Why would I write an article about the disaster of changing your mechanics? The disaster is in changing your mechanics when we are talking about Tour or PGA taught mechanics (will be labeled “traditional mechanics”). Traditional mechanics have a built-in coordination barrier that is virtually impossible to break through. Over 100 years of statistics show that scores for every level of player have remained a virtual constant. The average score for men amateurs has remained between 90 and 100 for over 100 years. The scores needed to win professional tournaments has only changed by a few strokes.

Every golf magazine promises improvement and it never happen. These are honest people who would genuinely like to see you improve. I don’t know any teaching professional that does not have the perception that he/she understands golf mechanics and it is the student’s fault for not following their instructions, not practicing enough and not taking enough lessons.

Science can be very cruel! It provides knowledge that explains these false perceptions. This video is a scientific explanation as to why taking “traditional lessons” is a disaster.

There are no superior “traditional mechanics”! Traditional mechanics require the motion to be on five different paths while body center moves upward and spins away from the ball. This creates a coordination barrier. Tour professionals, the best golfers in the world, have only achieved around 65% reproducibility.

HOW DOES THE BRAIN LEARN MECHANICAL MOTION?
Statements from Rita Carter's book:
• The putamen's (part of the basal ganglia) function is to look after automatic movements - those that have been learned by repetition (page 57).
• Memories form when a pattern is repeated frequently, or in circumstances that encourage it to be encoded. This is because each time a group of neurons fires together, the tendency to do so again is increased (page 159).
• This process is called long-term potentiation. If the neighbor cell is not stimulated again it will stay in this state of readiness for hours, maybe days (PAGE 159).
• Episodes that are destined for long-term memory are not lodged there straight away. The process of laying them down permanently takes up to TWO YEARS. Until then they are quite fragile and may quite easily be wiped out (page 164).
• Experiences which are destined to be laid down as long-term memories are shunted down to the hippocampus where they are held in storage for 2-3 years. During this time the hippocampus replays the experiences back up to the cortex, and each rehearsal etches it deeper into the cortex. Eventually the memories are so firmly established in the cortex that the hippocampus is no longer needed for their retrieval (page 162).

The scientific knowledge that will allow you to understand what it takes to make an effective change in your golf mechanics is as follows:
1. It will take around two years for the change to become automatic
2. You must become your own teacher.
a. You must have training aids that assist you in reproducing the motion exactly the same every time.
3. You must practice sufficient repetitions (around 70 strokes ) at least three times a week for several years.
a. Short term memory stored in the hippocampus has to be refreshed in order to maintain the stored electrical patterns.

Here are the reasons that “traditional lessons” virtually always fail!
1. The hippocampus retains very little of the information received during a lesson.
2. The odds of your future practice being what you received from the lesson are close to zero.
3. The odds on any golfer persevering for two years are highly unlikely.

The biggest fault of all is that even if a golfer persevered for the two years, it does not necessarily mean that you will have better mechanics. You will just have different mechanics.