Myelination and technique

[golfbulldog]

04-24-2005, 01:54 AM
pluthb
LBG Pro Contributor Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 43

A quick thought

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of the research that I've read (and it may be wrong) got me thinking:
It takes 1/3 of a second for your hands to translate a feel up to your mind, a 1/4 second to process it, and a 1/3 of a second to send it back. (If anyone knows any better data please feel free to correct me). Your golf swing only takes 0.8-1.2 seconds from start-up to impact. What can you really think about in that amount of time? I think we would all agree that Homer was a smart guy but I think another reason it is hard to have downswing thoughts is that the ball is at least 20 feet off your club before you can't do anything about it.
In having this discussion with Joe Daniels, he stated that one of the many reasons Tiger is so good is that he has created a wider freeway lane from his hands to his brain compared to the small alleys that most of us have developed thus being able to save shots with unbelievably educated hands.
Maybe this should go under swing thoughts but as a G.O.L.F. instructor I try to build good address posture, get them to the top with precision and watch'em pose as they finish. I do use the right forearm tracing drill but I try to stay away from downswing thoughts unless that is the only thought they have during the stroke. Tracing works phenomenally with putting too!
__________________
Golf can never be considered an enigma. ~HK

I found this post this morning whilst reading Yodas old posts about right forearm tracing ( great stuff)... but it just happens to fit in so well with an article i read recently in a UK newspaper... article was investigating the incredible Russian tennis schools ( eg Spartak ) that are relatively underfunded ( compared with Nick Bolletieri and co) ... and yet turn out incredible bunch of talented teenagers... an exerpt...

"If Preobrazhenskaya's approach is summarised in one word ( and it frequently is), that word would be tekhnika - technique. This is enforced with iron decree: none of her students id permited to play in a tournament for the first three years of study.

'Technique is everything,' Preobrazhenskaya says later, smacking a table with Khrushchev-like emphasis. 'If you begin playing without technique, it is big mistake. Big, big mistake.' "

another section reads...

" The students form a circle on one side of the net and start to stretch.... The 'Little Group' pair off with rackets and begin imitatsiya - rallying with an imaginary ball. they bounce lightly from foot to foot, they turn, they swing, the invisible balls fly. Preobrazhenskaya roams the court like a garage mechanic tuning an oversized engine; realigning a piston here, tightening a flywheel there..."

The article goes through the usual stuff about why russian women get so good at tennis ( great genes for athletic bodies, poverty breeding determination, long history of russian biomechanics) but then links to an article by a Dr. Douglas Fields to try to link the repetitive training based on pure mechanics ( often without balls and no tournaments) to hard science... the research explains the interaction bewteen neurones and myelin ( the insulating material which enables the most rapid form of neuronal conduction)...

"' in neurology, myelin is seen as an epiphany,' DOuglas Fields, the labs director, said. 'This is a new dimension that may help us understand a great deal about how the brain works, especially about how we gain skills.'

Neurologist theorise that this humble looking material (Myelin) is the common link between Spartak Kids and all the other blooms on the Talent map....
'I would predict that South Korean women golfers have more myelin, on average, than players from other countries,' Fields said. 'They've got morein the right parts of the brain and for the right muscle groups, and thats what allows them to optimise their circuitry'...

'...Tiger Woods...that guy's got a lot of myelin'

... it turns out that the more a neuron is activated, the more myelin it develops... hence the more rapid conduction speed. Place that high speed conducting neurone with a bunch of other rapid neurones in a circuit for golf swing and you have control over high speed operations and skills. You are basically upgrading your hard wiring...

'" what do good athletes do when they train?' George Bartzokis, a professor of neurolgy at UCLA, asked me rhetorically. ' They send precise signals along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire - lots of bandwidth, high speed line. Thats what makes them different from the rest of us' "

Excerpts taken from The Observer sports Monthly supplement April 2007 no 86

Now think golf.... Downstroke waggles.... slow motion swings ....emphasis on where the hands are in the downswing... importance of alignments over where the ball goes.... Muscle memory is just more myelin... at last we may get the scientific understanding to know what the great players have always done ( even if they did not know what they were doing at the time!)...

and that shot in round 2 of masters where Tiger aborted the golf swing so close to hitting the ball... that is one of the most talented pieces of skill i have ever seen... that is Myelin!!!!

[golfbulldog]

Myelination: an overlooked mechanism of synaptic plasticity?Fields RD.
Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. fieldsd@mail.nih.gov

Neuroscientist. 2005 Dec;11(6):528-31

Myelination of the brain continues through childhood into adolescence and early adulthood--the question is, Why? Two new articles provide intriguing evidence that myelination may be an underappreciated mechanism of activity-dependent nervous system plasticity: one study reported increased myelination associated with extensive piano playing, another indicated that rats have increased myelination of the corpus callosum when raised in environments providing increased social interaction and cognitive stimulation. These articles make it clear that activity-dependent effects on myelination cannot be considered strictly a developmental event. They raise the question of whether myelination is an overlooked mechanism of activity-dependent plasticity, extending in humans until at least age 30. It has been argued that regulating the speed of conduction across long fiber tracts would have a major influence on synaptic response, by coordinating the timing of afferent input to maximize temporal summation. The increase in synaptic amplitude could be as large as neurotransmitter-based mechanisms of plasticity, such as LTP. These new findings raise a larger question: How did the oligodendrocytes know they were practicing the piano or that their environment was socially complex?

[bts]

"What can you really think about in that amount of time?"

Nothing. You simply plan ahead and allow the "Law" to take care the business "in that amount of time.

"They send precise signals along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire."

Do you?

What's your precise signal?

Do you send the same signal precise enough when facing a shot over a water to a well guarded green?

What matters is that signal, or the intent!!!

[golfbulldog]

Nothing. You simply plan ahead and allow the "Law" to take care the business "in that amount of time.



Do you?

What's your precise signal?

Do you send the same signal precise enough when facing a shot over a water to a well guarded green?

What matters is that signal, or the intent!!!

Hi BTS,

Remember the bits in bold are by a Prof in Neurology and not a golfer... he is explaining it to lay people in a newspaper article...

All he is saying is that repetitive use of a neuronal pathway increases the myelin around those neurones hence making that pathway more rapid conductor...

Explaining why practise makes permanent...