired to pay attention to change, not repetition. This hardwiring can already be observed in proverbial infants. Show a baby the same object over and over again and they’ll gradually stop paying attention through a process called “habitization.” Change the object and the attention returns full force. The same goes for adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated that there’s progressively less brain activation when stimuli are repeated. The fact is, the repeated information does not receive the same amount of processing as new information.
We get lured into doing block practice—performing the same act over and over—partly because of our inherent impatience with the learning process and our wanting to feel like we’re performing better “right now.” We also succumb to block practice because it’s easy and makes us feel good. Who wouldn’t perform an act better or more comfortably after twenty repetitions? According to Dr. Kageyama, “It’s precisely this feeling of comfort and improvement that reinforces our reliance on block practice. The problem with this kind of practicing, however, is that the positive results we feel in the practice room today do not lead to the best long-term learning tomorrow.”
Block practice breeds both a false sense of competency and false confidence, which quickly disappears when we face the realities of our on-course performance later on. Moreover, the technician’s belief that they’ll ultimately reach technique perfection has been proven by science to be a futile one, because our brains are wired for adaptability, not consistency. To wit, research performed on the neural basis of sensorimotor integration and movement control by Stanford University professors Dr. Krishna Shenoy, Dr. Mark Churchland, and Dr. Afsheen Afshar:
Our brains simply do not allow us to “code” the swing perfectly so it will repeat time after time. We are all in a sense doomed to a level of inconsistent swings. It’s as if each time the brain tries to solve the problem of planning how to move, it does it anew. Practice and training can help the brain solve the problem more capably, but people and other primates simply aren’t wired for consistency, like computers or machines. Instead, people seem to be improvisers by default.
One of the beautiful things in golf is that no two shots are alike. Being able to adapt, trust, and judge are of the utmost value, and there’s less time available to develop these essential skills when you waste time trying to perfect the “un-perfectable.” Again, the Stanford professors:
Most players, when performing poorly, attribute the result to technique and spend more time practicing. Yet, the survey results show that players who are “on track” are actually practicing less! The pervasive belief is we can “groove” our swing to the point it just repeats and repeats while science is telling us the brain will never allow this to happen. If we accept the fact that the swing will always be somewhat variable from day to day, then practice can take on a more constructive approach. The message: flexibility beats consistency.
Science clearly supports my observational belief that overdoing block practice carries with it diminishing returns. So why do it at all? As both a coach and a player, I know that a golfer’s life is a petri dish for the ongoing experiment of “feel versus real,” which is one of the reasons why golf is both the best game to play and the most difficult. Usually, when you start playing poorly, it’s only because you’re not doing what you think you are. Sure, you can define and write down the fundamentals that you believe in (chest pointed in front of the ball, club up the plane with the toe up, finesse sequence, etc.), but are you actually executing them? You can’t assume either yes or no. A reasonable number of perfect repetitions in a well-designed daily block-practice session will provide the confirmation you need and keep you heading down the correct path. Continuity will ultimately breed confidence and mastery. As I say to my students, “A little bit of well-designed block practice a day keeps the swing doctor away.”
BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF RANDOM PRACTICE
When your intent shifts from fundamentals to enhancing your physical and mental skills, block practice takes a backseat. Here, the most efficient way to work is through “random practice.” As you progress through my wedge systems, random training will make up approximately 70 percent of your practice-time investment. Why? Because there’s so much beyond executing technique. Great players are great judges, and nothing improves judgment like randomly assessing shots. Things like choosing the right club and shot for the situation you’re facing; landing the ball in the appropriate spot; controlling trajectory; sensing grain, wind, and break; imparting the correct amount of energy to the ball; and adapting to varied lies so that you can strike the ball solidly regardless of the circumstance. Random practice is an opportunity to practice being mentally organized so that you can maintain focus, build confidence, and adopt a resilient attitude regardless of outcome, traits that all represent the mind and judgment skills of a champion. It’s what made Seve Ballesteros a legend. Random practice is nothing more than using focus and attention to learn something from every swing, and then tapping this knowledge to further refine the ability in question. I call this doing “hard math,” and I commonly give the following example in my golf schools:
Two aspiring students stage a math competition. One student performs the same basic problem over and over (7 + 7, 7 + 7, 7 + 7, etc.). The other completes half as many problems, but attempts more difficult and varied equations (108 + 71, 146 – 33, 66 × 3, etc.). The competition lasts a month. It’s easy to tell which student, after thirty days, will have worked harder and is destined to become the better mathematician.
Even though your daily performances may feel worse when you’re doing random-practice sessions, these skills will transfer to the course more effectively than the ones developed under block-practice conditions.
Improving Your Intentions
It doesn’t matter how or what you’re practicing—you always have to be focused and purposeful. This is the “intensity” component to effective training. Typically, I reserve 10 to 20 percent of my practice time for playing games. Anytime you’re forced to post a score with a reward or punishment that goes along with the outcome (i.e., a game), your intensity and focus skyrockets. Everyone wants to win, so games naturally get you out of doing the things that typically lead to ineffective practice, like being complacent or “going through the motions.” Games elevate skill transfer. If you succeed on the practice facility, you’ll succeed on the course. Many times I ask my players to “win” their way off the green (or out of the bunker) through a game. It’s the perfect way to end a training session.
YOUR BALANCED FOCUSED PRACTICE PLAN
BLOCK PRACTICE: FUNDAMENTAL DEVELOPMENT
10 to 20 percent of your daily dedicated practice time
1. Pay attention to your intention. What are you going to accomplish in this time frame?
2. Pay attention to the details: grip, alignment, ball position, balance, etc.
3. Put yourself in a learning environment: Go slow; focus internally; practice with immediate, accurate, and reliable feedback.
4. Be honest with yourself. Occasionally take inventory and adjust your plan if necessary (using video or by taking a lesson).
5. When making changes, focus on the process and not the immediate results.
6. Stay focused on the same thought for at least three weeks.
7. When training mechanics, intersperse drills with regular swings. (Remember, it won’t always be fun or comfortable when changing to a new move.)
8. Never practice “looking” at a target while “thinking” mechanics. Hit into open space or remove the ball from the equation when possible. Once you have the confirmation you need, quit.
RANDOM PRACTICE: SKILL DEVELOPMENT
70 percent of your daily dedicated practice time
1. Practice your full process and “trusting” with external focus (see here). Picture yourself in tournament situations; take the time to get focused on the target and the shot.
2. Shape shots: high, low, draws, fades, etc. Take five yards off or add five yards to your stock shot.
3. Change clubs, lies (uphill, downhill, rough, etc.) and targets frequently.
4. Practice every part of the game and every conceivable situation.
5. Run your full championship-feeling program, including post-shot error detection and positive imprinting (see here).
6. The goal of this type of practice is to learn to perform the action subconsciously and do it without thinking, as you do when you’re tying your shoelaces.
GAMES: TRANSFER TRAINING
10 to 20 percent of your daily dedicated practice time
1. Win your way off the practice facility by playing a simple game, like “Three In a Row”: Hit three fades, draws, or any kind of shot in a row to a certain standard before rewarding yourself with lunch or dinner. (More games listed starting here.) The ability to produce three in a row in practice will translate into the ability to execute that shot with confidence on the course when it counts.
2. Compete against set goals (as in the game “21”) or other like-minded individuals.
This is the right formula to work both “hard and smart” and develop a competitive advantage. Stick to it. If you only have thirty minutes to practice one day, spend only three to five minutes on block training to make sure that your fundamentals are sound. I liken this to Stephen Covey’s analogy in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Let’s make sure that the saw is sharp before we wade into the forest and cut the trees down.” Once your saw is sharp (i.e., block practice is complete), transition to random practice. Work on your process (the steps you run through to get ready to play a shot) as well as your judgment skills and ability to attain and maintain focus. Don’t get stuck in a spot, and never allow yourself a do-over. Rehearse the solution or correction in your mind, then move on. Practice being resilient and tough. Learn, put it behind you, and refocus on the next shot.
After fifteen minutes or so of random practice, finish your training session by winning your way off the practice facility playing one of the practice games presented in Chapter 9 (my favorite is 21).
Practicing within this structure produces maximum efficiency and maximum benefit for the time invested. It should be flexible, because some days you’ll be able to train longer than others. Despite structure, your plan shouldn’t be so regimented that it stifles you.
Regardless of how often or for how long you practice, perform your block-practice exercises every time. This may sound like I’m contradicting the research, but I believe that having a well-designed block-practice regimen is the key to keeping you on track long enough so you can own what you do and remove doubt when you play. It takes so little time, and the mental benefit of knowing you have a “sharp saw” is too important to neglect. I also want you to win your way off the practice facility without fail. If designed properly, a game also takes very little time to play and fosters the desire to compete, which is something all great players relish.
Be adaptive to the day by adjusting how long you spend in random-practice mode. On days when you have a lot of time, do as much random practice as you want, or as long as your intensity and focus remain high. When your time is limited, eliminate random practice completely, especially if you’re playing golf that day. The act of playing is in itself random training, but don’t ever confuse “warming up” with “practice.” When you’re warming up, you’re trying to get your body and mind ready to compete. When you’re practicing, you’re trying to confirm a fundamental technique or grow a skill. These sessions shouldn’t feel or look remotely similar.
Real practice—the kind that’ll actually make a difference—takes knowledge about what to do, forethought about how to do it, feedback while you’re doing it, a willingness to be uncomfortable, and mental discipline and focus. Real practice is tiring, which is why very few people actually do it. Will you? I would hope that your desire or passion for growth, and the knowledge that high-level performers have always separated themselves from others of equal talent by the type of work they do, will keep you on point. The fun you have as you grow and play up to or near your athletic potential will be all the reward you need.