What constitutes effective practice? Banging balls by the bucket-full? Hitting balls until your hands bleed? Trying to see how far you can hit your driver? Making the same swing over and over hoping something magical will happen?

None of the above are effective use of your practice time.

The only way to effectively practice is to practice with a purpose. In order to practice with a purpose you need to know what your objective is for that particular practice session before you start your practice session.

In other words you need to decide what you’re going to work on before the practice session starts. There are a number of different ways to practice with a purpose. Some examples are:

Working on alignment
Working on a specific position in the swing
Working on tempo or rhythm
Simulating play
Establishing a pre-shot routine

These are just a sample of what can be considered purposeful practice. The important thing to keep in mind while you are practicing with a purpose, the part or piece of swing you are working on is the most important part to analyze.

For example if you are working on establishing a solid pre-shot routine you would not over analyze the results of every swing except the success or failure of repeating your pre-shot routine. What the ball just did is not important, yet. No matter what you’re working on, whether it’s a correction or new skill, you’ll need to spend adequate time on the specific task BEFORE you can expect the change or new skill to influence the other parts of your swing.

Once you get into the habit of deciding what you’re going to be working on before you start you’ll see how ineffective your previous practice routine had been.

Let me know if you need help implementing purposeful practice into your practice routine.

And as always, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.