How To Practice In The Winter

All right, what is going on guys? Today I'm going to be covering how to practice in the winter. So if you are in a situation where it is cold in the winter, you might have snow on the ground, if you're just in a situation where you're going to have to use a simulator and you want to be able to get the most out of it, or more realistically your child wants to be able to get the most out of it, this video is for you. It's going to be profoundly valuable. If you enjoy it, go ahead, leave it a like. If you're new here, go ahead subscribe to the channel. Um, specifically all we talk about is helping junior golfers play Division 1 golf. And so that's why this becomes relevant is because if we're trying to play Division 1 golf, we're trying to approach this stuff year round and we need to know how to make the most out of all the time that we have available to us. Um, so if you're a returning subscriber, welcome back in. This is going to be, it's going to be a good one. I thought that I already had this video recorded. Um, apparently I didn't. So you guys are going to be able to learn some stuff here. This is going to be a lot of fun. So First things first, ideally in a perfect world, you know, we have some statistics already. If we don't, that's totally fine. One of the reasons that I love this app, Draw More Circles, we can distinguish between outdoor versus simulator rounds of golf. We can also distinguish between practice and tournaments now, and we can also look at different swaths of data, right? So we can look 3 months, 6 months, you know, 10, 10 rounds, 5 rounds. I recommend you never look at an individual round of golf, um, beyond just kind of like, hey, what happened. You really want to be looking at— we're thinking about how do we practice effectively. We want to be looking at large swaths of data. We're going to be looking at 5 or 10 rounds of golf where it's enough time to be able to say, okay, I'm working on this, and it's either moving the right direction or it's not. So anyway, um, when we are practicing in the winter, it's important to understand what we can do and what we can't do, right? You are not going to be able to practice your lag putting very effectively in the winter. Could you potentially work on it in an indoor environment if you have enough space? Yeah, potentially. But odds are it's probably not going to be that great in a simulator context. You're not really going to know that much there. Can you do stuff where you measure out your putting stroke, uh, particular length, or length, and, you know, model that out? Like, hey, if I take it back this far, it's going to go about 30 feet, so I'm just going to practice that movement at a particular tempo. Yeah, you could do that. And to be fair, you know, if you're really kind of hard-pressed, like, that is something you could pull out. But for the most part, a lot of the progress we're going to be able to make through the winter are technical changes, because, you know, we just don't have as much pressure to go out there and play, and we've got a lot of free time. So we have the technical changes. We can improve our ball striking, so off the tee and approach shots, which thankfully is a massive portion of the game. And we can also improve our short putts, believe it or not, because a lot of our short putts is just simple mechanics work. And so in this video, I kind of want to go through realistically all the major checkpoints that I would go through with ball striking and just kind of give you guys some perspective here. And then also some of the things that I would be looking at for putting as well, is to make sure that those, those things all kind of like keep up. So looking forward to kind of digging into this with you guys. So let's, let's go ahead and get started now. When we're tracking our statistics, one of the things that I like to look at is on-green percentage. And that's a great way to, to kind of set a measurement for ourself. You know, when we're in practice, if we say, hey, I hit the green 62% of the time from 100 to 125 yards, it makes a lot of sense in practice, you know, just out on the golf course or like outdoors, to say, hey, I want to hit this ball on an imaginary green and I want to hit 7 out of 10 balls on this green. So I'm doing a little bit better than my current skill set on the golf course. That makes a lot of sense. Now, if you are in a simulator context, you have access to a little bit more granular data, right? If you're on the golf course, like, or if you're outside, odds are you probably don't have a TrackMan. But if you're in a simulator, odds are you have some type of launch monitor that's gonna be able to tell you left, right, you know, dispersion. And so one of the coolest things you can actually do— I'm just going to give you guys a little diagram here— is you can hit 20 balls and create something like a shot pattern, or more or less realistically your child can do this. So if they hit 20 balls, and I don't know if there's going to be exactly 20 dots, but it's going to look something like this. If they're trying to bring it down, let's say here, that they're going to have a shot pattern looks like something like that, and they're going to have what I would call an error rate. So they're going to have a left-right error rate, and technically they would also have a a long-short error rate. So when I say error rate, what do I mean by that? I mean from 150 yards on the PGA Tour, the average proximity is about 22.5 feet. The reason for that is because on the PGA Tour, their percentage error is about 10%. So from 150 yards, that's 15— just move the decimal— 45 feet divided by 2 is 22.5 feet. And so when we think about that, that tells us that from 150 yards, a PGA Tour player has essentially perfectly put their shot pattern over the flagstick. So when you're looking at your child, or when your child's looking at their own game, why is this valuable? Well, we're able to take an audit of essentially like, okay, cool, we're trying to hit this ball however far. And again, having the statistics is helpful to know this, but we're going to be able to see what is their percentage error? This is a really kind of cool test to be able to do, to say, hey, we're going to try to improve our ball striking. What we're really trying to do is say, I want to get a smaller average error. Hopefully that makes sense. So like, you know, maybe this would be like, you know, first test, second test, and third test. It's also a great litmus test for saying, hey, we're going to make a swing change. Is it actually causing things to go better or worse? And you can measure that from an objective standpoint because when we look at, hey, I want to play better golf, especially on my approach play, there's, there's really only two main variables. We can pick better targets or we can tighten the shot dispersion. Those are really like the only two things that we can do. And so, you know, a huge part of, you know, just being able to develop in general is figuring out how to pick better targets. That's something that I help all my students do. If that's something you're interested in, you want help with for your child, um, you can follow the link below. There's an application to be able to work with me. Um, it'll kind of segment out if you are actually in a position where I can help you, um, or your child, then, you know, that'll kind of determine that. And then you'll be able to book a call with me. Um, if you're not, then it'll just tell you, hey, like, I can't help you, which I hope that you value as well. Because at the end of the day, with all this stuff, we want to know where we're at and be realistic about it. So anyway, back into the video here. Long story short, what you're able to do here is, from any distance you want, is to be able to say, okay, cool, I'm gonna hit 20 balls and say, like, what's my percentage error on those shots, and see if that trends down throughout the winter. It's a really great test to be able to run. So that's the first thing I'd really recommend you do. The second thing that you can do in the winter is you can measure what are all my carry numbers throughout the bag. So if I go lob wedge, sand wedge, gap wedge, pitching wedge, 9-iron, 8-iron, so on and so forth, to see, okay, cool, what are those actual carry numbers? And so the way to do that similar to what I just showed you guys here is we're looking at, okay, I'm trying to hit it to this target. What is my short and long of that target? And the way realistically to do this is you get 20 balls, you throw out your 5 worst. So in general, those are going to be like the ones that you hit fat or something like that. They're a little bit short, so you don't want to take those in. And then we're going to take the average of the remaining 15. And we're going to say, okay, cool, out of these remaining 15, what is the average carry? Maybe it's something like— let me see if I can use a different color— maybe it's something like that one. All right, so maybe something like that. So now we know, hey, it's not I just carry my 8-iron, I don't know, 160 yards, it's I carry my 8-iron 157 yards. And then you can also know what the variance is on that long and short, because one of the most underrated things when we're looking at approach shots— most people think in terms of left-right miss, right? So we're concerned with shot shape and stuff like that, but most people don't take it nearly serious enough to say, how far is my longest ball and how far is my shortest ball? And using that to map out where approach shots should land. So if we're looking at a green here let's just draw like an imaginary green. And then we say, okay, great. Let's say the flag is this back, back pin here. So if I'm trying to hit my approach shot here, I want to have a shot pattern over this, look something like that, where I'm going to have probably the majority of my shots coming up a little bit short, a couple of them coming up long, but I want to make sure that all of my shots, or at least the majority of them, are going to come up short of the back of the green. The flip side of this would be true for, you know, if you got a front pin, you want to make sure all the balls are getting onto the green and the majority are going long of the pin. Because again, if you flush one, in this case for the back pin, you're right on top of the pin, or you're maybe just a little bit long, you got a, you know, 9-12 footer. If you hit one fat, okay, cool, you're in the middle of the green. So this is a big part of being able to play good golf in general, because if we layer this on with, okay, I've got control of my shot pattern, let's say I'm hitting a fade Well, now all of a sudden I can aim left side of this green. I know pretty much all my outcomes, you know, just based on this percentage error thing again, are okay. If I hit it fat, you know, I'm fine. If I flush it, I'm fine. If I hit a flare, I'm fine. And so that's a really big way of just like how you lower pressure, um, for your child on the golf course is to help them understand that it's like a big part of how you're going to score is being able to set yourself up with shots where no matter what you do, it's going to go well. And so it's just crucial to understand that. So a big part of that is understanding how far do I carry my ball and understanding what's my longest, what's my shortest, and what's my average, and being able to use that strategically when we're hitting these different approach shots. So that's number 2. First one, once again, is percentage error, measuring that month over month, quarter over quarter. It's kind of a good way to do that. And then the other one is collecting all of your distances. Those two are great. Now obviously you can do kind of my baseline drills that I like to see with like the 10-ball format. I'm not going to go into the details of all those drills because that's obviously something that I do with the students that are paying me, right? So that's something you guys want help with, um, just go ahead and fill out the application, we'll talk about it. Um, but that's obviously a drill that you can do, just, you know, do the same drills you normally do outside. You can also— third one, we want to track where we're at with driver. Almost all of you guys or your kids can hit the ball further. And so we want to know what those numbers are. Specifically, we want to know carry, right off the tee, but we want to know clubhead speed, ball speed, smash factor is obviously going to be a factor of the two of those, spin rate, launch angle, and then angle of attack, dynamic loft, um, are also going to be somewhat of a product of, of the launch angle. And so if we have those numbers, one of the things that we can do is we can look at it and say, okay, cool. How optimal are we? Right? So if your child is like, has whatever clubhead speed they're having, let's say that they're not optimal. Let's say they're launching the ball at like 0, or they're launching their driver at like, they're, they're hitting down on it and they're launching at like, I should have said angle of attack 0, but let's say they're launching at like 10 or something like 10 degrees. Well, and let's say they're spinning it at like 3,000. Well then we know right away it's like, hey, yeah, we'd like to swing faster and that'd be cool. but we can just swing the club more effectively and hit the ball further without adding any particular clubhead speed is, is a great way to, to have that insight. The other side of that coin is, you know, let's say we look at it and your, your kid is like, they're, they're optimal. You know, they're spinning at like 2,200, 2,300, 2,400 spin. They're launching at like 14. They're hitting 3 degrees up. Um, and they got a 1.5 smash factor. Then we know, okay, cool. We need to get stronger. We need to be able to hit, you know, create more speed. So there's two different options here. We can be more effective in our golf swing, which is one thing, right? We can be more efficient with the way that we're moving it. Rory McIlroy is essentially a midget, but he's the longest player on tour because he's one of the most effective players with how he's moving the golf club. The other side of that is we can just flat out get stronger, right? We can go into the gym. And so this applies more for, um, you know, if you're— if your child is, you know, 14, 15, 16, they're gonna have a little bit easier time being able to make progress in the gym compared to if they're younger, but we're able to say, okay, cool. We're going to apply whatever plan this is. Either we're going to change our mechanics to try and be more effective with, with the physiology that we currently have, or we're going to get in the gym and we want to see our clubhead speed increase as a result of the stuff that we're doing. And that's super important. That's, that's one of the things that I try to emphasize a lot when I'm working with players is if we're doing something, we need to measure whether or not it's working. Because if we do something and it creates a lot of, you know, a lot of work for us, we need to be able to see, is that actually producing the outcome that we want? Because if we just go to the gym and we don't swing the club faster, then why are we going to the gym? And we want to make sure that we're just clear about that. Because if our whole thing for going to the gym is actually to hit the ball further, it's just, I don't know, be healthier or something like that, then we need to define that ahead of time. If we go to the gym because we want to get the ball further, we need to measure the gym based on, are we hitting the ball further? And if we're not hitting the ball further, if we're not picking up clubhead speed, then we know that whatever we're doing in the gym is not as effective as it should be, or quite frankly, it might not be effective at all. And so being able to measure those things is absolutely crucial. And so I, I'm just gonna go ahead and stop this here, 'cause I think you guys have a very clear context of just like, just a few. These are 3 things that you can do in the winter to be able to see serious progress. Now honorable mention, obviously play simulator rounds of golf. I can't stress this enough, play rounds of golf. You know, you're going to go out there, practice. You can also go play rounds of golf. You can play Pebble Beach or whatever, whatever you want to play. Um, but it's really important that it's not just grinding. We're actually going out there and shooting scores as well, even if we got the whole stupid auto-putt thing. Again, part of the value of tracking your statistics, you can just say, hey, I know I don't care about any of these putting statistics or short game statistics, but I care about my ball striking. So we're still going to be able to make progress in the winter off the tee. We're going to be able to make progress on our approach shots. Yeah, short game, putting, we're putting those in the back, back corner. But then when we get into the springtime, we're going to know that our ball striking is dialed in. We're going to know that our putting mechanics is dialed in, right? Pretty simple on that one. Give another honorable mention is, is just having like a putting mirror and being able to see your eye line, your shoulder line, and making, you know, 3 to 5 foot putts. Consistently, just make sure your mechanics are solid. That's going to be huge. And so you're able to come into the springtime where you're able to say, okay, the main issue here is we just need to sharpen up our short game, which is realistically just like you get comfortable with different kinds of grass because realistically you can chip inside as well and getting comfortable with lag putting. Once again, there are ways to work around, but once again, just want to get comfortable with it once we're out on different kinds of grasses. and that's it. And so hopefully you can kind of see here, I'm like, I'm even kind of papering over this, but like in theory you could work on everything. You're not going to have as clear data as you ordinarily would, but for some degree with the ball striking, you can actually get clearer data and you can be very focused about trying to get particular outcomes. And so hopefully this video is helpful for you guys just to kind of recognize that like there's a lot you can do in the winter. And so rather than looking at it as just like, oh, you know, it's a little bit of a bummer, you know, look at it as like, this is a big opportunity. To be very focused and get a lot out of the work that we're going to put in. Um, so once again, hopefully this makes sense. Hopefully this is helpful. If it is, go ahead, leave it a like, um, subscribe to the channel if you're new here. Once again, if there's something you want me to do for your child to show them exactly how they need to be practicing in the winter and just literally throughout the year, and then all the way down to just like how to get ranked, how to get coaches' attention, you know, which tournaments to play in, all that stuff, how to lower the scoring average faster, Again, links below for, for help with that. Um, you can apply, see if you're actually in a position where I can help you, and then we can go from there. But hopefully you guys enjoyed the video and I'll see you guys in the next one.