Since becoming a fully Qualified Positive Impact Golf Coach, I would say I've become somewhat of a Senior Golf Specialist. The learning has been incredible and the realisation of asking a senior golfer to move like a younger person is simply unrealistic .
Traditional golf coaches who don't Specialise in this area could be doing more harm than good with their students.
So what, you may ask do Positive Impact Golf Coaches do different?
"We retain the Complexity and pass on the Simplicity"
Realistically, senior golfers aren't going to practise much, so everything we ask them to do needs to be easy to do, uncomplicated and above all achievable.
We start with a series of questions that are aimed at understanding a persons belief system, we want understand what maybe holding a golfer back so that the information that follows is impactful.
One of the biggest killers of a golf swing is TENSION, we must reduce this before any changes can be made, if you score your tension on a scale of 1-10 , 10 being the tightest you can hold a club, you need to be at 5 or under, TENSION causes muscles to shorten thus reducing potential movement. TIGHT muscles move slower and reduce club head speed resulting in an increased amount of effort to hit the ball and tiredness further on in the round.
We coach 6 main PRINCIPLES and 3 DEADLY DONT'S
The 6 principles are:-
Turning
Weight shift
Rhythm
Coordination
Balance
Souplesse
Let me explain a little bit more about the 6 main principle.
TURNING - quite simply your body turns right and your body turns left if your right handed
WEIGHT SHIFT - form the address position as you turn your weight shifts on to your right side and when you turn in the opposite direction your weight shifts on to your left side.
RHYTHM - We all have our own natural rhythm and we ask our pupils to maintain theirs, being too fast or too slow will affect the rest of the swing,
COORDINATION - this is about coordinating the movement of the club with the movement of the body , if one is too fast or too slow you will struggle to match these two component parts. So commonly golfers don't do the first two things correctly resulting in poor coordination.
BALANCE - This is so important in the golf swing, next time you hit some shots try holding your finish until the ball stops rolling, this gives you time to be ware of your balance and if you feel you lose yours put yourself back in balance so that your mind knows how this feels, eventually you'll naturally end up in balance.
SOUPLESSE - this is quite simple suppleness, holding too much tension in your address position will suffocate suppleness , try to remain relaxed during your set up & swing and watch as you see the yards you've lost reappear.
The 3 DEADLY DONT'S are.
DON'T KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN.
DON'T KEEP YOUR LEFT ARM STRAIGHT. ( if your right handed , reverse if your left handed)
DON'T KEEP YOU FRONT HEEL ON THE GROUND.
One of the most common sayings in the world of golf is "Keep your head down" I believe this has caused more swing faults than any other piece of advice, the art of keeping your head down stops fluent movement in its tracks, I'm going to write a whole blog on this, so you'll fully understand why not to do it and what you should be doing.
Again another famous saying in the world of golf is "Keep your left arm straight" in order to do this you will automatically create TENSION , and remember tight muscles are short muscles, so many times I've witnessed golfers doing this and become very successful at topping the golf ball, allow your arm to be relaxed, indeed try hitting some balls with a bent left arm and see what happens .
And finally please don't try and keep your front foot Cemented to the ground, this is not only a bad thing, but it may well cause you to have knee injuries and possible back injuries, there is a thing called the Kinetic chain which starts from the ground up, your ankle is pretty mobile , your knee is fairly stable , your hips are mobile , your lower lumber spine is again fairly stable and your upper spine( T Spine ) is mobile, by allowing your front foot to move freely the Kinetic chain works as it should but if you keep your front foot down your body moves in completely the opposite way to how it should, leading to poor swings and worse still injury.
I could and will go into more detail on these subjects in future blogs but I wanted to give you a simple understanding of what Positive Impact Golf Coaching is all about.
So a quick reminder, reduce tension in your set up and swing, allow your body to move freely and please have a quick look at Brian Sparks video so you can see just how easy the Golf Swing can be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eURbeXGkeCU&sns=em
I hope this Blog inspires you to look at your swing in a different way, and remember you can always improve your swing no matter what your age. If you have any questions on this subject feel free to message me any time.
Happy Golfing. 😀
Julian Mellor
PGA Professional
Positive Impact Golf Coach
www.julianmellorgolfschool.co.uk
Julianmellorpga@icloud.com
