Old Dogs and New Tricks

A few days ago I talked about breaking old habits and how the brain produces a substance called Myelin.  Myelin is simply put an insulation that wraps around a series of neurons that are linked together to cause a movement.  The more times you perform that movement, the more thickly insulated this chain of nerves becomes.  The better the insulation, the more instinctive the movement becomes.  Myelin does not go away except in the cases of disease or old age which is why we concluded last time that you do not break old habits, you create new ones instead.

This time I wanted to discuss teaching an “old dog new tricks.”  This can be a little more difficult if the dog, aka, golfer is truly old.  The rate at which the body creates myelin decreases as we get older. 

“In children, myelin arrives in a series of waves, some of them determined by genes, some dependent on activity.  The waves last into our thirties, creating critical periods during which time the brain is extraordinarily receptive to learning new skills.  Thereafter we experience a net gain of myelin until the age of 50 when the balance turns towards a loss.” Daniel Coyle; The Talent Code

Throughout our entire life we continue to make myelin, it is however faster to learn a motor skill at a young age as opposed to an advanced age.  This may not shock you.

Can an old dog learn a new trick? Absolutely!  When it comes to golf and golf instruction, it might be best to work on improving particular skills rather than trying to overhaul your entire swing to look like Tiger Woods, but we can improve.

If you find this an interesting topic, the myelination of nerve fibers, the process of learning; pick up Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code.  Or go to  thetalentcode.com.  Both are great resources on how we learn, how our children learn and how as parents and coaches, we can be doing a better job.

Old Habits

“Old habits are hard to break.”  I agree and there is scientific evidence as to why.

As I start to break into my off-season reading list I have started reading The Talent Code for the second time.  The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle is the study of why and how some people develop expertise in a skill and why there are “hot beds” of talent developed in very specific locals.  A unique aspect of the book is that Coyle from a biological standpoint basically defines talent.  With the help of scientists, Coyle explains a recently discovered microscopic substance called Myelin.  Myelin is simply put an insulation that is built and wraps itself around nerve fibers.  Since every movement, feeling or thought is an electrical signal travelling through a chain of neurons, the myelin allows for the movement to happen faster and more accurately.  The more the movement happens, the thicker the myelin becomes allowing the movement to become “learned” or “natural.”

Think about any simple human movement you may have learned.  The first few times you performed the task it may have been clumsy or you may have made mistakes and failed.  With persistence, the movement becomes learned.  It starts with some success that requires conscious thought of how to perform the motion.  Over time and with plenty of repetition, the movement becomes something you without even thinking about.  The repetition of successful performances allows the brain to wrap more layers of myelin around the nerve fibers.  The thicker the myelin, the more ingrained the motion.

So, old habits cannot be broken.  Hopefully!  You see, myelin wraps itself around nerve fiber but it doesn’t unwrap itself except through disease or old age.  So once you have developed the habit of making a bad move in your golf swing, you can’t unlearn it.  Hence, habits are hard to break.  In fact, they are not hard to break, the just plain won’t go away!  So how do we improve?  Since you cannot unlearn a habit, your only chance is to create, nurture and insulate new ones.  Your ability to “come over the top” or to hold the clubface open, whatever it may be is there.  You own that.  To get better, you need to own the desired moves as well.

This replacement is a key aspect of learning that I talk to my students about all the time.  If there is a “bad” move in your swing, there is no benefit to telling yourself not to do it, you must instead do something else.

So habits can’t be broken but they can be replaced.

Next time:  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  This is not entirely true.  The older you get, the harder longer it will take to “learn” but it can be done.