Archive for the 'focus' Category
How do you feel on the first tee of an important golf round?
As we know, golf is a mental game. If you are like most golfers, you have difficulty in controlling slightly negative thoughts. We can feel anxious.
“I must avoid OB right” This thought is a killer example. With this in mind, its usually ends up resulting in gearing up my brain to send the ball OB with supreme precision. Oh yes, it’s great to get out of the office and unwind …
“Slow it down” it can be a great thought, but occasionally it causes us to be too cautious on the backswing and not turn the shoulders. Again balls goes right with a big banana slice..
“Bring the downswing down as slowly as possible” It works for some.
What about advice from golfing legends?
Arnold Palmer used to tell people “think of your feet and head as 3 apexes of and immovable triangle; your feet should be like bricks”
Jack Nicklaus put great store in a little rightward cock of his head at the takeaway, so his left eyeball and golf ball were inexorably aligned. Gary Player preferred to think of a core of metal passing up through the middle of his body; he twisted around it like a barbarcued chicken on a split.
Its no surprise that with all this going on in our heads, its very easy to get anxious on the 1st tee. We become afraid of letting go of the earth. We hit from the top, too fast with too much right hand (in the case of the right handed golfer). We keep the weight on the right leg and knees prudently locked. Whats happens? We look up, lifting our head a micro second too early and hitting the ball like a we’re chopping wood with an axe.
Many golf mental game experts, quite rightly, believe the set up routine helps us ‘get focussed on the job at hand’ – taking our brain away from ‘evils that may happen’
1. From behind the ball select a spot of the ground between the ball and your target. This quickly gets your brain thinking very precisely about the job at hand.
2. Align your club square to the ball and facing your spot.
3. Set your body and feet position parallel to the target line. Never keep your right foot perpendicular to the line because it is to hard to turn the body during the back swing.
4. Thinking soft grip, lay the club first in your left hand and then lay your right hand on top.
5. Important: Slightly bend your knees and lean forward, your arms should feel like they are dangling straight down.
6. Your weight should be balanced and on the inside of your thighs. Your weight should also be more on your toes and the balls of your feet then on your heels.
7. The grip end of the club shaft should be about 8-10″ from your belt buckle.
8. Keep your chin off your chest but stay focused on the ball. Your left shoulder will need to come under your chin at the top of your swing.
9. Double check that your club head is still facing in the correct position and apply the proper grip pressure.
10. Execute
You can practice the above routine away from the course at home so it becomes natural. It will go a long way to helping you overcome the first tee demons.
GET INTO PROCESS – NOT RESULTS
Happy golfing
Copyright
www.luckyfishgolf.com
Golf In The Zone State Attaining Your Peak Performance Joan A. King, C.Ht., P.NLP
Being in the Zone State is where you attain your peak performance. It can happen to 40 handicappers as well as scratch golfers. When a golfer is in the Zone State, he has let go of all of the restrictions imposed by conscious irrelevant thoughts. The golfer has created the reality that he wants to happen. His mind and body are harmonized before the swing so the swing happens without any thought or effort.
In the zone
Golf is different from other sports. In many other sports there is no time to think and the body reacts to the situation. It has been proven that Professional basketball players make more shots around the basket when the opposing player has a hand in their face and they have to shoot quickly, than when they take the time to aim the ball and shoot… and think (about missing). In golf, the ball waits for us and we spend too much time in extraneous confusing thoughts.
When a golfer is in the right state of mind he can access his peak performance throughout the round. In this Zone State, golfers feel as if they are in a trance, in a heightened sense of awareness where they have total control of all aspects of their game. Some golfers say they experience a sense of euphoria which includes total calm, ease and effortlessness in swinging and an enhanced sense of intuition. There is also an increase in power. Crisper, longer and more accurate shots result from the magnified sense of feel and awareness. Golfers have intensified concentration and mental clarity such as seeing a line on the green. In this trance, the golfer sometimes experiences being on automatic pilot as if someone else is swinging the golf club for him.
Ted Williams commented that when he was in the Zone, he felt as if the baseball was stopped at the plate, waiting for him to swing at it.`When Michael Jordan was in the zone, making one of his spectacular leaps, he felt as if he would never come down. John Brody, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback perceived the opposing line stopped when he was in the zone. He felt as if he had all day to throw the football downfield. What do all these experiences have in common? Time stands still for athletes when they are totally focused on being in the process of performing. When we are playing golf well we also have a distortion of time and are lost in the enjoyment of the game.
When we aren’t playing well we are focusing on the things that make-up the process. We bombard our mind with instructions on how to swing the golf club. We judge our performance unmercifully. We get wrapped up in negative feelings of incompetence, failure, doubt, and embarrassment.
In our society we have been educated to “try harder”. We are taught that the more physical effort we put into something, the more likely we are to succeed. This is very evident in the statement we have been hypnotized to believe, “No pain, no gain”.
For golfers, a more appropriate axiom is, “To gain control, You have to let go of control”. Once you have learned how to swing the golf club, you must LET GO and TRUST that the proper message will be sent from your unconscious mind to your physical body when you are on the golf course.
You have then bypassed your conscious analyzing, thinking, controlling mind and just reacted to all the learning and habits which are stored in your unconscious mind. If you are thinking about parts of your swing while you are swinging, you are controlling or steering the club with your conscious mind. This results in jerky, inconsistent, off-balance, out-of-tempo, off-line shots.
When you are driving your car on I-95 going south and you slip into a dreamy state of getting to Florida and playing golf, the car is steered smoothly by your unconscious mind. When you break out of your reverie and realize you haven’t been paying attention, the conscious mind (analyzing, judging, and criticizing) takes over and your driving motion becomes jerky.
To enter into the Zone State a golfer must trust his swing and be prepared to allow it to happen. A rhythmic movement such as walking, humming or whistling your favorite tune can move you into a relaxed state on the golf course. Movement into the zone includes all the physical and mental preparation for a round of golf.
Prepare yourself in the way you are most comfortable for your personality to become relaxed and confident. If you are a sociable person, converse with your fellow golfers. If you like to prepare alone, go to a place at the end of the range or green where you have quiet and solitude.
When you are aware that you are in “the zone” during your round, don’t think about what you are experiencing because that will bring you out of the process. Know that you are experiencing your peak potential performance and enjoy every minute of it!
How many times have you heard various well-known touring pros say: “golf is 90% mental”
Many great touring pros over the years have declared that the golf mental game rules.
But, many really great teaching pros have countered, “what good is the mental game if you do not have the physical skills to play the game?”. And rightly so. Then we hear the mental coaches argue back, “What good are the physical skills if the player is not mentally strong enough to keep them from breaking down under the pressure of competition?” Just like the old “nature vs. nuture” argument, it can go ’round, and ’round, and ’round.
In reality, if you want to play great golf you cannot really separate the physical skills from the mental skills. It’s a lot like a peanut butter sandwich. If you want a really good peanut butter sandwich, you cannot have just the peanut butter, or just the bread, because in either case it then would not be a really good peanut butter sandwich!
O.K., maybe that is not the best analogy, and maybe you do not even like peanut butter, but you get the point.
How can you have a great golf game if you do not have strong physical skills, and the strong mental skills to use those great physical skills in competition when the going gets tough?
Enough of that argument, and on to another one.
Golf is Mentally the Toughest Sport
The golf mental game, in our estimation, is one of the most challenging in all of sport. Because you are a competitive golfer, chances are you will take our side, especially since you are still reading this page.
Fortunate for you–and unfortunate for them–most competitive golfers spend the vast majority of their time on the same thing that the major golf magazines do, perfecting the technical aspects of the game, spending little or no time on mental skills training.
In one of our early 2000 studies of golfers, we were surprised to find that when asked if they felt the golf mental game was important to their success, more than 90% of the golfers surveyed said “yes”.
But when we asked the same golfers if in the past year they had actively done anything specific to develop their mental skills for golf, only 15% said “yes”! Fortunately we have seen these percentages rise significantly since then–maybe not coincidentally, along with the rise of Tiger–and we have seen many, many golfer’s take their games to higher levels by doing it.
As a competitive golfer, you might take some pride in knowing that you are competing in one of the toughest mental games on the planet. Even some of the world’s greatest athletes have in many ways found their “second” sport of golf to be much more mentally challenging than their “first” sport of tennis, baseball, football, or basketball.
Why Is Golf Mentally Tougher?
Early into our 1980’s research and work with tour players we noted two primary reasons the golf mental game is so demanding. Both are simply related to aspects of how the game is played.
The golf ball is stationary when in play.
Very simply, you are hitting a ball that is not moving. That may sound quite easy to do but in reality it is much easier to react to something that is moving than it is to something that is stationary, especially in the heat of intense competition. Why? When it is moving you have less time to “analyze” the complexities of the athletic skill that you will need to use, or to ponder it’s importance, or to determine all the ways you could fail before you actually do!
In sports like tennis, football or basketball, the ball and competitors are moving when in play. This makes it quite natural and easy to “react” and perform “athletically” rather than “judge” and perform “intellectually”. If you are not sure what I mean by this, let me explain with this example that we sometimes use with our clients.
Say you are sitting on the sofa in my office, across the room and about 6 feet in front of me. I surprise you by pulling out my dog’s favorite tennis ball and throwing it at you with little warning except to say “here, catch!”.
Being an athlete you will probably quite naturally and athletically react and catch the ball by physically doing something like this. You will raise your dominant hand with your palm forward, and your thumb at about a 45 degree angle, with your other 4 fingers pointing upward. As the ball gets but a few precise inches from your hand you start to simultaneously close your fingers, snapping them tightly around the ball as it touches your palm. And you will successfully catch the ball without consciously thinking of even a single one of these things.
Now we do it again.
This time I give you all the above instructions in detail. I tell you that you cannot deviate from any one of them. I warn you that you will not get lunch today if you miss. Then I tell you I am going to post word of your fumble on the internet for all the world to see if you miss. Then I throw the ball.
Think you will you catch the ball quite as easily the second time? Unsually not. Will your catch be as smooth and graceful as the first time? Not likely…unless you are an enlightened golfer and you have been working on your golf mental game. Then you would be able to easily over-ride all those instructions; warnings to again simply react to the ball!
Yes, this ball was moving, but the point here is that you cannot perform as well in golf when you are analyzing vs. reacting.
Which brings us to the second reason the golf mental game is so tough.
There are large amounts of empty time between shots to “over-think”.
Using the above example with the tennis ball, can you see why this could be a problem? Especially considering that you must turn off the analysis and turn on the reaction at least 60 times each and every time you play. And you must do this over a period of 4–plus or minus–hours each and every time you compete?
Golf requires that you be disciplined enough to put yourself into a mental state to react, even when circumstances are not natural for doing so. You will find this challenge only a bit in the other sports: in basketball with the free throw, in tennis with the serve, and in football with the field goal.
This article is credited to www.competitive-golfer.com