Coaching Vs Practice

[alabadi]

I was wondering what everyone thinks about how much progress you think you could get from lets say 1/2 day coaching.

would you progress further or less by spending the same amount of money you would have to on a coaching session for practice play at your local club.

if we say that coaching half a day would cost £175 this would equate to around 50 hours of practice time at £3.50 an hour, if then you devided your practice sessions into 4 hours chunks you would get 13 sessions. if you practiced twice a week this would mean 6-7 weeks of practice.

would you benefit more from practice or the half a day coaching. if it were a full day coaching the practice sessions would double.

weighing up the the pros and cons which would you prefer or think you would benefit from the most


Alabbadi

[Gerry Armstrong]

Depends entirely on what/how you practice and the current level of your technique.

If you have serious technical flaws and aren't aware of it, all the practice in the world would be pointless. In fact, lots and lots of practice will simply ingrain the fault in your technique and make it more difficult to correct later.

However if you do have serious technical flaws, coaching alone doesn't rectify them. You still need hours and hours and hours of practice to implement changes and check ups now and again to make sure you haven't strayed too far from your new technique.

If you already have a very good, solid technique then coaching can still be invaluable as you might be missing knowledge which may be what you need to take you to the next level. But lots of practice is also hugely beneficial as you will never improve without practice.

In other words, unless you are very lucky and naturally have an excellent technique, some coaching and lots of practice would be the ideal.

In my own personal case, I would of course love to be a better player but I obviously don't care about it enough to do anything about it as I don't play that often (it's summer just now, Golf season) and I never practice.

Lots and lots of practice is what I would need but there are other things I would rather be doing with my time and so I've just about made my peace with the fact that I will never be as good as I believe I could be but that is my choice.