While the validity of learning styles have long been debated by neuroscientists, many great educators feel they are not only valid, but are invaluable for teaching and learning.
Here is a fun little quiz to help you identify your own.
Why would you want to know? Besides being kinda fun to learn about yourself, you can use your learning style to boost your lessons, practice, game plan and play--in a way, "super charge" them.
Tips for using your primary learning style are at the end.
Before You Start
Before you start, you might be interested to know that the majority of golfers--around 80%-- seem to be able to adapt and blend learning styles while still having a favored one. This is great news because the most effective mental pre-shot routine requires that you use some of all 3.
The other approximate 20% seem to be more limited in how they process information. And can struggle more with their games without even knowing why.
Whether you use multiple learning styles or only one, knowing and using yours can dramatically improve your lessons, practice and play.
Take a couple of minutes for the quiz and you just might take more than a couple strokes off your game!
The letter with the highest number after it is your highest learning style. The second highest score indicates your secondary preference. If you have equal ratings, you are fortunate in that you can shift between styles which is very helpful for learning and playing golf.
Tips for Using Your Primary Learning Style to Improve Your Golf...
Now that you know which learning style you rely on most, let's use it to boost your lessons, practice, game plan and play.
AUDITORY:
-Golf Lessons
Have your teacher fully explain everything he wants you to do. Discuss and repeat back or rephrase what he/she is asking you to do as a way of reinforcing learning.
-Golf Practice
Have an internal conversation with yourself, discussing what you are working on. Coach yourself, correct yourself or congratulate yourself with this internal conversation.
-Golf Game Plan Discuss your strategy for playing the course with your coach, instructor, caddie or "yourself" with your internal dialogue. Verbalize details of the course, yardages, targets and clubs.
-Play
Talk to your caddie or yourself, a lot. Especially before each shot. It is especially important for you to verbalize to yourself or to your caddie what you plan to do before you do it...i.e. the club you will use, the directional and landing targets you will use, the shape of the shot you intend to hit.
VISUAL:
-Golf Lessons
Ask your instructor or coach to teach your lessons with sequenced demonstrations. And, to use video to show you what he/she is trying to help you do. After your lesson, write down what you learned. It will help if you or your teacher creates simple little diagrams or sketches or pictures illustrating what you are trying to do.
-Golf Practice
Use lots of visualization in your practice and preparation. "See" yourself confidently executing your shots and putts before you "do".
-Golf Game Plan
Imagine how you plan to play each hole. Better yet, get out a course map and draw your strategy on each hole.
-Play
Especially emphasize visualizing every shot clearly before you execute...see the ball flight, see the landing, see the roll. Same with putts...clearly see the speed of the roll and the ball rolling, see the ball falling into the cup at a definite spot.
KINESTHETIC:
-Golf Lessons
Ask your instructor to start your lessons by putting you in positions to get right into "doing" and waste little time "telling"! You will get far more from actively feeling and doing the lesson than you will hearing about or seeing the lesson.
-Golf Practice
Try to duplicate and lock in the "feel" of shots and putts you hit well in lessons or in play. Make it your goal to warm up this "feel" before you play.
-Golf Game Plan
Be the ball! Sounds strange, but just as if you are the ball, feel yourself traveling from tee to targets to hole on every hole.
-Play
Especially emphasize the "feel" of each shot or putt before you execute. Make this a kinesthetic feeling in some part of your body rather than a check list of positions.
Multiple Learning Styles
If you are fortunate enough to have multiple strong learning styles, you will be able to blend use of the above in a variety of ways to get the most from your lessons, practice, game plan and play.
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Referred to Dr. Graham by Dave Stockton, Dr. Graham aided Yani Tseng to help her win the 2010 Kraft Nabisco Championship!
Yani continued on to win the 2010 British Open Championship, the 2011 British Open Championship and the 2011 LPGA Championship! World No. 1 with 7 LPGA wins in 2011! She continues to get stronger and stronger mentally.
Victorious 1991 US Ryder Cup Team
Dr. Graham assisted Captain Dave Stockton and the team to a dramatic victory with The 8 Traits
Lee Janzen credits GolfPsych as major contributor to 1998 US Open Win
Ian Baker Finch Dominates '92 Open with The Eight Traits
Dave Stockton won '92 and '94 Senior Players and the '96 US Senior Open working with Dr. Deborah Graham, using GolfPsych Methods and The 8 Traits
"In 1993, my second year on the Senior PGA Tour, I won five tournaments and $1,175,944, was leading money-winner and was named Player of the Year...the main reason I had a year that for me was unbelievable is that I worked hard on the mental side of my game (with GolfPsych)."-Dave Stockton
Gary McCord, Champions Tour: "I never had a (sports psychologist) before. I knew I had some abilities and wasn't getting the best out of them. I said, 'Doc, I just keep choking towards the end.' So she (Dr. Graham) gave me ...a pre-shot routine, and ...helped me get out of the future and into the now."
Mike Reid holding 2009 Tradition trophy, his second Senior Major after Sr. PGA in 2005 with GolfPsych.
Austin Westlake Boys High School Golf Team with Coach Noaks holding 2009 Texas Div. 5A Trophy. 9 of the boys attended GolfPsych Level I Game Builder School in 2008, including 4 of 5 on the winning squad. They won by 11 shots. Perennial contenders, they had not won since 2001.
They Repeated this feat, winning State in 2010, with 4 GolfPsych trained players on the team and won by 14 shots in only 27 holes, shortened due to weather. And the Girls team won State for the first time with two GolfPsych trained players on their team.
Gary Christian tied the Nationwide Tour Playoff Record going 9 holes to Win the Northeast Pennsylvania Classic with GolfPsych in 2009
Henry Brunton, Canadian National Golf Coach for the Royal Canadian Golf Association (RCGA), Master GolfPsych Instructor and a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, in a message to the Canadian National Team Members: "We highly recommend that all golfers in the Royal Canadian Golf Association Player Development Program read and study this book(The Eight Traits of Champion Golfers by Graham and Stabler). As well, players should strongly consider obtaining a "GolfPsych Profile" and report."
GolfPsych has been a large part of the RCGA Player Development Program and Achievement Guide since 2000.
Bob McKinney of Erie, KS, 55, successful auto dealer, won once and placed in the top ten several times in Kansas and Kansas City senior events...
from email in 2008..."The game of golf has truley turned into a game of enjoyment for me since attending your class . The fun now comes from seeing how well I can maintain a steady relaxed mental state and still be fun to be around for my playing partners during a casual round and then keep that same attitude in competition. I have always known I was a mental case and now I work on what I'm concerned with most the mental game and I think just as much as I use to but know its about the right stuff. Thanks your friend Bob McKinney"
email update December 2009..."just wanted to let you know it took longer than I hoped but I have finally got a good handle on the mental part of my life and not just for golf but more for every day life in general and that in its self bleeds over into golf. you cant imagine how many times i thought now what would my meter be reading know and it would have been high so i keep learning and changing and I know find myself much more at ease with life and a much better golfer. My handicap is now 2.4 and I'm playing the best golf of my life but more important than that Im a much better person and have a lot more fun every day no matter what i'm doing. I guess what I finally learned was what was really important in life and that golf really is a game to be played that can never be won and a man is not measured by his golf score but how he lives his life . Keep up the good work and have a very Merry holiday season."
David Kopf of Beaverton, OR, 55, a 9 handicap shot career best 79 in club tournament...
from his email May 19, 2009"...I've never shot this well in a tournament. I think my tournament best was an 82, with the same handicap. I was hitting the ball straighter and longer than I ever have. I only missed 4 fairways... ...Jon, this performance would not have been possible in my previous states of mind (as you know).
I look forward to driving these skills in deeper and learning to execute them amidst greater and greater pressure. It was very satisfying to shoot a good score, BUT I'M FAR MORE EXCITED ABOUT CONTROLLING MY MIND. It will be the Ninja skill that others won't see..."
