Trillium Rose - The Nuance to Skill Development and Motor Learning

Trillium Rose, a top golf coach with a unique perspective on the game, joins us for an enlightening conversation on the art and science of golf. Her expertise in motor learning, a discipline she studied at the prestigious Columbia University's Teachers College, offers an intriguing analysis of the sport – from the technique adjustments for individual players to the diverse pathways that the human brain can take to learning golf. Trillium, recognized as one of the Top 50 instructors in the US by Golf Digest and one of the Top 100 teachers by Golf.com, sheds light on the value of continuous learning and the dynamic growth of golf.

Our conversation takes us through the nuances of motor learning and its application in golf coaching. Trillium shares the importance of understanding, analyzing, and adjusting a player's technique, and the prominent role technology plays in delivering these insights. She also highlights the challenges of finding the right help and how motor learning can pave the way for tailored strategies for individual players. The art of coaching, she emphasizes, requires communication skills that can adapt on the fly and connect with athletes in real-time.

We finish our talk with reflections on the importance of humility, commitment, and the ability to learn from mistakes in golf. The difference in approach between US and international golfers provides an intriguing insight into the sport's varied styles. We also share our experiences of playing golf in Scotland, challenging our preconceived ideas about the game. Whether you're a seasoned golfer or just swinging your first club, there's inspiration and wisdom to be found in our conversation with Trillium. Tune in for a fresh take on golf, learning, and the joy of the game.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Making the Turn with Double D and the Dooch and, unfortunately, a small programming note. Double D is not feeling very well this episode and is sitting this one out, but luckily we've got such a tremendous guest that I think we're going to be okay and we're going to go ahead and soldier on. So, in Double D's good spirit of the game, I would be more than happy to introduce our guest, who is none other than Trillium Rose, who is just an amazing coach in the northeast here in the United States and, in addition to be a director instruction at the Woodmont Country Club, she has also taken a very unique journey into how she chooses to coach her clients and I think it's a really cool story. And Trillium has went back to school and gotten a master's at the Columbia University, at the Teachers College, getting that in motor learning, and it is just amazing what she brings to the table in terms of helping people understand how to change a pattern and how to learn.

Speaker 1: 1:09

So we're very, very happy to have Trillium on. She's not only a great friend of mine and a great inspiration and somebody I look up to and try to be more alike, but she's also a member of the Golf Digest top 50 instructors in the United States, as well as being a member of the golfcom top 100 teachers. So Trillium is one smart cookie and we're super happy to have her. So, without further ado, hello Trillium. How are you today?

Speaker 2: 1:35

Hi Michael, good to see you. That intro makes me a little nervous, uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Why We'll just have a conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:43

It is, and that's the thing that I like is that, trillium, it was easy to find you because I've been a great admirer of yours online and I think that the content you put out is very thoughtful. And it's always kind of easy to find you, because if it's an event where there's people learning, there's normally a group, and Trillium tends to find herself towards the middle, and not only that, but she always looks great in her Jay Lindberg clothing, so she always stands out a little bit as well, so that makes it even slightly easier to find you. But you know, I think it's interesting that we always cross paths at these learning events, and that's one thing that I really want our listeners to understand is how committed you are to learning about the game of golf and how people learn and how to kind of translate those two.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Isn't that the truth? So that's a really nice starting off point, because in our industry, I think it's similar to, say, fitness or nutrition, where it's easy to take, I think, the clear cut path. Or maybe to say, all right, this is what I have always done, or this is what I've always learned, let's just do it that way, yeah, right, or this is what, this is what someone I really trust said I'm going to do exactly that. Now, not to say you shouldn't trust somebody, and but I think it's important to explore other approaches, other other perspectives, and question and question everything, and not in a negative way, but just in a okay. Well, someone said that on the golf channel. Why did they? Why what's really actually going on?

Speaker 1: 3:23

So I think it's so good. Kevin Kirk, I know somebody that you you like as well, but Kevin Kirk always uses the word kaizen, right? And this, always this quest of continuous learning and understanding and I think that's what you're talking about is just that you have a curiosity, right, and it's not. I think some people in our kind of wavelength of thinking sometimes we come off as being kind of combative or maybe even kind of constantly just questioning things to question them, when in reality we just have this yearning to really try to figure out the whole subject instead of just a very small piece of it.

Speaker 2: 4:05

That's, that's so right, and what's wonderful is that there are people that have excelled in certain avenues.

Speaker 2: 4:13

So if I want to really learn about, you know, track men, numbers, I mean early on James lights had had been doing so much and did a really good job explaining D plane before I was really thinking about the D plane, your swing direction, angle, attack facing off. So that's neat. You know, parker McLaughlin sort of branding himself as short game chef, right, there are what about John John doing the aim point? And and Mark Swaney, mike, mike Swaney, on aim point, I mean there's just so many different levels that we can, we can sit on level meaning maybe, maybe it's better like angle. We're looking at this through biomechanics or through performance, with nutrition even. Or we're looking at the. You know Lynn and Pia do such a great job on their mindfulness and like being aware of your state, your emotional state, and what does that do to your game, as opposed to just thinking about the technical, because there are so many different dimensions to the human experience, not just I know what I need to do. Why can't I do it?

Speaker 1: 5:25

Absolutely. I mean that, that I mean you're speaking to just kind of the growth of the game. I think right, and one of the things that I was talking to with Ryan Holly about the other day on a different podcast was how, you know, there's really this inflection point in the game right now and you know there used to only be a handful of people who knew about these certain subjects and they were like really world class, but now we're starting to see the next wave, right, the next wave of instructor who grew up and didn't have to figure this out and came out of the gate with an understanding of deep playing because of the work of James lights. You know there's and I honestly am one of those right, I've kind of been able to come in at this great point and it's like you're absolutely right, there's so many competencies that go into being a great competitive golfer or even being somebody that shoots 80 for the first time versus somebody currently shooting 100. You know there's a lot of different ways that you can approach this and for some people maybe the low hanging fruit is just general fitness.

Speaker 1: 6:27

You know there's also people that I know who are great players, like club champions, and they can't figure out why, or they can't draw the correlation, why, you know, they go on their buddies trip and they shoot like 10 strokes higher across the weekend and it's like, well, I don't know how do you normally have that many bourbon and coax every night Like, is the there's?

Speaker 1: 6:44

There's a trade off there, right? So I mean, when you look at the highest of levels, like what we're seeing in the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup, you know a lot of the players you see wearing a loop, and I promise you they're not just wearing it because they get paid. I promise you that there's somebody on their team that looks at that. And I think that that's really where golf has changed. Is there's room now for more? In my opinion, with the current tour and the way people work, the teams are getting bigger, because I think people are willing to be open to new ideas more frequently now. So you coming from motor learning and me coming from, let's say, the force plate side, right, we can be on the same team and we can still be talking about a lot of the same end goals, but we're trying to come at it from various levels to see which one is going to help us get there the quickest.

Speaker 2: 7:34

That's right and I think we should. We should recognize Dave, Dave Phillips and Greg Rose for what they did with TPI. I think they took a really a really great kind of holistic approach from the beginning. They said, Listen, everyone's talking about the club and the ball and the swing, but what about the human body and what about the testing? The human body and where we are on that, let's explore it. And they just they kind of took that next level in terms of having a team checking. I mean, they're looking at blood work, you know, they're looking at all kinds of things 3D. So I really appreciate, appreciate how many ways there are to to kind of measure ourselves and to and to kind of thoughtfully put a comprehensive plan together.

Speaker 1: 8:26

I don't know that this is widely known and I think I'm okay talking about it, but I think it might be fun because I know that you know a lot of the same people I do and obviously I love the guys at TPI. I think Greg is awesome and Dave is awesome and I was fortunate this past year to gust to walk the last 18 holes on Sunday with Dave, which was really really cool to watch him there with John obviously getting it done. So that was just mega, mega cool. So I obviously appreciate those. But do you know, kind of, what the genesis for TPI was?

Speaker 2: 9:02

My understanding is the genesis was the body itself. I mean exactly the issue or the concept. Like the concept, was people getting hurt and you're asking someone to do something that their body can't do or shouldn't do, or if we're asking someone to put a ton of torque and speeds in certain joints, can we make sure that they have the range of motion and the stability and the mobility to do that before we ask them to do it?

Speaker 1: 9:30

For sure. So the first guys that really kind of looked at this were the Australians. So I don't know if you've seen it on Netflix yet, but you can go and watch the America's Cup and it's about the 1983 America's Cup when literally Australia was the first team to ever beat the New York Yacht Club. In 132 years. They'd been having this thing in the New York Yacht Club at one every year and Australia finally got serious and wanted to knock them off their peg. And this was their opportunity. This was their sport and they poured all these resources into it right, and they really got all these really bright people together that were really mavericks and really just kind of outside the box people and they said, hey, if you wanted to make the best yachtsman in the world, what would you look for? And they put together all these different groups and asked all these amazing questions and at the end of the day, what Australia kind of figured out was, if we can get good at sport, we can get people to recognize our little island out here. That's not really got a whole lot of tourism going on and it's very similar to what's kind of going on now with the whole concept of sports washing and how countries are trying to use sports to better their image and world standings. But it's really cool how there were people who were listening to the Australians and Greg and Dave were definitely two of those people right, and they brought us something.

Speaker 1: 10:52

That I think is remarkable because, you know, I think the concepts of motor learning are vastly difficult. So I actually have a master's level biomechist on my payroll and before you came on, I was talking to Will about this and he's like man, motor learning is hard and I was like really. And he's like, yeah, really hard. And I was like that's surprising. He's like, yeah, he goes, it was so hard he goes.

Speaker 1: 11:13

I actually started in motor learning and chose biomechanics because I thought it was easier. So, like the motor learning stuff is really really hard and I think it's so difficult for us as modern coaches to try to wear the hat of everybody because, quite frankly, I don't have the time or possibly even have the ability to learn as much about motor learning as you already know. So it would make sense to bring you into the team and let you help us in that way, because now we're just getting to, you know, solving problems, instead of having to feel like I'm reinventing the wheel. So I applaud you and I think there's definitely a lot of camaraderie coming forth in the coaching sphere.

Speaker 2: 11:52

I totally agree with that. I mean, it's like if you're trying to fix a airplane, you need specialists to kind of weigh in on. You need to be an electrician, you need the plumber, you need the aerospace engineer who's going to look at whatever else. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of collaborating and kind of pulling together. And the other when you were talking about the Australians, I was thinking about the 74, I believe, olympics. When the Australians came back with not one single medal and the government said this is really embarrassing.

Speaker 2: 12:24

They formed the Australian Institute of Sport, which then, was kind of dovetailing of what you're talking about and incubating really good athletes, but also putting together some serious thought leadership which was backed by the government. So there was a really collective effort to cultivate, develop and really do it in a smart way. And of course, now we know where the Australians are they're a leader in sport and athletic development.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Yeah, it's unreal. It's just so cool because I think that for so long. I hate to say this, but you look at some of our greats, some of the best players in the game, all played with injuries, all battled this and that throughout their entire careers and I think a lot of that could be attributed to doing it the way it had always been done. There wasn't really a lot of uniqueness. When you look back at the history of golf instruction and golf teaching, you know everybody kind of wanted to see more or less the same things, but we also had a completely different task than we do today.

Speaker 1: 13:30

We were very limited with the ballada golf ball, with the fact that it just wanted to spin like crazy and it really limited the athletic ability in terms of speed that you could apply to the ball because of the spin rate.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So now that we're seeing that we have a golf ball that suits an athlete better in terms of it doesn't want to spin, so you can hit this thing really really hard and it doesn't go straight in the air, you know it's really difficult to go to a tour event and not find one of the groups have at least one participant with their left wrist taped up, and my firm belief in that is because the modeling that we're using is very antiquated in a lot of ways and I think that we're going to continue to find that the pure. You know, making a player better through technique alone approach is an approach and it has worked in the past, but I think that at a certain point these other developmental factors have to be kind of addressed if you're trying to holistically make the person a better player, and I think that that's why having somebody there who's a motor learning expert really helps the team.

Speaker 2: 14:33

I know people picked up what you just said because that was really insightful, and I'm thinking of all these different examples of players from all walks of life that are that are trying to trying to get better and trying to level up what they have, and I look at this as well. Okay, you are a human in front of me with what you have right now, right today. What can you do today with that? Now we're just going to roll our sleeves up and get into the motor learning part, because this is my lane.

Speaker 2: 15:10

The mileage I call mileage, or the experience, the number of repetitions that that any given person has on a particular movement plays, as such, a heavy role in in how we're going to move forward. For example, someone that's played for 30 years and they have a particular backswing, that might look and do something that they've done for a long time. That's going to be a little bit harder to adjust or maybe to find some field. And someone that's starting for the first week they're they're a year into the game. It's much more malleable than someone that's that's created some patterns that are now. That being said, old habits die hard, so why would I want to change something if it's so, if it's so reliable, like usually, consistency is something everybody wants in golf, so it could be, it could it could. It could be a movement that someone may not like the look of, but if it's consistent, we have to. We have to be really good and sure that we're going to want to mess with that, because it's going to be hard pressed to change.

Speaker 1: 16:15

And I throw something in there right there, because I like what you just said and not from a from a technical perspective in terms of like trying to stay more in my lane Right I would say that you're absolutely right because for the most part, if it's a, let's say, 10 plus handicap that comes in for a golf lesson, generally in the first sentence, normally the first three words I hear consistency. That's what they want, they got to have it and like they're just not going to be satisfied without it, right, and at the end of the day, generally speaking, before they get the chance to tell me that I've already had them hit some warm up shots and I have it there on track man or foresight or whatever launch monitor I'm using at the time. And the funny thing is is when you look at the standard deviation of, let's say, their club path, it tends to be very consistent onto itself, right, so the standard very, very small. And then when you start breaking it down and start really looking at the individual metrics that make up their golf swing, to your point, they may not like the look of it. However, it is very consistent onto itself.

Speaker 1: 17:25

So the interesting thing is helping them understand that they are very, very consistent and with this pattern, this is what it's going to produce, right, and we're also able to help them understand as well that. You know, I think where where technology can be helpful is to your earlier point, which is this person doesn't have the same feel and the same amount of reps as a scratch handicap player. I can tell a scratch handicap player to add duck their left arm, left across their body, and they might understand that, but somebody who's like you know, basically, is this the heel or the toe? They're not going to quite understand that, right? So having the technology there to kind of show them and modeled for them, kind of what we're looking for, man, it makes just a simpler message for that person to take in, versus having to rely on something they may not have experience with.

Speaker 2: 18:16

That's? Yeah, that's right, I'm think so. Let's say, let's go back to this 10 handicapped, for example. So I've got a guy it was my last lesson have an hour ago so he's, he's, he comes in, he's they're missing, right? Let's just see what's going on. Take a look at shots watching the club path and I'm watching the face and he's swing direction and club path are definitely left in the middle. Single digits three, four, five, six sometimes an eight negative.

Speaker 2: 18:49

So I'm looking at that, his, his wrist at the top and he's got in full extension over the club straight down. So that in itself doesn't bother me. But I certainly don't see it a lot on the high level players. Because why? Because then they've got to get it back into flexion coming down. So it's a lot of moving parts. Guy doesn't even play that much golf or practice that much. So I'm weighing that in too and he's all feel tennis player technique is not on his brain. But if he can think ball flight, change direction, he can usually kind of find something in his athletic kind of system to do it.

Speaker 2: 19:32

So I did mention the okay, well, you're steep with an open face. I you know the easiest thing would be to just adjust where that club is at the top. It's a backswing thought. It's at the top. You know you don't have to do it through the swing. That did not land whatsoever. Not one little moment of that was gonna work. Zero. No, I figured that out fast, it's not a problem. So I put some clubs down on the ground in the direction of the target and ball was in the middle. So probably three or four feet of grass in between the clubs or a lemur, so you can see visually, in a peripheral vision, where that target line is. So then I said, okay, I want you to imagine that you're gonna swing kind of at a diagonal to this. You're gonna come in from here in the inside.

Speaker 2: 20:21

That resonated Right, Not how to do it, but just this is what you wanna imagine. So for him that was really effective. That was all he really needed to kind of manage that movement.

Speaker 1: 20:34

You're spot on. But I don't think that that's necessarily true of just a 10 handicap either, right? I mean, there's really good players and they're terrified of a golf lesson. You know like they are absolutely terrified to take a golf lesson because and I'm not trying to be mean to anybody but they just they haven't found help when they've went looking for it. Right, because maybe the coach wasn't as prepared or maybe had just a very singular viewpoint that this player had already heard.

Speaker 1: 20:58

Whatever the case may be, but there are certainly a lot of high level athletes that just do things, whether they know about them or not.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Dustin Johnson's always kind of the joke, right, like he obviously doesn't understand vertical force, yet the guy could dunk wearing Italian loafers, so he obviously knows how to use them.

Speaker 1: 21:17

He might not be able to describe them to you, but I think that there's beauty in that, and we as the coaches have to excuse me have to sometimes make those judgment calls into how we want to either lean into a client and really try to help them learn a new concept, because we think that this is the only or the best path forward, and then there's times where you have to lean out a little bit, like you were saying ago okay, well, that approach was a mess and now we have to find a way to communicate with them, kind of on the fly.

Speaker 1: 21:47

And I think that's beautiful because in my opinion you know definitely motor learning stuff there, but also the art of coaching is another way. We could say that right. And I think that you know, if I think of motor learning, what I tend to think of is, you know, there's a lot of coaches who have always kind of done it one way, but I think that the beauty in motor learning is understanding like there are different paths for everybody and, yes, you can have success with all of them, but this is kind of a measured approach to how you want to move forward with somebody.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Yeah, yeah, and I hear I mean you're a colleague who said, well, motor learning is harder, it's just really wide. I mean I love numbers and math is so much more simple than English. I think that's the comparison he's kind of talking about. Like motor learning is really the nexus of psychology and neuroscience. So you're in neurophysiology, so like the brain functioning and sending signals from your prefrontal cortex three or CNS down into the muscle spindles through to the motor neurons, like there's a lot in that chain reaction that has to happen correctly but it uses.

Speaker 2: 23:03

So much of this discussion is about how our brains process things and what they do and how they create networks and how those networks change and how that changes over development in a skill development and general lifespan development, cause there's also a lot of different things you'd want to factor in depending on how old that person is. So there's just a lot of variability in that and the act of a synapse is a chemistry. It's a chemistry reaction where an uneven balance of potassium and sodium between us wall of the cell creates this flash of electricity which then goes down through the neuron to neuron, like okay, but then what does that output look like? I can't really measure all that stuff, whereas what we love so much about biomechanics and technical discussions is it's so measurable.

Speaker 1: 24:07

For sure.

Speaker 2: 24:09

And there's something really clean and neat and thorough and secure about that. And I am with you 100% on looking at technique, because you can be sure of it. When someone says how can I, how can I can do it with a practice swing, but I can't do it with a ball. Now we're into motor learning, like okay, now it gets really hard.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think that most of the literature that you read that isn't about technical swings is probably about transference of skill right and like I think honestly that it gets mislabeled so much because I don't think that I work with a lot of high end players, kids and young adults that win a lot of golf tournaments and none of them have psychological issues, none of them are what I would call mentally damaged or anything like that. Yet when I meet parents and they want me to take on a young person, they tell me about all this trauma that this poor kid has went through. And I'm like there've been a golf course, what's going on at the? I've been to a lot of golf courses, like they're pretty chill environments, like what's going on here, and it's just so interesting because I think that we mislabel as being weak minded or not being a finisher or all those things.

Speaker 1: 25:31

But to your point, I really don't think it's so much of that as it is the ability to transfer the skill that those same parents see on the practice tee to the tournament tee right. And I think that you're right there. I think that there is some deeper understanding in your clients and understanding like, hey, here's the thing, the skill that we got to make better. But, most importantly, I think where you can really help is this is how we're going to practice this skill, to transfer it and to play to where you can trust it and I applaud you, because that's really important.

Speaker 2: 26:04

That's so right, that's right and I'll just I'll put a little extra on that. So some comes in, says I can't. I can do it here if I can't do it there. My first question, and a outward question I'm also thinking this is well, can you really do it on the range Right, like that's number one?

Speaker 1: 26:23

How many people do you think actually okay, so I'm not gonna. I mean, obviously I introduced you and told everybody where you work, but you work at a private club and you work with mostly, I would imagine, members of that club, right? So I would imagine that it's a very good reflection of the people that are probably listening to this podcast. So, with that being said, how many of the people that you're working with right now and play golf at that club do you think actually understand, like from a benchmark perspective, what is good for them?

Speaker 2: 27:00

Well, I'd like to think my students have a really good understanding.

Speaker 1: 27:05

It's tough, though right, because, like Ego's so tied in.

Speaker 2: 27:09

Yes, and it's misleading and there is great research that's indicated that to be a common thing. So Bob Bjork had done some great work on using the psychology department at UCLA, some great work on perception of practice versus effectiveness of practice, specifically blocked and random. So blocked being I'm going to hit the same shot to the same spot and then random, I'm going to vary my targets and my distances and I'm going to do more what I would do on a golf course.

Speaker 2: 27:51

So I have a lot to say. I'm blocked and blocked and random and kind of. We've touched just a moment on external versus internal cues, and that's another one. So both of these kind of verses I said verses, but, but I actually think there's so much more nuanced and and if you treat them in a nuanced way, you just have so much more success rather than do I do this or that. Well, the answer is it depends, depends, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:21

I think that that's what we're finding through societal fabric right now. Right Is like the world isn't as black and white as we once thought it was. You know, there's a there's a lot of shades of gray in between and I think you're exactly right. You know, I would say I've really tried hard, on a personal note, to find more joy in the game of golf this year. There's been a long period where I haven't enjoyed it very much, not because I haven't played well and shot good numbers, just because I haven't found very much joy with it. So I've been pairing less than 13 golf clubs in the bag and I've been playing golf courses, you know, that are more fun and user friendly and shorter, and I've really been having fun.

Speaker 1: 29:02

But I think to your point and what I'm trying to say is that for such a long time I've been so technical when I've tried to be almost like a surgeon when I approach golf, because that's kind of how I tend to think of golf, with my role and what I do.

Speaker 1: 29:17

However, when I go into player mode, you know I it's really hard to perform at a high level and to have all those internal things going through your head because we need to be, you know, creative and able to adapt and able to process large amounts of stimuli on the golf course, and when you're trying to be all up tight, it just doesn't leave a lot of room for that. So I think that there's a time and a place to where my technical precision I can lean that end of that part of me. But there's also times, man, where you're hitting one out of you know foot high, rough and the ball's chest high and like throw the math out. You got to figure out a way to get this thing kind of back into play. So I love what you're saying there, because I don't think that very many people look at it that way. I think that they try to be this or that, red or blue, whatever the case may be.

Speaker 2: 30:07

This is a lot like music and other sports too. Like, let's say, you've got a couple measures and you play the violin and it's a technical maneuver with your fingers and the string and the sound and you keep getting caught up on it. Well, okay, that would be a good idea to go back to those and really feel in your fingers how that's supposed to feel, get that right, get that right over and over block practice. Feel it, feel it, get it right, get it right. But also be thoughtful while you're doing that initial practice to really work through what that progression has to do. What does that have to feel like?

Speaker 2: 30:48

Same thing with delivering the club. I mean, I'm so into the wrist being the wrist angles and wrist and how you move the club with your wrists through impact. I'm kind of a stickler through that because this A, you can get injured, but B, if you're trying to deliver a club solidly and efficiently, you do need to have certain parameters. You just do. There's just physics involved. So how we go about that is one way. So then you get your repetition, you get your feeling on that, you can kind of make it flow. Then let's add that to the larger scope. Let's add the rest of the piece so you can kind of blend it in. So you're going to play it, play it, play it. Does it then fall into place?

Speaker 2: 31:34

But you don't want to be in a spot where, okay, I'm coming to the now, I need to lift my finger here, I need to press harder there. This is reminding me of golf. Thinking too much Overthinking isn't productive. Overthinking if you've already done your work, which you have in golf, it's not going to be a great addition to your brain. When you're kind of going back to that online processing where you're either overcontrolling or overanalyzing, it's one thing to do it afterwards, after you hit the shot and you're like okay, I know what I did, I want to kind of work through, but you do that to get the feel back. The feel is what we need when we're playing.

Speaker 1: 32:16

What I hear you saying too is and I think there's some real beauty in this is that I think it's really important that we approach our practice with some intention, and I think that that really doesn't happen very much.

Speaker 1: 32:33

And what I mean by that is like intentional practice, right, like okay, I've done my warm-up and I notice that my club path is, let's say, a little more rightward than we would like to see it. Okay and okay, cool. So my intention is that I'm going to hit the next five shots and after those five shots I want to see that that club path, on average, has shifted more to the left. But I don't think that we really see that right. I think we see people that get lost in the result, and as long as the ball winds up close to the target, the ends tend to justify the means and they kind of fall for that trick time and time again and they think that they found the secret that they've always been missing every time they go to the driving range and then, just as quickly as they get to that first tee, they realize they didn't really learn anything in that practice and they're just as lost as they've always been. So you know.

Speaker 2: 33:24

I think you hit the nail on the head with the word intention. It's probably where we should have started, because that is, you can't go anywhere with with, with with change. You can't make any changes if you aren't clear on what your intention is.

Speaker 1: 33:44

I agree with you. I have a question. I want to get this end, because I think this is where you really get to shine a little bit. I'm going to ask you to put on your motor learning I hate to use the word expert, but I'm going to go ahead and cheat a little bit because I can't think of a better one. I'm going to go ahead and say you know, you're going to be a motor learning expert, hat on. And, from the motor learning perspective of things, what are you looking at right now and what do you think is going to be really important in terms of motor learning in the next three to five years?

Speaker 2: 34:24

I am looking in my own time, outside of my lessons. I'm looking at the group of people that have already committed to wanting to change. They know they want to change, they're committed to it, but they need to find out what to do and how to really be there. So not the people that are struggling to get motivated to practice or they don't like practice. I'm talking to the people that are like boom, I got to practice. All right, now what do I do?

Speaker 1: 34:55

Yeah, you're high achievers.

Speaker 2: 34:57

The high achievers are, you know, the operators, the people that actually will get there, and I'm looking at this not entirely through a golf lens, but through a motor learning lens, and this applies to just behavior in life as well. So that's where I'm spending a lot of time, and the second step after that is really understanding where you are with something and where you want to be with something.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Right, and I think that's beautiful too, because I get frustrated because there's a lot of people that mean well in the coaching space and they constantly tell me that you're not allowed Sorry, our phones are ringing there. They constantly tell me that you're not allowed to ever ask a young person about what they didn't do. Well with Right, you're only allowed to focus on the positives and it's got to stay all positives. But I think that you know that's good and there are people that need to balance that some. But at the end of the day you have to be able to reflect, because if you're not reflecting, then where was the intention to begin with? Right, like, if you're not going to set an intention and then go back and say, did I reach that? Then the intention is kind of like a wish at that point and it's not really going to add up to much at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 36:20

Now, I totally disagree with whoever said that you shouldn't ask someone what they did wrong, because if you make a mistake, that's an opportunity to learn why and what happened.

Speaker 1: 36:30

Right, right. So you're always going to be the greatest speaker.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Yeah, and touching on your, if you're willing and able to accept it and then be in a place where you're going to make a lot of mistakes and you have to trust the process and hopefully you have some kind of guidance or a plan or a person or a team or you know, or something around you that can help keep you on the right path. So, when, when you said that people get, either they get distracted by outcome or they'll use outcome as their kind of feedback as to whether they did something correctly or not, I think it's misleading, like you said, and not that somebody can't figure out how to hit the ball and have it go up in the air, not that they have to have lessons to do that. And there's plenty of people, plenty of people that are great golfers. Without thinking too much about this, that and the other thing, I mean gosh.

Speaker 2: 37:35

Last time I was in Scotland and I introduced myself as a golfer, this was in 2001. I got a lot of weird books, yeah, and maybe I don't know if it was because I was a female I didn't get that. I got the impression more like you're golf, you know, you teach golf, like that's what, yeah, what we just got the same thing.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Yeah, I hear you. They were very bamboozled by what I did.

Speaker 2: 37:57

They're like what's the what you help people play? We just tell them to go out and they figure it out Like, yeah, like our people are not okay, okay, you just go. You did it.

Speaker 1: 38:07

You're talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is golf outside the United States. When I was over for the 150th playing of the open which was amazing and St Andrew's I had never been, so it's my first time but when I was there, you know, staying light until like 1030 at night, it just stays light forever. And, believe it or not, the place I was staying just outside of St Andrew's was a golf course right across the street called St Michael's and I was like, well, you know, I'm going to have to do that eventually. So they didn't have any rental clubs, it was just a very public kind of rustic golf club and I played with a ping rapture hybrid, some kind of six iron. That wasn't very good, ping I two six iron or something like that, and some wedge that I wish didn't have the grip ahead because it would have been better.

Speaker 1: 38:54

And I played with just these guys that were like factory guys and like they just got off work and they had a couple beers with them, you know, and we were just out for a walk and like this.

Speaker 1: 39:03

They were just, they were not good golfers and I don't think they would take offense to that because they told me that repeatedly, but at the end of the day, trillium, it was amazing, right, if you watch them on the tee, hit the ball, you knew they weren't very good. But once they got within about 150 yards of the pen dude, they started flighting these shots down and hitting these creative bumping runs and like just, it didn't look like what we do over here in terms of golf, because the setups are so much softer and it's a little more targeted. But like over there, like you don't have to hit a perfect shot up in the air and, to your point, like you can figure out how to kind of slap it around and make you know a score. And man, is it freaking, cool and beautiful. Because I thought it was just amazing, because, realistically, those guys showed me more control of the golf ball than I see most scratch players here in the United States have, and I mean that in all sincerity.

Speaker 2: 39:58

And probably the best part, is they played fast.

Speaker 1: 40:00

They did. They, I mean you're, you're hustling right like they. We're gonna get as many holes in as we can before it gets dark, and they didn't care if we wound up on 14 and had to walk back in the dark. I mean it was a great time.

Speaker 2: 40:12

That's a great time and that's just such a good example of players Just having feel and working with what they have and their experience in their plane a lot of golf and they're playing quickly and they have a lot of shots that they can, as opposed to our approach which sometimes tends to get a little clogged up in the let's be perfect. Yeah, so that's like one end of the spectrum and then, and then really Scott Leonard, the other.

Speaker 1: 40:36

You know, I just think it really is squeezes the joy out of golf because you know it's just. You know the problem is is most people going back to? You know a little bit of the benchmark conversation we had earlier. Most people's benchmark is like 20 minutes of PGA tour coverage on a Sunday afternoon, right, and it's basically a highlight reel that they present as a golf tournament and it's just really not how golf works for people. And I think that when they see that, and then they see a guy that quote-unquote doesn't look all that athletic which is completely not true, but that's what gets said I think that they're like, oh well, I can do that. And then they get out there and they pretty quickly find out that it's a different game altogether.

Speaker 2: 41:15

Here's another issue on that point that I think I see, which I give a lot of To grace to the people that are feeling this, because I can understand what it must feel like. I'm learning tennis and I'm in development Two years of it, I'm learning drums oh.

Speaker 2: 41:32

Oh, very cool, yeah, very cool. So I make him a sick everyone. But when, when we are, let's say, you know you're playing and you realize, okay, you need, you need a certain aspect, like you need to be hitting up on it, for example on the driver. Let's say you're hitting eight down and you're hitting these low, they're landing at like 180 and then rolling to 250. That's not, that's gonna be a problem in some golf courses. Okay, so Adjusting someone set up or give, giving some of the different ball position or feeling like they're doing some different, the player may feel like that's an astronomical change. They may feel like that is completely Upending their whole deal, right, the deal with the feel. So From from, from the outside perspective, as a coach, you say, well, this is not that big of a change, but your feet, I respect that. Your feel is so different. So the question then comes Well, are you gonna? Are you gonna just Got through it, or are you gonna shy away and say I can't because it's too disruptive?

Speaker 2: 42:41

And this is where I come in and say well, you're gonna have what you always have, like you're. You're always gonna have that 30% miss where you're never gonna carry that water on that hole. You don't change right and talk about Versatility. Playing in other courses around the country or world, you're gonna come into some situations where you're gonna want that shot, where you're gonna want a shot with your wedge that actually has the ability to go up rather than just bump and run. You're gonna put everything through 50 yards out like you're gonna want some other skills.

Speaker 1: 43:13

So in other words.

Speaker 2: 43:15

Someone has to decide how much they they really want it and then actually commit to the process and put the time in and and really be okay that there are gonna be a lot of misses. It's really uncomfortable but in order to strategize, it's both pull it together. You have to be focused on technique initially and you have to commit to it and you can't go back to the old way.

Speaker 1: 43:36

Yeah, no, I completely agree it's. It's difficult. You know I get frustrated Sometimes because you know I do work with a lot of just you know 10, 15 plus handicaps. But I also have the the extreme honor to work with some of the best players in the world, and People always make comments that well, if I had that player, I'd be a great coach too and I go really well, what would you tell them? And it's they they get quiet pretty quick, right, and it's like the better the player, the harder it is to Really try to help them. But what I learned Helping better players has really helped me help everybody else, because at the end of the day, when I look at a golf shot, it's not a standalone event.

Speaker 1: 44:23

What I'm trying to see is I'm trying to see the pattern that led to that shot right. So like for a lot of, for a lot of good players, let's just say, right, they hit a lot of really great shots on the range. And then they're like what do you think of that pro? Right, and it's like well, that looks really nice and I would be willing to bet out of a hundred shots you probably do that about 20 of them, which is great.

Speaker 1: 44:43

But the issue is is that the 30 that you hit that are really, really bad, out of that pattern, are Unplayable and they make you get another ball out of your bag and the magnitude of your miss out of this pattern is really what's holding you back as a player. So we can keep trying to hit it to two feet every time, but it would be much simpler to help you stop making six, sevens and eights. Then it would be to teach you to make more two, threes and fours. So it's like just trying to help people sometimes like understand that we're not saying that you Can't hit a good shot this way. You can. But when we look at the overall pattern behind that, yeah, you got away with it there and you might want to go play the lottery tonight, but you're not going to be able to live and die with that because it's just going to create this huge magnitude miss that takes you out of play.

Speaker 2: 45:29

That's yeah, that's right. This is where I like our ghost, because it gives you, on course, data of it.

Speaker 2: 45:35

And then you can look at that and say, well, like the other day, he's looking at a player and he's telling me that it that it's his chip shot to shuriken, but, but, but, and I look at, I look, I'm noticing his tee shots were awfully short. And then I started looking at the dispersion and I thought, well, geez, here we are working on your short game, which I call that defense. Your offense would be off the tee because you're you're giving yourself 240 through 220 yard approach shots.

Speaker 1: 46:04

Yeah, you know, nobody's gonna live with that.

Speaker 2: 46:06

No, and so of course, you're gonna have to have a wedge in your hand, because that's a pretty hard club to hit from the green, especially where you've been hitting your drives. You're not in the fairway, so that game.

Speaker 2: 46:17

So if he had never mentioned wanting or needing to work on his drive, he always said they're fine. So when someone comes to me and they say something, I mean I'm listening to what they're saying, of course, but I don't always really know, unless I have some data or something, some evidence, to kind of base it on absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 46:34

You know a question that I'm really interested in. I've got one more after this, but we're kind of, we've spent some time together and it's been wonderful and I just really appreciate you coming on because you're so insightful. But Think back Trillium, maybe 10, 15 years ago Uh, you as a coach, right, and I would imagine, uh, that that was quite a bit of a different coach, right. But I want you to think back 10 to 15 years and then kind of fast forward to today and kind of doing this podcast and maybe your lessons this morning. But how would we get here? How did we go from where you were 10, 15 years ago to where you are today? What would you say is like the, the biggest learning that you've had over that time and what's helped you get to the person you are today?

Speaker 2: 47:21

Okay. So there's always a lot of stuff that I'm that I'm learning and getting better at, but I the the biggest thing that's really stand out my mind when you're asking this is Is is my realization and understanding that just by communicating to someone what they need to do Is an enough, and when they leave my lesson T, they may or may not, they may or may not have a understood what, what just happened, or be able to then carry on with what we were doing by themselves, and so that really was the Impetus for me to go back to school to help people to really figure out. Are that what are? The silver bowl.

Speaker 1: 48:03

It's such a badass thing, by the way, like that's so badass, brilliant, like that really is cool, like I really do think that that is. That's the one thing man like to. I mean, I had, to a way, lesser degree. I did not go back to school God help me but like to to be able to stop yourself in your tracks and go, hey, I got to get better at this thing. And then to commit to getting better and then showing up and like, looking people in the Face and going like, hey, I got something better, now let's try this.

Speaker 2: 48:31

I'm sure enough that is bad. I don't care what anybody says I'm showing up. Yeah, I gotta show up, michael.

Speaker 1: 48:37

You do bad, you kill that, so. So I love the fact that you're always learning, like I mean, I think that every coach is gonna say that right, and then for you to take such a serious, intentional path and Wanting to understand you know one of the mechanisms so much better, I mean, I think that's really really cool. So the big question, that's always the hard one, right, and I know that there is an answer, because you're a professional coach and obviously results matter and I totally understand that. But that's not allowed to be your answer to this question. You can't just say results, even though I know that they do matter, but how do you measure success with your client?

Speaker 2: 49:20

It's funny. You should ask that question because on my way to work today I was thinking I what? I was thinking of the number of people that I've taught in my whole stretch of teaching that have made real meaningful strides in, in, in, in their practice, and I was kind of relating it to my own struggle with tennis. Like, wow, that's really hard to do. I See the people around me that didn't decide to bite the bullet and make the change like a golf or tennis, and you see what that looks like. And then you see the people that did bite the bullet.

Speaker 2: 50:03

So for me, the and what? When I say bite the bullet, I mean Like doing the drills so that you don't, you don't continue to go steep and over the top, like Whatever it is, but actually sitting there and just putting the repetitions on and and seeing some real, miserable, miserable outcomes but then finally letting that, like letting it all happen and you see the lights. I think it's not necessarily outcome, as much as it is someone's willingness to stay in the Uncomfortable realm for a terrible time it's just awful, like it's just so bad.

Speaker 1: 50:44

Like when I'm sitting on my little stool and my little drum teacher, like I can tell, like he's actually thinking about maybe throwing a symbol at my head, like in whip flash or something like that.

Speaker 1: 50:53

Like when it's going like, and I just I look at him, I go, dude, I'm sorry, I'm really like, I just apologize, I'm trying really hard, I'm just not good, it's so. But it's so nice to have that humility because it's so easy to then be able to come back to you know, coaching others, and be able to show some empathy and some sympathy and like, just like, dude, I get it, it's on the on the tennis court.

Speaker 2: 51:18

I have to say to myself quite often, like I have really bad sailor mouth when I'm playing and I usually don't swear much, that f word comes out all the time. So I realized you know, first of all I don't deserve to be mad about making this any, but it's right and I'm not mad at anybody else. But I realized I can't be, I can't be fun for anyone else to see me, even my coach to see. So I just stopped doing it, so I just stopped judging and it's more like the, the intensity. My intensity level is really high when I'm practicing and playing. It's really high and it's really on and and my like. My hope is that I pull it off and most of the time I don't. But my thoughts are right. So, like I'm, I just got a, I just got to go back and like and I'm inspired. I'm really inspired because I'm thinking.

Speaker 2: 52:11

This is what I was thinking this morning. I was thinking my students Are better at this than I am. Like I've got some really incredible Experiences. Theme people go through that and not have a high expectation. Like I'm really athletic, so my expectations are high. That's a hard student to have when someone comes from another Highly skilled right, they're highly skilled in another sport and they come over to golf and they expect they should get it quickly.

Speaker 1: 52:38

And it's just not a golfer is always the most successful business person. Always, like, always, always, always, like I Feel so bad for people that are so accomplished in other areas in their life and like it's kind of I don't want to say it's all going right for them, but obviously it's going well, and then they get to a golf course, man, and like everything goes well, and then they get to that one beautiful place on the planet and like it just doesn't work for them and, man, it just drives them Monkers. It is crazy. They are the heart. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 1: 53:09

But I think it's also, you know our job really with that person Really turns into that expectation and goal setting right and like really helping them. You know, maybe through your tennis stories or my drumming stories or whatever they may be, but you know, kind of Showing them that like hey, man, like buckle up, because this is hard, there's a reason why you know there's not that many people who are really all that good at it and like you better learn to enjoy the scenery, because if you're gonna Be miserable, then go be miserable somewhere else, because this is never gonna work for you right, or find the right person to help you figure out where where the breakdown is and then work on it.

Speaker 1: 53:46

Absolutely so, man, that was fun. I know that we are out of time. Unfortunately, I could and I will. I'll end up texting Trillium about 15 minutes after we end the zoom call and we'll keep the conversation going, but it's been great having Trillium on. I really do appreciate it. I got a text message while I was doing this from the, the double D, and he is not feeling well, so we wish him a speedy recovery. We hope he's doing well and he will be back during the next episode. So please do me a favor make sure to go and find Trillium Rose on Instagram. She does an amazing job. Everything she does is very professional and very well done, and if you are in the Northeast area and looking for a great coach, that can definitely help you put together a plan to see your Best results. I can't recommend Trillium enough. So, trillium, do you have anything you'd like to say? To send this off?

Speaker 2: 54:38

Oh, Michael, thanks so much. I I just I like to think people get better. So if you, if there's a will, there's a way.

Speaker 1: 54:47

I love it. That's great. So thank you again to Trillium, thank you to everybody for letting us borrow her for just a little while, and that's it for us. So make sure that you go ahead and download this podcast and subscribe, and then you also can find the full videos on our YouTube page at making the turn. Thanks so much. Until next time, keep grinding.