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Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

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Training Multiple Speeds

In most other sports you have to react to the game and sometimes adjust your "stock" swing. This adjusting of your stock swing forces you to know the sequencing of the motion even better than if you did the same perfect tempo every time in practice. I recommend that golfers try and hit with a few different tempos to help them learn any mechanics. The better you are, the more you can subtly adjust the tempo, the higher your handicap, the more you will have to adjust the tempo by large amounts. I suggest playing with a tempo around 70%-90% and practicing at levels such as 50% and 100%. As you get better, you can do things like tempo ladder, where you hit shots at 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% etc. If you are really good you can vary the tempo by a few percent.

Tags: Not Enough Distance, Practice Strategies, Mental Game, Drill, Intermediate

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This drill video is training multiple speeds.

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So as I mentioned before, I like to play with time.

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I like to try to swing hard.

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I like to try to swing really soft and see if I can make solid contact regardless of what I'm doing.

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It really forces me to know the mechanics.

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So one of the interesting things with golf and working with golf students compared to some of the other sports that I've played specifically tennis.

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So in tennis, we are frequently swinging hard or we're trying to mess them up and we're trying to swing kind of soft and hit almost like a little more controlled shot.

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Same thing with hockey.

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I'm not always going exactly the same speed.

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Sometimes I'm adjusting it.

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Baseball is going to be more of a closer to golf where you're kind of always swinging at one speed.

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But if you realize that it's a little off, sometimes you'll just abort and still swing.

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More of an arm swing, something like that.

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The challenge with golf is a lot of my students only want to swing at one speed.

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So they only want to swing hard and fast.

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Now the problem with that is the brain learns really well based on references or having ranges.

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So the example I use a lot from Tom Hebron or Mike Hebron.

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So he did a study with hitting 90 yard wedge shots.

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We had two groups, one group got to hit 80 in 100 for an hour or two hours.

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The other group only hit 90.

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The problem with only hitting 90 is you don't know if it varies.

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You think, oh, that was a 90 shot.

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That was a 90 shot.

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Where if I practiced 80 in 100 and then I had to get tested on hitting 90, I'll go, okay, it's a little higher than my 80 shot.

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So I kind of have this range.

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Similarly, if I'm only swinging hard, then I don't really know my sequencing very well.

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Because I only have one reference frame, which is this swinging hard.

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If I swing soft, so if I slow it down a little bit, now I have a bigger reference frame of what it feels like to sequence the body the same way, but it different rates.

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So it really helps you work on your sequencing, which ultimately helps with your positioning, because sequencing can add a steep or a shallow, and it ultimately helps with getting those arms to extend on the way through.

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If that's the shot that you're trying to achieve for your stock shot.

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So play around with any mechanic that you're working on, but very the tempo.

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Now, when I'm doing this, I'll usually do kind of higher and lower.

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So let's say my normal tempo is a 80% or probably go 100% and I'll probably go like 30%.

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It's actually harder if I say, alright, let's go 70, 75, 80, 85.

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It's harder to do at least at first.

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It's much harder to do the smaller jumps in tempo, or speed rather than the bigger jumps.

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So as a fun way to transition and get ready for playing for the course, hitting different shots,

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I always recommend taking the mechanics that you're doing, and you can work on tempo drills,

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trying to feel the mechanics at different speeds.

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Ultimately, that will help you ingrain it and understand the movements even better.

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