⛳️ Do what I do!

Change up your Practice!

Ryan Robillard
March 21, 2024

It’s Thursday and you’ve got a few things coming,

⛳️ One Golf Tip: The Components of Practice
🧠 One Stat: I helped a Student gain 6mph in one lesson!

We’re next up on the tee, let’s go!

ONE TIP
How to practice like me?

Let's talk about breaking down your practice. If you are a golfer who just goes to the driving range and hits golf balls as fast as you can, stop doing that! I see many golfers fall into the trap and it just doesn't work. We hit balls way too fast, it's really hard to stay focused on the same thing for an extended period, and they don't change things up, and as a result, it's just not very fun. So today I'm going to give you a rundown about what a range session looks like for me.

I break this down in a video, you can watch it here!

Warmup: A warm-up is a must! Keep in mind that I never want to see players swing the golf club to warm up, I want them to warm up before they start swinging the golf club. This 5 minutes for me is the most important 5 minutes, if I have a good warm-up I'm ready to go. If I don't get my body warmed up usually I waste my first 10 to 15 minutes trying to get my body warmed up by swinging the golf club and therefore I'm not focused on hitting good shots.

Warmup drill: Something that I struggle with in my full swing is compressing the golf ball. So after my warm-up, I have a warm-up drill that I like to do before I do anything else. The drill is a split stance punch shot. Split stance so that I can get a lot of weight on my lead leg in this punch shot in motion to give me a short swing which usually guarantees me making ball first contact and really getting the feeling of compressing my golf shots. This is something I like to feel before I start my practice.
Short Game: Now that I'm warmed up and I've got my first drilling I will normally go to my short game and work on some feel shots. A common one for me is a ladder drill where I'm working on my carry distances. I will start at 30 yards and work my way up to 50 yards, 70 yd, 90 yards, then back down to 40 yards, 60 yards, and 80 yards. Normally I would just hit two or three balls to each distance to find out how sharp I feel and my carry distances on my short game shots today.
If this goes poorly I may reassess my goal for practice that day.

Full Swing Drills: Now I will go into my full swing drills. For this, my alignment rods are always out, I'm cleaning my club between each shot, and just being very intentional with the drill that I am working on. The drill specifically will vary depending on what exactly I'm working on. But this portion is where I will get most of my work done. When I'm doing this I normally won't change targets or anything but I have my alignment rods down to ensure that my ball position in my alignment is still consistent as I'm working on my swing.
Full Swing Game: Now that I'm done my full swing work I like to bring in an aspect of playing golf. I'll put my alignment rods away and I will start with my highest lofted Club and I will hit every other club. I will change targets after each shot I will go through my full routine and be very intentional with where I expect the ball to start and I hope the ball finishes. This is a really good break from just hitting ball after ball after ball and I believe does a great job helping me start to bring what I just practiced into a golf course mindset.
Max Speed: Normally I'll save roughly my last five to seven golf balls and what I will do is I will have a long drive contest with myself. The goal is simple to try to generate as much speed and hit the ball as far as I can. (Please note that my golf course has a no-driver policy, so I go through this with my fairway wood). Like many golfers, I'm always working on maintaining or increasing my club head speed which is why I saved this last little pocket of my practice to try to push myself to generate as much Club head speed as I can.

This might feel like I cover a lot of different things, but that's the point. When I see a player go to the driving range for 1 hour or hit 70 golf balls I know that there is no chance that they focus on the same thing for that length of time. I like to change things up and try to cover multiple bases in a practice session on the driving range. The thing that I will emphasize is as I do this I'm very intentional and very focused on what I'm doing for that period. Since I'm only spending a couple of minutes on one thing and then moving to another it gives me a chance to remind myself to be very focused on what I'm doing because I'm about to move on to a different part of the game.

You can watch go through a whole session (in a fraction of the time in the video below)