Quite often we will hear golfers say the professional golfers must have a secrete as to how they are able to strike a golf ball with so much power and consistency. Most avid golfers believe the secrete lies within their swing technique. Well, there's not a secrete, but they do learn in a way not well known or written about. They know how to learn in golf using correct information. They are all great learners and great learners using correct information are destined to achieve success. But, what makes the professionals such great learners? Well, this page will cover a few topics that identify and explain, to some degree, their approach to learning. I believe their disciplined approach to learning is at the core of their success, and to quote Michael Hebron, PGA, Master Professional, ” A MASTER OF ANYTHING, WAS FIRST, A MASTER LEARNER.” To become a master learner in golf, you must first, fully understand the necessary disciplines and tools used in successful learning. It all begins with learning how to learn and understanding the learning process using critical thinking skills to create your personal learning journal. Here are a few thoughts on the purpose and value in learning how to use a Learning Journal.
A Learning Journal is your most valuable means of measuring every aspect of your psychological and physical learning and performance throughout your golf game. But first, what is a Learning Journal? A Learning Journal is a collection of your notes, insights, observations, thoughts, perceptions, and other relevant materials that are based on your self study and field testing over a period of time. A Learning Journal enables you to take charge of your own autonomous learning process, as an independent life-long learner in golf. The game of golf is a lifetime learning curve, full of moments of self -discovery, excitement, success, and yes, moments of confusion, frustration, and failure, and out of it all, you will find yourself in an endless self-study, and this, is what makes golf such an awesome sport to play and learn from.
Given the nature of this intriguing soul searching complex beyond comprehension game of golf, you will need a Learning Plan and Instructional Guidance that will compliment and support one another throughout your learning journey. I have found through my experience that top amateur and professional golfers have a few common traits in learning that are quite evident, learning traits that I believe are responsible for their success in golf. First and foremost, they are disciplined learners that use Critical Thinking Skills in their daily use of Learning Journals as a tool of measurement. I find they are constantly drawing on golf specific Critical Thinking Skills that noticeably increase levels of attention, identities, and understandings in their psychological and physical performance that allows them to access and achieve higher levels of learning. They understand the value and purpose of this process in thinking, recording, and measuring as their means of achieving higher levels of learning and success in golf.
Many great learners have an innate gift or a propensity in learning and often achieve extraordinary levels of learning by enhancing their learning propensities through the learned use of golf specific Critical Thinking Skills. They are constantly making notations that provide a degree of measurement within their learning experiences. They monitor and measure their thoughts by thinking about how they are thinking about, what they are thinking in that moment, as well as, monitoring their disciplined emotions. Great learners often hold their full finish long enough to once again reflect on their experience, retrieving data on what just took place and using that information to make a better performance in the next performance. This becomes a cycle of learning that they are extremely good at. They are constantly measuring themselves mentally and physically as a means to achieving their set goals. But, this great learning ability, a gift to some and labor to most, can be learned by anyone through the use of Critical Thinking Disciplines as a part of their Learning Process.
Authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Success in sports, as in life, requires a striving attitude for achieving personal excellence in any task. Purposeful strivers are excellent learners and excellent learners are constantly monitoring and measuring their degree of improvement using specific Critical Thinking Skills to their task. Excellence in golf requires thought measuring thought. Professional Golfers and Business Professionals may not use this verbiage to describe how they are thinking in their learning process, but, as I have witnessed time and again, they use a higher degree of thinking skills, to measure their performance in their respective professions. It is in this way of thinking that Learning Journals play a key role in contributing to their personal achievements. My role as a teacher is not only to understand the mental and physical requirements of a golf swing in form and function but to direct student attention toward the means of learning the mental and physical requirements of proper form and function in a golf swing. I translate what can be seen and what can not be seen into an understandable and simplified message that has a positive influence to student learning. I believe this type of verbiage will help to convey what is going on within successful learning. Critical Thinking Skills are specific to a task and are not universally applied, so we have to learn how to use this skill specific to golf. This manner of thinking, the study of your mind and body and their relationship, requires the use of a journal to maintain a sense of ownership and order of your observations, experiments, thoughts, insights, and reflections, otherwise, they are lost in a matter of minutes and may never be retrieved through memory. I can appreciate the fact that not many students are going to be willing to take the time and energy to use this manner of thinking in learning how to play golf, but this is the means to achieving higher levels in learning and performing in golf. Learning in golf is fun and even more fun with a plan of action that is understandable and measurable. Learning How To Learn, using golf specific Critical Thinking Skills and a Learning Journal, will enable you to amplify your learning opportunities while providing you with vital empirical feedback needed for future learning and instruction. Using a Learning Journal on a daily basis will enable you to create an accurate assessment and measurement of your thoughts, perceptions, and experiences. Through time you will be able to transform your journal information into very accurate and meaningful learning experiences.
Knowing how to Learn through the use of golf specific Critical Thinking Skills, instructional guidance, and a Learning Journal, will be your means in how you measure correct habit creation and incorrect habit purging. Nothing could ever be more important in learning, training, practice, or performance than this required discipline in being cognizant of your physical and psychological habits as they are being formed. Golf specific Critical Thinking Skills, instructional guidance, and a Learning Journal will be your means of, acknowledging, monitoring, recording, and measuring habit formations, correct or incorrect. A timeless quote to always be mindful of: THE MIND IS SLOW IN UNLEARNING WHAT HAS BEEN LONG IN LEARNING – Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4 BC-AD 65.
Over a period of time, a Learning Journal will provide a consistent, definable, and measurable assessment of your mental and physical skills on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Journaling will plainly reveal your level of commitment and the areas of your game that you need to address. Always remember; your journal is a testament of your discipline, commitment, and hard work in your pursuit of personal excellence.
