Nilsson & Marriott on the Two Practice Essentials

Here are some thoughts from Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott, founders of VISION54, from their book Play Your Best Golf Now. This post is based on the chapter called The Two Practice Essentials. Obviously I'm just pulling some quotes from that chapter; there's way too much good stuff there for me to quote it all. But I'll try to tie it all together so you get some useful ideas.

The Two Essential Practice Skills will maximize your go back on exercise time... Hitting golfing balls until your arms bleed is best beneficial if you are attempting to get a Band-Aid endorsement deal.

Effective practice isn't about the length of your practice time. It's about the effectiveness of it.

The key concept that we latched onto is the absolute necessity of tearing down the wall between exercise and play. They are both golfing. Immerse your self inside the totality of the sport. The predominant thing you are attempting to do is play higher golf on the golfing direction -- now not hit the ball brilliant at the exercise range.

Don't lose sight of your goal. You want lower scores on the course, not a pretty swing on the range.

So the first Practice Essential is about making your exercise as similar to actual golfing as you can. We name it Simulated Golf.

To make your practice time effective, you need to practice the kinds of things that you'll experience on the course. Yeah, I know you've heard that plenty of times already, but that doesn't mean you're doing it so I'm reminding you. Again.

The 2nd Practice Essential is to realize how to integrate distinctive talents. The three keys to integration are engagement, repetition and accurate feedback.

Once you decide to make your practice more "gamelike," there are methods you can use to do that. Some that Pia and Lynn give are:

• Change clubs for every shot.
• Change targets for each shot.
• Do your pre-shot routine before each shot.
• Imagine you have a one-shot lead and have to hit the green for a two-putt.
• Shape shots around imaginary objects.
• Create a slow-play situation so you have to adapt your routine. (You can make yourself wait a certain amount of time between shots, for example.)
• Play half-shots.
• Play from bad lies.

You get the idea. You're trying to duplicate things you have to do during a real game, with each shot being different, and set goals for each shot so you can determine whether you have actually been successful or not. And finally:

If you hit pictures on the range whilst speakme to others with out your mind engaged, you aren't training golfing, you're training being unfocused.

This doesn't mean you can't talk to others while you practice. This means you shouldn't talk to others During character pictures. You want to be thinking about your shot while you're playing it. You can talk to others BETWEEN shots.

That's sufficient to get you started out. It's higher to take small steps while you're changing your practice recurring. You'll make greater development that way due to the fact the changes may not be so overwhelming.