Improving Process and Assessing Power Potential with Joel Dahmen

Our latest video featuring Joel Dahmen during his visit to TPI ahead of the 2025 season not only will confirm why he's a fan favorite on the PGA TOUR, but should highlight several things every golfer can do to improve their game.

Here are three lessons you or your golfers can learn from our assessment with Joel:

Consistent Pre-Shot Process

At the start of the video, Joel mentioned that he was very consistent with his driver, but struggled with his short-game.  Something that stood out about his approach to both was that he had a consistent pre-shot process with his driver, but not with his short-game. 

In both practice and play, a consistent process is critical for skill acquisition and performance.  As Dr. Rose likes to say:

“Quality practice is not about how many balls you hit, it’s about how many processes you run.”

Practice should make a golfer mentally tired, not just physically tired.

Is Power Limited By the Engine, Equipment or Technique 

The primary goal of the power assessment we teach in our advanced Fitness and Power courses is to determine if a golfer’s speed is limited by their technique, their equipment or their physical capacity. If a golfer swinging as fast as their technique and equipment allows, we know we need to improve their ability to express power physically.

Some golfers can improve speed by addressing technique, equipment or intent, but others won’t get faster until they increase the size of their engine.

Here’s Dr. Rose from Power Level 3. pic.twitter.com/dIgkcvpHit

— TPI (@MyTPI) July 20, 2022

In the video, Dr. Rose cautions Joel about using overspeed/overload training devices.  We’ve been massive proponents of this strategy for the last decade and, while the training devices are incredibly effective, we advise athletes to build a solid foundation of strength and movement quality before rushing to train speed. 

Training an athlete for power is like building a skyscraper.  To build the tallest skyscraper, we want to establish a solid foundation.  Our Level 1 and Power screens help identify if there are any cracks in the foundation.

Down in Chipping

If you’ve been following our feed recently, you might be familiar with this concept. It’s one of the more compelling insights we’ve uncovered from evaluating force plate data from hundreds of professional golfers over the last few years.  

When we measured Joel's center of mass while chipping, we noticed it was dropping in the downswing.  This is something we often see in golfers who complain of inconsistent contact in their short game.  

In chipping, we look at the lower body as the foundation and the hands as the technique.  If the foundation is unstable, the technique will suffer.

Down is death in your short game. 

In this video’s “PGA TOUR players are not like the rest of us” moment, Joel hit the stick from 20 yards away twice in a row after applying the feel of not going down.  Like all TOUR players, he is wildly talented and extremely hard-working.  The goal of our assessments is to make sure he's working on the right things.  

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If you are a coach, fitness or medical professional interested in learning more about how to help golfers determine if their body is affecting their swing, check out our newly updated Level 1 online course.

View TPI Level 1 Online Course

If you're a golfer interested in a physical assessment, you can connect with a TPI Certified expert via our Find an Expert page.