By Adam Young
I was playing around on my guitar the other night, learning a new riff. I knew the notes I had to hit and was simply practicing hitting them the best I could.
I was practicing for perfection.
Sure, I was getting better through the practice, but there was one transition that was a real sticking point. While the other parts of the riff were getting better, this note-change just seemed to stay crappy.
Just Experiment
I started to experiment with using different fingers to make the note change – none of which were successful. However, I noticed that when I went back to the original way of playing it, it seemed a touch easier.
This can be true in golf. I have found that, over the years of consciously experimenting with different ways of hitting the ball (many of which are intentionally incorrect), my ability to control the ball and correct mistakes has dramatically improved.
A simple example of this is that by learning to hit the toe and heel of the club at will (I use this during teaching demonstrations to show the effect on the ball flight), I have learned “tools” that allow me to correct unintentional poor strike patterns when they pop up.
I even did a study on this with golfers and saw an increase in improvement when they experimented with imperfect practice as opposed to practicing…
Read the rest of what Adam has to say about Do It Wrong To Get It Right in the January 2019 Monthly Handicap Improver here:
https://www.swingmangolf.com/register.php