Why Get Lessons Now?

This is not intended or designed to be a cheap plug for instruction. There isn’t even a sign-up option on this page. I’m interested in golfers avoiding the same kind of grief that plagued my days of competition.

My golf game experienced peaks and valleys since I took my first swings. I will certainly go through more, but the lows will not come nearly as close to the previous depths. I don’t intentionally maintain regret, but when I reflect on what I could have done differently in my playing ‘career’ I do consider my lack of a coach a mistake. 

I allowed my ‘self-taught’ moniker to become a source of pride and uniqueness. It should have been nothing more than a brief section of my development. I chose to keep the distinction mainly because of a poor experience with a previous instructor. Justified as it was to get away from his coaching, I shouldn’t have used it as an exemption from other teachers.

In hindsight, I’m certain I would have found a coach who made mistakes and taught some misconceptions. At least that’s better than cycling through a dozen on my own. Even if my swing wasn’t optimized, I could have at least been confident in what I was doing. I didn’t need my swing to be perfect, just sufficient. I needed to know what was working. I would have enjoyed affirmation instead of being plagued by doubt. 

Even when I stumbled upon seemingly good coaches, I balked at the cost. I was not a country club kid. I was a driving range fixture obsessed with the illusion of perfection. My working wage in high school was seven bucks and change. Even though lessons would cost me multiple paychecks, it would have been worth it given the alternative toil I put myself through. I remained isolated from one-on-one instruction all the way through college. I never committed to any instructor. 

What I didn’t realize then was the right information is worth far more than 20 buckets of range balls. Affirmation of correct technique is worth far more than a few pure shots. A good swing with old sticks is far more lethal than a bad one with the latest clubs. 

I believed the hours of practice was an investment in myself. But it was also an un-leveraged resource. Many of my practice sessions were not practice, but searches. I was trying to figure it all out. It was trial and error. Why not save some time and effort and simply get some answers from reputable help? My younger self wouldn’t have an answer for that question - only excuses.

I’ve never been one to tell people to get lessons, even when I began coaching. If you were happy with your game or believe you were on the right track, then keep going. I just care that people are enjoying the game. This outlook changed while studying biomechanics, particularly performance-based movement habits and injury prevention.

When an athlete experiences pain in performing their sport, it is frequently due to repetitive faulty technique, not an immediate trauma. The day the pain or injury began is not always the day the cause began. Athletes unknowingly wear down their bodies with substandard mechanics but only notice or treat when pain or limitations set it. These are tardy signals. These are signals from the body that it cannot handle the mistakes anymore. It’s used up its quota of repetitions. The unnerving deduction is that we could be doing something drastically wrong and not know it. 

Dr. Kelly Starret attests the body burns through its normal durability faster because of poor movement patterns. It’s not just a movement problem; however, it’s also a mentality problem. He cautions that people in general have an unhealthy focus on task completion.

“The most notable problem with our current thinking is that it continues to be based on a model that prioritizes task completion above everything else. It’s a sort of one-or-zero, task done-or-not, weight lifted-or-not, distance swum-or-not mentality. This is like saying, ‘I deadlifted 500 pounds, but I herniated a disc,’ or ‘I finished a marathon, but wore a hole in my knee.’ Imagine that sort of ethic spilling into other aspects of your life: ‘Hey, I made you some toast! But I burned down the house.”

The ever practicing, searching, grinding player can be halted in their tracks with one question. How do you know it made you better? If a player isn’t getting anything productive out of it, then what’s the point!? Players are regressing on the driving range because they’re frequently ingraining bad habits that cause problems they can’t fix. In the midst of this, they are often wearing down their bodies. Golf is not a physically demanding sport but after a certain point, just as Starrett warns, the body will no longer put up with bad movement.

Golfers would be better served, even on a short-term basis, alleviating their bodies of posture errors and malignant movement; however, I want to extend Dr. Starret’s warning beyond compromising the body. I want to warn you of compromising performance. 

What’s the reaction when we hit shots poorly? Hit more shots! Trial and error! Change things! On their own, a player will likely diversify the errors and the neural feedback before narrowing down an issue and resolving it. The necessary solution is to get help. 

The longer incorrect technique is practiced, the more difficult it will be to undo it. The misconception is that players have to retain what’s good about their swing through constant practice. If a movement is done enough times, it will be ingrained automatically. To a degree, that’s true, but golf isn’t a reflexive sport. It will always require a steady, proactive mind. Knowing what creates that good swing and result is a safety net against the unsteady times when the swing doesn’t show up. The swing could feel exactly like it did yesterday, but the results are different – what then? Golf’s answer is to keep churning through range balls and rounds till you find it. That’s the mentality Dr. Starret warns about. You could burn through 200 range balls to fix one error, but in the process, you could develop three new problems. You may not jeopardize your body in the immediate future, but you will jeopardize your mechanics and shot performance.

On occasion, a new client will come in and hit a dozen good shots in their evaluation. No glaring misses. While we both acknowledge the sterling, but brief, performance they just gave, the client never says “wow, you know what, I guess I don’t need lessons.” Why is that? Because they’ll admit what the range warriors and self-identified experts won’t: it’s not always like that. If the latter has that kind of performance they’ll say “I got it going, see! My swing works!” The former will say “see I can do it, but I don’t know how, and I don’t know what ruins it.” Much like Dr. Starret is aware of a bad movement pattern that hasn’t caused injury, these golfers are aware that there is a mechanical problem that hasn’t come to roost yet in the form of bad shots and scores. They see signs of it, maybe a couple wild tee shots or a shanked wedge, but it’s infrequent enough to mistake it as a fluke. Both injury and bad performance are being held off by the same thing: compensation. 

Eventually, the athlete’s body will give way to injury as Dr. Starret suggests. Eventually, the golfer’s performance will deteriorate as I suggest because the compensatory moves get lost, diminished, or overdone. An over-the-top swing might work so long as the club face gets left open for the ball to slice back towards the middle. What happens if the golfer loses the sense of timing or control of the club face and begins to over or under use its rotation? Shots will go dead left or over slice right.

It’s not just about injury or reaching perceived potential. Golfers should get lessons now because it’s preventative. Would you rather rehab from painful plantar fasciitis in your heel or prevent it by changing the way you prepare and move when you’re active? One promises less effort, less change, cost savings, and better health. This thinking needs to spill over into golf. Would you rather your golf game implode and get lessons when you’re at your worst or simply get lessons to keep your current good form and see how you can make it even better?

A recent client went through an evaluation and hit ten consecutive shots in the same vicinity but slightly pulled to the left. He was nearly a scratch golfer and entirely self-taught. He said his scores were in the low-mid 70s. If anyone had justification to walk out it was him. He didn’t. I asked what a bad day was. He said low to mid 80s. I asked how frequent it happens but the fact it happened at all was bothersome to him. He described his swing as “ugly” and knew it was the culprit. 

The valleys of bad performance do not have to run so deep or last that long. Instruction was meant to raise the ceiling and the floor of performance. It’s meant to improve your game and prevent errors. That’s why you should get lessons now.