Certification Program Overview
Kelvin Miyahira Golf™ offers a Certification Course designed specifically for golf instructors.
In addition to the general course material offered, you receive the following benefits from Course enrollment:
-Invitation to our Private Discussion Group to discuss ideas with other instructors who are already Certified, or going through the process of trying to become Certified.
-Thorough Analysis & Solutions for your own swing.
-Access to additional analysis done of students via the Discussion Group.
-Continued access to upcoming research by Kelvin Miyahira Golf™.
The Introductory rate to the course is a fee of $2500.
Email us at Contact@KelvinMiyahiraGolf.com if you are interested in being invited into the Certification Course Program.
An Introduction Message on The Approach
By Kelvin Miyahira
How does one choose how to teach? The motivated young teacher tries to experience as much of the teaching methodologies as possible. Typically this exploration of methods involves trying to improve their own golf swing. Experientially, if it works for the teacher, it should work for the student. Makes perfect sense right?
Long ago, I did the same thing. Based on Leadbetter’s success with Nick Faldo, Nick Price and Denis Watson, I became enamored with that method. So dedicated was I that I became a blind follower (didn’t matter that my swing was a poor Flip/Roll, I was going to make the method work!). It took years of study, visited Leadbetter, Gilchrist, and other former Leadbetter instructors only to have a young Tiger Woods blow up that teaching paradigm.
When Tiger burst upon the scene in 1997, the teachers that I followed had nothing good to say about Tiger’s swing. They were adamant that he would never make it. They said his hips were moving too fast, his shoulders were way too tilted at impact and he didn’t “re-hinge” the wrists properly on the follow through. Later they said he didn’t set the wrists early enough on the backswing and stayed “too wide.”
How ironic that the very things they said that were his problems were actually his advantages! The 2nd greatest golfer of all time was hitting it 40-50 yards past Faldo and hitting short irons into the par 5’s at Augusta. How is it that Tiger did not become the one to study and copy? The weakness of any method is a dogmatic belief in the method. When something better comes along, you can’t learn from it.
The cornerstones of my approach are grounded in movements of golf’s legends. Tiger is just one of them (or used to be). Young Tiger’s fast hips and tilted shoulders are as a result of a right lateral bend and lordosis that facilitated great rotation. We can see this in Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller and more. His hands that didn’t re-hinge properly was because he had a Drive Hold™release pattern. This is something that is easily verified in today’s best players using high-speed camera.
Thus, while I hesitate to call this a method, there are some very distinct characteristics that great athletes seem to display when swinging a golf club. These are the essentials of a legendary swing that everyone can tap into. When people aren’t instinctually doing these moves, it doesn’t mean they can’t. Perhaps they were taught improperly, misunderstood or had prior sporting experiences that had them move differently.
So why is my approach any different than a “method”? Instead of starting with the method’s ideas to cookie cut, we begin with removing dysfunctional patterns first. Once we’ve gotten that under control we can add more functional moves to the student. This way, each and every lesson should bring about an improvement to the student’s swing and ball striking. That is our goal.
But, in order to figure out function or dysfunction, we must break down the golf swing into it’s anatomical components. The teacher MUST understand the anatomical Micro Moves! If not, the movements can blur into indistinct ambiguous motion that looks all the same.
Once the big moves are correct and the swing looks better mechanically, the last step is refinement. This is where the release pattern needs to be improved and clubface movements are stabilized to allow one to hit it straight. Without understanding real ball flight laws, the student cannot really be consistent.
So don’t fall for the methods. Don’t buy high tech equipment just because marketers posing as real golf teachers say so. Study the swing. Study human anatomy and you will find there are no secrets to be found out there. It is all in the micro movements that I’ve already laid out. It is here that you can find out how you can hit it farther and straighter.
by Kelvin Miyahira