[HilaryNidierer]

Any THP'ers myelinating? My daughter's golf coach helped her build a pretty solid fundamental golf swing since her first lesson in May. She had seven lessons and made pretty good progress. Her goal for the Winter includes hitting a lot balls in a heated dome, but more importantly doing very specific drills at home for a number of minutes at a time. Her coach calls it focused practice (there are other names for it) and the practice serves to build sheaths around neural pathways (myelination) so the brain's commands are executed more quickly and exactly. The key is to learn the drills correctly and keep repeating until the pathways are thickly covered.

He's having her pitch pennies with a gap wedge while her hands are held in the proper impact position for a full swing, and also having her work on a connected very short takeaway and follow through with the club in a 10" long and 5" wide wooden trough. Another drill has her doing the small hip bump that initiates the down swing. There will be others. By exactly repeating these small but detailed movements over and over, a pathway becomes defined and "insulated" with a myelin sheath allowing the brain's commands to be more easily and efficiently duplicated. I'm explaining this poorly, but it's pretty interesting stuff. It has been used in soccer, music, tennis, and other endeavors, and while the premise has been around in golf, think Ben Hogan digging it out of the dirt, it's practice is being refined (focused, detailed, specific tasks) as research increases the understanding of how our brains and nervous systems work. A number of articles have been written over the last six months and can be found if golf and myelination are Googled.

New way to improve your golf game - 6 - Instruction - Golf.com

myelination golf - Google Search

The whole article in the first link above is interesting, but the link opens to a couple specific paragraphs on myelination. The second link goes to a list of articles and blogs.

She has been having fun doing these little drills over the last week, and will be doing it all winter long. She enjoys swinging her clubs, albeit very, very small swings, in the family room. She should have some thick myelin sheaths going by Spring. Apparently, golfers in cold climates see serious breakdowns in these myelin sheaths over the course of the Winter if they do not play or practice. Consequently, in some respects, the game must be learned over after the neural pathways have been neglected over even short periods of time. As can be imagined, the young are better at myelinating than the old, as myelin production slows as the years go by.

I hope this makes sense. The latent science geek in me finds it fascinating. I reiterate that I am most likely explaining this poorly.

Kevin