5 Phase Plan For Junior Golf with Adam Young

As author of The Practice Manual – The Ultimate Guide for Golfers, I spend a lot of my time designing practice plans for elite level golfers. Based on the science of motor learning and my coaching experiences, I have 5 staples in a practice plan that I like to see players conduct.

Technical

This phase is where you refine the body motion or club motion directly. During this phase, the result of the shot is not as important, so this phase is usually periodized to the off-season, or periods in the season where the player is not trying to peak for an event.

Lots of repetition with a movement-changing focus is the call of the day here. We are trying to ingrain the new moves so that we can be more prepared for the later phases. However, we are not just making our swing pretty during this phase – the changes must serve a function to improve ball flight, consistency and/or injury prevention.

Experimental

During this phase, we are opening up our skill and coordination via use of exploration. I use two methods in this phase – differential practice and variability practice.

Variability practice is where you try to do what you desire, but in different ways. For example, shaping a shot onto a target, or trying to hit the sweet-spot while standing different distances from the ball during set up.

Differential practice is a little wilder, but there is evidence showing improvements in skill over traditional practice. This is where you try to do shots that you wouldn’t normally use in the course of play, such as intentionally hitting the toe, or attempting the biggest hook/slice you can hit.

If you have ever seen Tiger or Seve demonstrate in clinics, you will understand that the best players can not only hit standard golf shots, but they’re very inventive with other shots.

Calibration

As we get closer to tournament play, we may decide to hone in on a more stable technique.

During this phase, players will focus more on calibrating a stock shot (straighter ball flight, or modestly shaped flight). The main focus will be on club and ball impact – so a working knowledge of ball flight laws is necessary here.

Performance

Not a lot guarantees successful performance in golf, but performance training does. For this reason, we enter this phase pre-tournament.

During the performance phase, we A/B test our game for different thought processes, techniques and/or strategies which produce the best performance. For example, do you produce a tighter dispersion when thinking about the target, or about a component of your swing?

This is essentially polishing your game before an event, but players often see huge leaps in performance using these strategies (hence the name). I often see jumps of 10-30% fairways hit simply by changing a thought process.

Transference

During the days before a junior golf tournament, the focus is shifted to transference training – so called because we are learning to transfer all of our learning to the place it matters most – the course.

During this phase, we play games with pressure which simulate a course/tournament situation. We also switch predominantly to random practice (hitting different clubs to different targets each time), as science has shown this to be beneficial to performing better on the course.

Summary

These 5 phases are often scheduled to be more dominant during one part of the season. For example, technical refinements would not typically be done before a tournament, as it is too late to ingrain them by that time, and it often causes performance disruption due to the increased self-awareness of the movement.

I also design plans where each phase may be conducted during the week. For example, Mondays may be dedicated to technical refinements, and Fridays may be transfer-training dominant.

If you would like to learn more about these advanced methods of training, as well as many other golf-improving methods, “The Practice Manual – The Ultimate Guide for Golfers” is available from Amazon. Click Here to be directed.

Cheers,

Adam

adamyounggolf.com

Adam has worked at some of the top facilities in the world, including the Leadbetter Academies and the World famous Turnberry Resort. He currently teaches at one of Europe’s most prestigious resorts in La Manga Club, Spain.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Jay Goble, Baylor University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Baylor University Women’s Golf is currently ranked 65th in Golfweek and is the 2015 NCAA National Championship Runner-Up.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Kelley Hester at Furman University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Furman University Women’s Golf is currently ranked 32nd in Golfweek.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Greg Sands at Texas Tech University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Texas Tech Men’s Golf is currently ranked number 33 in Golfweek.

Chris Tyler from Rotary Swing shares his knowledge on recent PGA tour winner Rickie Fowler. This is a great article for all golfers, including Junior Golfers.

The most simple way for you to increase your clubhead speed in golf is taking advantage of leverage. Lag is a giant source of leverage and can help you pick up 30-40+ yards of the tee if developed, preserved and fired in the golf swing properly.

Have you found yourself struggling with lag? Do you constantly find that your throw the club from the top of the swing and you get yourself into a scooped impact position that is lacking any sort of impressive power?

I have great news for you…

In the video below, I will show you how to focus on slowly developing lag and then how to preserve it properly in your downswing so you can pick up some easy clubhead speed just like Rickie Fowler.

Now that you have seen the importance of slowly building lag into your swing and how to use width and rotation to your advantage in the development process, it’s time for you to get to work!

Keep Reading Rotary Swing Now

Chris Tyler – See his full bio here: http://rotaryswing.com/rst-certified-instructors/50 Understanding the golf swing and how the body works is a fascinating concept that I have devoted my life to and in turn have helped thousands of students reach their goals in the game of golf. Teaching a golf swing that allows you to extract the timing, create consistency, maximize power through efficiency all while protecting and preserving the body has become the face of golf. Get better at golf with better instruction!

Here is more great information from Adam Young and possibly the most important golf article you will ever read. This article could be read over and over and over again…..keep reading below

Using an experience to sabotage yourself

You just played some of the best golf of your life and are in the lead of a two day tournament by 3 shots. In the final round, you are pretty nervous, this is a big amateur event. The first tee, you tentatively step up to the ball – your mind is all over the place. You can’t decide whether to play safe or aggressive. Bam – snap hook out of bounds.

You then continue the round striking the ball less than optimally. All your attempts to change the swing make it worse. You finish tied 10th after shooting an 80.

Afterwards, your parents talk about it with you. “What happened to your swing today? We need to do some hard work on the range tomorrow to improve it, it’s obviously not good enough”. You start thinking, “You know what, they’re right. My swing is not good enough”.

Is this really true? Is this swing which got you in the lead after one round really in need of a re-haul? What do you think is going to happen to this player?

Please do yourself a favor and keep reading this article, more info

Adam Young at AdamYoungGolf.com

Adam currently teaches golfers the importance of developing skill as well as technique, and builds their games as a whole – including strategic and psychological strength. Adam’s theories are cutting edge, utilizing much of the newest research in the field of learning. He presents them in an easy to understand way that will make you revolutionize how you learn the game.

Golf Reality Check with Adam Young courtesy of Jordan Spieth.

Adam has worked at some of the top facilities in the world, including the Leadbetter Academies and the World famous Turnberry Resort. He currently teaches at one of Europe’s most prestigious resorts in La Manga Club, Spain. He is also Author of “The Practice manual – The ultimate Guide for Golfers”, a bestselling Golf book on Amazon.

GOLF REALITY CHECK at AdamYoungGolf.com

Jordan Spieth won the Fedex cup last week – and over 22 million. You would think that winning 2 majors in a year, getting to number one in the world and capping it off with a Fedex win would mean the guy is infallible.

Check out this video of one of Jordan’s rounds

Lesson for all

The illusion of perfect play is simply that – an illusion. Even when a player wins a tournament, he/she will have many poor shots along the way. How you deal with that adversity will determine how you are as a player.

• How do you react to a bad shot? Is it “Game over” for you once you hit one duffed shot? Or do you pick yourself up and move on, accepting that it will inevitably happen?
• Are you able to grind it out, as I wrote in my popular article on Grit (click here)?
• Do you still stick to the process, or do you go searching?
• How well do you manage your confidence and expectation levels?

Continue to read

College Golf Camps®recently hosted a girls only junior golf exposure camp featuring Stacy Lewis. The camp was a benefit to Golf Fore Africa as well. Stacy is a great ambassador for ladies golf. She is the Cinderella story in a sense. Stacy won the 2007 NCAA National Championship. In addition, she was a 4 time All-American at University of Arkansas. Coach Kelley Hester, who is now at Furman University recruited and then coached Stacy while at Arkansas.