Stop Chasing The Perfect Swing ! In Conversation with Adam Young

We break down why “fixing your swing” so often makes you worse, and why impact is the only non-negotiable that actually controls ball flight. We lean on motor learning science to show how small, testable changes beat chasing textbook positions. 
• separating impact factors from swing aesthetics 
• using the big three at impact: ground contact, face contact, face direction 
• understanding micro changes in face angle and strike location 
• clarifying angle of attack versus divot depth using simple models 
• building matchups instead of copying a single “perfect” pattern 
• testing interventions to find what works for your body and brain 
• setting realistic dispersion expectations and smarter targets 
• learning plateaus, attractor states, and why old habits snap back 
• designing practice for transfer with targets, club changes, pressure, and spacing 
Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. 

Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Preview

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, welcome to this week's edition of the Flaghunters Golf Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Perryman, along with co-host Justin Tang, my friend, fellow seeker, uh lead teacher, one of the foremost minds in the teaching space in the game of golf. And he operates out of the Hidden Castle Golf Club in Singapore, a good friend and a trusted ally. And uh this week he takes the reins for me. I wasn't able to make the main conversation, but this conversation is between Justin and a very, very good coach named Adam Young. And uh Adam notably is uh the co-host for the Sweet Spot, the excuse me, the Sweet Spot podcast with John Sherman. He is one of these coaches that will try to get you to understand from a motor perspective, good versus bad, what proper versus improper is for you by exploring both spaces uh while you're hitting balls and one while you're while you're trying to learn how to swing the club better. So, I mean, a couple of the bullet points, you know, understanding uh clarifying attack angle versus divot depth. So this is a technical conversation, and using motor learning concepts like attractor states to explain setbacks, uh, and building a practice that transfers target club changes, pressure spacing, active forgetting. Very cool. Uh, it's it's a very rich conversation. I got a lot out of it listening to it. And uh you can further reach Adam at adamyounggolf.com. And when you go to adamyoung.com, you can even sign up for a free ebook that summarizes and visualizes some of what Justin and Adam talked about in the conversation. And uh you'll also find out when the free app will be coming out. Go visit adamyoung.com, check out the Sweet Spot podcast with Adam and John Sherman, and we want to give a thanks to Cleveland Circus on Mizuno Golf, and Jumbo Max Grips. Cheers, everyone. Thanks for listening, and please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Why Swing Changes Backfire

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I'm standing in for Jesse today, who unfortunately cannot make it. Today we have a fascinating guest for you. If you have ever swung a golf club and felt like an uncoordinated chimpanzee trying to solve a physics equation, this conversation is for you. My guest is Adam Young of Adam Young Golf. He co-hosts the Sweet Spot podcast with John Sherman. Adam is a fascinating person. He's not only a leading golf coach, but he's also the author of the best-selling The Practice Manual. He's basically the golf coach applying actual motor learning science to a game that's been stuck in the dark ages for a hundred years. Today we are gonna get into the weeds of why having a perfect swing is a trap, why you should actually practice hitting the golf ball badly on purpose, and the bizarre neuroscience of how we learn skills. Over to you, Adam.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Hi, thanks for having me on. What uh what questions do you have for me? Where where should we start?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

You know, Adam, one thing that really puzzles me, uh, having having played this game for a quarter of a century is the process of actually getting good. And I've seen so many good players over the years, in trying to get good, they actually get worse. Let's let's have a broad discussion about that, and then we can dive down into some uh issues that I would like you to educate our listeners on.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, getting good the way that most people go about it is to change their swing, change the way that they um change the way that they move. And you know, this is a double-edged sword. It it can be necessary for to a certain extent, um, but we can also try and force ourselves into a model or mold that doesn't suit us and is not even necessary to change. Like the thing is when I look at swing pieces or swing movements, I categorize them into what actually affects impact and what is just for aesthetics. So it's things like uh, you know, you look at who's the top golfer at the moment. Um I've got his name, Sheffler. Yeah, this thing is Shuffleman. Sheffler, Shuffle, Shufflefeet. Uh Scotty Shufflefeet. Um, yeah, I mean, lots of people look at his swing and say it's kind of unique, his lead arms kind of high, face is more open than usual. Um, you know, his feet move all over the place through impact. Um, but you know, he satisfies impact, which is what I always talk about. That club moving through impact is excellent. And that's something that he works on directly. And I think that many people think that, oh, I have to absolutely change my motion in order to get better. Whereas the reality is they just they have to change impact. That's what has to happen on a 100% level. Something at impact has to change to become better. Now, the swing may be part of that puzzle. Uh, you know, moving or changing the swing might be part of that puzzle. But again, do we need to completely uh dismantle someone's swing and build it up from scratch? I completely uh disagree with that approach. The way that I think is what does this person need more of an impact? And what can we add to their existing motion to make it better? This way it's not a complete destruction of the swing, it's just a slow evolution of what they already do naturally very well. Because the reality is what we do naturally, what our body wants to do, is usually one of the more consistent movements. And it's when we try to fight what our body does naturally that huge amounts of inconsistency come up. And I suppose the industry's argument to that has always been well, if you just put more reps in, it will become more consistent. And there's an element of truth to that as well. But to some extent, we'll always be battling what our body does naturally because there are many reasons why our body moves the way it does. It could be physical limitations, it could be um things that we did early on in life. Maybe if you were a hockey player or a tennis player, like you look at Nadal's swing, he's a very, very good golfer. I think he's scratch at least. Uh, but his swing looks like a tennis swing. It's short, it's super steep, and but he gets that club on the ball effectively. Um often physical limitations are a reason why we do it. Injuries, um, just the way everybody's body sequences itself differently. We have different muscles that are strong at certain points and weak in certain areas. Like you can uh, you know, juniors, why do they swing super long? Uh well, because they're very flexible. And so they're gonna create power through swing length. Whereas someone who sits at a desk all day and never does any rotation, they're gonna be much less flexible in the midrift, but probably stronger there. So they're gonna have a shorter swing with a different sequence. So trying to copy someone else's sequence when our body is not built exactly the same as them can be an exercise in fertility.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

So, what you're saying is we we need to be careful and separate what affects impact and what affects aesthetics. I suppose it's like driving a car down the highway and then the car stalls. We need to know does this require an engine overhaul? Or is it simply a tire fix?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, most people are just shining the car up and saying, why is why is it still not moving, right? There's some things that are just completely aesthetic that don't actually move the needle. And sometimes we fix the wrong thing. Uh, for example, example of that I always use is you know, lots of players might have a folded lead arm at impact, which uh, you know, textbook instruction would say that's a fault. Yet there are many, many golf pros who have a folded or slightly flexed lead arm at impact. I am one of those. Yeah, Lee Westwood is a huge huge example of that. I'm one of those. You got uh Rutif Hooson, you got Louis Easthausen, Ricky Fowler, Garcia. I could list a bunch of guys who fold their lead arm through impact. I'm one of them as well. Now, if you give a person who is a shanker, or even if they've hit the center of the face to heal, and you try to make them straighten their lead arm, they'll start to shank it worse. Every one of those will move more towards a heel. Now, that could be a good intervention for someone who tends to hit the toe too much. It might be a good intervention there. So I think of things in terms of um, not I I don't look at swing movements as false necessarily. I look at in the whole mix and say, okay, well, if that matches what they're doing. So if a player is able to hit the sweet spot over and over again with a folded lead arm, there is no reason to change that. You may, you're probably gonna make them worse. In fact, if you change that, you're gonna have to have another change just to match it, to balance it out. And now you've got a player working on two things just to achieve the same goal that they had before. The same thing they're achieving before. Um, so lots of play players will say, well, yeah, but maybe that different movement, that more textbook movement will be more consistent. And there's just no evidence to support that in many cases. Lots of what people think makes someone consistent is not reality. And in fact, the act of trying to change your swing is going to induce inconsistency because we're we're battling what's natural to us.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, unfortunately, uh a lot of coaches don't take a data-driven approach. I unfortunately refer to some coaches as guys who know everything but can fix uh nothing. And it's you use a very interesting word in intervention. Unfortunately, people don't know they go down this slippery slope of okay, we we introduce interventions, we also want to make huge mechanical changes. Like like for you. We know that when we change uh the golfer's impact, i.e. introduce intervention, the the look of the swing often changes.

Impact Over Aesthetics

SPEAKER_01 11:55

People people don't realize that, and it strikes me as kind of putting the cart before the horse. Let's change the look and we change impact. Certainly that that happens. But it's it's kind of like memorizing positions to stay balanced on a bicycle, and that's not quite how the the brain, the mind learns motion.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Exactly, yeah. I mean, if you if you throw a ball into a bucket, you're going to use a certain certain arm mechanics. Now, if you try and throw the ball to a bucket that's a little farther or a little closer or a little bit more left or right, you're going to change your arm mechanics. But you're not focusing on the arm mechanics. You're not saying, okay, I've got have to internally abduct, and you know, not even from a feel perspective, you're not thinking about this. The task creates the mechanics in that regard. Now you could, if you wanted to, you could say, okay, in order to throw on the left bucket, I have to turn my arm this way and do this and that, but it's not an efficient, it's not effective, it's not a natural way of doing it. Um again, it's as I said, it's possible to do it that way, but it's not functional. I mean, these things have been studied. And similarly in golf, golfers try to change impact through changing the motion. Uh, and it's possible to do that. But what I've found is uh called reverse engineering. I've found that by giving an appropriate impact task, by getting people to do the task, the swing changes itself. And oftentimes it looks more aesthetically pleasing at the end of that. But it's that's not necessary. You know, I was actually on a podcast before this, and I used the example of how when I was a two handicap, my swing looked more aesthetically pleasing than when I was a plus five handicap. Okay, when I was a plus five, I said, you know what, screw it. I'm not gonna stop videoing my swing. I'm just gonna focus on impact. I did that, and my swing started to look a little funkier. It started to move more naturally to me, I believe. Uh, but I struck the ball better. You know, I went from a two to a plus five handicap by striking the ball better, even though my swing looked worse. So sometimes the swing can look worse, but if the impact is better, the ball flight is better. Sometimes we can get the ball flight better, the ball impact better, and the swing looks better. Sometimes they don't look any different. I I've I've added 20, 30, 40 yards of people, straightened out their slices, eliminated their shanks. And if you stick their swing side by side, only the most trained eye would be able to see the difference between them. So often I'm not changing the motion, I'm just tweaking the impact as to what we needed. And the reality of golf is this is a scary one for people, but the reality of golf is when you hit a bad shot, it's always been one of three things that's changed. Either your ground contact has changed, you know, maybe you went a little deeper in or caught it a little thinner, your face contact has changed, maybe you hit it 10, 15 millimeters more towards the heel or toe, or your face direction has changed. Maybe you left it one, two, three degrees more open or closed. So every time that, you know, if if listeners take only one thing from this podcast, every time you hit a bad shot, it's gonna be one of those three things ground contact, face contact, or face direction. And the reality is there's only actually been a small change in one of those three things. And this is where it kind of gets scary. But when I ask people, you know, show say they slice one and it goes 35 yards offline. I say to them, show me the club face you think you presented to that. And they show me a face that's 45 degrees open. The reality is we go into the launch monitor data and I show them, I said, that club face was three degrees more open than the previous one that went right down the pipe. And they go, three degrees, huh? And then I actually have pictures of what one, two, three, four degrees open looks like. People can't even see the difference between it. So so we have to learn that okay, those three things are important at impact. Then how then the change that we need to make is only, I call it a micro technique. It's a very small change. Uh, and then it's then it's a case of okay, well, if it's such a small change, how on earth do I do that? And that's where skill development comes in.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Interesting you mentioned the thing about degrees. I often ask my students hey, what's how many degrees is one minute on the clock? They have to think for a bit and then I go like six degrees. I said, Can you see actually six degrees from time? Not really. I said, That's the difference between zero and zero on the golf course. It's a difference face to pass, difference between a push-draw and a hook. Yeah. It's it's that minute. And I said, Do you really think you have a chance of feeling what six degrees is, one degree is? I said, You've got no chance. And I really like how you elegantly put about the brain learning through tasks and not motion, uh, not positions.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Well, what I would say there, I'd give a little pushback to that. And what I would say is it's actually easier to learn how to feel it than it is to learn how to change it through, say, wrist angles or focusing on movement. Like if you want to, if you want to change six degrees, it's gotta be more of a feel, like this that tiny micro change. Um, but yeah, yeah, that's that's where skill training comes in because it teaches people feel. They say the teacher uh they say that feel can't be taught, but I've proven that wrong.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

I guess you can you can do your skill drills with feedback via trackmen, and then you go three degrees feels like this, four degrees feels like that. Exactly. That's exactly how I do it. I think most people get so caught up in in numbers, like, okay, let's go, as you say, let's let's put some devices on, let's get into all these funky positions, and and when they're done, the new swing looks nothing like the old swing. And we get down into this spiral of I want my swing to look like this. I think the human eye is so attracted to symmetry. And this is what I call the the Jim Furick and the Colin Montgomery problem. Jim Furick has won 75 million give or take in his entire career. He's shot 58 and 59 in two separate PGA tour events. Uh Colin Montgomery has won eight European uh order of merit titles, seven of them consecutively. Yet no one is rushing to teach or learn their swings. Yeah. Colin Montreal had early extension and everyone wants to learn the beautiful swing of Adam Scott, Tiger Woods.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Yeah. And they think the uh they think the answer lies in that symmetry, and it's it's not beauty, is not is not the answer to great golf as Furek

The Big Three At Impact

SPEAKER_02 19:20

shows us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So can you talk a little bit about the non-negotiables on the road to improvement? Yes. You mentioned the laws of impact.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yeah, so everything, every the reason why the ball does what it does is because of how that club is moving through impact. So there's there's a point in time where the club hits the ball, strikes the ball, and then about half an inch later, the ball separates. And during that time, during that half an inch, the ball is taking information from the club head. It's taking things such as what speed is that club moving? What angle is the club face? What direction is that club moving? Where did it hit on the face? Those are the those are the laws of impact. Or you could separate. I talk about seven laws of impact. So one of them is where did your club contact the ground? You know, because that's going to have a very high correlation with where you hit on the face vertically. So where did your club contact the ground? And we know with irons we want to hit ball first, then turf. Uh, where did you contact on the face? Was it on the sweet spot or was it more towards the toe or heel? Then what was the face orientation? Was it more left or more right at impact? Those are what I call the big three. Because as I mentioned earlier, anytime someone hits a bad shot, it's going to be one of those three things that has changed from swing to swing. So I can it's pretty much across the board, beginner, pro, one of those three things is the difference between a good and bad shot. Now we get on to things such as they they're more optimizations, right? So speed. Um, speed isn't necessary, but all else being equal or faster, clubhead speed is more beneficial because it's going to go farther and distance matters. Um path as well. So the direction are you swinging more out to in or more into out? Again, we don't need a neutral textbook path to play good golf. Colin Montgomery swung out to in. Tiger swung in to out for some parts of his career, out to in for others. Pros tend to be close to neutral, but I mean, there's some guys like uh Jack Zach Johnson. I always get him Zach Johnson and Jack Johnson mix up. Zach Johnson's like six, seven, seven degrees into out, and another one's a guitar player. Um, but you know, I Rory McElroy, when he was one of the best drivers in the world, he was like six, seven, eight degrees into out. He neutralized it and stayed a good golfer, uh, but it's not necessary. Um, you know, it path changes the shape of shot, the curvature patterns that you take to get there. So a drawer is going to be more in to out, a fader is going to be more out to in. But uh really, I think people obsess over path a little bit too much. Um, I don't like to see it way off, like if someone's cutting 10 degrees across it, more because of a more from efficiency. Like if you're cutting that much across it, you're going to be losing a lot of distance. But you know, if a player is three degrees, four degrees out in hitting fades down the target, we don't need to change it. If they can control the face, they can control the outcome.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

We don't need to be zeroed out. Yeah, we don't need to trend some years back.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah. I mean, it's fine to be zeroed out as well. It's not, it's not at the end of the world for that. Um, but you don't need to be. And then you have attack angle and dynamic loft. Attack angle is whether the club is coming in level, coming in down, coming up on the ball, and dynamic loft is like the the loft of the club, but what it is at impacts. You might have a 56 degree wedge, but most pros de-loft it to like 45, 40 degrees of impact. Um, so those are the seven laws of impact, which is I know is a lot, right? But luckily, we can actually just talk about the first three. We can boil it down to the first three, which makes it easier. In fact, ground contact and face contact can be lumped into two, uh, sorry, into one thing. So ground contact and face contact can effectively be if you're hitting too far in front of the ball, it's a thin. If you're hitting too far behind the ball, it's a fat. If you're hitting the ground too close to your feet, it's a toe. And if you're hitting too far, the ground too far away from your feet, it's a heel. So thinking of an X on the ground and just the middle of the X, X marks marks a spot. If you can hit that X, you can fix two, you can be very good at ground contact and face contact. You only have to worry about face direction then. So those are the big things. And then out of those, you boil it down to okay, what does that individual player need to work on more? Some players have problems more with face contact. Other players have good players who are very good at contacting the ball, but their face direction needs work. And so we just say, okay, well, for efficiency purposes here, you have to go off and work on face direction. Let's go and do some drills to do to improve that.

Attack Angle Versus Divot Depth

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Here, I would like to stop you, talk a little bit about angle of attack and dynamic laugh. I want to talk about our friend Joe Mayo. Yep, that's my friend. There is a misconception about oh, look, if you've got a 10-degree angle of negative 10 angle of attack, you're gonna be deep. I think Joe Joe has given up trying to explain to some people that steep is not deep. Can you give our listeners the Cliff Notes version of angle of attack being different from the swing up the depth?

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Yeah, I could give a few analogies here. If you imagine an airplane, um the uh the angle of descent that the airplane is taking, that's the angle of attack. The altitude is the depth. Okay, they're two separate. You could have a plane flying level, level angle attack, and it could be 30,000 feet in the air. Um, you could have a plane flying level, and it's touching the ground. His wheels are touching the ground, so it's much lower. Uh, similarly with a golf club, you know, the angle of attack is like the angle of descent into the ball. And that that angle, that club could descend into the top of the ball, the middle of the ball, the base of the ball, an inch behind, two inches behind, three inches behind. It could be the same angle of attack for all of those things. Um angle of attack, the biggest influence on it, or a big influence, is if you think of a hula hoop, right? You think of the swing as a hula hoops, the club is traveling on the rim of that hula hoop. Angle of attack would be where is the ball in relation to the bottom of that hula hoop. So now you you imagine the hula hoop, right? The club is coming down that hula hoop, is coming down, down, down, down, down, then it reaches the bottom and it's traveling level. And then after that, it starts to travel up the hula hoop. So if the ball is at the bottom of the hula hoop, it's a neutral or level angle of attack. And if the ball is farther back in that hula hoop, then it's a steeper angle of attack. Now, arc depth would refer to if we take that hula hoop and we drop it deeper into the ground or we raise it up out of the ground. That's arc depth. And so people often mistake they they are kind of tied in a little bit. So a deep divot and a steeper angle of attack are kind of tied in, but they're not exactly the same thing. You could have a 10-degree downward attack angle and not take a divot, and you could have a 10 degree down attack angle and take a divot. So um divot depth is not a good indicator of whether you're steep or shallow, it's more an indicator of arc depth.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

You and I have seen enough 36 handicappers divots with their drivers.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yep, exactly. You could you could have a shallow attack angle into the ball, a zero attack angle, and take it and lay the sod over it. You could lay a big chunky divot over it because uh the ball might be at the bottom of your hula hoop, but you've dropped the hula hoop in too deep. That's all.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

And can that was that was very clear. I think it's very difficult to get confused on those two points with your explanation. Can we move on to what you think are the negotiables of the golf swing?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Yeah,

Matchups And Algorithmic Coaching

SPEAKER_02 27:59

I mean, grip. You have some players who have a weaker grip, some players who have a stronger grip, some players who have mixed. For some reason, everybody said Hogan's grip is the way forward. That's because Hogan was good, and everybody said let's copy him. And that's not the right way to go about things. You know, Hogan was also battling a hook, so he uses what I would consider a weaker grip for most golfers. That's going to make them slice it. So there's a big mix of things that go into presenting the club face at impact, and grip is just one variable. So you might have someone with a weaker grip who has more leaderous flexion, and that might match up. You might have someone with a stronger grip. I'm thinking Paul Azing, a stronger grip and more cup at the top, those match up. They're not textbooks, but they might match up. Yeah, you've got Frey Couples, you've got Dustin Johnson who has a strong grip, which would make you hit it left. He has a leaderous flexion that would make you hit it left, but then he doesn't have a lot of forearm rotation through impact. So there's another variable that relates to it. It all sounds complicated, but when you think of things in terms of what do I need to do to make this player better, it simplifies it. So if Dustin Johnson comes to me and says, hey, I'm missing everything left, then you could say to him, okay, well, let's weaken off the grip a little bit or reduce some of that leader's flexion. But if it so you're moving in more towards textbook there, but for a very specific reason. But if Dustin Johnson came to me and said, Hey, I'm hitting everything right, then neutralizing his grip and wrist angles would be the worst thing for him. It would make him worse. And that's that's where people often get caught in this. I need to reach textbook. Uh, they they can often add things to their swing that will make them worse. And so you need to know what to do, really, or or either hire a good instructor who can tell you the right things to do, or really educate yourself on these things.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

I I like I like the term you use, neutral. And that that was certainly something that uh Jim Hardy drummed into me. Is it that everyone has a neutral? It may not be your idea of neutral, but everyone has their own neutral. It's your job to neutralize their swing to that standard. Right. What are your thoughts on that? I think it makes lots of sense, right? Like you use the term uh well, we use the term, oh Hogan had a weak grip to offset a hope. I get that. Then you get a guy, David Duval, super strong uh left-hand grip, and all he does is hit low pace. Fred couples, the same thing. He's a failure. So it's like, hey, hang on. That's the paradox here. A strong grip allows them to hit feeds. So you know, there's some somewhere in that that algorithm or the body of knowledge that we were teaching in the late 80s and early 90s that were missing. That's that's matchups. And I I think that that goes back to uh what Jacob's sorry, what uh Jim Hardy said about neutralizing uh a swing. And certainly there are other things uh that we could neutralize. For example, movement of the arm on the back swing, whether it's more behind us, transverse plane, or getting it higher above the body, how we start the swing, ball position as you alluded to earlier, even even the swinging direction. Like I think all these things you you throw all of them into a pot, it must come out nice. So you need to know, okay, I need more of this and less of that. Sometimes it's a bit befuddling for new golf coaches, like wow, you you said this earlier for this student, now you're saying this, like what gifts, right? Bring that full circle to to your your program, NLG. Like that's coaching level stuff, man.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

It is, yeah. And I think you can understand it so deeply that you can go off into the weeds with it, but then uh then you understand it so deeply that it can actually really simplify things. So like matchups is a much better um step in the right direction of where the industry should go. So say you take the old way of thinking, which is everybody has to swing it like a model, everybody has to swing a certain way, but then even you had different models, right? Now we move to okay, well, it's okay to not look like the model. These things just have to balance each other, which is matchups. So that's better. But then you have people saying, oh, well, you have to, if you have this, then you have to have that. And that's not true either. So people say, oh, if you have a weak grip, you have to have a strong lead wrist position to play good golf. And then, yeah, I mean, that's true in most cases, but then Dustin Johnson throws that out the window. I think I can't remember what David Duval's wrist angle was. I remember he had a strong grip. He was yeah, so he was so that goes against it as well. Normal, what you'd say strong grip would require more cup at the top, because there are other variables in there. My step in the other in the direction even further is what I call algorithmic coaching. It's like if this, then this. Okay, so if you are hitting toe, then add a heel element. And you can actually is almost a pick and choose from there. Now, some teachers might look and say, oh, well, this would be a better thing to add. And I say, hey, okay, if you want to, if you think that's a better thing. My answer to that question is let's test. So say I have a player and they are hitting right, and we look and their path is good, but their face is wide open. We have to say, okay, if face is open, then add face closing move, right? And the face closing moves could be stronger grip position, more lead wrist flexion at the at the top of the swing or some some point in the downswing, more supination, which is like more face rotation at the bottom, forearm rotation. Um, or you could just close the face at address, right? The most simple one, the lowest hanging fruit fruit. And then out of those four interventions, you would say, okay, well, if this player has a super weak grip, then strengthening the grip would be the logical thing to do. But let's test it. Let's test all four of those interventions, or even ask the player in front of you, what do you think? Like I can guide you and you can ask for my opinion as an instructor, but here are the options we have. I don't know which one is going to perform best for you, but we can test them and see. And at the end of those tests, we can say, hey, you know, this one performed best for you. Uh, but maybe you should still practice the stronger grip because it still performed okay for you. And maybe somewhere down the line that will be better. Maybe it's a combination of factors. I've had people where I say, okay, yeah, you've got a lot of cup in the wrist, you've got a weak grip. Let's strengthen the grip a little bit, and then for the next few weeks, practice lead wrist flexion until it's automatic and part of part of you. So using combinations of drills there. And then at the end of the week, a person might say, you know what, Adam, I really hate the feeling of a strong grip. I just hate it. I can't get on with it. But the lead risk flection drill really works for me. I'm like, hey, we found an answer for you. Let's do a weak grip, more lead reflection, just like speath in his prime or um calling uh Colin Morikawa, someone like that.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

So you do think it's important that we adapt for the player's physiological needs.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Yeah. And psychological. Like for me, if I'm missing left, I'll open the face address, right? Because I'm psychologically okay with doing that. Whereas if you give us someone who's type A and they're like, oh, I have to do everything the right way, if you tell them to open the face address, they'll hate it. They'll just be like, I don't want to do that, I don't want to do that. And that's fine. If that's their personality, it's fine. If they want to make things hard for themselves and do some things a different way, we can we can do that as well. So yeah, the psychological makeup, the physical makeup. But the good thing is by using this approach, you don't need to know everything about the player because the testing brings out the answer anyway. It's like if I test a strong grip to someone and start spraying it everywhere, and we test lead reflection, and it's like they start hitting it well, we know, okay, well, that works for you. I don't know why it works for you. I don't need to know why it works for you. Just it's a face closing move, and for whatever reason it fits in with your physical and psychological makeup right now.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

At what point become does it become do we change the swing or do we change the expectation?

Expectations And Dispersion Benchmarks

SPEAKER_01 37:12

At what point?

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Yeah, I would I would say um I have specific things for those as well. I think if you can hit if you can hit the ball within, let's just say eight yards longer and eight yards shorter, and then if you can hit the ball within um say six percent laterally as well, so 200 yards, if you can hit it within a 24-yard circle, uh, there's no need to change anything at all. You just repeat that and go on the course. And uh if you if you hit a shot of that quality and it's not on the green, you need to adjust your target, usually. Um I suppose what you asked is a little bit different in terms of what point should we uh change our expectations. Um, yeah, I think expectations are important. If you if you only practice once a week, you shouldn't be expected to uh hit every target and strike it like a pro. I mean, that's just unrealistic. So we we do have to manage those things as well, but it just depends on how high someone's expectations are. Um, but you can also strive to be perfect without getting upset when you're not. Um, you know, you can hit a shot and it's like, oh, that was two inches behind. I need to move it forwards, or even one inch behind the ball, I need to move it more forwards uh without getting upset at yourself for not being able to do that. So expectations should manage your aggression towards a shot, or you know, whether you get angry or upset at yourself. But yeah, the goal is the same for everybody. Strike as close to the sweet spot as possible uh within reason, strike as close to where that ground is uh ball is resting on the ground and get the ball within, say, like I said, six percent either side of the target is is pretty reasonable. I don't think you need to hit a shot any better than that.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

So let's talk about this, right? Transfer

Attractor States And Long-Term Learning

SPEAKER_01 39:15

to long-term memory. Student comes in for a string, oh great, I'm hitting the best I ever have ever hit the ball. And then when the student practices on their own three weeks later, the results are not quite the same. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about how a new move resides in the short-term working memory? And there is a series of steps, there is some time that needs to be to to elapse before that transfers into the long-term memory where it's almost automatic.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Yeah, I uh I actually drew these little pictures once for a blog post, and it was a man, and he was next to a pole, and he has a bungee cord attached to him. And uh, this is like your old pattern. You are attached to your old movement pattern. And as you try and change stuff, you do move away from that, but there's this bungee cord pulling you back, and so you try and pull away from it, it pulls you back, right? We're all, everybody is all all um attracted to that old state. They actually call it an attractor state in mode of learning, it's our old motion pattern. The most extreme example of this I can give you is that um I'm in America, and uh what the first time I was driving down the road and I saw police lights flash behind me, I put my hand into the door and tried to change gears. Now I'm driving a manual, I'm driving driving an automatic car, and I'm on the left hand side, I'm in the left hand side, but obviously I learned, I learned in a manual car on the right side, being a British person. So my basic instinct, I panicked, and my basic instinct came out. Now I've driven in America long enough now that that wouldn't be the case. And so what happens is as you you pull away from your old pattern, you get pulled back. You pull away from the old pattern, it keeps happening. But over time, you weaken that bond. That bungee cord that's wrapped around you gets weakened and tired until eventually it snaps and you can attach that to your new pattern, right? The thing that you're ingraining. So don't feel bad if, you know, after the first session that you do something, you go back to the old pattern. What happens is, you know, say say you're in your old session, you're in your first session, and your path is 10 degrees out to in. You're swiping across it, big old slice, and you have a great teacher and they teach you to swing more in to out, you get it much closer to neutral in that session. Well, the next day you go to it, you'll probably go back to the 10 degree out to in path again. But this is a big but you'll get closer to your neutral again quicker, and it'll feel a little easier. It'll still require effort though, but you'll get closer. You'll instead of taking a hundred balls to get that first zero path, it might take 50 balls, so half the amount, and it'll feel a lot easier. And then the next day, again, you might go back the first few balls you hit, you're back to minus 10 again with your path, your old path. But now it takes 20 balls to get back to this zero. And then given enough time, your first few balls, maybe they're not minus 10 anymore. Maybe your first balls are minus eight. So your lower end, your old range, starts to shift and it's quicker to get to the new range. And then eventually it's like, okay, now I've got my new thing, and with enough reps, it can become automatic to the point you don't think about it anymore. That does take a long time. And when we're adults, it does take a lot more effort, a lot more reps to get there. We may even not get to that point. I'll be honest. This should be an expectation is we may never learn something to the point where we don't have to think about it. But the fit the thinking may become much more efficient, much more effective, much more fluid, require less concentration. For example, something that's in my game, I tend to kind of early release it a little bit, which makes me hit it left and maybe hits the ground early. The first time I learned a later release, it took me a hundred balls before I could even get it to look good. And I had maybe a 1% success rate. Now, after years of training, I still have to think about it. But I can tap into it with just a practice swing, or even I can just say to myself, okay, make this one a slightly later release, and I do it. So it's much easier, requires a lot less conscious effort now.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

I want

Practice That Transfers To The Course

SPEAKER_01 43:57

to set beyond that to what I call the trial. Translation tax a lot of people's practice doesn't mimic what the field of play requires from them. Right. So can you talk about good practice habits so that people can actually uh get good with the practice time?

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Yeah, so there there are different types of practice, and each type of practice has a different purpose. So what most people do is what we call blocked practice or block practice. It's where they stand with the same club, same position, just trying to repeat this new move or trying to even repeat the same move over and over and over. Um, that is good in the initial stages. If you want to build confidence, you want to learn something new, you're trying to figure out, oh, that was not enough, I need to do it more. Repeating, repeating, repeating kind of quick succession can be helpful there. But there becomes a point where it doesn't help you transfer to the golf course. Um, so if you find that, oh, I'm great on the range, or I've got this new move down on the range, but when I go on the course, I go straight back to the old motion, which is very, very common, or I hit like tiger on the range and I hit like a 20-handicap on the course. That's a transference issue. And in order to improve transference, we actually have to train differently. We have to train for that, right? So we have to think, well, what does the course include? Well, it has more club changes. Okay, well, let's change our clubs in training. Uh, it has more target changes. You know, sometimes we're having to set up each time. So maybe on the range, try and set up to a target on the left, a target on the right, a target down the center. So you're learning how to set up each time. Uh, it has more pressure as well. So there's the there's an outcome. So, okay, we can do things to increase the pressure. One of the things I do is I play online tournaments. Um, that can that can help me in my practice to create pressure. Or if I'm practicing with a buddy, we'll often practice together and we'll play for like five bucks a shot. And for me, that's a lot of pressure. Um, we or you could even create your own pressure by saying, okay, let's see how many in a row I can repeat, I can do of this. Um, so that you know you're you're creating your own little targets there. Um, what else does the target? It also includes a target as well. As silly as that is to say, lots of people practice and they don't have a target. I was what once watching a guy practicing. He was a lesson of mine, and he had alignment sticks on the ground. And he's like, Adam, look at this. I'm hitting these balls so straight. Boom, boom, boom. And he he was, he was just like pummeling these shots. I'm like, that's great, that's amazing. I said, we need to stress test this now. Let's let's take away the alignment stick and let's go and practice to different targets. So I said, go off to this target, go off to this target, and he completely fell apart. Why? Because when he was practicing with the alignment stick down, he didn't have the target in his head. So this goes into then what we call locus of attention, where you place your attention. He was almost in his own little bubble, right? Of his alignment stick on the ground and his swing thoughts. Then you start introducing a target, and it's kind of like Pavlov's dogs, right? You ring the bell and the dog salivates. Well, with a golfer, uh, ringing the bell is the equivalent of introducing a target and salivating is the old motion. So when they think of they think of the target and the old motion comes out. So this guy has the two choices now. Either he has to ingrain his new motion with a target, so it requires practicing with targets, or he has to relearn how to put himself back in that little bubble. Okay, so almost imagining he's on the range mat again. And so that was the easiest option for him. So I said, okay, we'll line up to this target. And he lines up, and I said, but now imagine you're back in that bubble again. It's just you and the alignment sticks, your swing thoughts, and then he hits a shot and that improved his performance there. So there's both options available to us, yeah.

Spacing Pressure And Active Forgetting

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Can you talk about spacing as well? So on the on the driving range, it's so easy, myself included, guilty of that. You take a bucket of 50 balls, take your five high, and you just keep ripping shots. Boom, boom, boom, few because it feels so great, right? And then on the golf course, there's about three to four minute interval between shots, depending on the the the speed of play that they like can you talk a little bit about how the space between shots actually detract from performance if one doesn't prepare for it.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Yeah, so true learning. There's a difference between performing and learning, right? Performing is you're doing things right. Learning is you can recall it late at a later date. So an example of that is if you're using cue cards, right? You got all these cue cards, they're math cue cards, maybe, and you're like, or even if you're learning a language and you're like, okay, um, I can't think of a language. I think of uh Welsh. So um teabach is uh guy vindy teabach or squalch. Oh, okay. Osquelakanda is is Welsh for please, right? I don't know why is Welsh is such a horrible language. Osquelachanda, right? Very difficult. The first time you try Osquelchanda, okay, very difficult. You probably mess up. If you do it over, over, over, over, squelch and eventually you're performing really well. But you don't know whether you've learned it until you put that card away, wait some time, and then someone says to you, Oh, what was please in Welsh again? And you're like, Oh, was it this one or was it this? So recalling it is actually learning, not performing it, right? You could perform it great. Someone could even perform it quite poorly. They could say, Oh, squalachanda, and they could mess it up a little bit, but then later you ask them what it was and they get it close enough. So that poor person is showing an increased learning. Their performance is not perfect, but they're increasing learning. Um, so the golf equivalent of that is hey, you can stand there and just go, squalakanda, squalakanda, squalidah, over and over and over, um, and look great, but then you get on the course and you can't recall it, you can't perform that motion that you're doing. So we have to learn how, or we have to train for, I call it active forgetting. Okay, I didn't come up with that term, I don't know who did, but active forgetting. And so that that is where you include a little bit more time between shots, or you just mix things up more. So it's like, okay, you're hitting one drive now, and now you're gonna go over to the mat and hit a putt. Now you're gonna hit a wedge shot, now you're gonna change direction. So you're forcing yourself to forget the last swing by taking your hands off it, changing clubs. Um, and yeah, you can even I see it on a scale, right? There's amount of reps on one end, and there's context of reps on the other. So the realism of the reps on another. And block practice is just a huge amount of reps in a short period of time, but no context. Now, playing on the golf course is lots and lots of context, but not a lot of reps. A nice blend of those two where we can get a lot of contextual reps is practicing on the range in a way that simulates golf to the best of our ability. So um, I have you know a simulator right next to me, and I can actually play rounds of golf on it. So I can get quadruple the amount of shots that I would get on a golf course, and they're fully contextual. And I find that's really good for learning. That's that's like my sweet spot for for learning.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

Thank you very much for educating our listeners, Adam. No worries.

Adam’s Programs And Where To Find Him

SPEAKER_01 52:13

All a lot of the material that Adam has covered is available in his products strike plan, NLG, and the practice manual and the accuracy plan. Adam, could you give our listeners a little glimpse into what your products are all about?

SPEAKER_02 52:33

Yeah, I got different products for different purposes. The book, uh, this one, the practice manual.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

How many copies has it sold?

SPEAKER_02 52:41

100,000, I think, at the moment, which I I did not have any idea it would sell at. The goal was to sell maybe a hundred or a thousand would be the dream goal over the course of its life. And it sold a hundred times that already. So um I'm forever thankful for people who bought it. It is kind of technical, it's very dense. I wouldn't say it's for a beginner necessarily, although everyone can get something out of it. Like the first chapter on ball flight laws is gonna really help a lot of people understand why their ball does what it does, but it's it's very much for people who practice. So I'd say if you practice an hour, a week or more, it can it can really help you. Um, the strike and accuracy plan, they're more um, they're video products, they're a little bit more to the point. They give you, okay, do this drill. This is how you identify what what the ball is doing. This is the drill you can do, these are the movements you can do, these are skill drills you can do. They're about three hours of content each. Strike plan works on face contact and ground contact. So if you're a player who tends to miss long and short a lot, that's gonna be a good product for you. The accuracy plan works more on path and face. So if you're missing left and right, that's gonna be a better product for you, or just buy them both and support me. Um, and then next level, golf is a product that um is for the real nerds. There's like 150 hours of content in there, and it's actually I'm gonna grow it even further later. So, this is more if you like the sound of my voice, you like the way that I think, and you just want to really dive in and have it on in the background while you're cooking and listen to my philosophies. That's uh that's the product, but I understand that's not for everybody. That one.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

And can you tell our listeners where to find you?

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Yeah, www.adamyounggolf.com. That's my website. I've got loads of free articles on there as well. Um, in the blogs, you can even sign up for a free e-book that summarizes and visualizes some of the stuff that we've talked about. And I've even got a free app coming out at some point in this year that's gonna help us track these uh these things like ground contact, face contact, face direction. Because I'm forever on the golf course. When I hit a bad shot, I want to know and I want to know from my pupils why. And so the ability to just say, okay, that was a bad shot, it was short because I hit it fat. Okay, fat shot. And then at the end of the round, you can see, oh, I hit 10 fat shots today and three left shots. I know what I need to go and work on in the range now. So that will be free at some point. Yeah. And that if you sign up to my email uh email list, you'll be able to know when that's uh that's coming out for free.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Fantastic. Cannot thank you enough, Adam, for spending your afternoon with me.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

No worries, pleasure. Short one this one. Normally I was on a two-hour one before this one, and I enjoyed that as well.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

We we normally do segment different segments for our guests. Yeah, yeah. And we certainly would love to have you back again for another installment. Anytime.