I’ve played quite a few sports growing up, and am recently trying to learn golf. There’s quite a bit of technique involved in a golf swing and then I got thinking “how do we know this is the right/most efficient way to swing?”. Same thing for a hockey slapshot, diving, etc. Who comes up with the “proper” technique and why is it standardized? Does it come the best performers, and then everyone mimics (like the famous high jump technique)?
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Trial and error over generations.
In 1960 the NFL field goal kickers had a success rate of 50% Back then almost every kicker was kicking straight toed. By 1990 every NFL team had a soccer style kicker. The average success range was 75%. Now there are several reasons for success rates and average success range in field goal kicking, but most would agree the introduction of soccer style kicking was the biggest development in field goal kicking for accuracy.
This goes for any sport. Hell, if tomorrow you coached volleyball and you thought of a brand new technique for a serve and it made your team’s serve way more successful, other teams would integrate it into their strategy. If enough teams do this then it just kind of becomes the way of doing things.
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