Week 18 Update
Welcome Players! Range time is BACK! Finally got my camera fixed and hunkered down in the schedule to put two range sessions on the books this week. The good news is my swing is feeling pretty good and the changes of the past two months are starting to come more natural. The bad news is… no bad news! Let’s go.
Contents:
Training Week in Review
Habit Tracker
Training Log
Skill Practice
Golf Performance
Wrap-Up
Training Week in Review
I’m not “Michael Jordan” back - maybe more of a “Tom Brady” back. We all knew he wasn’t really going to retire.
We all knew I couldn’t last more than two weeks in a slump.
I managed to break the bad habit cycle this week and hit the ground running! Like I mentioned last week my training stayed up to par and I was able to translate that time to get out to the range twice this week.
We put some more firm rules in place to guide my training + practice sessions and will look to incorporate that into the updated framework.
There’s nothing special about Q2, but the grind and energy needs to stay the same so I’ll look to pick it up for the next month and a half and prepare for shooting low 90’s by summer!
Habit Tracker
It was a slow start to the week but a strong finish getting in two solid range sessions.
Need to improve on putting at home still, but there’s a plan for that now.
Training Log
Resistance Train (Gym): 1
Conditioning (Assault Bike): 1
Yoga (@ home): 0
I’m going to need to scale back the training in order to increase practice time. It’s just not feasible to be training full-time, practicing full-time, and living life/working a job.
Life > practice > training.
I’ll aim for at least one resistance training session and two conditioning sessions every week from now on.
Skill Practice
We’re back baby!
And the swing is feeling good from the time off. It’s always strange how after not swinging a club for a week or two you think you’ll have no chance at putting a good swing together - but the reality is months of practice allows you to take small breaks and still retain the skill.
I am testing out a new golf-performance journal I was given by the company who makes it. I’ve used it for both practice sessions before & after and so far I really like it. I’m going to wait a few more weeks to get a chance to use it during a full round or two and then will be sending out a full review.
But it helps me go into a practice session with three main objectives.
This week they were:
Swing easy
Make solid ball contact
Follow through
I did good at number 2, number 3 was eh, and number 1 not so much.
After I get warmed up I feel good and want to swing with effort. I’m not trying to crush the ball, but I feel like I just want to swing to my full ability. This mentality is a tough one to break for me and something I need to continue to improve in order to score well on the course.
I think I’m getting to a point where a lot of my mistakes on the course are a result of either a lapse in decision making or simply not playing to my ability (aka trying to hit shots that I’m not confident in).
The biggest hit to my swing from the past two weeks of absenteeism is in my driver. Before I could tone down the swing to 75% effort, hit the ball in the center of the face, and put the ball in the fairway. Remember that round where I hit 50% of fairways? Big improvement!
But at the range I just didn’t have the feel for the driver and was spraying a bit. Will need to reel that in this week.
Golf Performance
No rounds this week. Hopefully next…
Wrap-Up
It felt good to get out to the range and have some dedicated practice time.
It seems like such a challenge to do that until it’s done and then I realize, “That really didn’t take as much time as I thought!”
I’d like to say I’m out of the rut I was in, but two’s a streak so will have to see the results of this week before I can say I’m fully back!
To come back to the problems I was having in previous weeks, I decided to set some hard numbers for myself in terms of what I want to accomplish in one week. It is as follows:
Three putting sessions at home /= 150 putts / week
Two range sessions + one range putting sessions
Two conditioning sessions
One resistance training session
Everything after that is now considered a bonus!
I tried to set my expectations high in the beginning which was a good thing, but now that we’re in the middle of grind-season there’s no harm in being more realistic and harping on progress one step at a time.
See you next week!