Avsnitt
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Today, I share a personal story about a rough round of golf I had, and how journaling helped me pinpoint the issue with my swing.
Then we get into a topic that keeps coming up during the Live Lesson Friday sessions that I do weekly via Zoom with the members...
keeping your elbows together for a better shoulder turn, better synchronization, and better tempo.
Then I share my favorite training aid for making your range sessions better.
As always...
Remember the #1 key to improvement... one coach, one voice.
Turn off the tips, practice daily for just 10 minutes, and see the difference.
Visit facefirstgolf.com to contact me or book a Zoom session with me.
Let's get you on the proven path to your best golf!
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The force was with Bryson on US Open Sunday.
Today I tell a story of how I used to feel about Bryson and how that all changed in March of 2023 when he went out of his way to spend some real quality time with my 12 year old son.
It's something neither of us will ever forget.
Then we break down the shot that made history.
The WAY he decided to play it was, like so many other things about his game, unconventional.
You're going to see that shot replayed over and over whether you like it or not.
Hopefully my explanation of WHAT he did and WHY he did it will make watching it a million times in the coming years even more interesting.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Today we're laying out the stages to improvement.
Where are you in these stages?
And do you really HAVE to do anything?
Just knowing where you are and understanding the stages is progress in itself.
Give yourself grace and don't put pressure on yourself.
You are where you should be and you'll take the next steps when your ready.
And you'll do it from an informed perspective.
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Today, I’ve got a fresh story for you.
Yesterday, on the seventh hole at Gallery North Course in Marana, Arizona, my buddy Josh hit his tee shot into a bunker.
He had that long bunker shot that everyone dreads - about 40 yards.
He hit a 60-degree lob wedge and came up way short.
Here’s where it gets interesting: I had him switch to a 46-degree pitching wedge and hit the same shot. The result? Two out of three within ten feet.
The lesson here is about using the right club and avoiding deceleration.
Most players swing too easy, fearing they’ll hit the ball first.
Instead, you need to swing with enough speed to get the sand—and the ball—out of the bunker.
When practicing, focus on hitting the sand with enough speed to throw it out of the bunker. Keep your weight on your front foot and target a specific grain of sand. This precision will build your confidence and improve your bunker shots.
For distances, use a 56-degree sand wedge up to 20 yards, a 52-degree gap wedge for 20-30 yards, a pitching wedge for 30-45 yards, and a 9-iron for 50 yards. Practice these adjustments, and you’ll see a huge improvement.
If you're ready to take your game to the next level, shoot me a text at 480-375-5393.
If you want to chat with me on Zoom, go to https://facefirstgolf.com/talk-to-craig/.
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When it comes to improving your game, most people "play the field" to their own detriment.
I got the idea for today's episode from a podcast I listened to by Alex Hormozi - a business mogul who's in his 30's and worth over $200 million.
He said that before he got married, he spent 40% of his time "chasing tail" - his words not mine - haha!
And getting married freed up 40% of his time.
He was relating the same concept to business owners.
He said most business owners waste 40% of their time thinking about side hustle businesses or other opportunities that are a waste of time. The real opportunity is in growing their core business, but they never "get married" to their business and put all their effort into what is really their bread and butter.
Isn't it the same with your golf game?
There's too much information available out there.
And most players don't have the discipline to tune out the noise and focus on what matters.
And what matters if you're a 12+ handicap player is learning to swing from the inside on the downswing and release the club.
That's the skill you need to break through to get to the next level.
But most players never "marry their game" and spend their time "chasing tail" instead.
They listen to every tip online whether or not it even applies to them.
They'd be better served chipping away at learning the only thing that matters... Building the skill of swinging the club from the inside and making a powerful forearm rollover release.
Take Micheline from Canada, for example. She has put in the work and stayed focused on just those 2 things for almost 2 years now.
Her first year with Face First Golf, she shot an 86 - a personal best by a long shot.
Now a year later she just shot 82.
This is what happens when you make the decision to "marry your golf game" and focus on what matters.
If you're ready to take your game to the next level, shoot me a text at 480-375-5393.
If you want to chat with me on Zoom, go to https://facefirstgolf.com/talk-to-craig/.
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The reality is, while it DOES take consistent work to improve, most players are making it WAY harder than it needs to be.
HINT: It's NOT about spending hours at the range.
Unfortunately, less than 1% of golfers will ever break through because they keep jumping from one method to another or spend too much time hitting balls at the range without purpose.
The key is quality practice at home.
Aim for 80% of your practice to be at home, making good quality repetitions without the distraction of ball flight.
(YES! It will translate to the course)
A simple area of focus to improve your swing is to understand how what your elbows should feel like they are doing through the swing.
Keep your trail elbow pointed down in the backswing and your lead elbow down in the follow-through to avoid common issues like the flying elbow and chicken wing.
You can also use a thin towel under your arms or an elastic band above your elbows to help keep good form and arm structure.
Remember, practicing at home with focused, quality swings will lead to better results on the course. So get a net, practice at home, and watch your game improve.
Thanks for tuning in!
If you're ready to take your game to the next level, shoot me a text at 480-375-5393.
If you want to chat with me on Zoom, go to https://facefirstgolf.com/talk-to-craig/.
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Center face contact is crucial for pure, powerful shots.
But so many players don't even know where they're hitting the ball on the face.
Do you know where you hit it on the face?
The easiest way to find out is to spray foot powder on your club face.
And you can skip the fancy $13 sprays with a picture of a golfer on it and grab a $5 can of Dr. Scholl’s instead. It’s the same thing.
You'll quickly learn whether you tend to miss it on the toe or the heel.
And just being aware of it helps you improve it.
It's the simplest way to create a feedback loop that helps you build the skill of pure contact for shots that explode off the club face.
If you're ready to take your game to the next level, shoot me a text at 480-375-5393.
If you want to chat with me on Zoom, go to https://facefirstgolf.com/talk-to-craig/.
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Too often, players misidentify their main issues.
You might THINK hanging back on your back foot is the root cause of your inconsistency like the member I use as an example in today's podcast.
More often than not though, there's something else going on - a root cause that you'd never identify on your own.
You might have an open clubface due to a weak grip or a cupped lead wrist at the top of the swing causing an open club face.
That might be the REAL cause of your poor ball striking.
But you can FEEL hanging back and assume it's to blame.
Very few players hone in on the root cause on their own.
And if you don't hone in on the root cause, you might find yourself spinning your wheels indefinitely.
That's why I recommend letting ME diagnose YOU... at least until you really understand THE swing and YOUR swing.
If you're ready to take your game to the next level, shoot me a text at 480-375-5393.
If you want to chat with me on Zoom, go to https://facefirstgolf.com/talk-to-craig/
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Today we're talking what we're always talking about - the TRUTH about improving your game.
Every week we do Live Lesson Friday where members send in their swings for my personal feedback and today we're putting a few members in the spotlight and sharing what they've been able to accomplish with 10 minute at-home daily practice sessions.
You can do it too!
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Are you one of those players who has fallen in love with your 56 degree sand wedge or even your 60 degree lob wedge from around the green?
Today we're talking about a better way to get the ball close to the hole and shave strokes.
And there's a TON of actionable stuff you can do right now.
We cover shot and club selection... how to pick your landing spot... the BLT setup for better contact and shots that role right up by the hole... PLUS a formula for picking your landing spot based on the club you choose.
Lower scores are on the way!
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Motivation comes and goes as how you FEEL.
That's why you can't rely on motivation to change your game (or to change anything else in your life for that matter).
Change requires work.
Fortunately, the work is simple...
But simple does NOT mean easy.
It's simple because it's super easy to understand, and it only takes 5-10 minutes a day.
And you can do it at home.
But the hard part is that it requires DISCIPLINE.
CONSISTENCY matters.
It all means that if you only do the work when you're feeling motivated, you're not gonna do the work as often.
And if you don't practice FREQUENTLY for SHORT PERIODS OF TIME, your rate of improvement slows.
It's another one of those things that I learned in my years at Golftec.
At Golftec, we were taught from day 1 to encourage our students to take lessons WEEKLY.
And I was as skeptical about weekly lessons as our students were.
In regular lessons from a driving range or teaching pro, it was pretty standard that you'd encourage students to take MONTHLY lessons at the most.
The thinking was always that you need time to work on what you learned during the lesson and 3 or 4 weeks would give you time to engrain it.
So at Golftec when we were taught to push weekly lessons, at first I thought what a lot our students thought... that it was probably just a way to get people to burn through lessons so they'd need to buy more.
But then I started to see the difference in the rate of change of the weekly lesson takers vs the monthly lesson takers and it was a night and day difference.
The weekly lesson takers made changes much faster than the monthly lesson takers.
In many cases the monthly lesson takers rate of change was so slow as to be nearly imperceptible when looking at their swings on video.
It turns out that "taking a few weeks" to work on it was really just the student working their way all the way back to their old habit.
If they took weekly lessons, at least they would only work their way HALF way back to their old habit and they were reinforcing the new habit 3 to 4 times more often than the monthly lesson takers.
The key phrase from that is "reinforcing the new habit".
The more often you can do that, the better.
That's why I encourage the daily practice at home habit.
The more barriers to practice you can remove, the better.
Having to go the range is a barrier.
Even having to go to the garage to get your clubs is a barrier.
So put your clubs (or at least a club) where you have your practice setup.
I keep my clubs in my office and the net is right outside my office.
That makes practice almost inevitable.
And that's a good way to think about it.
Do everything you can to...Make practice inevitable.
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Most players don't practice at home.
And if they DO practice at home, it's maybe 10-20% of their practice and the other 80-90% of their practice is at the range.
For effective skill building, we've got to reverse that.
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Here's what they are...
Check your grip Set yourself up to practice at home Learn training vs trusting mode/read Golf is not a game of perfect by Bob Rotella Start working on chipping with a less lofted clubThis episode is packed with a LOT of actionable stuff!
Let's go!
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Improving your game does NOT take a Herculean effort.
At Face First Golf we work smarter, not harder.
Real improvement comes from doing the little things day in and day that add up to big things...
like reducing your handicap by a third like Ben Miller did.
With 1000 days to go until his 60th birthday, Ben decided to do something golf related every one of those 1000 days.
He shares his story in today's podcast.
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Every master of his craft needs his tools.
In this episode I'm sharing audio from one of the first videos you get after signing up.
There are 7 you're going to need and you can get all of them for less than $100.
Set yourself up for success!
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What a great live lesson Friday we had this morning!
Great attendance, great interaction, and just a fast paced ride to improving your grip among other things.
Mastering your golf swing is just like mastering anything else.
And I got reminded of it when my wife and I started dance lessons this week.
I'm no dancer, and it put me in that space that you'll be in when you finally decide to give up the gimmicks and quick fixes.
You've got to pick it up and put it down over and over to create more beginnings and endings to see through the big changes you need to make to play this game at a new level.
You'll feel like you have 2 left feet at first.
But then it will start coming easy.
The journey is the goal. Thanks for listening!
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The 3 previous episodes were about the 3 myths of golf improvement.
Today I wanted to summarize all 3 and add the 4 pillars of success in improving your game.
Thanks for checking it out!
Craig
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Have you ever heard that when it comes to improving your game you have get worse before you better?
These days we only hear about quick fixes.
But there's a good reason that old school prevailing thought was that you have to get worse before you get better.
It's all explained in today's podcast along with the exact way you can ensure you can go through any swing change without ever having to worry about going backwards.
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The driving range is NOT where you fix your swing.
The driving range is where you hit 200 balls with 7 different swing thoughts.
On the driving range, a lot of players wonder... Am I crazy or is this not doing any good at all?
You're not crazy!
There are 2 big problems on the range.
The first is that nobody will do the small swing work that's required to make big swing changes at the range.
The second problem at the range is that you get distracted by ball flight.
Instead of working on what you came to work on, you end up trying different things to correct ball flight.
The driving range does serve a purpose - it's where you work on turning off mechanical swing thoughts and making swings fully locked onto your target.
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Today's episode is a little different.
I recorded a video about how you need to walk before you run to make the big changes.
It means learning good motion with small, slow swings before building it into your full swing at full speed.
The video I recorded got a little long - 8 minute or so. And it was a pretty in depth explanation of the concept of starting small and slow and building on it.
So I decided to make the audio from that video into a podcast.
- Visa fler
