It's time for a new episode of faith and fairways with the founder Brad Thorberg, who after more than 16,000 lessons taught to over 2000 golfers has discovered the most forgotten and overlooked parts of your golf game that is keeping you from playing your most consistent and confident golf ever. Now here is your host Brad Thorberg.
00:23 What is up members of the birdie crew and my fellow golfers, Brad here today coming to you with another episode of faith and fairways. We are going to chat about why your practice is ruining your golf game.
00:37 Huge topic for so many of my clients. You see over the last 15 years I've had a lot of great students, clients working hard on their golf game, but they don't really know how to practice and just you know, to to go back in time. I think of a think of playing high school sports and, and just how chaotic that would be if there was no plan when we showed up for practice. I remember to this day football practice going in at after, you know, eating lunch and into the locker room just to see how bad the conditioning drills were going to be for football practice. Sad day. But there was always a plan, there was a list of drills and time spent on certain things be focusing on things and there was a good break out between technical improvement of mechanics and then going full speed working on on reacting and game plan for the upcoming week.
01:26 And that's the same when it comes to your golf game and in your golf practice you'd need to have a specific clam. When you show out there or else you're just, you're just hitting balls hoping for things to get better with no specific direction that you're trying to take it. So you gotta have a plan for your practice. You have to know where you're going, how much time you're spending or how many balls. You either need to decide onX amount of balls per drill or I'm going to spend 10 minutes here, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes here. Regardless how well I hit it. The problem is so many of you fall into as you get out there, you go by your large bucket of balls. Can you just start wailing away and there is no plan just to start hitting and if you're hitting well you just keep hitting until you hit a bad one.
02:07 And then you start thinking of, Oh, what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What do I need to change? Let me try this. Let me do that. I read this article. How about that? [inaudible] That's really where you start creating some very bad habits. You basically are training your brain to think every bad shot is your fault and you're training your brain to think there's some magical thoughts that will cure it. And that's not true. I mean, think of the amount of reps when you go back to any sort of task, you had to learn that required hand eye coordination and just how much practice it took. There was no magical thought of of, Oh, do this and I'll catch every ground ball coming at me. It took repetition of someone hitting ground balls at you and you getting in front of it and learning how to go through the motions and react and understanding how the ball's gonna react and it's the same golf.
03:00 You have to be working on your mechanics and you also have to be working on just hitting golf shots. And when we're in golf season like we are right now, which is hands down my favorite time of year, you need to be out there focusing probably 70% of your time on just hitting the golf ball where you're looking and getting a sense of, Hey, when I align at this target and I swing this club, it's tending to go straight or this direction and it's giving you a way to go manage a golf course. Then another 30% of time working on maybe a mechanical movement. It should be only one move. Like I tell my clients, I don't care if you're working on no doorway sway drill and you're trying to get better rotation staying on top of the ball and you go shank 10 shots in a row.
03:42 I don't care cause it's not about how you hit the ball cause that wasn't your focus. Your focus was on how your body was moving. So when you're out there practicing mechanics, you got to, you got to separate yourself from the end result and focus on the mechanical movement. Too often I see the amateur golfer out there trying to work on their mechanics, which is great, but then they're basing how successful the mechanical drill is on where the ball goes in that that is just setting you up for frustration and it's training your brain to think that the moment you hit a bad shot, you did something wrong and you need to fix something and that is totally not true. Your mechanics take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps. I kid you not. When I work with my clients and I give them a drill, I go this is the only drill you're doing for the next week or two.
04:33 So then the next seven to 14 days and your goal is five to 800 reps, 500 to 800 reps of a single movement to change muscle memory. And it's usually a very exaggerated movement. So that way when you put the club in your hand and you pull the club back, you're not thinking of how to swing the club. You're just focusing on hitting the ball solid, starting it and ending it on certain targets and your mechanics are ever changing. And they will be their host of, you know, you know, not to the burst your bubble but your mechanics will always be changing. Even when they get into a great spot, they will slowly be changing to something else. Cause there's no like perfect range of motion. We're either going to overdo something under do something, we might get misaligned for a couple of practice sessions and next thing you know our swing path has changed.
05:20 I mean I've seen it, I've been doing this a long time, over 16,000 lessons. Yeah. I've seen people in wonderful spots show up two weeks later with an entirely different swing cause they put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps of something they thought was working good cause they saw the ball flight going where they wanted. But then we see it on camera, we go. That is setting you up for some big misses and in disasters down the road. And we've got to nip that in the bus. So this time of year, 30% of the time on mechanics, 70% of the time on hitting golf shots. When you're hitting golf shots, now you're going through your pre-shot routine. You're looking at where you want the ball to start, where you want it to end. You're getting yourself aligned, you're taking a deep breath, you're thinking 80% effort. Start here in here.
06:01 Swing middle of the face. You're not worrying about how your swing is going and if you hit a bad shot, you go, that's a bad shot. Learn from it. So you learn your tendencies. Don't think, Oh my gosh, I didn't keep my head down. Oh my gosh, I didn't get enough turn or I turned too much. Or I didn't accelerate too much weight on my back foot. It wasn't that I promise you your swing when you hit a good shot or a bad shot. Right now it looks identical to make any sort of small minute change on camera, takes hundreds of reps, almost to a thousand really to be honest with you. So don't start training your brain that, and that's what I see is so often you're out there practicing your mechanics. As soon as you hit a bad shot, you think you did something wrong and then you're changing it.
06:44 Then you go to a new thought and a new thought and a new thought. And next thing you know you've put in a hundred golf balls plus a practice or two. So your 300 reps in and you've tried seven different things, you have no idea what's working [inaudible] and half the time you leave frustrated, half the time you think you found some miracle cure, which it didn't. You just had good timing. The mechanics are still probably poor. So you need to start spending your time focusing 70% on hitting golf shots, practicing your routine, looking at your target and 30% on mechanics. And when you work on your mechanics, you needed to detach the end result of where the ball went. And just focus on how the body feels doing that specific movement. Now if you need help, I'm with where you, what you should be working on mechanically.
07:26 Go see your local PGA professional. They know what they're doing, especially one with video. You know, I worked for a company called golf tech. I love it there because the technology is phenomenal. So getting in front of video camera will show you instantly what you're doing and it'll help you pick up muscle memory. So much faster. Those in front of a video camera, pick up muscle memory seven times faster than someone out there. Just guessing what they're doing cause what you think you're doing and what you feel you're doing are entirely different than what you'll see on camera. So you got to get in front of a camera. The next thing you know that I've already touched on it is your practice is teaching your brain that you think every bad shots your fault. So if you're out there spending no time on hitting golf shots and you're, you're spending a hundred percent of your time just beating balls, beating balls, cycling through.
08:13 Thoughts. I sliced that ones. Let me try strengthening my grip. I topped that one. So let me try to force my, my head down. You know I hit behind that so I must not have shifted my weight. If you're constantly doing that while you practice, which so many of you are, you're training your brain that on the golf course, the moment you hit a bad shot, you think you did something wrong, you're in a negative mindset. And when we get negative we get tense and quick. So that's gonna make things even worse with the faults you have within your sewing [inaudible] and you're going to start cycling through thoughts and golf's a game of managing your misses. So if you out there with the same thought, start here, end here, 80% effort, middle of the face, and you say that before every swing and you're only making 30 to 40 full swings, you're going to have a much more consistent pattern of misses.
08:58 But if you're out there and you slice your first one off the tee and then you try something different and then you try something different. Next thing you know, you make 40 swings with 10 different thoughts. You have no [inaudible] that day where the ball is going. Sure. Occasionally you might find a thought that just helps for timing for that day or for half the holes. So maybe 10 to 20 of your swings, but it really didn't change your mechanics. It just helped with your timing. You're still a basket case all over the place mentally. So you got to start training your brain to think it's your fault when you make a bad shot, cause that's golf cost the game a bad shot.
09:31 We're all gonna make them. Even though Brad has cracked the code to consistently breaking 90 there are still three major mistakes he's found from working with over 2000 clients that will sabotage your round before you get to the first tee. Head to www.mygolfcode.com now to receive your free guide where he outlines all three polls and provides you with some easy action steps to start playing more consistent golf today.
09:56 The goal is to be the person with the better bad shots. You know, I think of my high school my senior year, my high school year, we had our, our home invite and I won it. I think I shot 73 or 71 and you know I, I played pretty well that day but I didn't have the best shot two holes in front of me. A kid had a hole in one, a hole in one whole six back home LBN country club hole in one best shot of the day. So he had the best shot of the day. He shot 97 and I shall I believe 71 so I had the better round. I waxed him. I just waxed his butt. Why? Because I had the better misses. I had the better bad shots cause I was just focusing on hitting the ball that that up to that plan never had really a lesson.
10:38 So I was just focusing on hitting the ball. I'm playing my big old power fade or power slice, whatever you want to call it. And we relied heavily on a great short game. I played with what I had. That's how I practice. I practice hitting the golf ball consistently with the shape I had up to that point in my life. You know? So you guys got to start playing golf with what you have and when you hit a bad shot, go, Hey, that's one of my bad shots. If you're shooting 90 you're going to make 1718 bad shots. That's nearly half your swings are going to be a bad contact or bad direction. You got to let it go. Step over the next ball with the exact same thought process. But if you're practicing on the range, constantly cycling through different swing thoughts, different golf magazine articles, different YouTube videos, then you're a basket case.
11:23 When you're out there, you're just overthinking things and every time you hit one bad shot, you think you have a magical thought that's gonna fix the next thing and it ain't guys, it ain't going to happen. So you got to start training your brain on the range, especially in golf season, spending 70% of time on just working on that routine and having that single thought and then 30% of time on mechanics and detaching the end result where the ball goes from what you're working on. And you've got to stick with that one mechanical thought for a week or two until you get 500 to a thousand reps and because it ain't going to change until you do. And you can't do two things at once. That's not how we're built, especially in an athletic movement that takes 1.2 seconds with a three inch chunk of metal moving like 90 miles an hour.
12:04 So stick to one mechanical thought on the range. Get in 500 to a thousand reps before you ever try something different and only spend 30% of your time on it. 70% on working on your pre-shot routine. Now will you stop training your brain and you start training your brain to really focus on where you want the ball to go. That'll help you tremendously. And the third thing, guys that I see so many of you not doing is you're not working on your short game. You're now working on it. I mean, good, good. Couldn't his gracious 60 65% of your shots come with a wedge and a putter and you're spending 90 to a hundred percent of your time on the driving range. Come on, come on. Ugly swings can play great golf. Ugly swings can break. 90 can break even 80 if they have a short game because you're going to have days where there's just, you get some bad breaks or the wind's blowing.
12:58 You got to get up and down. It reminds me of around, I did a playing lesson up in Cheyenne, Wyoming and let the country club there. Years ago, this was probably eight years ago now with Tom [inaudible]. I didn't hit a single green that day and he hit one green, so technically he hit more greens than me and he played nine holes and actually I'd even par because I got up and down every stinking time. But once I got up and down eight times, one time I did, I made one bogey, but I chipped in once for birdie and shot even par without hitting a single green. Now that's kind of a fluke, but here he goes and shoots 46 hitting one green. So technically he hit the ball better off the tee. Yeah, up around the green. But a short game was nowhere near where mine was.
13:40 If you want to truly get more consistent with your scoring, start breaking the barriers of 90 or 80 gotta be working on your short game and his short game is 60 to 65% of your score. No shocker, we should be sending in 60 65% of our time in the short game area. Yeah. So think of that. If you're out there, you know, and you can find different drills and so forth. You know, the simplest way I would say is what you hate doing around the green is probably where you need to start. So if you hate lag putting spend time there. If you are missing a lot of three footers and hate three and four foot putts, spend a lot of time. There are a few hate up and running or if you hate hitting the lofty pitch over a bunker start there, but you need to start, you're spending 65% of your time in the practice screen area.
14:25 Okay. Not the driving range. Yeah, so first spend an already. Yeah, no, I'm coming up with numbers here, but you know say you're going to go spend two hours, 120 minutes, you're going to go spend two hours out there practicing. You know here would be how to start practicing time-wise. Now you can fill in the drills, go, go look no online, go talk to your local pro, check out some of the drills I have. They will help you tremendously if you had to, you know, golf fit pro Brad, my YouTube channel, I have some drills up on there that'll help you tremendously. [inaudible] And some of the, yeah, other drills I've talked about in some of my past podcast. But say you have 120 minutes, you should be out there spending, you know, 70 80 of those hundred and 20 minutes alone just in a short game area.
15:11 So over an hour. So now you go over there and you've got 50 minutes left on the full swing. Well you should be spending 15 to 20 of that maybe on mechanics. And then the last, you know, 30 40 minutes should all be spent working on your pre-shot routine, playing that round a golf from the driving range, you know, grab a scorecard and play nine holes a full swing and make those last 40 50 full swings all about playing a, a quick round of golf out there, going through your routine, picking different targets, having the exact same thought process and letting go of the bad shots, doing the exact same pre-shot routine for the next shot right after. And you start training your brain to really get focused and refocused and sticking to the plan and you gotta have a plan. So just like I mentioned, if, if you're going to break out the time now, you get in there and you start breaking out the small area.
16:03 So if you go, all right, I've got two hours, wife gave me two hours, or I got two hours once a week to go out there to practice. Yeah, I'm going to spend 70 minutes in the short game area and those 70 minutes I'm going to spend 20 on lag, putting in 20 on five foot and then pots in and I'm going to spend or 10 and a bunker, 10 on short chips and 10 on short, lofty pitches. And you're going to work on hitting landing areas and working with different clubs, working with different drills, but you're going to space it out and write this down. You got to write down your playing or else you ain't going to stick to us or write it out and then go, all right, now I'm going to go over and get my, you know, really all you need is a medium bucket of balls.
16:43 And now I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes on my mechanics. So if I'm working on a rotation draw, I'm going to do three slow backs. When he's really exaggerating that turn one, two, three, really exaggerating it. I hit a ball. Don't worry about where it goes. You're just trying to feel that turn. When you hit it, you might top it, you might miss it. Who cares? It's about feeling the turn. You're changing your mechanics and then spend the last 30 minutes playing nine holes, you know, full swing. Get out a scorecard and see, Hey, first of all at this course is 527 yards, so I'm going to go, no driver. All right? It's sliced a little. So now I'm going to [inaudible] you know, lab with a seven iron. Then I'm going to hit a pitching wedge and you're going to go through that same routine of, all right starts here, ends your 80% effort, middle of the face, exhale and go or whatever it is for you.
17:29 Okay? It'd be focused on where to start word and picking different targets, getting aligned and not once thinking of mechanics and start training your brain to stop thinking. You can fix things with a magical thought cause then you can just spiral out of control and that's why your scoring is all over the place, literally all over the place because your brain's over the place and it all starts with how you're practicing cause that's what's creating, you know the routine and the habit and you've created that habit to think one bad shot is your fault and you have some sort of random magical mechanical thought that's going to fix it. But really what it's giving you as a test example of one, it was no clue where that ball's gonna end up. That sounds scary to me. I'd never want to do that on the golf course.
18:11 I would scare the bejesus out of me not knowing where the ball's going to go cause I'm throwing in some mechanical thoughts. We'll stop doing that. So start spending your time focusing more on your pre shot routine of where you want the ball to go full swing wise. But over over 60% of your time out there should be on short game started creating a plan before you get there in the car. Write it out, you know, type it into your phone, get a piece of paper out, write it out. You know how much time you're going to spend in each area focusing on things so you have a plan to stick to. Just like you did play in high school sports coach, always had a planner also be just utter chaos and you'd be a pretty poorly coached team who didn't win a whole lot if there was no practice plan every time you showed up for practice, create that practice plan.
18:58 Really dive into your short game if you truly want to get better and then you know you should start seeing some, some pretty good changes right away. Know you get in [inaudible] practice sessions like that. Four hours in one week when you started shifting how your mind is focused, you guys will start to see change happening. You know, the very next weekend you're out there playing golf this fall, so hopefully that helps you guys. I know it will. Next week, stay tuned. We're going to talk about why your golf ball keeps going where you don't want it to go, man. We're going to get a lot more into detail with that and pre shot routine and really helping you create a great pre-shot routine. So tune in next week for that for now. Remember to swing easy. Talk to y'all soon.
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