Golf Coach & Instructor Resource | GLT Golf

In this quick start guide, we dive a little deeper into what it means to train in a “Game Like” way. Game Like Training Golf is the purest form of deliberate practice. involves guidance from the learning sciences and is proven to enhance human performance. It has become increasingly popular, especially in the last few years, due to an assortment of statements suggesting that practice on the golf course is more important than practicing on the range, or that practice on the range must be adjusted to more accurately represent the golf course.

Within this guide, you will be exposed to the inner workings of Constraints Led Learning, an approach that stems from the Non-Linear Pedagogy framework, and is closely linked with the popular TGfU (Teaching Games for Understanding.) A constraint led approach to coaching is fundamentally about creating problems that challenge the learner to come up with appropriate solutions to those problems. In sport, especially in golf, there is often a recipe approach when it comes to coaching, "If I follow this template, the output should be this." Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t always work because, as individuals, we all see solutions to problems through different lenses. Constraint based coaching is about letting the individual find a way to solve the given problem in their own way - with some added guidance and input, rather than being given the answer. 

The goal of this quick start guide is to help parents understand how their motivations, actions and words can impact their child's engagement in organized sports. As well as education, this guide will allow parents to assess their current influence on their child’s engagement and provide advice on small refinements that can be made to encourage certain behaviors. Small shifts in language and how you engage with your child can have a dramatic impact on their participation, training effort and overall enjoyment of their selected sport.

In this quick start guide, Team GLT will dive into golf psychology and provide practical training tasks to help you get the most out of your student’s game. We will begin with a brief look at 3 psychological characteristics of excellence (chunking, automation and intrinsic motivation,) then examine the reasons some golfers fail to develop these characteristics. Finally, we'll examine how these skills can be coached.

The Game Like Training Golf team has produced this guide on indoor training with the intentions of helping you understand the potential limitations of indoor practice, provide potential solutions and extend your current training methods. Team GLT believes this guide could potentially help hundreds of golfers transfer more of their learning into competitive play for the upcoming season.

Throughout this Guide to The PreShot Routine, Team GLT will cover the mental challenges that golfers face on the course. We will also break down solutions that are proven to combat these challenges. The terms in this guide are broken down into two parts. Each point is initially explained in terms that should help a golfer relate to the mental challenge that playing golf provides. The same point is then explained in scientific terminology allowing a coach or player to delve deeper into the academic research, should you wish to do so.

The science of motor learning uncovers several principles that will improve the effectiveness of practice. This science is essential in player development and can help anyone learn better, faster.

This guide is designed as a golf coaching template to educate you on key motor learning principles. This information will help you design better practice environments for yourself, design better practice environments for your students, and deliver your instruction more effectively. You will also benefit from learning what each principle means how to utilize it during practice.

There is a lot of valuable research going on in the fields of player development and learning, as well as a lot of new information that coaches need to be familiar with. The golf coaching world is changing, and for the better. Coaches around the globe are paying more attention to developing great athletes and players. These 5 pieces of research are a solid foundation for golf coaches, and an introduction toward changing the way golf is taught.

Help students develop their pre-shot routine in a game like way. Students actively discover which challenges help them swing the golf club with increased freedom and flow. Then the student can be challenged to take this focus onto the golf course in a form of a process goal for their pre-shot routine.

Use the OSVEA score card to record the key components of your routine and grade how well you engage with them during a round of golf or talking your routine aloud.

Use the Process Focus Score Card to maintain thoughts and feelings that will avoid anger, tension and wasted shots on the golf course. Scoring your key process goals after every hole is a tactic that has helped some of the worlds best players deal with the stress of playing for millions of dollars.

The Process Challenge allows students to actively engage their mind in tasks that will help them self discover a new level of process focus. This can lead to a player becoming more relaxed and enjoying competitive golf.

The Strategy Challenge allows students to actively engage their mind in tasks that will help them self discover a new level of golfing tactics. This helps players shoot lower scores even when their ball striking is a little off.

As humans we are programmed to recall negative events. This is an innate human survival mechanism that has helped humans become the most dominant species on the planet. However if we want to access our best golf more often, we must break free of repeatedly recalling our negative experiences on the golf course and relive the sight and sounds of our best shots.

The Science of Happiness suggests that the tasks detailed on this worksheet can help personal and sporting performance.

Engaging in the Thought Tracker Challenge and reflecting on your personal patterns of thinking can help the development of self awareness and provide compelling reasons to engage in a psychological conditioning program.

The Transition Training Journal is designed for students to take notes on the processes that help them successfully complete Transition Training challenges. Self recording and then reflecting on what is logged in this journal will help students retain thoughts and feelings that are conducive to them playing their best golf. Students can then transition what is actively discovered in practice into competitive play in the form of process goals.