Grinding at Home

As I have said in previous posts, if anyone has any requests for what they would like to see on my blog then please get in touch on Twitter or Instagram. I had a request that inspired me for this post, the basic request being ‘What do you do on your off weeks from competing’. I liked this because it gives you an insight to what happens behind the scenes and what goes into the scores, good or bad. Now what I write doesn’t necessarily work for everyone so don’t feel you suddenly must go out and copy me, I practice more than most and probably put more hours I than most. Personally, I feel it gives me the best chance to succeed. I want to look back and say I gave it everything I had if nothing else.

Obviously, what I do changes depending on the time of year, there are less hours in the day in the winter so I can’t put the same hours in but I do the most I can in those months. So, let’s start with what I will do in two weeks’ time. I say this as I will be having a few days to re-charge when returning from the Challenge De Espana this week. When I start this week, I will have three full weeks until I head off to European Tour School roughly so I will be using this time to make some changes early, up my gym routine and put in some long days on technique. The last week before heading off I will be playing a lot more, scoring games and playing some competitive matches with friends. The first full week back from a tournament I never change though, I see this as a maintenance week and a time for me to get back to where I want to be both in the swing and my body. Things change while you’re away in the heat of competition so it’s important to keep on top of things.

Monday, my alarm will go off at 06:00 and I will head to the gym for when it opens at half past. I’ll usually spend between an hour and an hour and a half in the gym including a warm up/ stretching, lifting weights and a cardio cool down. My lifting varies, in the season during tournament weeks, if I have access I will lift as heavy as possible for low reps and high sets. For example, last week in Portugal I trained at a local gym and got three reps out at 175KG on deadlift on my 5^th set. I’m not scared to lift or put off by people saying it’s the wrong thing to do. Lifting heavy doesn’t mean I suddenly won’t be able to swing the club which is the common view. For those about to tell me I’m wrong, I started my own study mid-2017, the first half I didn’t lift in tournament weeks but felt I needed to change. When I’m home and going to the gym I hit the ball lovely and feel free in my body yet the first half of the year I didn’t feel right. The second half of the year I lifted, I lifted heavy and have beaten PB’s all season for different things and my scoring average has decreased by nearly 3 shots compared to the first six months. Guess lifting isn’t too bad after all?

Anyway, back to the schedule. On days I go to the gym, which when I’m back will be 4-5 days a week. During the season 3 days. I will aim to get to the golf course, Corhampton Golf Club at 09:00 and my first move is to do my golf warm up which takes around half an hour, this is the same every day. In fact, my plan for the day is similar for all days I go to the gym so I’m just going to go through Monday and you can fill the gaps. At 09:30 I will head on to the putting green and this is where most of my work in a day is done. I see putting as a huge strength of mine and I am always looking to improve and hole more putts. I’ll use my laser to check face alignment for 5 minutes testing myself on different lengths and breaking putts before setting up my mirror. I see alignment as my key factor in putting, if I can square everything off I will hole more putts, it makes sense to me. I use the ‘Perfect Putter’ device to set up all my drills and I find the straight putt using this, along with setting my VISIO gates up. I’ll spend ten minutes hitting putts on the mirror, checking all set up points and going through my on-course routine. Why practice without a routine when you use one on the course?

After this I will usually choose one of my holing out drills, all incorporating putts inside of ten feet. Whether it be a ‘stay until’ drill or a scoring drill its good practice and I use my full routine again, I take my practice seriously and want to replicate what I do on the course in this practice. Once this is completed I will either concentrate on putts between ten and twenty-five feet or do some pace drills, I will usually alternate this unless I see a recurring trend on my on-course sessions. All of this will usually take me until lunch time, so I spend nearly 3 hours putting each day. I’ll normally have lunch packed with me and take it with me to the short game area where I can have it in peace.

The short game area is another place I can lose track of time on. I’ll start with my warm up for chipping, which I use at all tournaments. Again, I think it’s important to mention that the way I practice putting is in the order I would warm up at a tournament and then chipping I do the same thing. Starting with a distance control ladder drill with varied clubs, lob/flop shots, bunker shots and then small pitch shots. I generally won’t hit pitch shots outside of 60 yards unless I’m on the golf course. My short game practice is always tested and monitored, I have many short game challenges that I have learned from Mr Walker at England Golf. In my opinion, he is the best short game coach around and he has transformed my short game and made me a multi-dimensional player. I will test myself and my goal is simple, to beat personal bests in the tests that I do, it gives me competition and gets me heated when I hit a bad shot but it is great for getting me ready for the course. Once again, the thing that always stays the same is my routine, I want to see how it holds up when I have a chip to beat a score or a shot that needs to go close.

I will usually do one or two tests a day and then allocate time to work on the areas that stood out as an area for improvement. Once satisfied with my work I head back to the locker room to go through some stretching and foam rolling. It would be around 14:00 now so a couple of hours chipping. I’ll now go through my long game warm up which takes 20 minutes and then head out on the course for nine holes. I’ll mix up what I do on the course, I never play a medal unless I’m playing against a friend. Worse ball is a personal favourite for me, where you hit two balls from everywhere apart from the green always playing the worse ball. It gets me good at scoring and minimising my errors, my personal best is 3 under for nine holes at Corhampton and I’m not expecting to beat it any time soon, it’s a brutal game.

After my nine holes I will go through some three footers on the putting green and then head back home for dinner between 17:00 and 17:30.

Tuesday is a day that I don’t lift usually as I need to recover from Monday in the gym. My alarm though, it’s still set at 06:00 and I’ll be up and ready to leave the house by 07:00, stretched at home and ready for the day. It’s on these days when I’m home I will aim to play 18 holes and the winter time is great for an early round with Neil. Once at the course I’ll go through a shortened warm up, another good habit as sometimes you only have thirty minutes to get ready or it is too cold. A short warm up is perfect for this. I’ll aim to play 18 holes keeping score with a wager on the result, if it’s with someone it will be against them but if not I’ll have a bet with myself.

I can get round 18 holes by 10:30 which gives me plenty of time to work on my game. It will then revert to a similar format to Monday. I’ll start by putting, usual warm up and mirror work but I’ll change up the drills and work on things that may have been flagged up in the round. Let’s say I miss-read a lot of putts on the course, what do I do? Well I’ll use my ‘Perfect Putter’ and read putts and mark my read with a tee, the putts being random. The beauty of the Perfect Putter is it rolls the ball on a perfect roll every time so it removes any human error. I can quickly see if I have over or under read putts and then set up drills accordingly. It’s a great tool to have and if you have the finances to do so it is worth the investment.

I’ll then do some short game in the afternoon with an area of key focus, it may be long bunker shots, lob shots or spinning pitch shots. I like having this focus to allow me time to explore new techniques and find a way to play the shots. My days where I don’t go to the gym usually involve more time hitting balls. So at around 14:30 I will go to the long range teeing area and set up some drills, the first being putting out cones to work on pitching control from 50 to 120 yards. This acts as my warm up as well as practice for my pitching and long game. I’ll go through my swing drills, working on technique and then when I’m happy with the technique I will go through some skills testing with my long game. Focussing mainly on flight control and shot shaping, this then highlights anything I’m struggling with which can be fed back to my coach Simon or worked on later in the session. Once again, a full routine for every shot.

Now there’s one last thing that some of you may have already thought of or if not it may open your eyes a bit to the way I do things. I structure my practice days in the way that my warm up in a tournament is structured, so my practice days are extended warm ups basically. At a tournament, I start with small putts and work out to drivers, so I do the same every day at home.

I hope this has helped,

Scott