Hot take- Listening to other instructors online/in person is a waste of time mostly

[hacker113]

DISCLAIMER: I DONT MEAN THIS IN A NEGATIVE WAY, I'LL EXPLAIN

 

I have had lessons in person, online, advice here, and watched thousands of videos of golf instruction online trying to improve. learned nothing from all the videos I've watched online and couldn't understand it or apply it. The series of lessons I had in person were just learning the basics, I improved quickly initially but plateaued and soon after went down the rabbit hole of desperately trying to make swing changes.

 

A lot of people i have talked to in real life and online said they felt like they wasted their money on lessons since they could not grasp what the instructor was telling them. This is my problem especially with online instruction since I had trouble implementing feels and I seemed like I was taking what they were saying too literally, because when I tried to do a drill or a feel they were telling me to do it just felt "off"

 

Everything I have been told to do and feel in the swing never felt right even after putting a good amount of time in, I was told everything from "swing to right field" "fire the hips" "start the arms first" "set your wrist earlier" "lead with right elbow" tried all of these and more for a while and it was not working, you know when you should stop doing something because it does not feel right. It did not feel like how a golf swing is supposed to feel, felt like i was forcing movements and out of sync.

 

Seems like when I stop watching and reading golf swing instruction and develop my own individual feels that's when I make improvements. We all think and learn differently so it makes sense to figure out what works for us and go from there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hanginnwangin]

Do you film your golf swings? Or just go by how you "feel"?

[Scottbox]

I'll let others chime in...

 

[hacker113]

45 minutes ago, hanginnwangin said:

Do you film your golf swings? Or just go by how you "feel"?

Both 

[phizzy30]

I wouldn't necessarily say that remote/online lessons are a waste, however it doesn't work for me.  I need the teaching pro to show me in person what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it or I'm just spinning my wheels. 

[iacas]

It just sounds like you've either worked with instructors who aren't all that good, you didn't communicate very well to them that you didn't understand what they were asking of you, or both to varying degrees.

 

1 hour ago, hacker113 said:

It did not feel like how a golf swing is supposed to feel, felt like i was forcing movements and out of sync.

 

How do you know what a (better) golf swing is "supposed" to feel like?

 

Also relevant: 

Edited March 9 by iacas

[PSUJJH86]

[otto6457]

You might save some time.

 

 

[Hawkeye77]

Touched all the bases. 

[Flip4000]

I like in person lessons for swing mechanics, but dont mind watching online stuff for course management and strategy. 

[Valtiel]

People learn in different ways so i'd never judge someone for feeling like anything online/remote was a waste of time, it's just gonna be like that sometimes. It also sounds like the various canned talking points that were thrown at you did you a disservice as they often do, which sucks and i'm sorry because the golfing public deserves better. 

With any instruction both the student and the teacher have their own bridges to cross, and for any lack of crossing on either side the other has to be equipped to make up for it. The teacher needs to know how to go down several different roads in order to reach the student and/or the student needs to know how to communicate what they're feeling and thinking extremely effectively. In even the best of scenarios this is more difficult online on average. Not every teacher has fully crossed their bridge and many students don't even *know* about the bridge, let alone that they should be working towards the other side of it. Many teachers have only a couple methods/ideas and many students are jumbled up with a combination of lousy advice from multiple sources, their own potentially misguided ideas, and an entire *second* bridge to cross which is gaining parity between feel and real so you know what your body is actually doing as opposed to just having this secondhand relationship with it via the telephone game that is "feel". 

Your comment "Seems like when I stop watching and reading golf swing instruction and develop my own individual feels that's when I make improvements" is basically that path that junior golfers take. This has a ceiling for everyone and it's often when you reach said ceiling that it's time for good professional instruction. Ideally you've gained awareness of a sufficient number of things about your swing that you can take with you into instruction, both as a guide for getting what you want and as a compass to steer you away from bad or incompatible instructors. 

 

[st1800e]

5 hours ago, hacker113 said:

watched thousands of videos of golf instruction online 

Not a good recipe.   
So say you have a medical problem and “watch thousands of videos online” about your problem. Does that help? No.  Just makes you anxious.   

Medical Dr. or golf teaching professional, pick one after doing some research.  If it doesn’t work out, find another.  
 

You’re not going to cure your disease, or your slice on the internet.   

[Soloman1]

warning: harsh reality ahead.

 

some people are incapable of learning or changing some things.

 

ask the average person to do simple arithmetic without their phone and watch them utterly fail.

 

youtube is full of people who don’t know what 1 x 2 x 1 is.

 

if someone can’t learn anything after all the videos and lessons, then maybe it’s the person in the mirror.

 

some people can’t throw a ball, figure out how to change a tire, play an instrument, parallel park or eat a hotdog without spilling mustard on their shirt.

 

it is not a birthright to be a good golfer just because someone thinks they should be.

 

it’s about time competent instructors are relieved of responsibility for students who just can’t get it. 🙂

 

[Pastit]

47 minutes ago, Soloman1 said:

warning: harsh reality ahead.

 

some people are incapable of learning or changing some things.

 

ask the average person to do simple arithmetic without their phone and watch them utterly fail.

 

youtube is full of people who don’t know what 1 x 2 x 1 is.

 

if someone can’t learn anything after all the videos and lessons, then maybe it’s the person in the mirror.

 

some people can’t throw a ball, figure out how to change a tire, play an instrument, parallel park or eat a hotdog without spilling mustard on their shirt.

 

it is not a birthright to be a good golfer just because someone thinks they should be.

 

it’s about time competent instructors are relieved of responsibility for students who just can’t get it. 🙂

 

Folk I know have many roof tiles missing but made +2 at golf and played no 1 their county for years on end and received top quality coaching. 

[Soloman1]

1 hour ago, Pastit said:

Folk I know have many roof tiles missing but made +2 at golf and played no 1 their county for years on end and received top quality coaching. 

 

 

yes, and some people are geniuses who can't make a par.

[Kuuuch]

2 hours ago, Soloman1 said:

warning: harsh reality ahead.

 

some people are incapable of learning or changing some things.

 

ask the average person to do simple arithmetic without their phone and watch them utterly fail.

 

youtube is full of people who don’t know what 1 x 2 x 1 is.

 

if someone can’t learn anything after all the videos and lessons, then maybe it’s the person in the mirror.

 

some people can’t throw a ball, figure out how to change a tire, play an instrument, parallel park or eat a hotdog without spilling mustard on their shirt.

 

it is not a birthright to be a good golfer just because someone thinks they should be.

 

it’s about time competent instructors are relieved of responsibility for students who just can’t get it. 🙂

 

Great post. I was actually thinking about this the other day and almost started a topic on it.
 

What’s interesting to me is when you get a lesson, most instructors don’t want to give you more than 1 thing to work on (I don’t blame them). If you get a lesson once a month which is quite frequent imo…the entire rest of the year you have to rely on yourself to a large degree. 
 

I’ve made all of my improvement from online lessons and when I figured out how to use the info he gave me + take ownership of my swing is when I really started to improve. 
 

Assuming a player can implement/understand a new move, it’s still mostly on the student to understand when they’ve overdone it or to notice when something they previously worked on gets out of whack.

[Khill818]

I'm curious what you'd quantify as a "good amount of time" ?  

 

A lot of times teaching in sports is saying the same thing 20 different ways and one of them clicks.  Good teachers have many ways of expressing it.  Really good teachers can break it down into  small chunks of things to work on...in the proper order.  Not progressing until the step is mastered.  

 

 

Edited March 9 by Khill818

[hacker113]

5 minutes ago, Khill818 said:

I'm curious what you'd quantify as a "good amount of time" ?  

 

A lot of times teaching in sports is saying the same thing 20 different ways and one of them clicks.  Good teachers have many ways of expressing it.  Really good teachers can break it down into  small chunks of things to work on...in the proper order.  Not progressing until the step is mastered.  

 

 

months

 

after working on my swing during the winter i found a feel that finally clicked. I know its gonna take time to implement but it kills two birds in one stone

[Hawkeye77]

1 hour ago, hacker113 said:

months

 

after working on my swing during the winter i found a feel that finally clicked. I know its gonna take time to implement but it kills two birds in one stone

Post up a before and current vid of your swing - only way to know for sure.  

[doctor220]

19 hours ago, hacker113 said:

DISCLAIMER: I DONT MEAN THIS IN A NEGATIVE WAY, I'LL EXPLAIN

 

I have had lessons in person, online, advice here, and watched thousands of videos of golf instruction online trying to improve. learned nothing from all the videos I've watched online and couldn't understand it or apply it. The series of lessons I had in person were just learning the basics, I improved quickly initially but plateaued and soon after went down the rabbit hole of desperately trying to make swing changes.

 

A lot of people i have talked to in real life and online said they felt like they wasted their money on lessons since they could not grasp what the instructor was telling them. This is my problem especially with online instruction since I had trouble implementing feels and I seemed like I was taking what they were saying too literally, because when I tried to do a drill or a feel they were telling me to do it just felt "off"

 

Everything I have been told to do and feel in the swing never felt right even after putting a good amount of time in, I was told everything from "swing to right field" "fire the hips" "start the arms first" "set your wrist earlier" "lead with right elbow" tried all of these and more for a while and it was not working, you know when you should stop doing something because it does not feel right. It did not feel like how a golf swing is supposed to feel, felt like i was forcing movements and out of sync.

 

Seems like when I stop watching and reading golf swing instruction and develop my own individual feels that's when I make improvements. We all think and learn differently so it makes sense to figure out what works for us and go from there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vast vast majority of pga tour players (the most talented golfers in the world ) work with a coach, some of them multiple coaches. If you can figure it out on your own with individual feels I guess you are destined for greatness. The rest of us need some help to get better. 

[Mikey_HACKilroy]

I don't think trying to learn on your own requires that you be especially gifted from the perspective that you'd have to be a budding tour pro. Yet, that isn't to say it is easy because you have to have at least some idea of what makes a functionally good swing, and dare I say that's a tough sell.

As soon as I finish my garage and have some extra funds I'm going to find an instructor and put him on retainer for a little while.

Here's why going it alone is a tough slog. As said above, you have to have some functional idea of what a good swing should be like. It's only for those who are very committed, and can self analyze consistently without all of the internalized self criticism. Folks who are very hard on themselves - like me - may also not be the best for the task. Yet, we are also stubbornly committed to it, which can be a problem in and of itself.

Online advice and comments can get lost in translation. I tend to say I like my swing to feel effortless, easy, smooth with as little thought as possible. It commonly is skimmed over and instantly interpreted as "one doesn't have to think about the golf swing."

But I just assumed they would understand it was emblematic of a more whole concept. The golf swing is not effortless, easy or requiring of little coordination. It is a violent maneuver, but when familiar can feel like all of those things above. I couldn't possibly believe I'm going to be on auto-pilot. That's for career golfers (Pros).

Going it alone makes it very hard to get and stay in a good phase. Very hard.  However, since you have the funds for instruction, I'd simply pare down my channels and rely on the instructor as much as singularly possible. That, above all else, will make sure you get consistent information in the same style of communication.

 

By consuming so many different channels of information, you are never able to understand all of it the same way. It doesn't make you incapable of understanding it. It makes it difficult given the different styles you will observe. While it's fine to read a golf periodical, it's also easy to dive down the rabbit hole of golf "fixes."

Edited March 9 by Mikey_HACKilroy

[Khill818]

7 hours ago, hacker113 said:

months

 

after working on my swing during the winter i found a feel that finally clicked. I know its gonna take time to implement but it kills two birds in one stone

I wonder if you found a feel that made sense to you...but was founded on some  instruction you recieved ?  

[hacker113]

4 minutes ago, Khill818 said:

I wonder if you found a feel that made sense to you...but was founded on some  instruction you recieved ?  

Nope, figured it out on my own

[Valtiel]

11 hours ago, Soloman1 said:

some people can’t throw a ball, figure out how to change a tire, play an instrument, parallel park or eat a hotdog without spilling mustard on their shirt.

🙂

You know I was feeling really good about myself reading this list, then it got to mustard on the shirt and i'm like...

[Chunkitgood]

People who play golf well tend to have learned via implicit learning as children and in any event their knowledge of how to perform a swing is implicit procedural knowledge, which means they have no conscious access to it.  In order to have something to teach others they must themselves reverse engineer their swing, or rely on the teachings of other good golfers, who in turn have no conscious access to how they swing.

 

The results are about what you’d expect.

 

 

 

 

[HitSomeMissSome]

16 hours ago, hacker113 said:

Nope, figured it out on my own

 

What type of scores can you shoot now? 

[Nels55]

14 hours ago, Chunkitgood said:

People who play golf well tend to have learned via implicit learning as children and in any event their knowledge of how to perform a swing is implicit procedural knowledge, which means they have no conscious access to it.  In order to have something to teach others they must themselves reverse engineer their swing, or rely on the teachings of other good golfers, who in turn have no conscious access to how they swing.

 

The results are about what you’d expect.

 

 

 

 

What does "play golf well" mean?  I am usually around an 8 cap and I have shot par or better a couple of times so do I qualify as being able to play golf well?  If so then while it is true that I 'learned to play golf' as a child, I learned completely wrong and had the most horrifying mess of swing that you can imagine.  How did I finally improve?  I took lessons!

[ferrispgm]

If I stopped doing something because it didn’t feel right or made something feel forced I would have gone from a 5 to a 15 instead of +3. I’ll agree tips like firing hips or swing to right field are no good but even quality instruction feels bad at times. For example, me learning to get more pressure toward my lead toes at the top a few years ago felt god awful and I played horribly for several months but results since have been waaaay better.  

[GoGoErky]

15 hours ago, Chunkitgood said:

People who play golf well tend to have learned via implicit learning as children and in any event their knowledge of how to perform a swing is implicit procedural knowledge, which means they have no conscious access to it.  In order to have something to teach others they must themselves reverse engineer their swing, or rely on the teachings of other good golfers, who in turn have no conscious access to how they swing.

 

The results are about what you’d expect.

 

 

 

 

Let’s see if this is another drive by post or if you will respond to people.

 

What about the people that have learned to play golf without any implicit learning as kids? I know people who had never watched golf as kids and learned golf as an adult via lessons, a couple are scratch and one remains around a 12.

 

Define plays golf well.

[MonteScheinblum]

Just now, GoGoErky said:

Let’s see if this is another drive by post or if you will respond to people.

 

What about the people that have learned to play golf without any implicit learning as kids? I know people who had never watched golf as kids and learned golf as an adult via lessons, a couple are scratch and one remains around a 12.

 

Define plays golf well.

Larry Nelson took up golf at 21 and won a major championship.