Short Game

 

Learning, a subject that could fill a series of 5 booking, but what are the key points we need to know to make our practice effective?

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BLOCK TRAINING

There are two main types of practice you can perform.

BLOCK practice

RANDOM practice.

They both can be beneficial, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Block practice is probably the most common form of practice you see, hitting shot after shot with the same club to the same target, repeating the same skill over and over. Most expects in this subject would not consider this ‘quality practice’, but it can have its benefits, and can help our body and brain to create a more consistent technique.

The act of repeating something makes physical changes; our brains starts to wire new neurons together (in a new movement pattern).  Our bodies become more flexible for that specific movement, and specific strength changes occur in the muscles in order for that movement to become more dominant and easier to perform – this is why it is so difficult to change our swings after we have had them so many years.

The act of repeating something makes physical changes;

  • Our brains starts to wire new neurons together (in a new movement pattern).

  • Our bodies become more flexible for that specific movement.

  • Specific strength changes occur in the muscles in order for that movement to become more dominant and easier to perform – this is why it is so difficult to change our swings after we have had them so many years.

The benefits can be:

  • Can useful for the beginning stages of learning something new.

  • We can get lots of feedback in a short period of time (5 balls a minute or more).

  • We can also make adjustments on the spot, leading to an immediate trial and error style of learning.

  • It can also be good for confidence boosts, as we are able to quickly improve our performance during the session – however, this comes at the expense of raising our expectation level too high, which is usually bad.

  • Block practice is also great for building up new mental concepts for how to hit the ball.

  • It is also a great tool to push our skill levels into new areas which we have not seen before. Whether or not we retain all of this ‘newly acquired skill’ is irrelevant – it has opened up new belief patterns and neural pathways for us to access.

The disadvantages can be this:

  • It tends to neglect the preparation and access of the movement. For this reason, and the above reasons, we tend to see a performance which raises very quickly during the session, but then drops down close to baseline again after the resting period. In other words, we feel like we are learning a lot during the session, but the next day most of it is gone. We do retain some of the information, but retention of skill tends to be lower.

Block Practice Example