Golf Psychology Newsletter - CHANGE OR NO CHANGE????

Welcome again to the Golf Brain newsletter.

I hope that you have all had the most wonderful Christmas and look forward to a great New Year.

First of all congratulations to Ben Parker !!

He joins some illustrious names such as Mark Calcavecchia and Tiger Woods in winning the prestigious Orange Bowl tournament in Florida. Ben started to train his golf brain last summer and has made tremendous strides forward in his mental game.

So, what will this year bring for you and your own golf?

Will it be more of what has happened already or will some shift take place to take you to another level?

Mostly at this time of year we hear all about change, be that changing your diet, your exercise programme, your job, your house, car…the list goes on and on. Yet, most people STAY the SAME. The logic for change is strong yet the all-powerful unconscious mind wants to keep things the same, it wants to keep running the same old patterns. When you understand the unconscious mind a little more and how it actually functions you will be in a position to actually make some of the changes you really want. Over the coming weeks, I will present to you through the newsletter some cutting edge research on the change process. Each of the newsletters will build a momentum of information that has not been presented before. We all know WHAT we want to change but HOW is the key question that will be thoroughly covered. But first…..

CONCENTRATION: TRUTH AND FICTION!

• Cast your mind back now to the best years of your life, your schooldays!!
• How many time were you told to CONCENTRATE?

If you had a similar experience of school to the one I endured then you will be able to recall that often used phrase!

Yet, how effective was the command to ‘just concentrate’?

Did the teacher ever give us a lesson in concentration?

For me, telling someone to concentrate is as silly as telling someone to ‘just relax’ and in the work that I do with tournament players concentration is probably the least understood skills of the mental game.

Many golfers believe that being serious and miserable on the golf course is concentration, well it isn’t, it is just being miserable!

Golf is almost unique in sport in so much that we only need to concentrate or focus on the task (shot) for a very short period of the time we are actually on the golf course. We may be out there for the best part of 4 hours but we only play golf for a small percentage of that time (15%).

The way that concentration in football is triggered gives us a clue to the direction that we need to take. The soccer players concentration is TRIGGERED by the referees whistle in so much as soon as the whistle is heard the footballers mind is now focused on the task i.e. get the ball. He then has a trigger to stop concentrating when he hears the whistle for half time or full time.

Unfortunately, in golf we don’t have the same kind of triggers so that many golfers are actually concentrating at the wrong time in between shots and have no means to switch on and more importantly to switch off during the round. So many poor shots result as a result of mental burnout because concentration isn’t rationed effectively.

You need to develop your own golfing version of the ‘referees whistle’ to enable you to enjoy focused concentration on the shot at hand and then allow yourself a mental break in between shots.

FOLLOW THESE POINTS:

• Set up a ‘start’ signal to your routine such as taking your cap on and off or looking at the logo on your glove
• Choose a focus word such as ‘Ready’ or ‘Now’ to draw your attention to the shot at hand
• To focus on your breath is a great way to still the mind in the present moment
• After each shot is over create an ‘end signal’, take off your glove, feel the club touch the bottom of the bag
• Have a word such as ‘Done’ , ‘Over’ or ‘Finished’
• Clear the air by breathing out. The shot is complete. Give your mind a mental break.

RESEARCH

• Ulrich Neisser of Cornell University interviewed and recorded circumstances of forty four students at the time of the 1986 challenger explosion. Two and a half years later, the memories of where they were had changed: NOT ONE was 100% accurate and over one third were severely inaccurate. The students with inaccurate memories couldn’t recognise or accept the authenticity of the written records from only two and a half years earlier.

KEY LEARNING

When you play well record what you were doing IN DETAIL because science tells us that you will FORGET.

More tools and techniques for assisting memory are available in the Golf Brain series at www.golf-brain.com.

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