Working in Movement

Strength, conditioning and flexibility. Those ore the things that quickly come to mind when thinking about learning or improving athletic skills. Those things are important, but there is another important element. The missing element is coordination, the ability to use perception and movement towards performing an athletic skill.

One instructor who would agree with this idea is golf putting teacher Geoff Mangum. According to Mangum, "The brain is not so much the seat of thought and emotion as it is the organ of perception and movement." Mangum's website is dense with information on ... well, just about everything you'd want to know about putting a golf ball, from almost any perspective. But Magnum's focus seems to be on brain-based learning with all the applied neuroscience that you're likely to find on a golf site. Says Mangum, "The brain determines your athletic skill, especially in putting, where the basic physical condition of the body is secondary to targeting and stroke control." Great news for us duffers.

I was particularly taken by what Mangum had to say about working with those who think of themselves as non-athletic:

How can you help the golfer who has absolutely no athletic ability?

By showing him or her how normal adult skills, like reaching the hand out and opening a door or turning to pick up a glass of water on a nearby table, really underlie top athletic performance, and that the decades of experience with these processes of the brain and body can be used quite instinctively in sports to great effect, with appropriate guidance and practice. [From Drive for Show, Putt for Dough with Mangum]