Science of Speed Training Part 2

In the last post, I focused on the short-term speed gains that often occur within an individual speed training session. Today’s post will be the first of several that begin to dive into what matters most; why and how speed training can help you gain speed in a more long-lasting sense. 

I view swing speed as a skill that is underpinned by both physical and technical factors. Being strong, mobile, and powerful can open up options in terms of how you move and produce force. But we also need to be able to apply forces to the club, and move it through its path into the ball with appropriate combinations of velocity, direction, and orientation. 

Check out my previous post if you’re interested in my thoughts about the mechanical determinants of swing speed. 

The CHS Framework

If you begin to view swing speed from this lens, you can start to dissect how different methods may influence swing speed, and the implications they have for performance as a whole. Given the current popularity of different speed training methods, I believe it’s important that we understand how it works and how to get the most out of it.

I believe speed training methods (depending on how they’re designed and executed) can provide both a motor learning and high-velocity training stimulus. Today’s focus is on the motor learning piece.

Speed Training: A Means of Developing High-Speed Coordination and Exploring Movements

The golf swing is a complex task, requiring a well-orchestrated sequence of muscle and joint actions to apply forces to the club with precise magnitudes, timings, and direction. As we try to navigate this motor control challenge, we tune  into different types of feedback. This includes sensory feedback on the movement and position of different body segments, how the club-ball impact felt (e.g., ground and face contact), ball flight (start line, curvature, trajectory), and the shot result relative to where we wanted the ball to go. 

This means that we approach the task differently when trying to balance speed with accuracy/control compared to focusing on speed alone. It is incredibly hard to explore new movements and techniques when it will come at the cost of hitting a lot of bad golf shots in the process. In fact, most golfers probably can think back to a time when they were trying to work on a specific technique, but found it hard to commit 100% when it resulted in a whole bunch of poorly struck or wild golf shots in the short term. 

But how we move is strongly influenced by our movement goals, the task/environment, and the feedback we focus on. And speed training typically alters all of these factors. We tend to move differently, or at least find it easier to explore different movement patterns when focused on swinging fast compared to when swinging fast AND striking the ball in the center of the face AND achieving the desired ball flight. 

Part of this process can also include changes in how our nervous system coordinates actions at both the level of individual muscles/joints, as well as across joints or body segments. For example, coordination can be velocity-specific to some degree, in that your nervous system needs to do things slightly differently when we ask the body to move at speeds that are faster than normal. Setting up tasks and feedback that help the nervous system learn to coordinate at faster than normal speeds can result in subtle, but meaningful changes over time. 

In other words, speed training can serve as a controlled dosage of high-velocity exposure, which can provide a motor learning challenge that our body uses to 1) explore new ways of coordinating the body and how the actions are coordinated and controlled. These processes can occur in obvious, larger scales (e.g., observable changes in how much you turn or how you sequence the body) or smaller, more subtle scales (the nervous system becomes more efficient at coordinating muscle activation/sequencing within and across muscles). 

All this is to say that you tend to swing and use your body a bit differently when you 1) take away the ball, 2) tell a golfer to swing as fast as possible with high efforts, and 3) provide feedback on speed rather than other feedback sources. And this can lead to some adaptations in terms of how we move and coordinate the body when trying to swing fast in the future.

What this means for speed training as a tool/method

The change of goals, the task/environment, and feedback all make speed training a powerful motor learning tool when used appropriately. 

For example, I commonly observe that golfers with more constrained swings tend to “open up” and swing more dynamically when you take away the ball and have them focus on speed. They tend to start leveraging the ground a bit differently, sequence in a more efficient manner, and maybe even find some range of motion in their swing that they had never previously accessed. This can have a lot of positive carry over to their normal golf games if they simultaneously build the skill and coordination/control to use it. 

But it’s also possible that you can get carried away with just hammering away at high effort speed training, and end up moving your technique towards a fast, but ineffective pattern for what actually matters (playing better golf). We want to step back and think about the overall skill of swinging fast, but in a way that is most likely to translate to better performance. 

To inform this discussion, I am first going to introduce some motor learning mechanisms, or processes that help drive changes in movement during skill practice. I am then going to go through a few different types of speed training sessions and point out how these mechanisms may be influencing things, and some practical considerations. 

Motor Learning Processes in Place During Speed Training

When you are going through a process of learning/developing or refining a movement skill (like the golf swing), there are various processes that are taking place to help the nervous system respond to the practice session, identify potentially useful strategies, and eventually build the skill of expressing the most effective strategies in different contexts and situations. 

Understanding the basics of 4 of these key motor learning mechanisms can be really helpful when considering how, when, and how much to use different types of speed training methods. 

The table below provides an overview of each of these, based on recent reviews on these mechanisms (Leech et al. 2022; Spampinato et al. 2021).

A very important piece of this puzzle is that these mechanisms often can and do work together. I’ll be discussing this more below. 

But let’s dive into each of these a little bit before bringing it all together. 

Reinforcement Learning

When we practice a task with a specific goal, there is a continual feedback loop that reinforces strategies and movements that tend to be successful and discourages those that are not successful. You can think of this as a guided exploration of strategies, feels, and cues, where feedback helps you identify and latch onto the ones that help you meet your specific goal for the session. 

During speed training, this measure of success vs failure is often “did my swing speed go up?.” As you explore different ways of swinging (consciously or subconsciously), your brain will be reinforcing those that consistently lead to faster swings and discouraging those that do not. 

Dopamine pathways are believed to help drive this process by reinforcing actions that result in positive outcomes and discouraging those that do not. In other words, there is a “dopamine hit” when you find a way to swing faster, making it more likely that you will try to use a similar strategy in the future. 

What does this mean in terms of how we approach speed training?

First, reinforcement tends to be a gradual process, requiring you to explore different strategies and reinforcing those that “work.” But over time and reps, it can produce changes in your swing that stick around long-term. Especially if paired with other motor learning mechanisms and when you are also working to dial in strategies that you’ve identified as useful. 

Second, the reinforcement process is tied to the specific goal of the speed training session (e.g., make speed go up). If you get carried away with mindlessly seeking speed over everything else, you may optimize for speed while compromising in other areas. So balance and a systematic approach is key.  

In other words, reinforcement is a powerful tool that helps shape how we move and acquire/refine skills. But it’s also a very simple and somewhat blunt process. If you prioritize a specific goal and feedback (like swinging fast with a speed radar), the reinforcement processes will focus on that goal over anything else. 

To use reinforcement to your advantage, you want to have a plan for structuring your speed training sessions over time. This way, you can still prioritize certain goals at a given time, but also have a plan for piecing it together into something that will work on the course. I briefly touch on this at the end of this post. 

For this reason, I believe it is very important to think through what your specific goals are over time, and ensure you are structuring out different sessions that help develop skills that can eventually be transferred to the course. With a smart approach, we can take advantage of the benefits of reinforcement learning during speed sessions, while also considering the big picture when it comes to balancing speed with overall performance. 

Sensorimotor Adaptation

Another motor learning mechanism that often works hand-in-hand with reinforcement learning is sensorimotor adaptation. Over time your nervous system develops an expectation of what swinging your golf clubs should feel like. But when you change the task in some way, such as using lighter or heavier speed sticks, the swing feels different than normal and can cause the body to adapt to the changes. 

For example, you are probably very accustomed to the brake sensitivity of the car you drive daily. But if you suddenly change cars, there is an adjustment period as you adapt to the new brake sensitivity. After a while, it will begin to feel more natural as your nervous system adapts to the slight differences in how the car responds. 

A similar process happens during speed training, with a great example being speed sticks. Your brain has developed an internal model of your normal swing with your typical equipment. This swing feels “natural” because the sensory info matches closely with what your brain expects based on the model of your swing you’ve built up over time. But speed sticks have a different feel than your own driver due to the weight and inertial differences. 

This mismatch between what the brain expects and the actual sensory info triggers processes to adapt your movements on a rep-by-rep basis to match the new dynamics of the movement. In other words, you tend to make some adjustments to how you move, and interact with the ground and club as you swing the speed stick. This can involve subtle changes like muscle activation sequence, or more easily observable changes, like how much you turn in the backswing or sequence body segments. When you switch back to your normal driver, you will again go through this process of adapting back to your normal driver, since some of the adjustments can carry over. 

This process tends to happen on a swing-by-swing basis to some degree. But you also are not starting from scratch each time. For example, the first time you ever swing a speed stick, it can feel really awkward and difficult to coordinate. But by the 10th time you swing that same speed stick, your nervous system is pretty quick to adapt to it. 

In simple terms, swinging a speed stick that is differently weighted than your own can result in adjustments to how you move, that can carry over to how you swing your own driver. Some of these adjustments can be useful for learning to move in a more efficient manner and ultimately swing your own driver faster, especially when combined with other motor learning mechanisms like reinforcement. 

For example, there are differences across golfers, but here are some trends I tend to see when golfers use heavier speed sticks:

• Golfers that normally rely on a lot of arms/hands during takeaway and transition find this a bit more challenging to do with a heavier club. They often find themselves exploring ways to engage the larger muscles to push off the ground and build momentum into the backswing and in the transition/downswing.

• During the downswing, the extra weight of a heavy speed stick swung at relatively fast speeds can make it feel like it is pulling you out of your normal posture (in a way it is, because you have to apply “centripetal forces” down the shaft throughout the swing to make the club move in its semi-circular path). After a few swings, golfers can often learn to deal with the momentum of the heavier stick, which can often cause changes in how they move and leverage the ground. 

In contrast, with a light speed stick, golfers are challenged to learn how to coordinate and sequence their joints and body segments while moving faster than normal. This can amplify any inefficiencies in their movements, since poor sequencing will often be particularly exposed when you ramp up the speed of the movement. 

In each case, the changes to the mass and inertial characteristics of the club/stick being swung can trigger an adaptation response from your nervous system. It is going to attempt to explore ways of moving that still allow you to swing fast and effectively, despite the changes in the implement being used. Importantly, some of these changes can carry over to when you switch back to your driver, at least for a short time. 

A key factor in my opinion is that speed sticks can be a useful tool, but they are not the only way to learn to swing faster. You can accomplish a lot by swinging just your own driver. 

For example, there’s probably also a degree of this process occurring when using your normal driver, but trying to swing it much faster than normal. While it’s less pronounced of a change in how the movement feels compared to changing the club AND swinging hard., it will still feel different than your normal swing and will require an adaptation process to learn how to coordinate at these faster speeds.

This process is complex, and has a lot of potential implications. For example, I tend to use speed sticks for specific purposes based on the movements that I want to promote. But driver swings tend to be the basis of a lot of what I do. I’ll dive into this topic further in a future post, but for now you can check out a few thoughts from prior posts that I have put out. 

Instructive Learning

Instructive Learning is probably what most people think of when it comes to golf instruction. You have an intentional goal for your movements (which can be given to you by a coach or something you come up with), and you attempt to execute the movement accordingly. You then use external feedback from a coach or other measurement tool (e.g., video analysis, launch monitors, etc.) to assess current performance and to “correct errors” to improve. 

There are better people to discuss the nuances of golf instruction and practice than me, so I am not going to cover this in-depth here.

But it should be fairly self-evident that intentional changes in your technique can contribute to swinging faster. Just keep in mind that key factors dictating the success of these intentional changes are 1) the quality of the instruction/feedback received and 2) your ability to practice in a way that allows you to develop the skill and adaptability to use these changes effectively across different shots, situations, and while under pressure. 

This applies to training for speed (and eventually using it effectively on the course) as well. 

Use-Dependent Learning

Use-dependent learning describes repeating an action in order to change or refine movements over time. The idea is that practicing a pattern makes it easier to repeat or perform over time. 

Most people understand the value of “putting in the reps” to improve a skill. But in golf, it’s clearly not enough to just repeat a swing over and over. If that’s all it took to improve, golfers would improve at a much faster rate. 

Instead of just mindlessly putting in reps, use-dependent learning is most effective when you are cognitively engaged and actively trying to “problem solve” the movement problem you’re faced with. It’s not just the sheer act of repeating the swing that makes you improve, but repeatedly going through a learning process that challenges you to explore movements, refine current movements, and/or develop skills to best express the skills you have. 

Again, it would take a longer discussion to do the topic justice, but I believe that use-dependent learning plays a key role alongside the other learning mechanisms to help drive speed gains, and eventually make them feel natural and repeatable (even though each swing is actually slightly different than the one before. Variability is a natural part of skilled movement, not something to be completely avoided). 

Bringing it all together

Let’s consider an example of going through a session which is focused on swinging fast with different weighted speed sticks. Here is a breakdown of what the goals, task, and feedback will look like: 

• Task: Swinging different weighted speed sticks for a given number of reps

• Goal(s): Swing each speed stick slightly faster than the session before

• Feedback: Focused specifically on swing speed plus sensory information from the swing itself. When using speed sticks, there is no feedback on the quality of the strike or ball flight.

As you work through these sessions, you will not only be experiencing short-term changes which can influence speed within the session (see part 1 of this series here), but the various motor learning mechanisms can also be contributing to changes which can result in more stable gains over time. 

The change in task and goals (e.g., using different weighted speed sticks with max effort) can cause some shifts in how you move and swing. For example, even when using their own clubs, golfers tend to use different swing strategies when scaling their effort levels.  

This change in effort/intent towards max speed is also coupled with changes to the weight/inertia of the speed sticks vs your normal driver. As a result, sensorimotor adaptation processes to kick in to explore and practice different movement strategies as a response to the change in weight/inertia. Ultimately, the nervous system is trying to find ways to coordinate/control the actions of individual muscles/joints, and their inter-relationships to swing fast with the altered weight. And some of these strategies can carry over to your normal driver, and potentially have benefits (though you can also take it too far with using speed sticks in my opinion). 

While this adaptation to effort/intent and the weight of the speed sticks is relatively subtle, you can also work with a coach or intentionally try to move in specific ways to increase speed. For example, you may try to make a bigger turn, load the lead leg earlier and faster, or use a faster backswing in the pursuit of speed. This would tap into the instructive learning side of things a bit more. 

Finally, the processes above will also be driven by Reinforcement Learning and Use Dependent Learning. As you go through the speed training session, feedback on whether you speed is going up or not will cause reinforcement of strategies that are successful, and discourage those that are not. Over time of working through this process of “problem solving” the challenge of swinging faster, you can narrow in on strategies that tend to work well, and then repeatedly work to develop the skill of using them effectively in different situations and circumstances (like with your driver, on the course, or across days). 

But a critical part of this entire process is that the goal of this session is max speed, NOT overall golf performance. So if you prioritized max effort speed work over everything else, you may very well develop strategies that are good for max speed with a speed stick, but less effective when you have to strike the ball in the center of the face while controlling dispersion. 

You also need to develop the skills that will help you take that max speed potential and apply it in a way that will actually be effective on course.

• We need to take max speed potential off the ball and learn to swing fast while striking a ball 

• We need to take the ability to swing fast, and learn to translate it into ball speed (by striking the ball fast, but also with quality strikes). 

• We need to take ball speed potential, and learn to use it to achieve quality distances and dispersion (by considering other impact and ball flight factors). 

• We need to develop the skill to transfer these capabilities to better performance on the course.

For example, I made this post awhile back about some of the common barriers that golfers run into when it comes to taking speed gains and translating it into better performance.

Some golfers will improve their on-course performance by just adding in some max effort work. But others will get caught up on certain aspects or even have regression in some areas if the balance between different skill development areas is not right. 

I’ll be diving into some of this more later, but for now, check out my post on building “speed that transfers”, and how we should design sessions that alter the task/environment, goals, and feedback appropriately. 

More to come on this later, and feel free to reach out with questions via social media (Instagram) or by submitting a question at the link below. 

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