Secrets Of Owning Your Swing

The Revolutionary Power Golf ApproachBy Edward A. Tischler John Steinbreder

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Edward A Tischler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-1200-5

Contents

Foreword.....................................................................f.1Introduction.................................................................i.1Part One – Setting The Stage...........................................1Chapter One: The Journey.....................................................5Chapter Two: The Golfer's Story..............................................7Chapter Three: The Game's Fundamentals.......................................13Chapter Four: Hitting, Throwing or Swinging..................................21Part Two – Accuracy....................................................29Chapter Five: Swing Path.....................................................35Chapter Six: Swing Track.....................................................51Chapter Seven: Wrist Lever Action............................................63Chapter Eight: Lever Delivery Action.........................................74Part Three – Power.....................................................91Chapter Nine: Swing Anchor...................................................97Chapter Ten: Torque System...................................................121Chapter Eleven: Clearing Action..............................................133Chapter Twelve: Axis of Symmetry.............................................145Part Four – Good Feel..................................................155Chapter Thirteen: Swing Linkage..............................................161Chapter Fourteen: Swing Slotting.............................................175Chapter Fifteen: Postural Release............................................191Chapter Sixteen: Arc Management..............................................207Part Five – Techniques, Methods, and Myths.............................215Chapter Seventeen: The Biomechanics of Hogan's Technique.....................219Chapter Eighteen: TIGER Can Own His Swing....................................241Chapter Nineteen: The David Duval Saga.......................................253Chapter Twenty: Continuing The Journey.......................................261Glossary of Terms............................................................Glossary-1

Chapter One

The Journey

Bobby Jones once said, "The average golfer is not interested in winning golf championships. The chief benefits of the game for him must be recreation and companionship of congenial friends. But it seems to me that is little excuse for playing the game in a haphazard way. I have always thought that if the game is worth playing at all it was worth making some effort to play it correctly."

I agree with Bobby Jones in this respect. In fact, I believe giving the game the efforts it deserves is required of all golfers who want to own their swings. Of course, this is true of mastering any task in life. You can ease your mind – the way of mastery is simply the path of improvement.

And constant improvement is an enjoyable experience. Ben Hogan also believed this, as confirmed by this quote from Five Lessons The Modern Fundamentals of Golf: "I know thousands of golfers console themselves with the game's being an avenue to exercise and companionship – which is wonderful – but every golfer, at the bottom of his heart, wants to play relatively well.

To do that takes some application, some thought, some effort, but the golfer who goes about this wisely will play good golf and should go on to enjoy his golf increasingly the rest of his life. The greatest pleasure is obtained by improving."

Keep in mind, the more present we are during training, the more likely we will complete the internalization process in a timely fashion.

One of the keys to being present is to be as aware as possible. That requires opening your mind as well as your senses. It also means paying attention and absorbing all that every moment has to offer.

To assist in those skills, and they are skills, I suggest you learn to quiet the conscious mind through meditation and proper breathing. Though doing so is optional, their influences will greatly increase your chances of improving in a suitable and rewarding manner.

Also, remember that the biggest hurdles to developing an accomplished game lay in the individual's mind. Creating expectations, being impatient and being more result-oriented than process-oriented all create obstacles in the learning process. Training with discipline, patience, fortitude, and intensity are a must. Learning to be more aware as compared to judgmental is also key.

If you are committed to owning your swing, you will be engaged in the process for a considerable amount of time. My experience tells me it takes golfers more than three years of regular training to do so, even if you are Tiger Woods, who has made the choice to revamp his game twice – the first time with Butch Harmon and most recently with Hank Haney.

So, do yourself a favor, and start paying attention to the patterns in your game. Notice which actions produce which results. Notice the thoughts that keep you moving in a positive direction, and which ones continue to be counterproductive. Notice which beliefs create barriers, and which ones create opportunities. Notice which reactions support your progress, and which ones deter your improvements.

I guarantee that using terms such as "but, because, try, can't, couldn't, and if" will continue to deter the process because they bring doubt into the situation. And doubt is a negative influence on your confidence. Keep in mind, confidence is one of the most valuable tools a golfer can own. Trust is another one. So, be conscious of which words, phrases, and beliefs invite doubt and which ones invite confidence and trust.

This book will give you the secrets for owning a repeatable swing. It will be up to you to assemble the machine. It will be up to you to internalize the skills. It will be up to you to stick with it long enough to experience desirable improvements. It will be up to you to trust the skills on the golf course, and it will be up to you to learn how to play the game.

In the end, playing great golf involves much more than owning your golf swing. However, understanding and owning your swing is extremely fulfilling and very necessary if you are going to own the type of game that will keep golf a rewarding experience for the rest of your life.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey.

Chapter Two

The Golfer's Story

As I began my coaching career, I followed the lead of my inner game coach, Fred Shoemaker. He believed a student could only learn what he was ready to learn. He also felt a student would commit more time and energy to something the student believed was important to the process of getting better. Therefore, he asked all his students at the beginning of their lessons what aspect of their games needed to be improved the most. Then, after a brief evaluation, they would agree upon an agenda for the lesson.

Following in Fred's lead, I began asking similar questions before evaluating each student and providing recommendations. While doing so, it became apparent that all golfers wanted the same things.

For starters, they wanted to be more consistent. I found that interesting because most golfers were consistent. Their good shots created a recognizable pattern, and their misses settled into a pattern as well.

One golfer consistently played weak fades and another loopy draws. One person consistently executed swings that sent the club into the ground before the ball, and another thinned his shots. Some golfers consistently played their irons well and their woods poorly, while others did the exact opposite. Lastly, some golfers had better short games while others had better long games. Whatever the case, most golfers did indeed have a pattern.

Once I brought this to the student's attention, he said, "Yeah, but it is not the pattern of consistency I want! I want my shots to be more on target." I replied, "Oh, so you want to play more accurate shots, and you want to do so consistently?" So, with our minds in agreement, we established a plan to help the student reach the goals related to producing accurate golf shots.

After the skills related to accuracy were internalized and maintained, each student scheduled a new series of lessons. During the first session in the new series, I asked, "What is it we can work on that will make a big difference in your game?" Often, the reply was, "You know, for somebody of my size, my age, my strength, and my health, I think my shots should go further." I then said, "Oh, you want more power in your game." The student answered, "Absolutely!" So, we created a plan for developing more power and set out to package it up with accuracy and consistency. When the new package of skills was repeatable, the student invariably noticed that something was still missing.

And by skills, I mean your physical skills. There are, of course, focal skills, management skills and mental skills among many others that are also needed to perform well on the golf course under pressure. However, those are outside the realm of the physical skills, and most golfers believe they need to acquire their physical skills before they master their playing skills.

To those questions, every golfer I have ever asked has said, "Yes, at least for now!" This encouraged me to wonder: "Is there anything of necessity in the physical skills department that relates to something other than accuracy, power, and good feel?" I was unable to find one, and in thousands of lessons and hundreds of clinics and workshops, nobody has come up with any other necessary aspect. I find that amazing!!

You might ask, "What about consistency?" Remember, consistency comes from having a plan and sticking with it. If you change your plan every day, week or month, you will never achieve consistency.

If, however, you create a plan and stick with it until the skills are internalized, you will attain consistency. This means consistency is a process as compared to a skill. As far as the golf stroke is concerned, it is the process of reproducing it time after time. And that involves focus, commitment and habit formation.

As mentioned earlier, it takes around 6,000 repetitions to internalize a habit. Those repetitions must be executed with regularity over a constant interval. For example, deciding to execute 3,000 repetitions one day, then taking a month off and executing another 3,000 repetitions in one other day, is a faulty plan. The reason it is faulty is the inability to stay focused and aware over the duration needed to perform 3,000 repetitions in one day.

At some point, the student will simply be going through the motions. Simply going through the motions fails because internalization requires focused attention, which programs the subconscious computer. And proper programming is required when it is time to apply the internalized skills.

You are much better off executing 50-100 repetitions, three-to-five days a week until the skills are internalized. Though training seven days a week may seem ideal, we need to be practical with the plan. Create a schedule you can maintain over the long term. In each session, commit to a time limit and a set of repetitions that will allow you to remain focused and aware. Some people can train almost endlessly while others can only train productively for a half an hour at a time. I trained with 1,500 balls a day for eight straight years while developing my skills. However, this is a very ambitious prospect, even for professional golfers. I recommend you begin with scheduling one-hour sessions with 75-100 balls. If you execute training or rehearsal swings in between each shot, you may only need 50 balls.

Notice the time interval you are able to remain focused throughout. I have often seen golfers train well for 30-45 minutes, when, oops, a series of missed shots seem to show up. At that moment, things suddenly seem to fall apart, and the golfer starts wondering, "What is wrong? Everything was all right a few minutes ago."

When this happens, it is typically the case that the golfer has experienced what I call the "focal wall" – an extremely normal experience. Simply put, they ran out of focal endurance.

If you study for a test, you can only study for so long before you start reading the same line over and over again. If you go to the gym, you can only train for so long before you fatigue. If you go for a jog, you can only travel so far before you run out of endurance.

Training in golf works the same way. As you continue training, you may experience a loss of focal endurance before you become physically fatigued. When this occurs, I suggest you continue by playing partial shots. If your focus begins to wander then, transition to short game shots. Or simply pack up and go home. Of course, if you have time, take a break, rest up, and see if you can continue training.

Golfers frequently become focally fatigued before they are physically fatigued. When this happens it may appear to the golfer that she has plenty of energy. On one hand, she does have lots of energy, physical energy. On the other hand, she is drained of focal energy.

Have you ever been so physically exhausted you simply had to lie down, then once you did your mind kept racing and it was difficult to fall asleep? Conversely, have you ever been so mentally exhausted that you felt the need to rest, only to lie down and experience a restless energetic body?

I'm sure you all have encountered such experiences. It's also likely you've been so physically and focally exhausted that you have simply lain down and fell right to sleep. Of course, there is emotional energy that can be spent as well.

In my experience, people tend to be more in tune with being either physically fatigued or emotionally fatigued. The level of focal fatigue is often more difficult to identify or understand.

In general, recreational golfers will experience the focal wall somewhere between 45-60 minutes into a training session. That experience may also occur midway through the back nine of a round of golf.

It is also my experience that golfers who are able to train with full focus for 90 minutes are able to easily play 18 holes of golf with full focus. Competitive golf is even more taxing. Golfers that are able to train with full focus for 2 ½ hours are well equipped to complete their competitive rounds of golf in full focus. With this in mind, you are encouraged to develop adequate focal endurance for your particular needs.

One way of developing greater endurance is to push the limits of your endurance. In the gym, you perform one more repetition, or stay on the Stairmaster for a few more minutes. In golf, play more shots. The key to doing this productively is to continue training in a manner that allows you to stay focused on each shot. Taking short breaks, or transitioning to smaller shots that require less intensity can help.

So, golfers are concerned with developing skills related to accuracy, power and good feel. And as a whole, they are unable to come up with anything else they physically need.

Now, if your shots are accurate and powerful, yet feel bad (because rhythm, timing, or contact off), will you be happy? If your shots are powerful and feel great, yet are flying left and right into trees and hazards, are you happy? If your shots are accurate and feel great, yet your six-iron swing only plays the ball 80 yards, are you happy?

Every golfer I've ever met has been unhappy eliminating one of those qualities. Everyone I've asked has been pleased with all three, and at the same time, those golfers believe that accuracy, power and good feel complete all the qualities needed to be consistently happy with their physical skills.

That impressed me as a very complete picture of what golfers need as far as physical skills are concerned. Therefore, the question became, "What is fundamentally needed to produce accurate, powerful, and good feeling golf shots?"

If we could answer that, we would have a much greater chance of meeting the needs of every golfer's game.

Chapter Three

The Game's Fundamentals

While studying the game's fundamentals, we organize them into three principle categories – those related to accuracy, power and good feel. You can think of our fundamental discussion as having three acts of a theatrical play. Act One is titled Accuracy, in part because the factors that influence accuracy are the factors that are most necessary to complete a round of golf. In addition, when I ask golfers what they want, the first thing they ask is to be accurate. You'd be amazed at how many golfers would give up extra power so that they can be more accurate.

Let's get back to the first reason. Having accuracy is the most important factor with regards to finishing a round of golf.

If you have accuracy, you can plot your way down the fairway, onto the green and eventually into the hole. Many senior golfers play the game quite capably while proving this point. If you have power without accuracy, you may power your shots out of bounds, into hazards or lose them in trees and bushes.

Boy, what type of game would that be? How long might it take? Imagine the conversations between golfers.

"Hey Joe, have you seen ol' Tom lately?"

"No I haven't, last time anyone saw him, he was out there on the 17th hole at Apache Creek knocking em' out of bounds."

"You know Sam Billings? He said he played through ol' Tom last Wednesday. I wonder how many groups he had to let play through. Hey, maybe he's still out there. Yeah, let's go check and cheer him on."

Of course, that is a silly scenario, but to play the game it's fundamentally necessary to finish the round. And you need the skills of accuracy to do that, because you must keep the ball in play to do that.

Why else might I make accuracy the first Act of the fundamental story? Because the goal of the first act in a play is to set the stage for the story that follows. More specifically, setting the stage is the act of introducing those characters, places and things that are fundamentally necessary to tell and complete the story. Therefore, by identifying the fundamentals of accuracy we will accomplish the job of setting the stage of what is necessary to play the game.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Secrets Of Owning Your Swingby Edward A. Tischler John Steinbreder Copyright © 2011 by Edward A Tischler. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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