Change That Sticks

Change sounds inspiring until it asks you to feel awkward, look odd, and swing “worse” before it gets better. We dive into the real reason most golfers stall: chasing outcomes while avoiding the uncomfortable work of reshaping a motor pattern. Instead of miracle tips, we map a practical path that ties movement, club delivery, and ball flight together with measurement, clarity, and grit.

We talk about why grit often beats raw talent and how the “natural” label hides the hours of deliberate practice behind great performances. Then we connect that mindset to golf: launch monitor data reveals your pattern, while force plates or 3D motion capture expose the body motions driving it. With that insight, targeted drills act like training wheels—deliberate constraints that teach a new order of operations. You’ll see early gains in path, face-to-path, and strike quality before your feel catches up, which builds belief and momentum.

We also tackle fake progress. Playing the same course can trim strokes through familiarity without building portable skill. If you want a game that travels, you must rotate discomfort into practice: work on long irons and fairway woods, vary targets and lies, and test the motion at playing speed. Openness and commitment turn this into a sustainable process. A coach can diagnose root causes and design effective drills; only you can do the reps and bring the new pattern to the course under pressure.

Ready to trade comfort for capability? Follow our process: identify one root issue, measure it, train it with smart constraints, and reinforce it until it holds up on the tee, on the fairway, and under a card in your pocket. If this helped, subscribe, share with a golf friend, and leave a review so more players find the show. Got a topic you want us to cover next? Send it our way.

Website : measuredgolf.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 New Year, Resolutions, And Reality
• 1:49 Defining Change Through A Golf Lens
• 4:07 Coaching Humans, Not Just Golf Swings
• 5:20 YouTube Milestone And Channel Invite
• 5:25 Grit Vs Talent: Duckworth’s Thesis
• 8:00 Why We Mislabel Talent And Greatness
• 11:20 Evolution, Habit, And Resistance To Change
• 13:25 Golfers Seek Change But Avoid Discomfort
• 15:46 Comfort Routines On The Range Limit Growth
• 19:54 Discomfort As The Engine Of Learning
• 22:03 Motor Programs And True Swing Change
• 25:33 Course Management Illusion Vs Skill
• 28:51 Outcome Chasing Versus Process Fixing
• 31:05 Measuring Movement: Force Plates And Data
• 34:25 Training Wheels: Drills To Transfer
• 38:00 Time Alone Won’t Improve Your Path
• 41:07 Social Media Shortcuts And False Promises
• 44:40 Openness, Commitment, And Real Coaching
• 48:00 On-Course Pressure And Patience With Change
• 51:29 Quick Wins Without Lasting Fixes
• 54:08 Embrace Awkward To Unlock Better

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listener, sit down and join me, Michael, as we discuss all things golf. And it's official. Uh, we are finally past the holiday season. It is January 7th. I'm recording this a few days before it gets published on the set on this coming Saturday, uh, because I will be traveling. But we are kind of in the first week back from the holiday season where everything gets disrupted. We're traveling, we're eating bad, we're not sleeping well. Uh, everybody's kind of in the throes of the holiday season, but this is the first week back. And with it being the first week back, a lot of people uh are still hanging on dearly to those resolutions that they made for the new year, those goals they made. And unfortunately, a lot of people, even though we're only seven days into the new year, have already abandoned those things because, like we talked about on the previous episode, a lot of people, when it comes to resolutions and goals, really focus on the outcome of those goals and really almost make the goal too big to kind of get into bite-sized form to where we can see that change happen through a change in our habits and the processes that we're applying on a daily basis. But why is it so many people struggle with resolution? Why is it so many people struggle with change? And I think that's what we're going to talk about today is, you know, what is change? What does that mean in golf? Uh, why are people struggling to make change? Uh, there's a lot that goes into that. It's a very complex issue, and I think it's one worth discussing uh in the context of improving our golf swing, improving our golf score, uh, improving our overall skills as a golfer. So we're gonna kind of dive into change today, talk about that, why we are adverse to that, why some people do a little better with that than others. But I think it's gonna be a really cool conversation and probably a little bit more in-depth than a lot of the conversations we get into. And one of the cool things I'm doing right now is uh reading more. That's been uh something that I've really enjoyed uh, you know, more so here recently than at any other point in my life is I've just quite honestly been reading more and a little less medical journal, uh, a little less uh trying to really dive into the specificality of golf and the golf swing, but really just kind of reading more uh of these books that you know I find interesting and pertinent to being a well-rounded coach and working with human beings, because I think being a golf coach is one of the more difficult things you can do. A, you have to understand, you know, what the concept is that you're trying to teach uh at a very high level, the ins and outs, you got to know it forwards and back, backwards. You have to know a lot of analogies, you have to know a lot of ways to describe it to people that maybe don't share your background. But not only do you have to be able to literally teach a concept to somebody, but then you have to be able to get them to physically execute that. So there's a uh a lot of things that go into coaching, and and not just coaching golf, but coaching any sport, right? It's you have to be able to communicate, you have to have a clear and somewhat concise kind of philosophy and what you're trying to convey. And then you've got to be able to get them to execute it, even though you know maybe this person you're trying to change things with has been doing something differently for several years. They have a motor pattern. Uh, a lot of people choose to call that muscle memory, but they have a motor pattern that they've created. And getting people to change motor patterns is certainly not easy, uh, to say the least. So I like to do a lot of reading that isn't so golf specific or golf-oriented, and like to look at learning, uh, different learning styles, uh, like to look at the concepts of mastery, like to look at a lot of different things that I think make me a better golf coach and make me a better communicator. So one of the books I'm reading right now, uh super good. Uh, I've actually got it right here so I can show it because we have a YouTube component to this. And by the way, uh thank you to everybody. Uh, we just reached 8,000 uh subscribers on YouTube. That means a lot to me. That's really cool. We don't do any marketing with our YouTube, we don't like pay for subscribers, we don't, you know, work the algorithm probably the way we should. And to see it hit 8,000 is really cool. So thank you for that. Uh, if you don't know about our YouTube, it has more than just the podcast. We have a lot of swing videos, uh, theory, concept stuff on there as well. You can find that by searching measured golf on YouTube, should pop right up there for you. And if you don't mind, subscribe. We'd love to see that 8,000 number get even higher. But I wanted to say thank you because we literally this morning just hit 8,000. So it might fall a little bit now that I mentioned it, it normally does that. But I didn't want to hold back and wait till we got to like 8,100 because that'll probably take another month. But long story short, thank you very much. I really appreciate it and appreciate it. And if you haven't already, please head over there, go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. I think there's a lot of good information, and we're going to be doing a relaunch on that in the very near future. But getting back to reading and what I'm reading, I'm currently reading this amazing book by Dr. Angela Duckworth called Grit. And grit is not my favorite title for a book, uh, but Angela Duckworth has come uh referred to me a couple different times. Uh, she is incredible so far in what I've I've read. And essentially in the book Grit, what she's trying to figure out is what's more important? Is it more important to be immensely talented, or is it more important to be a hard worker and have some stick toitiveness uh when it comes to your pursuits? And so far, what I've read in the book is it seems, and she titled the book, so I think I know the answer, but it seems that she's putting more value on having grit and having the ability to stick with something and to work at something for a long period of time and to kind of get through the humps and kind of take your lumps and you know learn how to do something new. And I find this book fascinating for a lot of different reasons, but she's really in the beginning, excuse me, in the part that I've read so far in the beginning of this book, she's really uh done a great job of kind of separating, you know, a lot of people that we've witnessed through history who have been successful in arts or in uh sports or in business that you know we label as being talented. But that's really a shortcoming because we tend to see the end result, the great performance. And because it is so much different than anything we've seen before, it's so much greater, it's so grandiose. We tend we tend to say something of the effect like, oh my god, they're a natural, they were born to do this, they're so talented. But when you say that to the person, they kind of dismiss it. And I think a big reason for that is we didn't see all of the time, effort, and energy that went into creating that one singular great performance that we all witnessed. And I think that's really interesting because a lot of people see an amazing performance by Scotty Shuffler or Tiger Woods, and it's easy to say, well, they were born to do it, they're just naturally talented. They're it it it's creating from a psychological perspective, it's creating a barrier for us to not compare ourselves to them. But what makes these these individuals so great, whether it be business or the arts or sports or whatever else it may be, what makes them so great is all of the work that they've put into that thing for a sustained period of time. And that's where change happens, right? That's that's kind of getting at this topic of change and what it means and why so many people struggle with it, because change is hard. And if you kind of really oversimplify this a bit, and we think about change, every single person that plays golf has one commonality, maybe more than that, but at least one. We're all human beings. And as human beings, whatever you choose to believe, we have evolved. If you don't believe me, go back to the 13, 1400s, look at the average height of somebody, and now look at the average height of somebody. We are evolving. Okay, so if we are evolutionary, generally we resist change. And what we do while being evolutionary is we find something that works and then we keep doing it, and those become our habits, and that kind of becomes our life. And there's a lot of people who kind of figure out their path, their way, uh, their habits, and they kind of just run that until the clock expires on them. And we know people like that, and typically they tend to be people who are pretty, you know, well tied to their routines, pretty well tied to their their social group, pretty well tied to their jobs, and they they don't really change much. But the thing is, is with us being evolutionary and us being resistant to change because of that desire to evolve over time, you know, I think change, because it's the opposite of being consistent or constant, change is very sexy to us. And we all want to change. We all watch a movie that inspires us, we all read a book that inspires us, we all see a friend do something amazing, and now all of a sudden we're inspired to to follow their pursuit, but it wears off, and the motivation to make that change wears off. And I think that is something that certain people are more quickly willing to give up on the dream than others. And that's kind of where it comes back to the book, and we talk about grit, and there's people, you know, like we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast, who seven days into the new year, have already given up on their resolution. Ah, I can't do it. It's too hard, I don't like it, it's uncomfortable, uh, whatever the case may be, but they've already given up, and we're only a week out of 52 weeks into the year. So I would say that if we talked about grit with those people, I would say the grit's pretty low, and or that their goal setting process is a little wonky and probably needs some revising. But nonetheless, there's people who just give it up, right? But there are people who, you know, come new year, they want to, you know, lose weight or they they want to get to the gym more and get stronger, or they want to make their golf game better, that you know, at the end of this year we'll be celebrating, hopefully, the fact that they've stuck to it and they've seen the the fruits of their labor. They've seen their golf game get better, they've lost the weight, they've gotten stronger, they've whatever the case is, right? So what is what is kind of going on there? What is it that allows certain people to make change and other people really struggle with change? And, you know, like I said, it could be some of the goal setting process, it could be the inspiration. There's a lot of things that go into this. I am by no means a clinical psychologist, so I'm not the person to probably try to explain this to people. But from a golf context, I think it's very interesting. And the reason I think it's so interesting in golf is because almost everybody that I have ever taught golf to comes to me to be their agent of change. Hey, I want to change. Hey, I want to get better, I need to make a change to get to the place I want to be because where I'm currently at doesn't satisfy me, and I want to be satisfied. That's kind of how it goes. And the thing is, is that while I really pride myself on trying to be that agent of change, a lot of people still are unable to create that change. And there's a reason for that. Nobody can change your habits, nobody can change your uh inclinations for you except yourself. And when it comes to making change, I feel like a lot of golfers in particular don't necessarily understand the change that needs to occur for them to get better. And generally, the change we we want to create a change that is very big. You know, I want to go from a 20 handicap to a single-digit handicap this year. That's a big change. Okay, well, how do we make that change? Where does that change come from? And the simple fact is that most people don't actually want to change, they just want to shoot lower scores or they want to hit the ball farther or whatever the case may be. So they're not even in the business of change. They just know that something has to change in order for them to be where they want to be. And that's where I think, you know, golf has really changed, uh, certainly in my career, but more specifically since COVID. And I think the reason that so many people believe that this change has to happen is because of YouTube and because of the COVID golfers, and because we have so many people that are now into golf that have never been into golf in the past. And it used to be said, and this is strange for me because I used to adamantly disagree with this statement, but you know, it used to be said you have to dig it out of the dirt. That's what they said. And I was like, no, no, no, you can get on force plates and you can get on a track man and you can figure stuff out now, and you don't have to beat yourself to death trying to figure it out. Well, maybe it's not taking the learning out of the dirt or digging the learning out of the dirt, but maybe it's in the habit of making a change. Maybe it's in the process of making the change, right? Maybe that's what we have to dig out of the dirt, is the actual change has to be dug out of the dirt. And I think there is some truth to that statement. And what I'm kind of getting at is with the amount of technology we now have, with the equipment that we currently have, with the uh perceived uh intellectual information that we have out there about the golf swing readily available on YouTube and social media, it would seem that we can make people better quicker. But we're not seeing that. We're not seeing that at all, as a matter of fact. We're seeing that most golfers are not getting better. Most golfers are getting better to a point, but then the ceiling is very, very low. And we see that the average score that uh a person shoots, and and by the way, this is a very skewed number, but I think according to the handicap, the USGA and the handicap system, I think like the average score is like somewhere around 95. Now, keep in mind that most people don't put everything out, most people don't, you know, walk back to the T when they hit one out of bounds and take the stroke and distance. Most people don't play by the rules at all, to be honest, nor do they, you know, putt everything out and keep an accurate score. But with that being said, the average score is 95, which is, you know, probably not where most people would like it to be. So we know that golfers aren't really getting to this single handicap level the way they think they should. And a lot of people tend to think, and this is where I think things have really changed since COVID, but since 2020, we could say as well. But since like this COVID period of time, people feel like if they just show up and play golf or show up and hit balls, that they're somehow, somehow going to get better. And that's just not the case. That's showing up and and doing what you do and kind of following your habits, and and that's not going to lead to any change. So when it comes to actually making a change, I think one of the key ingredients for change comes from being uncomfortable. And if you are showing up and doing the same thing all the time and expecting to get better, well, we all kind of know that's the definition of insanity. And it generally doesn't work. So I'll give you an example of this. Okay. So, like for me personally, I like to, you know, when I do go to the driving range, I like to start with the wedges. Okay, I like to see a couple nice crisp wedges, maybe 10, 15 of them. Uh, 56 degree generally is where I start. Um, you know, and I'm hitting like some, you know, 40, 50, 60 yard wedge shots. And then once I'm feeling pretty good with that, then I'll make a little more full swing and I'll try to hit that, you know, 56 degree wedge, like 90, 100 yards at a target. You know, generally there's a flag or a green out there at about 100 yards. So I'll take aim at that and hit a few wedges there. And then it's uh, you know, then we get to like the eight iron or the nine iron. Uh and I, you know, that's that's an iron. I'm making a full iron swing with that. You know, if it's an eight iron, I I kind of find that 150-yard green out there, and I'm, you know, hitting some shots at that. And, you know, hey, is it getting there? Is it not getting there? Is it left? Is it right? What, you know, making your adjustments that you make. Um, and then I kind of like maybe hit some drivers. And I don't really, I don't hit a lot of long irons. I don't hit a lot of fairway woods. I don't hit a lot of hybrids. Uh, and that's kind of my routine because that's my comfortability. I'm I'm really good. I hit a lot of fairways with my driver. I keep it in play. Uh, I like hitting the driver, especially when I'm outside and get to see the ball flight. Uh being inside here in Ann Arbor at measured golf, you know, we don't get to see the ball flight. We see it on track, man, but we don't actually get to see the ball fly. So I like seeing the ball fly outside uh with the driver. I like, you know, hitting eight irons, seven irons, nine irons, you know, it's easy. It doesn't challenge me much. And that is my routine. Now, if I go out and I play golf and I play a normal golf course and I'm playing a golf course that's you know somewhere between 67 and 7,000 yards long, I'm probably not gonna hit a lot of those long clubs unless it's a longer par three. Um, unless you know I'm trying to get to a par five and two. I'm gonna kind of do what I'm doing. But if I all of a sudden go and and play a course that's longer and I'm hitting a lot of five and six irons into greens, and I'm needing to hit those fairway woods a little more frequently because maybe the par threes are a bit longer and I'm having to get the hybrid out of the bag or whatever the case may be. Okay, well, I'm not really prepared for that. And I can't really expect to hit those clubs as well as the clubs I hit all the time. But my habit, my routine, my comfortability is in these clubs that I generally hit because that's what I'm good at. That's what I like doing. And I'm not really willing a lot of times when I go hit balls to get uncomfortable. There's people next to me, you know, sometimes they know who I am, maybe. Uh, I feel a lot of pressure that way to perform at a high level because I'm a professional. Uh, and you know, like it's stressful, right? So if I wanted to actually get better with my longer irons, with my fairway woods, with my hybrids, you know, I need to spend more time hitting them. And that that creates a little more uncomfortability, right? But by hitting them more and being a little bit more uncomfortable, that's an opportunity to learn. And that's That's where I feel like we don't do a great job. Uh, is learning when it comes to golf. I feel like we tend to try to create and control the scenario or the situation, but we don't really push ourselves into that uncomfortable place to where the learning really happens. So, you know, why is that? Well, it takes grit, right? Like going back to the beginning of this conversation, like when we're uncomfortable and we fail, that feels bad, right? Like that doesn't feel great. So what do we do? Do we quit and say, well, I just can't do it and walk away? Or do I stick to it and I keep, excuse me, hitting balls until you know my hands bleed and make myself figure it out? Well, I think that's the difference between the people that get better and the people that don't. Or who are those people that I can give a drill to that significantly alters their motion pattern? And yeah, maybe they shrank the first couple. Now, do they feel hopeless and lost? Of course they do. We all feel that way. But the people that I see that take the big leaps and bounds are the people who the next time I see them, they're doing that drill with some competency and they're able to hit the ball better. And they're like, hey, you know, in the beginning, man, this sucked. This was hard. But now all of a sudden, like, I can do this. And that's really the amazing, amazing thing that golf can teach us is in a controlled environment, you know, nothing's gonna change big time in your life if you had a good shot or a bad shot. But we can learn how to overcome obstacles and we can learn how to get better at things. And it doesn't mean we're forever better, it doesn't mean we're never gonna make that mistake again, but we start learning how to stick to it and how to kind of suffer our way through the learning process long enough to where eventually we start seeing some of the fruits of that labor. So, you know, making change in your golf swing is not easy because you know what your golf swing feels like. Whether you can describe it, whether you like it, doesn't really matter. You can make your golf swing. And if you get on force plates and or you get on some 3D motion capture and you make some golf swings, it's more or less going to be the same golf swing every single time. You have a motor program that's kind of floating around in your brain, and that's called golf swing. And every time you go to golf, it plays golf swing, and you do what you know how to do. That's us kind of playing out our habits and our way of being. When we want to get better, when we want to be able to make more speed, when we want to be able to deliver the club better, when we want to be able to get the the strike to be right in the middle of the face, and we need to change our order of operations to do that, that really shakes the monkey tree inside of us and makes us uncomfortable. And that is a tough place to operate from in our current society because a lot of people love the game Candy Crush. And the reason they love Candy Crush is because it's not very hard, it's not very taxing, and it doesn't push us into any uncomfortable situations. Now, if you had to play Candy Crush in front of people and be judged on your performance, well, now that might make it a little bit different, but we're not asked to do that. We're just playing on our phone by ourselves, probably killing some time. So we have to stop thinking of golf as being candy crush to where if I do it long enough, eventually I just keep leveling up and leveling up and leveling up, and eventually I'm like, you know, a thousand levels into this and feeling like I've accomplished something. It doesn't work that way in golf because golf requires us to actually make our skills better. Now, golf kind of creates a bit of an illusion for a lot of people, and what I mean by that is, and I don't have any numbers for this, I wish I did. We need a anybody that wants to help out on the podcast to be like my research assistant, I would love that. But if we had some numbers, I would be interested to see how many people that keep a handicap play the same course, let's say eight out of ten times, meaning that they play 50 rounds of golf a year, and out of that 50 rounds of golf a year, they're playing 80% of those rounds at that course. Okay. So the reason I'm curious about that is the illusion that golf creates is that there's people who join a club or maybe buy a pass to a public golf course, and that's like their home base. And they start playing golf there, you know, a couple times a week, maybe once a week, but generally they play all their golf there. The first couple of times they play, oh, I didn't know there was a bunker there. Oh, I didn't know the water came in that close to the green there. You know, we don't really know the lay of the land, so to speak. And they go out there and they struggle a bit, right? And they hit it into that bunker, they hit it into that water, whatever the case may be. But through repetition and through playing that same golf course time and time again, they eventually kind of learn, hey, I got to keep the golf ball more over here. Hey, I got to keep the golf ball more over here. And because they're not taking the penalty strokes, because they know the breaks of the greens in general, because they've played it a bunch of times, because they kind of know the lay of the land, their score gets a little better. Now, at a certain point, they kind of, you know, plateau and their scores stop getting better. Well, they've gotten better through learning how to manage that golf course better, but they haven't really developed any new skills. They haven't learned how to hit it farther, they haven't learned how to hit it straighter, they haven't learned how to hit the draw that's necessary for that par three. They haven't learned a lot of these things. They've just learned how to get it around that park a little bit better. Okay, so I think there's a lot of golfers who kind of think that they're getting better at golf when in reality they're just learning how to manage the golf course they always play a little better. That's one part. The second part is that there's golfers who start with a very low skill level. So maybe these are the COVID golfers, maybe these are the new golfers that you know they were terrible and they could barely hit the ball, and now they can hit the ball halfway decent, and they kind of have figured out how to hit the golf ball that way. And once again, they get better to a certain point. But to get past shooting in the 90s, to get past shooting in the 80s, to get to this, you know, place where most people seem to want to be, which is like a low handicap index, you're going to have to be very good at developing new skills. You're going to have to learn how to hit it far enough to be able to attack the par fours. You're going to have to learn to hit it far enough to be able to get to a par five and two every now and then. You're going to have to learn how to, you know, make enough of your putts inside eight feet to be able to kind of protect yourself against unnecessary bogeys. There's a lot of things that you're going to have to learn to be able to do this. But the thing that I think is interesting is a lot of people who you who you know who claim to be low handicaps, they're low handicaps at their their home course. The minute you take them on a golf trip, their differential goes way through the roof because they're not really that player. They are that player at that course. But the minute we take them somewhere where they don't know the breaks of the greens, when they don't know, you know, where the hazards are, and they don't know kind of how the course is kind of quirky in its own way. Now all of a sudden they shoot a score closer to their actual skill level and their ability to be variable, right? And not just be able to do one thing, but to be able to do multiple things. So I think it's very interesting that generally when people talk about change, it's it's a process, right? Change is a process. But generally, when golfers talk about change, it's outcome. They want to shoot lower scores, they want a lower handicap, they want to hit the ball farther, like whatever. And they think that they have to make a change to do that. I would argue that making a change in the name of change's sake is not so good. So, an example I'll give you is I like to let people warm up when they come in for a golf lesson. And then I ask questions. I'm a big question asker. I like to kind of get in their head and get my canoe out and paddle around a little bit and kind of ask some questions and figure out where they're coming from. But you know, maybe maybe I'll take a little video of their golf swing, right, while they're warming up. And uh I try to video like one they hit pretty good, or one that they hit, kind of like you know, most of the ones they hit that are decent. And I'm like, hey, what do you think of this? And they're like, oh, that that right there. You see that in impact? I I hate that. That looks terrible. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I was like, so you know, what is it that you would like to get out of today? What is it you would like to change? And they're like, oh, that I don't like that impact position at all. And it's like, well, if we changed impact, okay, if we changed what your arms and club and hands kind of look like at impact, you wouldn't be able to hit the ball. And what people don't realize is the things that they typically don't like about their golf swing is the compensation they're having to make just to hit the ball. So a lot of people don't realize that yes, we don't like the way impact looks, but that all kind of went awry way before that, whether it be in the backswing or the and the transition and the downswing, wherever, but that led to this having to be the only way this was going to work. And the more extreme it is, obviously, the less often it's going to work. So a lot of the things that people go about trying to change are kind of outcome-based. I want impact to look different. Well, did we make a good backswing that puts you into a position to even get to the impact position that you want to create? Well, yes or no, right? Did we, you know, transition the club in a way to where we got the club to shallow a little bit, we're able to get the arms more in front of the body? Like, did we do these things? Well, no, right. And if we don't change those things, okay, then it's going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to get them the change they really want. And now they quit on that goal. They don't have that stick to this to it. And that's where I think, you know, making change and grit really go together in golf. Because I've said this before on this podcast, but if if you know, the thing that I love about what I do is we've got the force plates, you know, we've got track man, we've got really good objective data to look at. You know, this is how the body's moving based off how the body's moving, this is how the club's having to react, and this is why the club is doing what you don't want it to do. It's it's pretty clear cut and dry. It really is. So we have an understanding of fundamentally from a movement perspective, what needs to change. Okay. Now, here's the cool part I like to give specific drills to that movement issue for that golfer to work on. I love to do it, it's my favorite thing. Like, I love to give them drills. So I give them a drill that specifically addresses that thing. Okay. And guess what? A lot of times, initially, the first 20 minutes, whatever, they're really bad at doing that drill. Terrible at it, right? Because the body doesn't know how to do this. So I've done something really cool here. And what I've done is I have been an agent of change and I have made them uncomfortable, and now like the nervous system's trying to catch up and trying to learn and trying to figure out what the heck we're trying to do. Okay, we've kind of tricked it. So within that 20 minutes or whatever, let's say they start doing a little better job with the drill. Most do. Okay, great. Put them back on the force plates, and we can show them that it is substantially changed. And the cool thing is, is more often than not, not only has the force plate data changed in terms of the movement pattern, but generally we're seeing that the track man data changes as well. Whether that be the path, whether that be the face to path, whether that be the dynamic lie, the attack angle, whatever we're looking at and specifically working on, we can see those numbers start to change in real time with the movement pattern changing as well. Well, now we've done something amazing. Okay, we've made this person incredibly uncomfortable. We've taught the nervous system specifically what we wanted to do, and we're gonna have some reinforcement because we're seeing that the results are lining up with this. So now there's a rhyme for or there's a reason to the madness. Okay, well, I I really didn't like that and couldn't do that very well in the beginning, but you know, I see how that helps, and I see how that that kind of works, and I see how that's going to lead to better for me. Okay, great, wonderful. That's what I can do as a golf coach. That's what I can do as a Sherpa on your journey to the top of improvement. Now, when it comes to the grit, when it comes to the stick-tuativeness of this, this is where that golfer now has to go and continue to do that drill. They have to continue to reinforce it, they have to push themselves to be uncomfortable, they have to push themselves to do something different. And that's the really cool part of all this is that the people that I'm fortunate enough to work with who go and do that outside of the lesson, they start seeing improvement. And and then we start, you know, it's kind of like putting training wheels on a on a on a bicycle, right? We put the training wheels on just to get you the general kind of orientation and sense of what it feels like to be on that bike. And you ride it around, you're like, Look at me, look at me, I'm doing so good. And it's like, yeah, well, hang on, you know, we got the training wheels on. Like, you're not really riding a bike, you're riding a tricycle, but we'll get there, right? So we we put these training wheels on through the drills and through the reinforcement of the measurements and and through the data. And then as that player gets better at the drill and gets more proficient with it, and the body starts to kind of learn what we're asking it to do, then we can start taking, you know, pieces of that drill away. Or we can just take the drill out altogether and go, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We know that this is the data that we're kind of looking for, okay. Like this is the ranges that we want to live within. And now what we're gonna do is we're going to have you hit five golf balls with no drill, right? No training aids, no nothing. And we're gonna see if that's starting to produce these ranges of motion and movement, or if it's not. And now all of a sudden it's like we it's you don't take both training wheels off, right? You take one off at a time. But in this case, you know, they're feeling pretty froggy. So we take both training wheels off, we push them down the hill, they either ride the bike or they fall over. So when we look at this data now, it's like, oh, wait a minute. It's better maybe than it was. It's not as extreme, maybe as it was. Uh, it's not all the way there yet, but I can I'm I'm moving that direction. Cool. This this is the process of change. This is how we get people to get better. And through stick tuativeness and through grit or whatever you want to call it, people get better. But once again, it requires a bit of digging this out of the dirt and being consistent with it and putting time into it. But it's not random time, it's not, you know, showing up and just playing golf and expecting the results to be better, it's working on a specific problem and then reinforcing am I getting better at this or am I not getting better at this? And that's where I think a lot of people are really missing the mark. They think just, hey, the time itself will lead to better. Well, I disagree because if you show up and you have, you know, just to use a general example, if I have a club path that's, you know, five, six, seven, eight degrees left of target or right of target, and I show up and just do that every single time because I don't understand that my body is doing what it's doing to create that, and I, you know, kind of figure out how to get that around the golf course, I'm gonna have a pretty low ceiling. And I'm not going to be able to make that change that I want to make to get better because I'm just kind of doing the same thing time and time again. There's no change happening. But if I understand, like, hey, my body moves like this, which is what causes the club to move left or right, and I'm gonna work on getting my body to move different and get my hands into a different delivery. Okay, cool. Well, if we stick with that and we see that through and we don't quit within the first week of the year, okay, then we're gonna be able to potentially see that change through. And that's really cool. That's what I love about what I do is, you know, I taught a lot of golf lessons, you know, back when I was a young coach, and we didn't have force plates and we didn't have this stuff, and it was like, oh, the ball's flying better. Yep, there you go, there you go. But we didn't really know whether we were making things better or not. We just knew that we were getting things timed up better and the ball was flying straighter. But now we can actually look and see is there a change within the motion pattern happening? Are we actually getting the body to move differently? You can do that through some 3D motion capture stuff as well. Uh, if you choose to look at kinematics versus the kinetics, but we have to understand at the end of the day, if we show up and just move our body the same way every time and try to make the golf swing different, that's gonna be pretty tough to do because the arms in the club are definitely reacting to how the body's moving throughout the golf swing. So making a change um sounds great, right? Like we all want to change. Like, there's things I'd like to change about my golf swing. It's do I have the time, do I have the uh stick toitiveness enough to see that through? And and for me, you know, right now at this point in my life, you know, I'm not, but I am actually doing uh some work in the gym this year, and I I I'm excited about that. Uh, and I'm trying to get my body in a better place. And once I feel like I can actually create some of these movements that I feel like I need to make a little easier and get my body trained to do that, then we'll go about trying to make the change with the swing. But I know enough to be dangerous, and I know right now the way that I've done it in the past and the way I've trained my body to move in the golf swing, it's just not where it needs to be in order for me to make the change that I want to make. So, you know, my job isn't to try to force a square peg into a round hole and just which leads to the pits of despair. Uh, rather, I need to do what I need to do in terms of getting my body better, getting myself moving better. And once I can do that, then it should be much easier to get the golf swing where I want it to be in order to play at the level I want to play at. So I'm excited about that, but it's not generally the approach that is being sold out there. And I think for so many people, they're being sold, you know, whether it be through social media, YouTube, whatever, it's like, hey, do this one thing and hit it 15 yards farther. Do this one thing, lower your handicap 10 strokes, do this one thing. It doesn't work that way because we don't know if that one thing is really what the core issue is for you. And if we're going to make change, we need to make change in a very Intellectual kind of way. And we need to understand, like, hey, that these are the 20 problems of my golf swing, right? And I need to figure out that, you know, 15 of them come from the same root problem or root cause. And that's the thing we need to address. It's just for most people, addressing that one core thing is difficult because it's going to require being uncomfortable and it's going to require consistency or time over a period of time. And that's where, you know, golf has really changed a lot in my career. It used to be, you know, pretty easy for somebody, you know, let's say five, 10 years ago. Let's say 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it used to be a lot easier to sell to somebody like, hey, you know, this is where we're at with your golf swing. This is where we want to go with your golf swing. And we're going to spend a considerable amount of time on this, on this thing, on this one area that really needs to get better so we can do these other things and clean up these 15 things, right? Like we're going to spend a lot of time, okay, Mike, cool. Now, that doesn't mean that we mess around a session or two with that one thing, and they go out and start hitting the ball perfect. That's not what this means. But they would start seeing some improvement through that one thing and kind of see that there's some light at the end of the tunnel and all that good stuff. And they would stick with it. Now, because of how much information is out there on social media and YouTube, you know, people saying that it doesn't take any time, that if you just do this thing, it'll get better. Here's a training aid that'll make everything perfect, this, that, and the other. There's so many options out there now for people that they kind of feel like, oh, hey, I tried this thing, it didn't work, I'm on to the next thing. And there's very much this, you know, going into the candy shop and just trying a little bit of everything until you figure out what you like. And the problem is, is that there's some people I think that through that process of this didn't work, I'm gonna try this, this didn't work, I'm gonna try this, this didn't work, I'm gonna try this. There are people who I think figure out through that process, you know, kind of what the core issue is and what they need to fix. But by and large, I think people just stay where they're at. And because they're they're trying to find the thing that they're able, they're trying to find the thing that's going to make them immensely better without making them uncomfortable. And the simple fact is, is if you're going to make a change in your golf swing, you're gonna have to get uncomfortable, and you're probably gonna have to get uncomfortable more than once. And one of the traits that I think is the most important when it comes to making change is openness. And that's hard because you really have to take that leap of faith with somebody that's trying to help you and go, hey, I've tried everything there is under the sun, none of it helped me. You know, what do I need to do? We do the analysis, we figure out what needs to be done, and now it's like, okay, I'm gonna commit to this, I'm gonna stay open, even though it gets darkest just before dawn, you know, even though I'm gonna feel terrible, even though all these things are are not gonna feel right, okay, I'm going to see this through. And we really need people who are open, and we need people who have that situativeness or that grit or whatever you want to call it. So, you know, I think if you're wanting to make a change in your golf swing, I think you need to find somebody that can that can help you identify what it is that's really getting in the way. I think you need objective data to do that, right? I think, you know, force plates, track man, I think you need at least those two things to really understand what's going on. You know, you could get away with 3D motion capture and a track man, but you need to understand, like, hey, I don't like this ball flight. It sucks. It's it's not for me. Okay, fine. We do that through a launch monitor, right? Uh, we understand the the benchmarks, the data, right, that leads to that ball flight that you don't like. Okay, well, that path's too far right, so that's going to create a hook, or that path's too far left, that's gonna create a slice, whatever, right? Okay, so we understand that. Then we understand whether it be through 3D motion capture or 3D force plates, the movement of the body, right? That's going to allow for us to start going, oh, okay, well, wait a minute. My body moves this way, then of course the club has to move left, or if my body moves this way, of course the club has to move to the right. Okay, cool. We understand that now. Great, fantastic. Okay, so now we start kind of working on the body part of this, and then we should see the benchmarks within the launch monitor change. That's how we go about this, right? So I think you got to find somebody that A can help you identify what actually needs to change, and then B, you have to be open and willing to get uncomfortable with them and let them guide you through the darkness, right? To where we get on this pathway to change. And that's hard, right? Like it's hard for people to be open. We feel judgment, we don't want to look stupid. I got to get better by you know, whatever, right? So it's tough to find that. And then you need the people, if you really want to see people excel and you're somebody that really wants to, you know, take this to great heights with your golf game, then you have to be consistent with it and you have to be committed to it. And, you know, if you are working on this thing and you go to the golf course and it doesn't work, you know, okay, fine. Like it's gonna take time. It's it's going if you're really going about making a sizable change, right, that creates uncomfortability, that's gonna take a little bit of time, not only to master the new move, but to get comfortable with that new move on the golf course, especially when we start feeling external pressure from the golf course. I gotta shoot a score, I gotta not hit it in the water over there, I gotta do all these things. So it's it's really a daunting process, which is why I think so many people are crazy when they come to me and they say they want to change. In reality, they just want to shoot lower scores and they want me to tell them how to do it. And I can tell people, you know, what needs to change, I can tell people, you know, how we're gonna go about it, I can tell people what the end goal of it all is, but at the end of the day, they have to be the ones to get on that journey on their own, and they've got to be the ones to see it through. And you know, the fun thing for me is that when you do a good job with this stuff, you know, people don't have to hit it worse. People don't have to get worse, people can get better quickly. Now, when I say get better quickly, I mean they can hit a singular shot way better, maybe farther, maybe straighter, whatever the case may be. They can do that in the session, right? So, like I had a lesson earlier today to where I really, I really shook the monkey tree with them, and I I really literally like made him do something that made him very uncomfortable. And the funny thing was is that by the end of the session, he said that he was swinging the club about a third of the speed that he usually does, and his ball speed was up almost eight miles an hour. And he's like, Wow, I just I can't believe that, and that's crazy. And I like that's so much better, and it's higher in the air, and it's going farther, and it's going straighter, and it's the ball, you know, it's a lot more straight ball flight. And I'm like, Yeah, that's great. It doesn't mean that he's forever fixed. Like, yes, we're able to do this right here, right now, but we're gonna have to reinforce and train this and through the drill work and and really kind of cement this as this is what I'm trying to do when I swing this golf club. So I don't want it to sound like I'm saying that you have to be willing to get way worse to get better, but you do have to be willing to get way more uncomfortable to get better. And there's you know, a financial expert guy, I guess, I can't remember exactly who, but he was talking about, you know, if you're not willing to trade down your lifestyle for six months to be financially better off, you'll never be financially better off. And I think that that's very true. I think very few people are willing to, you know, uh make a make get uncomfortable to get comfortable. That they're just not willing to go through the uncomfortability of life, right? And that change process. And, you know, I've said this before, but you know, if I said, hey, you could be, you know, whatever the bet, you know, you could be the handicap you want to be, you could hit it farther, you could hit it straighter, you could be able to hit all the shots, you could, you know, really be a great, you could be a PGA tour winner, but you have to swing it like Jim Furick. People wouldn't take that bet. Wouldn't do it, right? Uh same with Matt Wolf. I said you gotta swing it like Matt Wolf to get better. People wouldn't do it. Because it's strange, it's awkward, it's funny, right? But that is the uncomfortability, right? Of hey, I'm willing to go out there and do something that feels weird, I'm willing to go out there and do something that looks weird, I'm willing to go out there and do things that kind of don't fit within my status quo, but I'm going to be able to perform better. I'm gonna see this awkwardness through to a better me. And that's where I think you know, change becomes hard for people. So long story short, um, you know, I think people are definitely capable of making change, right without a doubt. Like the day that we're not capable of making change is gonna be the saddest day in human history. Um, but I think it's hard to make change, and I think it gets harder to make change. And I don't think it's necessarily a golf problem. I just think it's everybody has to be Instagram perfect these days, and everything has to be photo perfect, and you know, it's all about looking normal and fitting in and like having a lot of followers and all that stuff. But, you know, I think we have to realize that, you know, a lot of us don't have a pretty golf swing to start with. And I don't really know what the fear is there because so many people I think are fearful of making a change because they don't think that they'll ever be able to replicate what they do. And it's probably more than likely because they don't even understand what they're doing in the first place. So I think people put way too much um put way too much stock into what they're currently doing and are afraid to lose that to make the change. But in reality, I think a lot of people could gain a lot from going through a change process and learning how to get better and actually understanding, you know, more about what they do when they swing the golf club versus just being kind of in this subjective feel state. And I think that's that's where golf really gets it wrong a lot, is without a doubt, when we play golf, it's very field-based because we don't have that technology out there with us, but we still need to understand what we do at a core level to create our golf swing. And then once we have an understanding of that, then we can try to change things, measure those things, and then create new feels based off the changes that we're trying to make. So I think there's a lot of ways to go about doing it. Uh, but I think generally we got to get people willing to be uncomfortable and open to the process of making change. So uh if you're somebody that's serious about it and you know want to get better at golf, then I hope that this is advice you take to heart. Um, I hope that you find somebody uh in your area or you can come to us here in Ann Arbor, or you can find me when I'm on the road. Um, but you know, I think getting on some force plates, getting on some 3D motion capture, understanding, you know, what causes your miss, what causes your good ones, and then understanding how we're going to go about making a movement pattern change to increase the likelihood of the good shot is is super helpful. Uh, I don't think it's gonna hurt anybody, but I do think for a lot of people it tends to be eye-opening because they're, you know, hey, when I when I hit one good, man, I made the perfect swing. Well, no, you timed up your swing. It doesn't mean you made a perfect swing, and there really isn't a perfect swing, but there is a swing that's gonna work best for you. And we have to understand the physics behind it, we have to understand the kinesiology behind it, we have to understand, you know, the ball flight laws and and how that applies to the pattern that we're making. So long story short, I think you can get better. Um, I really do. But I think, you know, when you're thinking about making a change, you you gotta you gotta roll that one around a bit. You gotta think about what are you asking for? You know, or are you are you willing to put time into this and be consistent? Are you willing to stick to it? Are you willing to get uncomfortable? And if the answer is no, then okay, fine. There's nothing wrong with that. And a lot of people maybe don't have the time or resources or whatever available to do that. And in that case, maybe don't try to make a change, maybe try to refine what you already do or you know, go and visit the putting green and chipping green a little bit more and get better at those skills. Um, but if you're if you're serious about wanting to make a change, I think this is the way you have to go. Uh, and I think science kind of more or less proves that. So anywho, you know, I think uh it's an interesting topic, as I said. Uh, I highly recommend the book by Angela Duckworth, Grit. Uh, I think it does a really nice job of of explaining a lot of this, uh, the concept of of you know what's more important, uh, inherent talent or you know, work ethic and and and change. Um, and I think that's it's really a cool place to start uh if you're interested in kind of going down this path. So anywho, I uh I want to once again thank everybody. Uh it's been pretty crazy this journey that I'm on. Uh never in a million years got into this to have a big following or anything like that. But you know, the 8,000 subscribers on YouTube is is pretty cool. It means a lot to me. Uh, and I really do my best to you know create content that you know is helpful, insightful, and is not just you know full of fake promises. So uh I hope you take something away from this. I hope that the podcast has helped your golf game in some way. Uh, but you know, I'm I'm all ears. You know, if you guys have topics you'd like me to discuss, if there's things that you know you're interested in that we haven't covered on the podcast, please reach out, let us know. You can always reach out to us on social media. You can follow us uh at measured golf. You can follow me at the forceplate guy on Instagram. Uh if you want to go to our website, measuredgolf.com, you can send us an email directly through there. Uh, you can schedule a coaching session. We have online coaching sessions as well. A lot of people have been confused about that. I'm just not using Skillist or any other platform. Uh, I'm kind of doing it my own. Uh, it's great. I can't believe that I've finally become a convert and I think the online coaching thing can be done fairly well and at a high level. So if that's something you're interested in, we have that available as well. But, you know, thank you so much for listening, uh, subscribing, uh, commenting, all these things. They really help us a great deal. And, you know, I I really enjoy connecting with you guys. So if you know you want to drop us a line and and ask a question or give us a comment, we'd love to hear from you. So thanks so much. Um, it it really means a lot. It really does. So thanks. Uh really appreciate you guys tuning in, listening, uh, subscribing, downloading, all that good stuff. But we really appreciate it, and we want you guys to know we do this for you. So let us know what we can do to help you better. So thanks again. And until next time, and always keep grinding.