A few weeks ago, I attended a teaching summit hosted by AMF.  There have only been three and I have attended each one.  You can read about last years summit here.  Last year, I was a little disappointed and was hoping for a better event this year.  It was. In fact it was the best one yet.  Hosted at the Four Seasons in Dallas, Texas with host professional Rod Cook.

This year, I arrived early because I was staying with a great friend that lives in Arlington and I had set-up an AimPoint Green Reading Clinic for that Sunday.  Gave the clinic Sunday and headed to the airport to pick up my good friend Sean Lalley.  I missed an outdoor Demo Day Sunday with Trackman and some other technology companies. No big deal. Stuff I had seen before.

We start bright and early Monday morning with a presentation on Injury Prevention/Performance Improvement by Rod Cook and Dr Troy Van Biezen.  A summary of this presentation can be found in an earlier post called What Golf Swing is Easiest on the Body? Great start to the summit.  Certainly some scary stats to be sure.

Next up was a quick presentation by Mizuno.  Great talk. Made me want to do business with them.

At 9:30 was a talk from Bob Mulcahy on Explaining your Value and Protecting your Position.  I thought the talk was excellent even though it didn’t apply to me.  Bob typically handles subjects regarding improving teachers positions within a club environment.  AMF can be used as an organization that can help during contract negotiation time as it has some wonderful data on the value of instruction at the club level.

Before lunch we heard from Gio Valiente and he talked about Fearless Golf.  This was an excellent talk and certainly caused me to put Fearless Golf on my winter reading list.  One of the really cool subjects was the physiological ramifications that might go into ‘choking’.  There’s a section of the brain called the amygdala that plays a role.  Somethings may happen(fear) to trigger the amygdala under stress which can be different for different people but once it is triggered, very specific physiological things happen.  You can’t stop them or control them. They are going to happen.  It releases chemicals that bring about the ‘flight or fight’ response. Eyes dilate, blood vessels constrict, muscles tighten and a host of other things.  This happens regardless of any mental techniques to ease them.  They are physiological things that happen as a result of the chemicals released when the amygdala is triggered. These changes bring about tight and quick golf swings.  They become tighter because as your blood vessels in your fingertips constrict, they become less sensitive.  You may feel like you are holding the club like a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale but it may actually be a six because your fingers can’t feel like normal.  They have been desensitized due to a lack of blood and feeling in your hands.  Again, you can’t control this.  Because the muscles are tighter our backswing gets a little shorter and quicker throwing our timing off.  Combine that with the death grip and there comes mr right to right.  Keep in mind that this is a physical response to fear or whatever it is that triggers the amygdala.  We either need to try and prevent it from occuring or adjust now that we know what to expect.  Great speaker and great information.

After lunch we had a round table discussion on Social Media and it’s use by instructors.  This was a bunch of fun for me as I am a social media addict.  I was able to explain to some people the benefits of things like Facebook and Twitter to the bottom line just by giving my own experience.  Enjoyed that but wished it wasn’t round table. I would rather have heard a talk from an expert so I could learn more.

Another quick sponsor presentation. This time from Trackman.

Final presentation was from Chuck Cook.  I thought he did a great job.  One thing that he did that blew me away was he put his estimated income for 2010.  WoW! I never thought teachers could make that kind of money.  It was broken up into 6 or 7 things so he had nice divirsification but they were all related to teaching golf.  There was yearly packages, franchise fees, corporate fees and a few others.  I was shocked.  Like most great teachers, he said he got lucky.  The right student at the right time that led to more students.  As he became more popular, more really good players came by.  They may only need a small tweak or work on their short game to become a tour or major winner.  When it happens, they credit you and you look like a genious and it begins to snowball.  A funny guy and a great talk.

That wrapped up day one.

Day 2 started with a talk on how to sell golf lessons.  Wasn’t very interesting.

A short presentation by Flexor then Dr Rick Jensen.

Dr. Rick Jensen was the hit at last year’s summit and he hit another home run this year.  You can read about his talk in a previous post called The Future of Teaching Revisited.  He is really a good speaker and makes it fun and interesting.

After that came Mark Sweeney and his talk about AimPoint Green Reading.  Admittedly, I am a little biased on this one.  There was about a 15 minute talk inside and then a 45 minute clinic outside on the putting green.  It is just plain fun watching the faces of people as they learn it.  He talked about inflection points, zero lines, anchor points and touched a little on crowns.  He did an excellent job and had many people come see him after it was over.  Here are some pics from the event.

The last talk was from Stan Utley on putting.  I had seen Stan talk a couple of times so I only spent about the first 20 minutes listening to see if it was going to be different than before.  After that, I went down and chatted with Mark and Rob Noel about AimPoint and future happenings.

All in all I give it an A.

The food was fantastic all week except for one bagel.  I mention it because I tweeted that during the summit and by the end of the week someone apologized for the bad bagel.  It really was a special week at a special place.  I forgot to mention that on the first night, we had a little AimPoint get together.  There were about 10 of us that got together for dinner.  It was great to see Keith Handler and Chris Foley again. Another fine meal and good times were had by all.

The other thing that was great about this summit was meeting so many pro’s that I had talked to only on twitter.  Here’s a list of people to follow on twitter that I met at the summit:  Ricky Lee Potts, Dennis Sales, Todd Halpen, George Connor, Tim Cusick,

As always, please leave any comments or questions.

JG