Back Hit Exercise

Out with Karen a local golfer......we had a 9 hole lesson to learn a little about course management and practice the back hit drill.

Karen is trained in book keeping and as such she is very analytical......meaning she judges everything based on results and believes if I do this part right I should expect this result. One of her habits is judging and commenting on every shot and looking for a reason WHY this or that happened.

I simply asked her to say "BACK" out loud when she had completed her back swing and "HIT" when she made contact with the ball.....and finally not to judge her shot's as being good or bad.

Unfortunately for Karen she had been providing herself with so much negative self talk......it was a in some way no suprise that she has continued to struggle with her golf.

With using the Back/Hit exercise on every shot she started to feel where the club head was and as a result she then began to hit good solid golf shots.

If you are getting tied up in mechanics try the back hit exercise.

One great result for Karen was she was able to hit 2 solid 3 iron shots. I asked her to pick a club she didn't like.....she picked the 3 iron. Her first hit was terrible, when she regained focus on the club head and did the exercise correctly, the ball flew beautifully.

Feel the Club head

Out coaching again at our local driving range here in Te Awamutu.

The session I did actually didn't focus on any of the normal do this do that type of golf instruction. What I asked the student to concentrate on was "feeling the club head".

This is not as easy as what most people think. We are so conditioned at looking at and hitting the golf ball we actually have no clue as to where our club head is. Ernest Jone's in the early 30's wrote extensively about the importance of the club head.

I asked the student to close his eye's as a means of really feeling where the club head was in the back swing and forward swing. After about 15 minutes he actually got it.

His back swing slowed down about half the speed of his normal swing. As a direct result of feeling the club head he had to slow down. The forward swing the same results happened.....in terms of feeling.

My student couldn't believe how far the ball went by simply slowing down and feeling where the club head was.

At the end of the day it is the club head that we swing......try this drill at home or the driving range.