Purpose of a training aid/What makes a good training aid?

[cnosil]

I’ve been playing with the Puttout Devil ball and it got me thinking about the subject title….what makes a training aid good?   The Devil ball is very good at telling me when I do things wrong and I have different difficulty settings that help me check where I am good and where I am poor.   But the question is does it actually help me learn or know what to do to get better?  If the ball goes right, face is open at impact and if it is closed, face is closed.   Do I just keep trying things and hoping I come up with a long term solution and. It a one day band aid?  
 

If we look at the TourStriker aids like the Planemate or smart ball,  they are built to help to reinforce the aspects of the swing they are trying to fix.  By using these aids I am more likely to do the task correctly.  
 

What is you thought about training aids and how they are supposed to work?  Should they guide you to do specific things or let you try a variety of things and maybe  end up frustrated.  The question probably gets into learning theories and how people gain knowledge but interested in hearing what  people think.  

[null]

To me, the perfect training aids not only tell you when you are doing something wrong, but also teach you how to do it right (ie. Tourstriker PlaneMate)

[Golf2Much]

Some of the attributes I'd be looking for are:

• Ease of use:  you shouldn't need a PhD or 25 page instruction manual to figure out how to use it.  The more intuitive the better.  Simple elegance!  
• Give immediate feedback:  reward "good" performance and suggest changes for "not so good". 
• Portable:  nice to use it at the course practice areas or at home.   Easily moved to either location.
• Transportable:  easily moved between clubs when needed.
• Compact:  the ability to easily store in your bag or take up little space in your car, office or spare bedroom.  It makes it easier to hide from your non-playing spouse.  
• Not battery operated:  somehow, they always die when you need them the most!

[tony@CIC]

Something simple that reinforces what an instructor has you working on. As an example; after a lesson with her instructor my wife was given a simple drill to eliminate her tendency to chicken wing it. He used a golf ball bucket in the lesson but recommended a soccer sized ball which ended up being a $5. solution from Walmart. Of course he could have sold it as a golf training aid with fancy packaging and detailed instructions for $39. 99 (black Friday special) .  I've purchased a number of training aids most sit in the garage gathering dust, simply because they sounded good but didn't necessarily fix the swing issues.  

 

 

[GolfSpy MPR]

Fun question.

My basic rubric for measuring the worth of a training aid: how likely is it that, if I get "good" at using this training aid, my scores on the golf course will go down?

What that means is that any training aid (or, as @tony@CIC mentioned, any object used as a training aid) can be awesome, if it works toward that goal. Literally any object might be exactly what any particular golfer needs (a hula hoop, a headcover, a towel, a soccer ball, etc.). If that thing helps your score get better (note: not just swing better), it's a great training aid for you.

For me, though, what makes a training aid Mt. Rushmore-level is that using it is likely to help virtually every golfer get better at playing golf.

That means (in my judgment) that training aids that focus on impact and the result of the swing are on a higher level than training aids that dictate a particular swing movement. The "swing-centric" aids are not necessarily bad at all; they might be exactly what an individual golfer needs. But they should be understood as more niche: they are designed to solve a particular problem, and if that isn't your problem, the aid won't apply to you.

[RickyBobby_PR]

From what I’ve seen instructors say is that  training that does the movement for you rather than you doing the movement is good. Some also some with feedback that you are doing things correctly and when you aren’t.

Planemate is a good example because you have to make the proper movement to train the movement pattern and you receive feedback in terms of where the band is at in the movement and the tension on it.

smart ball is good because it trains proper arm structure. The gbox, gbox shallower also because of the feedback