The Practice Manual is not for the faint of heart. It covers an immense surface area of the sport of golf, and at times it's very technical. Adam broke the book into three sections – About Learning, Training, and Periodization. About Learning covers both golf specific details as well as meta-learning. Training covers how to build technique and skill in service of your golf game. Periodization teaches tailoring practice time to the appropriate season, month, week, or day. Every aspiring competitive golfer will take something valuable away from this book. Even non-golfers will find valuable takeaways from the meta-learning portions.
Key Takeaways
Memorable Quotes
Rating: 8/10
It will take me another couple readings to soak in all the processes and drills shared by Adam in this book. Golf is a life long sport though, so I'll be happy taking the time to do so. On the negative side, there were many typos, and it was often repetitive. A few passes through with an editor, and it would be easier to digest (and shorter). @Adam, I'm available! Serious golfers looking to improve their games should give this a read. Also, anyone in the sports or performance fields could take away a lot of food for thought.
Key Takeaways
- Impact is the only thing that matters when striking a golf shot. The ball flight laws dictate what will happen to the ball based on impact. Understand the ball flight laws: 1. Heel-Toe Strike 2. Divot Position 3. Clubface 4. Path 5. Speed 6. Loft 7. Angle of Attack.
- Understand technique vs. skill. Technique is a particular way of completing a task. Skill is the ability to produce the desired outcome in that task. A skilled golfer can use many techniques to hit a shot inside 15' for example.
- Understand your locus of attention and how that pertains to performance and learning.
- Cultivate good variability in your technique, because it's outcome that matters.
- Work your way through the stages of learning to gain mastery of a particular technique or skill.
- Use quantified practice and goal setting to hone in on the performance you want.
- There are five phases to training: direct technical, experimental, calibration, performance, and transference. Use them at the appropriate period in your cycle to maximize performance at the right time.
Memorable Quotes
- As a result of developing skills, we create the ability to self-organize multiple techniques or variations of techniques which will function, as opposed to a singular functional technique.
- Technical (procedural) development usually involves getting rid of variability. Skill development involves encouraging better variability.
- Neutral focusses will not raise the ceiling of your potential, but they may help you reach that ceiling more often.
- Addressing movement issues alone without addressing the perception/action of the impact concept is swimming against the tide.
- You don't learn stability through stabilizing. What a paradox. The baby who learned to stand through forcing stability [with a full body baby walker] (taking away degrees of freedom and encouraging less movement variability) is less stable than the baby who learned to stand through creating instability (encouraging degrees of freedom to work together through movement variability).
- Whenever your desire to hit your best shot goes up, the chance of your old swing coming back increases dramatically.
- The best gift an educator can give is to get someone to be self-reflective.
Rating: 8/10
It will take me another couple readings to soak in all the processes and drills shared by Adam in this book. Golf is a life long sport though, so I'll be happy taking the time to do so. On the negative side, there were many typos, and it was often repetitive. A few passes through with an editor, and it would be easier to digest (and shorter). @Adam, I'm available! Serious golfers looking to improve their games should give this a read. Also, anyone in the sports or performance fields could take away a lot of food for thought.