Were you recently on a driving range? Probably you have a constant routine that you follow in your training. Perhaps you begin with your wedges and gradually work your way up to irons, then you move on to hybrids, fairway woods and finally you hit your driver. Perhaps you hit several shots with one club until you are happy with the result. Then you move on to the next club. This is the most common pattern.

It evokes a musical instrument training. Musicians also practise particular parts of a song so long, until they feel that it is perfect. If you take your 7 iron and hit countless amount of golf balls, until you start hitting them well, you follow the same framework. Meanwhile you decrease the efficiency of your training and increase the stereotypical experience (and you are suddenly very close to get bored). This doesn’t look like the right way to get better.

Play the real golf

Try to step outside of this frameworks and think about the structure of your training. Repetition is not the right impulse for your brain, but change is. When you are hitting the thirteenth shot with your 7 iron you might feel like you are doing the right thing, but have you ever seen a situation on the golf course where you had to hit thirteen shots with you 7 iron in a row? That’s not the real golf, that’s a sci-fi.

Take a different approach – make your body and brain busy with hitting a different shot every time. Push yourself to situations, where you constantly have to adapt, don’t train your brain or your body to an endlessly repeated movement. After you thoroughly warm up, try to “play a hole” on the driving range. Foolishness? Not at all, just try to simulate shots from a golf course you know well. Let’s say that you pick your least favourite par 5 – hit your driver, continue with your hybrid or long iron and finally hit your approach.

Random selection destroys stereotype

You can also use a different version – disrupt a series. After your warm up, start with driver, then hit your wedges, then 7 iron, then hybrid. You don’t have to do it exactly in this order – the order of the clubs you hit is up to you. You can bring only a few clubs to your training session and next time bring different ones. Choose randomly, hit a few shots with one club and move on to completely different one.

You can also use different ways how to enhance your training session and make it more exciting and inconsistent. Soon you will see that random training or training that includes hitting shots just like you are “playing a hole” is much more effective. You are dealing with more realistic situations and you are getting ready for what can actually happen on the golf course. Meanwhile your brain is constantly busy and has to think, unlike in a situation where you are hitting the same shots over and over again where it can relax and switch off. Plus the experiences are much more useful and have a long-term impact on your game.

Think about this next time you are standing on driving range. Change the depressing routine. Change your golf.