Did Hogan do mirror work? How and how much?

[rankoutsider]

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362059464' post='6519343']
[quote name='guisician' timestamp='1362050800' post='6518915']
I thought the book (SLOW PRACTICE WILL GET YOU THERE FASTER by Ernest Dras) looked familiar; dug it out of a box and am about halfway through. Short book (84 pgs not counting epilogue and appendices),short chapters, basic but important stuff. The author stresses the importance of both relaxation and point of impact. Nik, you'll be interested to learn he was a tennis player (refers to Gallwey's THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS); his experiences playing and teaching tennis, along with studying the Baghavad Gita, got him going on this path. One chapter depicts a slow-practice, sweet spot-finding training aid for tennis he came up with that's quite ingenious; he illustrates the "golf version" of the device later in the book. Honestly, there's not much Hogan here, but the author does tie his "findings" to the Coleman footage and other earlier Hogan "real time slo mo" demonstrations as well as the mirror practice advice from Five Lessons.

To summarize; nothing really new here besides the training aid(s), but provides a concise summary of some important points regarding how we practice and learn.
[/quote]

very nice! something to think about. Looks like he just slapped Hogan's name on there to get attention then. Damn!
[/quote]

Maybe so, but I suppose it is possible that he extrapolated from that relatively minor reference in 5L and wanted to suggest that the idea has credibility and has been used by the greatest in the game who was also known to be a tireless practicer and who rebuilt his game using what would have been regarded as unconventional methods. I share your cynicism for sure, since it is very easy to bandy about the Hogan name and try to lure in the suckers with it, but perhaps this is a bit more legit. Then again, I don't have the book, so perhaps you are right on the money.

[tembolo1284]

almost done reading the book. Horribly disappointed. He talks about the philosophy of visualization and focusing on making sweet spot contact and slow motion training....all basically to sell you on a training aid he made in tennis and adapted it to golf.

[dairic]

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362690379' post='6566013']
almost done reading the book. Horribly disappointed. He talks about the philosophy of visualization and focusing on making sweet spot contact and slow motion training....all basically to sell you on a training aid he made in tennis and adapted it to golf.
[/quote]

damnit!

What's the training aid? I'm curious.

[tembolo1284]

[quote name='dairic' timestamp='1362692351' post='6566181']
[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362690379' post='6566013']
almost done reading the book. Horribly disappointed. He talks about the philosophy of visualization and focusing on making sweet spot contact and slow motion training....all basically to sell you on a training aid he made in tennis and adapted it to golf.
[/quote]

damnit!

What's the training aid? I'm curious.
[/quote]

I mean it's a nice story that he tells and I think it has merit...I was just hoping for more.

He says people aren't focused enough on making proper impact in the sweet spot....which he emphasizes is one very tiny spot the size of a pin.

In tennis he did it by putting a kind of mini donut where the sweet spot is on the strings and then he got a sliding nail thing and stuck it through a tennis ball and put it on the wall. You make your stroke and really focus on putting the nail sticking out of the tennis ball through the little donut and you push it a bit. blah blah blah. Don't want to give it all away now but this will really heighten your awareness of the sweetspot and it'll help. I remember training this way in tennis and it's cool. Hell....maybe it's worth it in golf.

So you do the same thing in golf...here's the pic from the book. You stick a screw somehow thru the ball and this little thing on the face of your club and really focus on putting the screw into the little donut hole on your club.

[attachment=1574073:slowMotionDrill.jpg]

[tembolo1284]

Clearly you do it very slowly at first.

[tembolo1284]

One thing that kinda killed me was the first sentence on Page 55...chapter is called, "Avoid mistakes while practicing."

He says, "Here are the well-known words of Al Woods, Tiger's late Father: 'Practice makes permanent; Perfect Practice makes perfect.' "

I know he's Yugoslavian but lordy at least get the dude's name right.

[dairic]

Interesting. Doing that drill at full speed could get very interesting

I remember reading somewhere that similar to golf there is an ongoing debate in tennis regarding equipment. Super light racquet with big forgiving surface area vs heavy racquet with less forgiving and smaller surface area.

Apparently heavy and not forgiving is better in the long run. Light and bigger results in higher rates of injuries...less inertia due to light weight and off centre hits close to the edge of the racquet really torques the arm.

Smaller and higher inertia reduces off centre hit torque and promotes more precise hits. Less injuries and higher skilled players.

[tembolo1284]

[quote name='dairic' timestamp='1362698106' post='6566829']
Interesting. Doing that drill at full speed could get very interesting

I remember reading somewhere that similar to golf there is an ongoing debate in tennis regarding equipment. Super light racquet with big forgiving surface area vs heavy racquet with less forgiving and smaller surface area.

Apparently heavy and not forgiving is better in the long run. Light and bigger results in higher rates of injuries...less inertia due to light weight and off centre hits close to the edge of the racquet really torques the arm.

Smaller and higher inertia reduces off centre hit torque and promotes more precise hits. Less injuries and higher skilled players.
[/quote]

I agree with that. Which is why I still prefer my wilson prostaff 85 sq in head coming in at a nice 14 oz. I wish I could say it was a st. vincent model but it's not. Sampras all the way baby!

ya...You never do that drill at full speed. Otherwise you'll kill your clubface!

[tembolo1284]

In any case i'm moving onto reading the Nelson autobiography followed by Hogan's american life written by the same guy that wrote the American Triumvirate. Great book that Triumvirate. Gonna read Nelson's book first though. Saving the best for last with Hogan.

[tembolo1284]

[attachment=1574289:slowMotionDrill.jpg]

[rankoutsider]

That's very disappointing, and all the moreso since that swing aid will do nothing at all to help your golfswing. Zero.

Mirror work is likely the most effective way to work on your game, especially if you have an area where you can do full swings, with or without a ball, in front of the mirror (and can turn to have the mirror DTL and face on). For putting, nothing can be more effective than aligning with the mirror and lines on the carpet.

I suspect this book is not going to convert many golfers to the benefits of working with a mirror.

[tembolo1284]

Def wasn't a book much about mirror work...more about slow motion training.

[tembolo1284]

and visualization.

[rankoutsider]

Thanks a lot for the review Tembolo. I was close to ordering the thing, but paused just in time.

[tembolo1284]

[quote name='rankoutsider' timestamp='1362710992' post='6568345']
Thanks a lot for the review Tembolo. I was close to ordering the thing, but paused just in time.
[/quote]

You know I think it's a fun read...took me about 75 min...but I wish he went more into how to use the drill and what to do beyond it once you've sort of
'mastered' the drill. To be fair though to all of you I just saw there's also a website. So I might as well give you guys that so you can check it out for yourselves.

thesolarsweetspot dot com

I will say that in the back of the book he sites many examples from various experts in their respective fields about the positives and merits of practicing in slow motion. Lots of them are musicians and the constant theme is, "Practice slowly and with full concentration so then you can play at lightning speed."

Guisician being that you are a muscian maybe you can talk about the merits of this. I know it's certainly true in tennis...I'm just not all that thrilled with it about golf....not yet anyway.

The guy's name is Ernest Dras also.

Alright.....back to byron nelson's autobiography for me.

[tembolo1284]

Ugh..he sells the book, drills, and some other things in his store. Now i'm just disappointed. :P

[guisician]

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362744720' post='6569831']
...
Guisician being that you are a muscian maybe you can talk about the merits of this. I know it's certainly true in tennis...I'm just not all that thrilled with it about golf....not yet anyway.
...
[/quote]

Hey T,

Slow practice is a huge part of music prep. If you've got a passage full of 32nd notes, there's no other way to go about it. You keep referencing the passage in the real tempo throughout the process to stay in touch with your goal, but if you're practicing it too fast to be played flawlessly, you're just practicing mistakes.

IMHO, the tricky part of applying this to the golf swing is that if you're not careful, slowing down the swing can unbind it's elements to such an extent that they might no longer work or make sense as a united whole. When you slow a musical passage down to master it, the act of producing each individual note still happens in real time; you're just widening the gaps between each note. But since one golf swing = one note, that's where the analogy largely breaks down. No one really slow-practices the sounding of ONE NOTE. Imagine a sax player trying to do so; air needs to move through the horn at some threshold of speed for the note to even sound, so that's a non-starter.

My wife is a black belt and I've watched her do Tai Chi for many years. Looking at the Hogan slow practice footage, I'd say there's a much better comparison with a slow-practice golf swing to be made there.

Also, on the subject of Hogan's mirror work; would he have done any at all if the option of videotaping (and subsequently analyzing the crap out of) his swing was as easily and constantly available to him as it is to today's player?

[tembolo1284]

[quote name='guisician' timestamp='1362754871' post='6570615']
[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362744720' post='6569831']
...
Guisician being that you are a muscian maybe you can talk about the merits of this. I know it's certainly true in tennis...I'm just not all that thrilled with it about golf....not yet anyway.
...
[/quote]

Hey T,

Slow practice is a huge part of music prep. If you've got a passage full of 32nd notes, there's no other way to go about it. You keep referencing the passage in the real tempo throughout the process to stay in touch with your goal, but if you're practicing it too fast to be played flawlessly, you're just practicing mistakes.

IMHO, the tricky part of applying this to the golf swing is that if you're not careful, slowing down the swing can unbind it's elements to such an extent that they might no longer work or make sense as a united whole. When you slow a musical passage down to master it, the act of producing each individual note still happens in real time; you're just widening the gaps between each note. But since one golf swing = one note, that's where the analogy largely breaks down. No one really slow-practices the sounding of ONE NOTE. Imagine a sax player trying to do so; air needs to move through the horn at some threshold of speed for the note to even sound, so that's a non-starter.

My wife is a black belt and I've watched her do Tai Chi for many years. Looking at the Hogan slow practice footage, I'd say there's a much better comparison with a slow-practice golf swing to be made there.

Also, on the subject of Hogan's mirror work; would he have done any at all if the option of videotaping (and subsequently analyzing the crap out of) his swing was as easily and constantly available to him as it is to today's player?
[/quote]

Fascinating sir. I agree completely the one swing = one note comparison you've made. Being an aikido and kenpo karate guy myself, I think the kata practiced in martial arts is more comparable to golf swings in slow motion...but like you said doing it too slowly can mess up the golf swing.

In particular...when you do it slowly....you lose the tension you create in your swing and it's all off. That's the problem i've always had in tennis as well. Practicing the serve in slow motion is a disaster because there's a lot of torque and exploding off the ground during it...and doing that in slow motion has got to be one of the most awkward and useless things in the world.

So ya...i'm at a bit of a loss. I'm making swings right now next to my boss in slow motion and I just don't get it.

[ej002]

who publishes this crap?

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362694455' post='6566415']
One thing that kinda killed me was the first sentence on Page 55...chapter is called, "Avoid mistakes while practicing."

He says, "Here are the well-known words of Al Woods, Tiger's late Father: 'Practice makes permanent; Perfect Practice makes perfect.' "

I know he's Yugoslavian but lordy at least get the dude's name right.
[/quote]

And isnt "Al Woods" legally blonde?

[tembolo1284]

it's not that bad!

Lord knows who publishes it. Looks like the author did it all.

[rankoutsider]

Guisician offered a good summary of my more very brief remarks. Practicing slowly is good, but there needs to be some flow in the sequence to keep it a chain action. If you are trying to fit the little nub from the driver face in the hole in the golf ball, you will get nowhere, since that is so slow, you lose the chain action element.

I love to swing my gyroswing very slowly in front of a mirror, since it grooves a strong feeling for the swing and can be done slowly enough to hit positions that you are aiming for.

Mirror practice has a place alongside video practice, in my view, and I don't think Hogan would have ditched the former for the latter, or at least not entirely. With a mirror you can watch yourself swing while you swing: if you are videotaping your swing, you cannot really do this. I suppose if you were to set up the camera to feed directly to a monitor that you could watch while you practiced, you could get all the benefits of the mirror practice and tape what you were doing, but I'm not entirely sure why you would do that. I tape my swing a lot and watch and rewatch it, but I also practice a fair bit in front of a large mirror.

[guisician]

[quote name='rankoutsider' timestamp='1362792918' post='6574619']
...
Mirror practice has a place alongside video practice, in my view, and I don't think Hogan would have ditched the former for the latter, or at least not entirely. With a mirror you can watch yourself swing while you swing: if you are videotaping your swing, you cannot really do this. I suppose if you were to set up the camera to feed directly to a monitor that you could watch while you practiced, you could get all the benefits of the mirror practice and tape what you were doing, but I'm not entirely sure why you would do that. I tape my swing a lot and watch and rewatch it, but I also practice a fair bit in front of a large mirror.
[/quote]

Thanks rank; of course you're right about mirror work offering in-the-moment feedback that most video setups don't. Clearly I could use quite a bit more of both! Of course, Hogan would be doing both (and lots of it) were he playing now. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but he's quoted in one of the Hogan bios as saying if they had video analysis in his day, "I would've worn those guys out."

[tembolo1284]

I think guisician holds the key for slow motion training. With your music background and knowing about the 'too slow ruins flow' problem...how would you recommend practicing the swing in slow motion?

I think I need to do it with a golf ball and hit it...so hit a driver 80 yards say...then 160, then 240, then full. Something like that.

Or do something like that with a 8 or 5 iron. Otherwise the flow and proper muscular tensions and loading and firing goes to hell.

What do you think guisician?

As to a mirror....I don't know about that. I think maybe that's just to look at static positions. Address, halfway back, top of swing...etc.
It would just be a camera otherwise to look at positions during the actual motion. You can't be stopping and taking a peak before hitting the ball for example. Happens toooo fast...even in slow motion.

[guisician]

Other than as a way to check a position or two with or without a mirror, I think it's difficult to practice constructively using a super-slow Tai Chi-like swing because so much depends on the way the clubhead weight feels as it swings with some speed (as well as how the shaft reacts throughout). However, doing somewhat slower versions (e.g. @ 25 or 50% speed rather than the usual 80 or 85%) is a great way to really heighten the awareness of what's happening in the swing while keeping enough "real feel". This makes it a great way to star ingraining a swing change. When you can hit it the way you want to at different speeds (like in your 80 - 160 - 240 yard example), that's controlling and owning your swing.

[Jim Waldron]

I can tell you from first-hand experience, working with several thousand students since I opened my golf schools in 1995, that super slow motion mirror work is one of the most effective ways to ingrain swing changes - if not THE most effective. Not just another opinion on a golf forum, but fact. I have seen many, many times how fast my students make the changes with slow motion training. This does NOT mean you don't also train at full speed, and at half speed. But you do so for different purposes. The actual sequence is slow motion - 30 seconds from start to finish - or even super slow mo - 60 seconds, then half speed, then full speed.

There are NO negatives to slow motion training. But - like any type of training, it is not a magic cure-all.

[ajc57]

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1362690379' post='6566013']
almost done reading the book. Horribly disappointed. He talks about the philosophy of visualization and focusing on making sweet spot contact and slow motion training....all basically to sell you on a training aid he made in tennis and adapted it to golf.
[/quote]

it's all bs. I read it too. I mean there are some good points in there but all these slow motion concepts just don't make any sense to me. The one thing to ask is just how many people can get into Hogan's positions in slow motion? most Hogan fans can make all his moves in slow motion, but the swing is not executed in slow motion. Assuming slow motion practice helps your real time swing is like driving an F1 really slow around a track and expecting to use that as practice for real race, at lightning speed.

At best, slow motion may help you focus and zero in on something (Hogan used it for just this purpose) but it rarely helps you "feel" the move you need to get there, IMO/experience.

[ajc57]

[quote name='Jim Waldron' timestamp='1365134090' post='6765387']
I can tell you from first-hand experience, working with several thousand students since I opened my golf schools in 1995, that super slow motion mirror work is one of the most effective ways to ingrain swing changes - if not THE most effective. Not just another opinion on a golf forum, but fact. I have seen many, many times how fast my students make the changes with slow motion training. This does NOT mean you don't also train at full speed, and at half speed. But you do so for different purposes. The actual sequence is slow motion - 30 seconds from start to finish - or even super slow mo - 60 seconds, then half speed, then full speed.

There are NO negatives to slow motion training. But - like any type of training, it is not a magic cure-all.
[/quote]

This sounds better, I can agree with this. Def not a magic cure-all and I don't see any downside other than losing focus on your real goal - the full, real time swing that gets your pill from point a to point b.

[tembolo1284]

[quote name='Jim Waldron' timestamp='1365134090' post='6765387']
I can tell you from first-hand experience, working with several thousand students since I opened my golf schools in 1995, that super slow motion mirror work is one of the most effective ways to ingrain swing changes - if not THE most effective. Not just another opinion on a golf forum, but fact. I have seen many, many times how fast my students make the changes with slow motion training. This does NOT mean you don't also train at full speed, and at half speed. But you do so for different purposes. The actual sequence is slow motion - 30 seconds from start to finish - or even super slow mo - 60 seconds, then half speed, then full speed.

There are NO negatives to slow motion training. But - like any type of training, it is not a magic cure-all.
[/quote]

So say the guy had a tendency to take the club far to the inside and you wanted the student to take it more straight back.

How would you go about using slow motion training to ingrain that?

Just have the student do slow takeaways in the mirror ensuring he is in the right position. And then we he can trust that do slow full swing at like a quarter of the speed?

[tembolo1284]

great post by the way Jim. I think there's something to this.

[Jim Waldron]

[quote name='tembolo1284' timestamp='1365618010' post='6802865']
[quote name='Jim Waldron' timestamp='1365134090' post='6765387']
I can tell you from first-hand experience, working with several thousand students since I opened my golf schools in 1995, that super slow motion mirror work is one of the most effective ways to ingrain swing changes - if not THE most effective. Not just another opinion on a golf forum, but fact. I have seen many, many times how fast my students make the changes with slow motion training. This does NOT mean you don't also train at full speed, and at half speed. But you do so for different purposes. The actual sequence is slow motion - 30 seconds from start to finish - or even super slow mo - 60 seconds, then half speed, then full speed.

There are NO negatives to slow motion training. But - like any type of training, it is not a magic cure-all.
[/quote]

So say the guy had a tendency to take the club far to the inside and you wanted the student to take it more straight back.

How would you go about using slow motion training to ingrain that?

Just have the student do slow takeaways in the mirror ensuring he is in the right position. And then we he can trust that do slow full swing at like a quarter of the speed?
[/quote]

You can use slow mo for any swing segment. To drive the info into the subconscious mind. You have to start somewhere with movement training, and slow mot follows the rule that you have close to zero conscious precision control over high speed body part motion at short time intervals. So slow mo is the first layer of control. Your thinking mind does control your body with precision, especially with the real time mirror feedback. If you cant make a swing change in slow mo, no chance of doing it correctly at full speed.