“Proper” Practice Makes Perfect

Practice does not make perfect. It makes permanent. So what you practise had better be right.

As in all sports, if you want to be better at what you are doing, you practise. Tour professionals put in around ten hours a day, six days a week, split between range work, practice rounds, weight training, cardio and flexibility.

You have heard the saying “practice makes perfect”, but does it really? To keep it short, no. What practice does is make things permanent. Repeat a good move and you groove a good move. Repeat a flawed one and you groove that instead.

“You can shoot eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, all you become is good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”Michael Jordan, NBA legend

The cycle of effective practice

Good practice is a loop, not a grind. You practise regularly, which builds consistency. Consistency lets you correct technique, which develops skill. Skill makes your errors easier to spot, and spotting them sends you round again.

My own early experience was baskets and baskets of balls on the range, and getting nowhere fast. It was only after plenty of research, and lessons from great instructors, that I became a firm believer in one idea:

“Proper practice makes perfect and permanent.”

The journey to golf mastery

Nobody arrives at good practice on day one. Most golfers climb the same five steps, and each one depends on the one beneath it.

Proper for you, perfect for you

At Tailored Swing, individualism is the heart of my coaching. Every golfer should take the quote above and make it their own: what is “proper” for your body, and what is “perfect” for your game.

Perfection would be “I want to be free from all of my flaws and never mess up.” But how can anyone be free of flaws when one of them is, say, a physical limitation? It cannot be done. What we are striving for is excellence: “I am going to work on this task in the best possible way, to the best of my ability, with the best information I have, until I become extremely good at it.”

What is happening between your ears

Initially, your brain is mindful and in charge of guiding the swing. The more you practise the right way, the more muscle memory you create. Over time your brain and body come to understand the swing sequence, and your nervous system reacts faster as the pathways are grooved. The better you get, the more natural it feels.