“We’re talking about practice.” But perhaps not in the way golf normally talks about it. Practice is often discussed as though the central problem is simply choosing the correct drill, finding the right practice schedule or accumulating enough repetitions. But every practice session contains a theory of learning—whether the player or coach recognises it or not. When we repeatedly rehearse the same movement from the same place, under the same conditions, we are making assumptions about how skill develops and how it will eventually transfer to the golf course. When we constantly correct errors, prescribe positions or try to make movement look more consistent, we are also communicating something to the player: That variation is a problem. That mistakes need to be removed. That the coach knows the solution. And that successful practice should look controlled, orderly and predictable. The problem is that good practice performance is not necessarily evidence of learning. Blocked repetition can make a session look fluent because the player knows what is coming next and can reuse the same solution. Random or interleaved practice may create greater difficulty, but the evidence does not support treating “random beats blocked” as a universal law—particularly when we move from controlled laboratory tasks into complex sporting environments. The effects depend on the learner, the task, the level of complexity and what is actually measured as transfer (Czyż et al., 2024). This is why practice cannot be judged only by how well the player performs during the session. A player can hit twenty excellent seven-irons from a perfect lie and become better at completing that particular exercise without necessarily becoming more capable of solving the problems they will face in competition. The more important question is: What information is the player learning to use? Representative Learning Design argues that practice needs to preserve the important information–movement relationships found in competition. Practice does not need to reproduce every detail of the golf course, but it must allow the player to perceive relevant information, make decisions and regulate movement in relation to the task (Pinder et al., 2011). Without that functionality, practice may contain physical similarity without containing meaningful action fidelity. The movement might look like golf. The environment might look like golf. But the player may not be solving a golfing problem. This becomes even more important when we stop viewing the golfer as a machine made up of separate components and begin viewing them as a complex adaptive system. From this perspective, skilled movement is not produced by one part working independently. It emerges through the continuous interaction of the performer, the task and the environment. Coordination adapts as intentions, emotions, fatigue, confidence, equipment, lies, targets and environmental conditions change (Davids, 2015). That means we cannot assume that changing one technical component will produce a simple, predictable change in performance. The player adapts. The rest of the system reorganises. And sometimes the “correction” creates consequences that were never anticipated. This does not mean technique is unimportant. It means technique cannot be separated from the context in which it must function. It also means movement variability is not automatically noise to be eliminated. Skilled performers do not reproduce an identical movement on every attempt. They stabilise the outcome while continually adapting how the movement is organised. The aim of practice, therefore, may not be to build one perfect swing that survives only under controlled conditions. It may be to develop a player capable of finding functional solutions across changing conditions. In this episode of The Performance Room, Terry Rowles and Stuart Morgan explore: Why practice that looks successful may not transfer. Why blocked and random practice have become overly simplified coaching labels. Why the information contained within a task may matter more than the drill itself. Why movement variability can support adaptability rather than represent technical failure. Why players should be understood as complex adaptive systems rather than machines to be engineered. And why the beliefs beneath our practice methods may be more influential than the methods themselves. Because beliefs do not merely describe practice. They organise it. They shape what coaches notice, what they correct, what they tolerate and what they interpret as progress. They influence whether difficulty is seen as productive exploration or evidence that the session is failing. Mindsets can orient people toward particular expectations and responses, especially under challenge and uncertainty. They are therefore not passive opinions; they can influence how experiences are interpreted and acted upon (Crum et al., 2020). So perhaps the most valuable question is not: “What drill should I do?” Perhaps it is: “What does this drill teach the player to perceive, decide and adapt to?” And beneath that: “What belief about learning made us design practice this way?” We’re talking about practice. But we are also talking about transfer, adaptability, information, beliefs and the type of player our practice environment is quietly creating. 🎙️ The Performance Room — with Terry Rowles and Stuart Morgan References Crum, A. J., Akinola, M., Martin, A., & Fath, S. (2020). The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 33(4), 379–395. Czyż, S. H., Wójcik, A. M., & colleagues. (2024). The effect of contextual interference on transfer in motor learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Davids, K. (2015). Athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems: A review of implications for learning design. Revista Internacional de Ciencias del Deporte, 11(39), 48–61. Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Araújo, D. (2011). Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 146–155. Instagram: @stuartmorgangolf @Iceberggolf @terryrowles Email: stuart@iceberg-golf.com
