Practice your short game like Odell Beckham catches footballs

  By now some of you have seen Odell Beckham's ridiculous one-handed end-zone grab, with the degree of difficulty being escalated further by being heinously interfered with before the ball arrived.

https://youtu.be/zxbz3DDQzHU

 His ability to make these one handed grabs has been highlighted during pre-season training sessions. If you haven't seen any of these, see the video here:

https://youtu.be/BY8xrmkN9w4

 Suffice it to say that this is a man whose nervous system has been acutely tuned to the physics of football flight. He is able to read the trajectory of a ball and simultaneously control his own body (and hand) with such precision that he can manufacture these spectacular catches with seemingly no effort.   Now he is endowed with big enough hands to make this possible (some world-class table-tennis players may have similar dexterity but could never make such a catch). And make no mistake, his training in catching balls this way makes his two-handed catching ability even more precise.

 Training the neural networks involved in reading the physics of ball flight and adjustment of body mechanics (principally located in the cerebellum) by this rigorous exercise has several effects.  The main one is that these networks can then collude to produce a simpler task with greater efficiency.  If you are trying to improve an ability with which you already have a 99% success rate  there are other ways at getting improvement besides repetition of what will seem like a boring and laborious task.  

Take the ability to make 3 footers as an example. It will take most golfers who have been playing for >2 years an EXTREMELY long time to see substantial increases in their 3-foot make percentage) Training in a more diificult related task with a defined success of 40-60% rather than >90% will allow you to quickly see the improvement you seek.  

How do you apply this to your game ?

  With 3 foot putts, putt exclusively on the practice green with the blade of a wedge.  This will fine-tune your "touch" to delivery the blade with the correct path, contact point and force that will make putting these with a putter trivial on the course.

Not exciting enough for you ???

  With chips around the green, practice the toughest ones you can find one-handed with your highest lofted club.  Define success as whatever you can do 5 out of 10 times.  For some this would mean just making contact cleanly and moving the ball forward toward the target, for others it would be a 20 foot circle around the flag.  Whatever it is for you (try 10 and draw a circle around your best 5) define it and work to get more than 7/10 in that range with every subsequent chipping session.  Your short game will thank you out on the course.

Bottomline:  Practice with a degree of difficulty that makes the game seem easy in comparison.  It will do wonders for your actual golf game.

Spieth Could Putt Better...

One of the few golfers I've seen out there who putts (at least some of the time) using a fundamentally sound approach is two-time major winner Jordan Spieth.  

As a neuroscientist, I break down putting into the neural networks that are engaged while accomplishing the task effectively.  Most people quickly move to alignment, distance control and proper putting mechanics as critical to making putts.  Sure these things are important.

But almost all golfers out there today are relying on the fidelity of their brain's GPS to inform them about those three factors.  When they take their eye off the hole they are asking their brain to keep that target in some form of working memory in order to allow the rest of the circuitry to use that information to do its work.  The entorhinal cortex, the seat of the brain's GPS is doing a portion of this work to keep the target in the "mind's eye" -- whatever that is.  

Instead of trusting the fidelity of that system to accurately inform you about the position of the hole to within 4.5 inches, why not keep the target in your visual field?  In plain English, why not look at the hole while you putt?.  This simple switch changes the game of putting from having to putt to a picture that you have to create and maintain in your brain to simply putting to the ACTUAL picture! (Yes I'm invoking Earl Woods here, who famously instructed Tiger, "Putt to the picture.")  The latter is way easier when you get used to it, especially for players worried about distance control.

Jordan putts while looking at the hole on shorter length putts.  I even noticed that Louis Oosthuizen did it on short length putts at the British this past week.  Hunter Mahan at a clinic I attended at Half Moon Bay claimed to practice this way as well.  All in keeping with sound fundamental neuroscience for getting the neural circuitry to produce more consistent results.

I would argue that the effect is much more dramatic for longer putts than shorter ones, and Spieth could be an even better putter if he committed to the method for every putt he looked at.  

Here's why.  

That seat of the brain's GPS I was telling you about, the entorhinal cortex has place cells and grid cells ready to fire when a person is in a particular place in his environment.  The number of these place cells is much greater for shorter distances than farther distances.  When researchers look at slices of the brain they note that greater cell mass corresponds to your immediate vicinity versus further out.  

The logical extension is that the fidelity of the "mind's eye" picture is much better for short putts than long ones. Plus your margin of error percentage is about one-half the hole width (2.25 inches) divided by the distance of the putt X 100.  For example, if you are 4 feet from the hole, your margin of error is just under 5%, while a 12 footer gives you only a 1.5% error margin.  The longer the putt, the less the margin of error for your target acquisition, and, unfortunately, the less neural circuitry there is dedicated to making a high fidelity image at the greater distance. On the other hand the margin of error introduced for not looking at the ball when you are ready to putt is always fixed (as it is the same distance from your eyes for every putt). 

In other words, the beneficial effect of looking at the hole (not the ball!) can be even more dramatic at longer distances.

If you look at putts gained for the professionals,  the average putts to hole out from 8  feet is about 1.5 (roughly a 50% make probability) and the average putts to hole out from 16 feet is about 1.8 (a 20% make probability).  Would you rather your 8 foot make probability go up by 10% over the field or your 16 foot make probability go up by 10% over the field?

Now this is a somewhat rhetorical question as improving your target acquisition by looking at the hole is going to increase both make percentages, but the strokes gained by doing so for the longer putts is 0.8 for every 10 putts of 16 feet versus 0.5 for every 10 putts from 8 feet.

There's more to gain over the field by making a few more longer putts per round.  Also the fidelity of the picture in your brain stands to improve more for the longer putts while looking at the hole versus shorter putts.   I maintain that Spieth would be a better putter if he committed to the technique wholesale.  

Now before you go trying this out at home (and I wholy encourage it - no disclaimer here) , know that there is  a learning curve to the switch.  Stubbing putts while you are adjusting your brain to a consistent setup is a possibility.  But a committed putter can make this transition in one or two sessions and never look back or fear a mishit putt again.  It is far easier to train the brain to know exactly where the ball is then to know EXACTLY where the hole is. Commit to this and perhaps you could putt better than Spieth!

Want to learn more about how neuroscience can inform and improve your practice and thus your game? Contact me at sangoram at goalogolf dot com.

Curing the hosel rockets and chipping yips with the fundamentals of neuroscience

  Say you have been playing golf a long long time. Say you were pretty good at it once upon a time. Say you are a perfectionist who constantly wants to get better. Say you tweak swing mechanics to improve and try to honor what your body is telling you along the way... But say, in so doing, you run across a bug in the Matrix...

  The hosel rockets and yips are a constant source of mystery and much consternation.  People even believe that watching other people with the yips can INFECT them and they typically want nothing to do with watching it, fixing it or even talking out loud about it.  If you've been around golf a while, you've no doubt heard stories of famous golfers developing these conditions and having to quit the game for good.  To a neuroscientist the yips are not all that mysterious.   As with many disease processes, the underlying causes are multifactorial, and attacking the specific underlying circuit malfunction FOR YOU with informed practice is the way toward the cure.  Curing the yips can be hastened with a simple fundamental understanding of the neural circuitry involved in the process of making a golf shot.  Using this fundamental understanding as a basis for diagnosing the CAUSE of your yips leads to fairly straightforward ways to solve the problems.

  In this series of blogs we explain each system and the ways it goes wrong and provide a drill or two that can help you see you game.  We start with the brain's GPS.

Target acquisition difficulty

Your brain has a GPS system built into it.  It helps you recognize where you are in space and where things in your environment are and forms a model of this so you can use it predictively to accomplish tasks.  Find the bathroom half-asleep, give someone directions to your living room from your kitchen without having to lead them by the hand, represent a golf target so your motor program has something to plan towards. Problems with your brain's GPS can lead to errors in shot-making. The place, grid, boundary and head direction cells that form the core of the GPS can come uncoupled from their actual physical representations and start to lose fidelity.  For some, this loss of fidelity can lead to second-guessing during the swing, altering swing mechanics based on a perceived "better" target and inappropriate activation of muscles that outwardly resembles a "twitch."  If you have trouble retaining the target in working memory when you step over a shot, your GPS may need tuning. I suggest the following drill.

Drill:   Visit the target!  For a short game practice session make it a habit to physically visit the target of your shot (notice I didn't say the hole).  The entorhinal cortex saves the bulk of its circuitry for your immediate vicinity (typically less than 20 yards).  The only people that need precision and accuracy of mere inches or feet at 30-50 yards or greater are golfers, archers, snipers, etc. (See upcoming posts for a discussion of the difference between precision and accuracy)

 In order to enhance your existing GPS function take a trip to the area where you want the ball to end up and imagine how it will get there. Then go back to the ball and prepare to hit the shot.   Ask your practice swings to answer the question: Will this attempt result in the shot I imagined?  Answer the question with your practice swing (not cognitively) until you're fairly confident that  answer is yes. Then hit the shot with a swing as close to that "correct" practice swing as possible.  If you are near scratch take only one shot, handicap 5-10 you get a second try, handicap  more than 10 you may if you choose take up to 3 tries but remember that in the game of golf you only get one chance. 

 Assess the outcome of your body movement in practice with respect to the body movement for the actual swing BEFORE you look at the outcome of the shot.  Repeat this process from different locations around the green to different targets on the green each time.  It helps to get away from precut hole locations and stick tees in the ground for your "pin target." This is because, just as Google Maps loads on your phone from low resolution to better and better clarity, so too your entorhinal cortex is working to learn your surroundings without you "knowing" it.  The longer you spend in one spot, the better the representation.  But golf doesn't allow you to stay in one spot, so simulate the game by at least moving targets and positions (and even green complexes) as your particular practice facility allows.  This type of approach will help you solidify the connection of the GPS circuitry with the motor program while simultaneously training the GPS to do a better, quicker job at acquiring the surroundings in a representation that can lead to great shots.

Send us feedback about your experiences with this drill at sangoram at goalogolf dot com and stay tuned for more posts on the other components of the brain that need tuning to cure the yips!

The Red Panda Drill

      I once went to a Bulls game in the mid-90's during the Jordan-era and the half-time act was a Chinese acrobat who went by the moniker "The Red Panda."  She did a number of balancing demonstrations but the coup de grace was a balancing feat on a 7-foot high unicycle.  She started riding it in a wide circle that took up about half the court.  Her assistant tossed her two bowls that she carefully balanced: one on her head and one on her right foot, still cycling the unicycle with her left foot back and forth in place to keep balance.  When she was ready she flipped the bowl up with her foot and caught the bowl on her head -- stacked on the bowl that was balanced there in the first place.  Very impressive! But she wasn't done.

  The assistant tossed her two bowls the next time around, and again she carefully stacked and balanced them on her right foot all the while pedaling one-footed  to maintain balance on the unicycle with two bowls in place on her head.  When she got the feeling, a swift kick of the right foot and the bowls flipped up, and again she caught both bowls on her head without any use of her hands (other than to maintain balance on the unicycle).  Four bowls securely on her head, she proceeded around the arc repeating the feat with three bowls. 

  By this time the audience was rapt in attention to this woman who could seemingly do no wrong. Each successful catch resulted in louder and louder applause.  Four bowls were just as smooth and the crowd could not believe what it was seeing.  The grand finale was five bowls that she stacked on her foot. At this point the audience was pretty certain that this woman, The Red Panda, was as sure as a Jordanesque buzzer-beater jump-shot.  And true to form, she nailed the finale catching all 5 bowls on her head while riding the unicycle flawlessly around the arc.  A total of 15 bowls tossed (by foot!) over the 5 attempts, catching every single one of them on her head.  Her hand-eye coordination (or should I say foot-head coordination) was simply off-the-charts.  The crowd went crazy.

  This dainty Chinese acrobat had stolen the show from what was, in the form of a World Champion Chicago Bulls game, a very tough act to follow.

       The training that this acrobat had to undergo to develop this skill must have been at a level of rigor that few athletes would be willing to match.  The balance and strength that must have developed in her core to perform this feat, along with the judgment of force necessary to get those bowls to their destination is (almost) singular.  Google "Chinese acrobat unicycle bowls" and  Youtube videos featuring the Red Panda and numerous other Chinese acrobats abound demonstrating even further feats of difficulty (all involving bowls and 7-foot high unicycles). 

  The "Stars of the Beijing Circus" features a group of five women all riding unicycles performing various and sundry tosses of bowls to each other, in synchrony and in movement demonstrating a level of control that is other-worldly.  And yet we all know that at some point each of these women made the attempt (and failed) to mount a bicycle for the first time.  They attempted (and failed) to mount a short unicycle for the first time. They attempted (and failed) to mount a 7-foot unicycle for the first time. They attempted (and failed) to balance a bowl while riding said unicycle for the first time.  They attempted (and failed) to toss that bowl in the direction of their heads once balanced while riding said unicycle for the first time.  (You get the progression by this point…) They failed all of these times before they succeeded in performing an act that on the surface appears effectively impossible.  

     With the Red Panda and her colleagues as background, the point of this drill is not for you to go out and buy a 7 foot unicycle and refit your wedges with 7 foot shafts. Rather, the idea is to bring in a level of difficulty commensurate with your existing ability to help train balance while executing short chips.  

   The principle of goal-setting for this drill is to titrate the failure rate so that learning can take place without utter frustration.  Failure is absolutely acceptable and the level of difficulty must match so that you can be "successful" around 40-60% of the time.  For the novice this may mean simply balancing on one foot and trying to make contact (any contact) between ball and clubhead. For the high-handicapper it may mean trying to get the ball inside a 20 foot radius of the hole 50% of the time. For the mid-handicapper the goal may be 10 feet. For the single-digit handicapper the goal could be set to 6 feet.  And for the scratch/elite golfer the goal would be inside the leather (less than 2.5 feet). 

  The exact number, however, depends on your own empiric experimentation.  Here's where you turn into an applied neuroscientist.  After 10 preliminary “scouting” attempts at chipping one footed from a good lie,  walk around and remove the 5 worst shots.  Measure the distance from the target hole to the furthest remaining ball.  This is your target distance for the drill.  Now reattempt the drill from a different positions around the green complex with your attention on your own sensory feedback.  

    The question you are trying to answer, in the form of a chip attempt (ie. the actual movement of an executed shot — not a cognitive verbal answer), is this:

  What is the least possible effort I can make, with my muscles in the least tension and remaining in good balance, that will still get the ball to the target?

 With this question and a goal in mind (ball inside X-feet)  you’ve set the stage for your brain to train itself to improve its performance.  It requires making continual softening or firming adjustments to the body as well as deeply feeling the sensation of engaged muscles and how the degree of engagement correlates with the outcome.  This quintessential feedback loop for learning will result in internalization of the correlation.  There will come a point where no conscious cognitive knowledge of how far to take the club head back, what arc the arms/hands/club should trace, nor how much force to use to swing is needed to execute a better than average shot.  When that feeling sets in on more than 50% of your shots, you know you are improving.

   The key to the continued utility of this drill is to adjust the goal intelligently or increase the degree of difficulty of the physical maneuver.   There are merits to each, and you should try to adjust each as you gain experience with the drill.  Adjusting the goal should only occur when 50% of your “scout” shots start to fall inside a smaller radius.  Adjusting the difficulty should occur when you feel comfortable and relaxed with the prior level of difficulty.  Increasing the difficulty could take many forms but here are a few examples for you to riff on based on your own personal preference.

1) Close your eyes, further training the Brain's GPS integration.

2) Balance one-footed on a destabilizing balance pad (like an Airex balance pad), further taxing the cerebellum's balance control and error-correction algorithms.

3) Use one hand while chipping instead of two, challenging the sensory perception ability of the proprioceptive smart-grid inputs.

4) Do both 1) and 2) simultaneously

5) Do 2) and 3) simultaneously

6) do 1) and 3) simultaneously

7) Do all of 1) , 2) and 3) simultaneously

8) Purchase a unicycle on which to perform the drill while doing 1,2 and 3 ;-).

The degree of difficulty should be ramped up whenever you approach a near 60% success rate but should be eased up if you are failing  more than 60% of the time.  This is the dynamic sweet spot of learning.  Since chipping doesn’t take any “God-given” physical prowess to execute, you too can become a chipping "Red Panda".

A Neuroscience of Golf Debut

I plan to blog regularly to bring you state-of-the-art neuroscience content as it relates to golf.  

Check back here for more on the Brain's GPS, the Cerebellum and it's function, the proprioceptive smartgrid and much more.  In addition, you'll find useful drills that are firmly based on neuroscientific principles designed to elevate your game.  You won't find these drills anywhere else!

Check back here for more on

• the brain's GPS
• the cerebellum and it's critical function for hand-eye coordination
• the sensory smart-grid that lives in your skin and muscles
• and more neural system that allow you to play golf

In addition, I will provide useful drills designed to elevate your game that are firmly based on neuroscientific principles.  You won't find these drills anywhere else!