Dear j1987f,
I agree with most of what sammy says, particularly about "restraint" not teaching a skilled movement that transfers to on-course play. Even a "loading" device is not much better, such as an elastic strap attached low on the putter shaft and then anchored in the ground, with which the golfer performs a series of 4-5 isometric stretches of the strap into a good-form follow-thru, and then removes the putter and makes a short putt with an after-effect muscle action that seems to occur involuntarily.
What is missing is the "know-how" about the body of the cause-and-effect geometry and muscle recruitment and postural set and changes in a sound cause-and-effect movement. This knowledge does not get inside the brain simply from a movement, but from exploration of the errors and successes that inform the brain and body about cause-and-effect matters, such as what is an effective / helpful setup, what is the balance, what is the muscle tone of which muscles, what is the postural set, what are the magnitudes of in-stroke forces that tend to disrupt good movement and what body changes protect and preserve good form or correct corrupted form in time, and more. This know-how is EXTRACTED by the golfer from the training situation, either with expert guidance to help shape and speed up the process or without it.
Frankly, restraint devices that come with the promise that simple repetition trains skill short-circuit learning engagement altogether. They may "demonstrate", but without independent engagement and exploration of misses and successes the golfer gets nothing substantial. It is POSSIBLE to learn with such a device, but it is certainly not an effective training for transfer well-founded on motor learning science and theory.
The restraint device does not even provide "feedback", although I'm sure the developers think it does. Feedback is "knowledge of result" (KR) caused by "knowledge of performance" (KP) of the body, with the golfer exploring the relationship of KR and KP. A device that always generates the SAME result is not "feedback", despite the belief of golf training aid makers. That is like putting a child on a stationary bicycle and having them peddle for two days and then handing them a real bike and telling them to ride down the highway -- no sense of HOW to stay balanced while peddling on one side and then the other, no skill at all.
And transfer also is harmed when a device "helps" the movement, since this is a "crutch" that is not available during on-course play. Train with a crutch and you get a crutch-skill; remove the crutch, and the crutch-skill itself suffers and in any event is not good enough for on-course play.
This is basic motor skills development science and theory, and I would suggest you get the basic VALID teaching and learning science well in hand before conducting your study. The explicit and implicit notions of how it works relied upon by almost all golf training aids are simply not valid, and unless you confront these underlying flaws, you probably will accept them unmindfully. That's a serious misstep in science. This
blog post on motor science might help.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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