Golf Range Magazine - Smart Learning Strategies

Women Leading on the Range: Smart Learning Strategies – Teaching vs. Coaching vs. Student-Centered Learning

By Kay McMahon, LPGA Professionals Hall of Fame/PGA Member

In today’s modern golf industry chatter, the debate goes on regarding teaching versus coaching, and often too much information is imparted in the process. The challenge should be more on how student-centered learning takes place. Real student-centered learning takes less time, imparts enough information (yet not too much) and has a much longer retention level.

Student learning can mean a variety of things, but two of the most important concepts are:

• First – learning happens faster by connecting new knowledge with knowledge and concepts that are already known.

• Second – learning happens by using a simple feedback system. The task was either done OR not accomplished as desired. Self-learning happens by having to figure it out or self-correcting rather than being corrected or over-taught.

Smart Learning Strategies (SLS)

Our research and implementation of the Golf 8.5 experience of “chunking” or dividing the golf swing into only 4 parts for pre-swing with only 4.5 parts in-swing and using our Smart Learning Strategies (SLS) simplifies and accelerates the learning process with four major components.

First – Understanding

The first step is to understand what to do and why. Understanding or knowing how to do something makes it 10 times easier to do, as opposed to not knowing the why or doing it just because someone said you should.

First, understand the club or tool and how it is designed to work or make the golf ball go in the air and with some direction. This means understanding true cause and effect – how the club affects the golf ball.   

A brief explanation and a specific demonstration of the club, the body motion and desired outcomes of the task can be given and shown breaking the skill down into small parts. Association of what is already known outside of golf by making simple aligned comparisons to previous knowledge creates a more rapid learning cycle.

Second – Whole – Part – Whole

Traditionally the swing is taught as a whole in fast motion. The swing is a whole complete motion and needs to first be seen as a whole motion. Yet optimal learning happens when the whole is done in parts taking the speed out of it (slow motion). Emphasis is placed on the club head and the person in each position, receiving feedback visually (looking at it); feeling it; balancing it at each stopped position. First, it is the whole image, then the parts, then put it back together. A person has a 300 percent retention (retains learning or doing the task) by doing something in slow-motion parts. Speed is added later.

Third – Conscious Awareness Mode

Traditionally people say, “I don’t want to think” or “I am thinking too much.” Not true.  The only way to get to unaware is to first be aware. Thinking or awareness is good in the first stages of learning. The way to the automatic stage of performance, the “not thinking state,” or the “zone,” is to first be totally aware. Being totally conscious or aware is the only way to get to unaware or automatic.

Fourth – Buddy system = Smart Learning Strategies (SLS)

Traditionally the “teacher” is the only coach, offering the only form of feedback. The Golf 8.5 “Buddy” system or Smart Learning Strategy is designed for each person to have a Buddy, a practice partner or Observer or a personal “Assistant Coach” with very limited feedback measures or cues of what to say.

The Observer offers simple feedback regarding a specific task with ONLY a verbal “Yes” or “No” for the task or skill at hand. Nothing more – a Yes or a No. If receiving a NO, the one swinging needs to figure out how to accomplish the task or skill being practiced. After only two shots or swings, each buddy switches roles.

Two things happen in this process:

1. The Observer or Buddy learns more by watching, allowing time to better process without having to perform and process at the same time.

2. The “doer” or the one performing gets immediate verbal feedback from the “yes” or “no.” The Observer offers no other information that could clog the brain or destroy the performer’s processing. The “Yes” turns into feedback or reinforcement of “Yes, I did it.”  The “No” turns into self-learning by figuring out the differences of how to do it or not do it. There is no “right” or “wrong” – no positive or negative. There is only “I did it this way or I did it that way.”

From over 20 years of research and implementation, the feedback from every lesson, clinic and workshop participant is the same. “I learn as much from being the observer and what a wonderful, easy and fun way to learn successfully!”

Kay McMahon is an LPGA Professionals Hall of Fame Member, a PGA of America Golf Professional and Women in the Golf Industry President. To contact or learn more, email Kay at  Kay@eduKaytiongolf.com or log on to her website at www.eduKaytiongolf.com.