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Casey Eberting Golf Schools and Golf Instruction
In Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin, Texas
(35 minutes north of San Antonio International Airport)

Muscle Memory

It takes a certain amount of time for the body to learn a simple motion—much longer than most of you would imagine. For this reason, I recommend for my clients, and for you as well, to practice a new motion for about four weeks (if practicing regularly) before moving on to another fundamental. Unfortunately, most golfers work on something for a few days and then they're off to work on something else. Don't expect to improve with this kind of practice!

There are 2 processes going on when you work on your golf swing, 1) you first have to make a change, which is gradual, not instantaneous, and 2) you need to adapt to the changed movement. Understand that because the change is gradual, your immediate goal should only be to make a change for the better—don't think you're going to perfect the new movement. In the future, if you are working properly, you will come back and work on each fundamental over and over in a process that I call "cycling through the fundamentals" (I have a page on this in chapter 8 called "Cycling Your Way To A Better Golf Swing").

For definition purposes I say learning, or muscle memory, occurs when a conscious effort to put the body in a particular position, or to move it in a certain way, is transformed from a conscious action to an automatic action requiring no thought. Many of you would call a learned motion muscle memory, and I do too, just for the sake of simplicity. For all intents and purposes, it's as if the muscles do have a mind of their own—they can perform amazingly complex motions without the person having to think about them.

For illustrative and descriptive purposes, I much prefer the term "muscle memory", even though it may be an inaccurate term. One irate reader severely reprimanded me for not using the term "motor memory". Frankly, to us lay people it doesn't make much difference whether it is called "muscle memory" or "motor memory"! The important thing to realize is that to learn a new movement you must practice that movement over a long enough period so that the movement becomes automatic.

One final, but very important note—most golf instructors recommend golf lessons spaced at weekly intervals. Considering what you've just read, what do you think will happen if you were to take lessons spaced at weekly intervals? That's right, every week that you start work on something new, you'll be giving up on what you were trying to learn, but didn't, in the preceding week.

Next Page—Will A Good Instructor Work With The Swing You Have?

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