January 15, 2021
Author: Shawn Clement
Positional Golf Coaching
Positional based teaching is internal focus based learning. Where one is instructed to place their body parts into the positions one would have when they are performing like the professionals we see on television. This is extremely backwards thinking as the body positions of that particular professional were acquired as young kids sending a golf ball towards a target with no thinking involved at all.
Task-Based Golf Teaching
Task based teaching and learning is when the student is given a simple task to execute and the body is performing this task without thinking and is simply reacting to it’s immediate environment. This is called external focus and has been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be the most effective way to acquire and keep motor skills through our “self preserving wiring” we have used for millions of years, passed on from one generation to the next, in the best ways of surviving and thriving.
Because we are already “Pinocchio without the strings”, what would be the point in instructing this machine to use all of it’s separate body parts simultaneously in performing what we perceive as a complicated and complex set of movement patterns?
When you say to a child, pick up that flat stone and skip the stone off the pond like this; would you need to instruct how to hold, when to shift weight, when to clear the hips and by how many degrees to clear the hips and when to let go of the stone after the hand has passed the elbow and the fingers have passed the hands? We would have become extinct a long long time ago!
So now, let’s look at one of our core tasks that relate immediately to the task of swinging a club through a ball towards a specific target: the cutting of grass with a “grass whip” or a “sling blade”. In this video, you will see how easy it is to acquire said task, then become an expert at it within hours or days and not weeks or months or years.
And for more in depth insight of what Wisdom in Golf offers in their style of coaching please go ahead see for yourself right here
Co-authored by: Golf Test Dummy (Chad Ferguson)