If you have ever tried to fix a persistent problem with your golf game you will know how true that is.
Like when you last tried to change your grip, correct your putting action or make a swing change, you had to concentrate hard; you made more errors; it took so much time due to mental confusion; and the experience was frustrating and unpleasant.
Thankfully, all those skills coaching sessions appear to be paying off. You practice and practice and your technique on the range shows obvious improvement.
However, as soon as you are out on the golf course and under the stress of competition, your game falls apart and you revert to those old, wrong, ways.
You wanted to change but your brain would not let you change. In the case of your ingrained golf technique problem, you were the prisoner of habit. By a process of psychological interference, your old learning has disabled your new learning.
Cognitive science tells us that whatever we have practiced and learned is protected from change. When the new golf swing you are trying to learn is different from the old swing, your brain instantly detects this conflict and generates habit pattern interference to protect and preserve the old swing.
That's why old habits die hard!
Eventually, you will succeed and make the change over to the new swing but biomechanical experts say that it can take up to 2,000 practices before the new swing consistently replaces the old one. This is called the “adaptation period” and we have all gone through that misery.
