A few things
- many people make good “feeling” practice swings, that are actually non-functional. For example, when a player lays the shaft down nicely, swings from the inside more than their normal over-the-top move and releases like a pro, it might look and feel great. But if you were to astutely look at the face at impact, it would send the ball 45 degrees right.
The unconscious then overrides this during the actual swing. P.s. this is only an example, not applicable to all. It’s just to say that in many cases, a nice feeling swing is often non-functional, and players revert back to old habits to increase function (albeit in a mixed-bag-of-errors way).
- If it is genuinely a good swing that is not translating, it is often a “locus of attention” shift.
Our brains encode movement patterns with where our attention was. If, for example, you make a beautiful practice swing focusing on the movement and THEN switch your focus to the target/result during execution, your brain will fire the motor pattern that has been encoded with that focus - I.E your old pattern. More info in THIS LINK here
When I’m making a change with a player, I use certain tactics, like scaling, precise feedback etc. to direct a player’s attention more.
- If a player doesnt have great control over their attention, we can use “constraints” to train the unconscious.
For example, if a player is suffering with fat shots, rather than hit off a range mat, where the margin for error is bigger, we will move to a fairway bunker (MOE is much smaller). As long as the player has a couple of cues to enact a change in this, the “constrained” environment will keep a player’s focus better during the shot and/or simply train them on an unconscious level more.
There are loads of examples of constraint’s led tasks, from using clubs with different lie angles, placing objects in the way, environmental changes, rule-based games etc.