Animal, machine, or technician?

[JerryB]

I ran across this concept a while back regarding weight lifting and it popped into my head the other day for golf. 

Basically, most people lifting weights fall into the "animal" category: there's little technique involved, only brute strength.  In golf I'd think this would be all beginners and even a lot of people who have golfed for years.  They're mostly just swinging a club without much grasp of the whys and hows.

Some people are "machines" who have the technical stuff down and can repeat it over and over, but if something goes awry it throws them off badly and can be difficult to fix.  I'd think many low to scratch golfers would fall under this category.  When things click it's all good, but when it's not clicking is when filming or coaching comes into play.  The "feel vs real" idea comes to mind.

Finally, even fewer still people fall under the "technician" category.  They have a repeatable process and can also fairly easily self-diagnose when things aren't right.  I would guess many pros fall under this category and others who are very self aware but otherwise earlier in their golf journey.  

Myself?  An animal all the way.  Nothing I do is very repeatable yet and I'm mostly just swinging and hoping for the best .

What about you?  Where do you think you fall?  Does this even make sense??

[RickyBobby_PR]

24 minutes ago, JerryB said:

Basically, most people lifting weights fall into the "animal" category: there's little technique involved, only brute strength. 

Not sure where you are getting this information from but I’ve been in old school strength gyms to globo gyms and a bunch in between and there very little strong people using bad technique and technique breaks down as fatigue sets in. Yes at that point some may muscle the last rep or two.

The bad technique I see comes from those leaning or watching bad videos on YouTube to correct some fault

28 minutes ago, JerryB said:

Some people are "machines" who have the technical stuff down and can repeat it over and over, but if something goes awry it throws them off badly and can be difficult to fix.  I'd think many low to scratch golfers would fall under this category.  When things click it's all good, but when it's not clicking is when filming or coaching comes into play.  The "feel vs real" idea comes to mind.

I would disagree, for the low handicaps they are going to recover quickly, it may be the next shot, the next round or the next practice session. Also when it goes awry it’s not as bad as the mid to high.

For some it could be coaching or filming but there’s a good number that can use what their eyes tell them in ball flight and what they felt and then get a feel they have and create that feel in their preshot routine. If they can’t then they play with the ball flight they have and then work on it afterwards. This is all possible because they put in the practice time to have a pretty solid swing base.

The ones that go way awry are those who really heavily on timing in the swing to compensate for swing flaws like steep shaft in transition and the effects that come from it like early extension and having to use the hands to square the club

this category if I would say is your high single/low double digit handicaps

33 minutes ago, JerryB said:

Finally, even fewer still people fall under the "technician" category.  They have a repeatable process and can also fairly easily self-diagnose when things aren't right.  I would guess many pros fall under this category and others who are very self aware but otherwise earlier in their golf journey.  

This is your scratch and close to scratch golfers.