As a PGA Golf Professional, I am constantly on the lookout for new ways to help my students to improve faster and more efficiently – without making things complicated.
Over the years of teaching, I have noticed that Golfers seem to adapt to changes fairly quickly on the Driving Range. As soon as a little time has passed the quality of the “swing improvements” decreases, resulting in the original swing motion they did before the lesson. This is mainly because they are accustomed to that “sense of feel” (and lack of practice).
TrackMan is such a powerful tool, which can help us in many different ways and provides us with a vast amount of information – One of my favourite ways of using TrackMan is for Biofeedback, especially helpful for beginners or people who do not have a “feel” for their swing
“Biofeedback, or applied psychophysiological feedback, is a patient-guided treatment that teaches an individual to control muscle tension, pain, body temperature, brain waves, and other bodily functions and processes through relaxation, visualization, and other cognitive control techniques. The name biofeedback refers to the biological signals that are fed back, or returned, to the patient in order for the patient to develop techniques of manipulating them.”
As a golf coach, I can teach many different drills or swing types to suit my student´s needs. Seeing as we are all individuals and every person has a different sense of feeling, some people adapt to certain swing changes quicker than others.
Unfortunately, the only thing a golf coach can not imply on their pupils is a feeling.
This is where TrackMan comes in.
As an example, if my student is struggling with his swing direction and “coming over the top” as one could say, I would explain the situation and then work on his swing motion with certain drills, to start off with, and let him repeat the drills for a few minutes.
After a few repetitions I would blend out all the TrackMan numbers on the TV screen apart from “Swing Direction”.
Now the student must – on his own! – Try and alter the number on the screen from a – to a +
(even if he gets it from -18,4° to e.g. -2° would be an accomplishment).
The goal here is that the student has been given the tools how to change the numbers but has to develop an own feeling for the change and TrackMan will give him direct feedback weather his feeling is strong enough for the desired change or if he must exaggerate that feeling to a certain extent.
Another great way to use Biofeedback would be to change somebody´s Attack Angle with their driver from a – to a desired + in order to gain more distance by hitting more up on the ball.
Here I would follow the same procedure as above, only showing the “Attack Angle”.
Every golfer I do these Biofeedback exercises with gives me the same feedback:
“This works great on the Golf Course and it’s much easier than technical swing thoughts!”
Biofeedback is the most powerful way of teaching someone movement patterns because everybody feels differently and ONLY THE STUDENTS feelings count.
In my opinion, it is much easier to repeat a certain feeling than technical swing thoughts (especially on the golf course).
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