From Practice to Playing Golf

How did I swing so fluidly on the range 10 minutes ago, but now, on the first hole, I chop at the ball like a lumberjack?

This is one of the greatest frustrations most golfers face. We’ve proved to ourselves that we can swing well on the practice range, but transferring these feelings, the rhythm and confidence onto the course is quite a different challenge.

The ability to transfer your golf game from the range onto the course is one of the essential mental skills to be mastered.
This mental skill can be learned and improved. Just like any teaching professional worth his or her salt better be able to cure a slice, any golf psychologist better be able to help golfers take their games from the range to the course.

To effectively transfer your golf game over, there are essential mental perspectives to apply.
First, the 7-iron you hit on the range is entirely different from the 7-iron you might hit on the first hole. They are two separate situations that involve quite different mental processes.

Most often, we feel good about our swings on the range after we have repeated the same shot. We feel our swings are “grooved.”

But during a round you only get one chance at each shot. Second, When warming up prior to a round there are myriad swing factors to which you may be paying attention – posture, alignment, takeaway, hand positions, rotation, swing plane, tempo, plus any swing cue that has been working for you.
Trying to do all of those things over a shot during the round will probably lead to a
mental meltdown. Forget about all these isolated mechanical issues and perform integrated swings. This
is where mind and body come together.

Third, on the range you’re in a ball orientation, but during a round you need be in target and process orientations. During warm–up, you are focusing on striking the ball and maybe seeing how it flies through the air. There, the golf ball is the end.

But during a round the ball is a means to other ends. Once you step onto the golf course, you have to focus on a target, whether it be the hole or a spot in the fairway.
These three mental perspectives are critical to performing at your best during a round.

During your warm-up on the range, you must gradually and consciously shift your thinking from a practice mentality to a playing mentality~ The best way to do this is to follow what Ed Grant advised back in 1981:

“If you want to play more like you practice, you must star to practice like you play.”

From your practice sessions to you warm-up sessions, everything you do should be done in the way
you would like to do them on the course. Pick out a precise target, follow your preshot routine and commit yourself to the shot. If you’re hitting more than two balls per minute, you’re going too fast.

Granted, there are times to do drills or work on specific mechanics, but the last
half of every practice session should be used to replicate the kinds of on-course performances you seek.

1. GO THROUGH YOUR RELAXATION sequence and settle into

yourself as you stretch. Good players do this before theyhit balls and even just
before theywalkto the first tee.

2. ALTERNATE YOUR SHOTS on the

range. Hit a 9-iron and then a 6-iron. -Yes, you might not feel cdmfoi~table
doing this,but it is more akin to what you will be facing on the course.

3. PICK OUT VERY SPECIFIC

TARGETS. Aim for dead grass or a drain. Get used to focusing on a target.

4. HIT THREE-QUARTER SHOTS

and work the ball. Let’s face it, perhaps only half of the shots you hit during a
round will be your standard full swing on a flat stance with the ball sitting up.
Get a feeling and confidence on the
range for your creative shots.

5. REHEARSE KEY SHOTS you’ll be

hitting in the first three holes. For example, I believe the first hole at Graeagle
Meadows is the most demanding opening hole in Northern California. It’s a 440-yard
dogleg left around trees with water on the right. On the range, Iwill practice
drawing a three-wood. I imagine myself on the first tee with each of these shots I
take.

6. FEEL ThE RHYTHM. The last

3rd of the balls you hit should be rhythmical swings at 80 percent full power. Think
and feel rhythm. You can carry this to the course.

7. MAKE TIME FOR SHORT-GAME

PRACTICE – putting, pitching and chipping. I believe that if you only have time for
either full swings or chipping, you should choose chipping.

8. TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF

before you walk to the first tee.
Complete your mental transitions, yawn, shrug your shoulders and say hello to the
course.

If you’re aware of these mental orientations, warm up properly and employ some of the
above techniques, you’ll become more effective in transferring your golf game onto the
course. You’ll truly be ready to play.

I hope I have been worth my salt.

Cheers!

Tom

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“It’s a fact that a person can acquire a complete mastery of the skills needed to succeed in golf. Yet, this same person may not be able to perform in a consistenly winning manner. As a highly regarded sports psychologist, Dr. Tom Kubistant has made a difference when it comes to unlocking the mental barriers that may keep us from success in golf.”

Jan Usher – PGA, Lakeridge Golf Course

Dr. Tom Kubistant has been called “The Master of the Intrinsic.” He maintains the entire bibliography on the mental
game of golf…and has read it all! Nobody is more experienced than Tom. He continues to work with professional and average golfers every day.

If you want to get your game to the next level, click here to get
Mind Links now!

Author of “Performing Your Best, Links Golf, Mind Pump: The Psychology of Body Building, business and sales training audios, over 280 articles for magazines and now………Mind Links – The Psychology of Golf.

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Controlling Your Emotions – Part 4

Ok, Ok, I know 4 parts is a bit much, but it’s soooo important in managing our game for lower scores that I felt I had to fill in some blanks from what is not on the CD’s. I’ll make this the last one for now but who knows, I’m always reading and researching new things to tell you about this area in the future. Anxiety on the golf course comes from all of our difficult emotions. We fear them and we fear the perception of failure. This is what causes the anxiety which could be just a mask over the real fears.

Well, there is something we can do about it on the golf course when we are out of emotional control:

So I left you last week by saying that our unconscious mind is the domain of all of our emotions and that it reacts symbolically. This means that it does things and acts when it is presented with something that triggers one it’s automatic responses. For instance, many people will instantly change their attitude when they see a person in a uniform of some authority. Like say a police officer uniform or maybe a military uniform. They may have a positive or negative reaction but all the same, it’s just some cloth on a body.

We react all day every day to such symbols like logos, flags, monuments etc. The point is, your body can instantly manifest a physical change without your trying to by being exposed to a symbol of some sort and it’s all controlled at the unconscious level. Knowing this, psychology and NLP have come up with some ways to take advantage of this for creating positive states and change.  I’ve found it to be useful on the golf course as well.

So let’s say you’ve just lost your cool on the last shot but the next one coming up is very important. You know from the last article that there are chemical processes at work in your body and so you need something strong, right now, as an antidote to turn it around. What you might want to do is to bring something with you in your golf bag, maybe it’s a special red handkerchief, maybe it’s your lucky hat, it could be anything that you believe is your symbol for a resourceful state. Something that you had with you that you associate (an anchor) with a successful achievement from your past like a trophy. Your body has the ability to instantly change it’s chemistry if you are really good at communicating with your unconscious mind.

Studies with multiple personalities have shown that these subjects instantly change such biological functions as: brain-wave patterns, blood flow patterns, muscle tone, heartrate and even allergies (from the book Holographic Universe) when they change personalities. That is how powerful our unconscious mind is. You can turn off the anxiety as fast as you turned it on.

You possess this same skill. It’s just a matter of thinking about it in advance and using some sort of symbol to help get you there when you want it.  How about bringing a picture of someone with you to bring out. Or a picture of yourself in a great moment. It doesn’t even have to be a good moment, just something that is a very strong memory that can get you back to neutral at least. This is all very very possible and if you’re one who is prone to letting negative emotions get to you and affect your game, this is a very good strategy. You can do it very easily and all on the sly by just going into your bag and opening your wallet for second and taking a look at that picture right there on the golf course.

The last thing I want to leave you with on this subject is that we can become addicted to the anxiety and emotions. Yep, no kidding, just like an addictive drug. Some of you may be surprised to learn that you can actually become addicted to feeling angry or frustrated. Why in the world would we do that?  The answer is the same as why do people like to go see horror movies: it makes them feel alive. It helps them express passion that they may otherwise be lacking. It’s not that we consciously WANT to be angry. It’s just that those darn peptides cause the cells to go crazy, vibrate, move. If you want to see a funny explanation of that in a movie I recommend “What the bleep do we know.”

Anyway, again, it’s awareness. Ask yourself are you in a habit of getting angry? Can you go a full round without losing it?  Play your next round with only that goal in mind and forget about your score.  And then, at night when doing your mental practice and self-hypnosis or accelerated learning visualizations, see yourself in complete control of all your emotions and state. Play that round in your head like you see Retief Goosen at a major. Rehearse it regularly just like the astronauts did before the first mission to the moon.

Remember, Winners win in advance!

Greens and fairways,

Craig

Controlling Your Emotions on the Golf Course Part 3

Last time, I gave you my confession for a time I threw a golf club (my putter after missing an easy 4 foot birdie putt). Yes, I was and am ashamed to say it, but, give me some credit though as I did take my own advice and stay in the feedback loop using my cybernetic mechanism toward my goal of getting my handicap down to 2. In other words, I didn’t just say to myself that it was an isolated incident and that I could get total control of my emotions no problem from then on. Oh no, after the round, looking back at what happened, I became aware of my flaws as an imperfect human just as all of us are. I’m not perfect and neither is anyone else. We’re all on a journey of learning toward reaching our goals and as long as you keep learning and adjusting, you’ll keep advancing.

O.k., good, what next? What if this happens again? What will I do?

Stop, don't do this

In the last article, to reiterate, it is best to prevent this sort of thing than to recover from it, right? Ok, good, you’ve got that.  So after I came to that conclusion, I went on another book-reading binge to get some answers. I first went back through my NLP training manual to find help.

I think the first thing for us to know is that the unconscious mind is the domain of all of our emotions. What is an emotion really?  According to Daniel Goleman, they are, in essence, “impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.” His book Emotional I.Q. is a fascinating read and describes the actions that follow each of our emotions and their purpose.

It’s a bodily reaction, a release of a pattern of molecules, or chemicals if that is easier to understand. This is all controlled by our unconscious mind and is triggered by our senses taking in something and then it being filtered to become our internal representation of that event. It all happens automatically, in our unconscious because of the way we have shaped our internal representations over the years through our culture, experiences, upbringing, personality, etc.

These molecules get sent throughout the body from release points all over the body, not just the mind, and bind with cells to cause them to take an action that is appropriate for that emotion. This from the book: The Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert phd.

The big thing to know about this for golf, is that once this happens, it takes awhile for these molecules that bind (ligands) to unlock from the receptor sites of our cells. So no matter how determined you are to come back to normal after an outburst, like when I threw my club that day, I was up against a chemical process that just takes time to normalize, if I let it.

Molecule of emotion

So what should I have done differently given all this science stuff? Well, the next hole I played was a par 3 about 220 yards. A tough hole yes. I usually play it with my 4-wood that takes a full swing and very good contact to make it there. Normally, I play that hole with confidence and I focus just on swinging it freely like I do with my driver. I pick my spot on the huge green and have the confident idea before I hit that I have the potential to birdie this hole like every other one. But this time, unbeknownst to me, all those chemicals were locked onto my cells into a pattern that was getting me physically ready for a confrontation (which resulted from my anger on the last hole). This prevented me from my normal swing having much chance, and as a result, I hit a very poor shot that went way right resulting in a terrible lie and approach angle.

What should I have done? I should have gone to my next club up, my 3-wood, choked down a little, used a more compact swing that has less chance for error and doesn’t require the finer touch, and played the hole far more conservatively. I should have used my go-to shot. The hole had a huge front opening that makes it a very easy chip up if you miss short. That’s where my miss should have been if there was going to be one.  The object of the game for me on that hole should have been to just get through this hole with no more than a bogey and a good chance of par;  to just survive my unresourceful state. To wait out the chemicals returning to normal. Instead, I got lucky to get a double, continued to be p.o’d, went to the next hole, a par 5, and again played it like I normally do (going for it in 2) and ended up with a triple!

Many golfers, once they lose their cool, they think they have to “make up” for their choke and they start “going for it” for everything. They take more chances than normal. They get all fired up and vow to erase that last miss with a birdie. Like when you lose a bet at gambling you think you should go double or nothing. But, we really should be doing the opposite after a bad negative experience.

We need to scale back, retreat, and regroup so that we can come back strong after our body chemistry returns to normal, which it will sooner if you use this strategy. Then when it does, then you can become more aggressive again if that’s how you normally play. I had to give you all that scienctific junk so that you would see the value of this strategy and you won’t have to throw or break that golf club!

The real, long term solution is in my Gold membership pages at golf hypnosis where I have a training on emotional mastery

The next ideas I’ll give you to help with recovering after you lose it is based on the fact that our unconscious mind reacts symbolically. Stay tuned  for controlling your emotions Part 4. Until next time,

Greens and fairways,

Craig

Controlling Your Emotions on the Golf Course – Part 2

This is the kind of scenery us golfers get to recreate in. It could be the picturesque contrast of the desert against a bright green grass, or fairways lined with majestic pine trees, or wetlands with wildlife and plants that you rarely would get to see otherwise. Most of us would admit that it’s one of the reasons we love this game; that we love the beauty of the outdoors. Even on a muni course in the heart of the city it’s still a welcome break from the normally chaotic scenes we take in our vision on an average day. You’re there because you love it. You’re there because you want to be. It’s a release from our every day worries. It’s a respite from the pressures of our jobs. It’s a break from all those people who want a piece of you all day. It’s a time-out from stress and having to think hard to solve problems. And for some of us, it’s an opportunity to challenge ourselves when we don’t get enough of that to stimulate our brain as much as it needs to feel alive. On top of that, we get to do it with people of our choice, like-minded friends and friendly souls to exercise our social nature.

Even those who are there for the hard-core competition and big money ultimately do it for those same reasons.

What I’m trying to say right off here is that, we don’t deserve to get anger or frustration. What? No, we don’t.  But I just missed a 3 foot putt that cost me $100 and yes, I am angry about it and experiencing frustration! Go and reread the first paragraph again. Doesn’t it seem downright silly to be angry given all that? Just the fact that we have enough money to be able to spend some of it this way puts us in the top 5% of people on this planet that can even afford it!! Do you know how lucky we are to be able to even play golf? Billions of people don’t know where their next meal is coming from and so we have only the right to be thankful and grateful. And yes, even a duty to really enjoy everything about this game, even the times when we don’t play so well.

The thought I hope comes to your head now is: “I never thought of it THAT way.”

That’s called perspective.

I know, I never thought of it that way either until recently. We take so many things for granted in our lives and I’m now going to make every effort to be grateful and thankful and those conscious-directed thoughts will not only keep my body’s natural balance in order, but I believe it will also do something for my spirit.

end golf frustration

You see, I have a confession to make to you all: I threw a club a few years ago !  It’s true! I was so angry with myself for missing a putt I thought I should have made. I winged my putter about 30 feet toward the next tee (didn’t want to have to do any extra walking you see- Hah!) You know, I wasn’t even so angry that I missed the putt as much as I was for not following all of my own advice that I’ve been giving out. I didn’t follow through and didn’t hold my finish and so the putt was a weak stab. I was angry for not living up to my own expectations. And how many times have I preached and written about not having expectations? And there I went and did it myself!

What’s really ironic, is that the fact that I had expectations of myself to play the way I tell others, perfectly all of the time, is the exact reason why I didn’t play the way I tell others!  It’s the reason why I missed that putt! Had I put myself in the correct frame of mind BEFORE playing that day, and kept myself there, I would have given my unconscious the opportunity to consistently follow all the instrutions I’ve been giving it including making sure that I hold my finish on putts. It all goes back to internal representations, it always does.

Frustration comes from you expecting something to happen and you can’t figure out why it doesn’t or how to prevent it.

You get yourself wound up in this endless loop of “why me?”

More confession time: That day that I threw the putter, I was on the 6th hole and that putt was about 4 feet for a birdie. I had parred all 5 holes prior to that. So even after missing that putt, I was still at par. So I tried to get ahold of myself because I knew there was lots of holes to play. But guess what, the chemicals in my body had already been released from my little tantrum. My limbic brain had already hijacked my neuron transmission processes. I read in the book Emotional IQ by Daniel Goleman that when this happens, you are at the mercy of that part of your brain for awhile. Normal patterns of electrical impulses in the brain get redirected so that some information doesn’t get registered in parts of the brain that help with making informed decisions. Have you ever heard someone say something like “I’m so mad I can’t even see straight?” That’s a physiological fact.

I thought, no problem, I’m an expert at this kind of mental control and I’ll be fine. But I wasn’t! I was in denial and continued to play the same way I was before my losing it. And I double-bogeyed the next 2 holes. I never really recovered that day and my score showed it. I vowed to go home and figure it all out and find out why and never let it happen again.

You know, we’re all human. Give yourself a break! Get in the state of mind at the beginning of the round where you believe in your gut that no matter what happens you will still be enjoying the thing you most want to do - GOLFING!

The thing I want you to get from this article, this lesson, is that the best cure for negative emotions is prevention.  It’s so much easier to not have a loss of emotional control in the first place than to try to recover from one.

In Part 3, next time, I will talk about what we can do to get back into control when we do lose it. Until next time,

Greens and fairways,

Craig

“Championship golf is not about who hits the best shots, it’s about who does the best job of controlling his emotions”
Tom Weiskopf

Most of us golfers have seen the golf comedy movies like Caddyshack, Tin Cup, and Happy Gilmore. If you haven’t, I encourage you to do so. In fact, I encourage you to watch every golf movie you can get your hands on. I recently watched the movie Bobby Jones, a stroke of genius and The Greatest Game Ever Played and both of those movies actually brought tears to my eyes. Really! And I’m not ashamed to admit it. Both were about overcoming huge obstacles and achievement in golf AND LIFE. They tweaked my emotional chords.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the comedies are great too for what they are! But, some of the characters actions are not what you would want to do in your game. Watch those movies with discernment. Enjoy them and come out of them with a big smile thinking “what a great sport I love that has so much fun, joy and laughter to go along with it.”

We like those movies because us golfers so desperately want a pro golfer to be expressive, to show his emotions, to be a “performer” like Happy Gilmore. Lee Trevino, Fuzzy Zoeller and Chi Chi used to do some of that and we loved them for it!. We want entertainment! That’s really why John Daly is a favorite these days. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and we can identify with him. He lets his anger out, he swears, he tells us about his problems in his marriages etc.

But look who are the top people on the tours: Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Tiger, Ernie, Phil, Annika.  All pretty boring to watch. Out of those, the only one you ever see expressing his emotions is Tiger. He’s an exception as you’ll see him sometimes show his disgust for a bad shot but he has had many many years of mental training in dealing with his emotions and has obviously learned very well how to compartmentalize. Even so, 99% of the time he is as robotic and cold-looking as those others. Unfortunately, it is the rare person that will entertain us as we watch golf and play well at the same time.

So, I’m really sorry to say this but, Happy Gilmore is really just a fantasy and if you want to score well, you’ve got to be more like Retief with regard to our emotions. Why is this so? The answer is because of the mind-body connection and communication system. You may have heard this phrase casually mentioned for all sorts of things related to health and healing and yes, it does apply there for sure. But what is it?

I’ve been asking this question for awhile now and I believe I finally found the answer in a book called: Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert. She was a government research scientist trying to find ways to help drug addicts recover. Her studies led her to fighting aids and other diseases. And it all boils down to this:

We create our own body chemistry with our habitual thoughts.

That’s the mind-body connection and the more I learned about it, the better my game got.

Golf anger management

Did you know that studies have shown that a huge percent of cancer patients have had major life changes happen to them prior to being diagnosed with the disease? Many of you know firsthand about how stress affects your body. I’m getting a little off the subject so let’s get back to golf.

The bottom line to all of this for our game for you to know is that our body chemistry which affects the actions of all of our cells, is very delicate and it doesn’t take much to push it out of balance. And it is all controlled by our unconscious mind that has as it’s prime directive to PRESERVE THE BODY. So when you experience negative emotions, your unconscious mind acts in such a way as to do what it thinks is necessary to first and foremost keep you alive. This comes in direct opposition to playing a game like golf!

When you set if off balance with an emotion like ANGER, it gets ready for a confrontation. This involves sending adrenaline out, sending peptides to cells everywhere to communicate the need to either prepare for battle or to shut down so that the cells that need the resources for battle get them. Many of those cells are NEEDED for golf! Many of those cells are located in your brain that are used to make good strategic decisions about your next shots. Those resources are needed in the nerve cells that you use for touch and feel on the putting green, for instance, and they aren’t getting ‘em!

You see, until I started studying some of what scientists have been coming up with the last couple decades in this area, I just wasn’t convinced about all this emotion and feeling stuff. I just didn’t pay attention to it. I thought that the key to my improvement was just another lesson and a few buckets of balls away. yes, I saw that the pros were all very calm, steady, and emotionless but I thought it was because they were naturally like that. That they were just born that way. WRONG!  Those men and women have worked very hard to DEVELOP those attributes and skills with regard to controlling their emotions. I think most of them probably didn’t have to learn all about the science of neuropeptides, ligands, fluid transport systems etc. to be convinced they needed to do this to play well. They probably just saw that they played better when they developed their emotional I.Q. and so they worked on it just like they do their putting stroke.

This is what we have to do too if we want some easy scoring benefits Without Practicing and the good news is that everyone can develop and improve on this for the rest of your life. Even more good news is that you don’t have to be a complete robot. Remember when I talked about your 3 different personalities on the course. Go ahead and have fun and laugh and smile during your personable phase. But, if you want to score lower, you will have to get control of your negative emotions.

I read a recent article about “Terrible” Tommy Bolt where he said he admitted he left a lot of money on the course because of all his temper tantrums over the years. He also said ” It thrills crowds to see a guy suffer. That’s why I threw clubs so often. They love to see golf get the better of someone, and I was only too happy to oblige them. At first I threw clubs because I was angry. After a while it became showmanship, plain and simple. I learned that if you helicopter those dudes by throwing them sideways instead of overhand, the shaft wouldn’t break as easy. It’s an art, it really is…And never break your driver and putter in the same round.”

In part 2 of this, I’ll give you some more solid ways to help control your emotions…now that you’re convinced you need to! Look for part 2 in your email.

Greens and fairways,

Craig

One of the most common problems I hear from golfers is that they
swing perfectly in practice and not as well on the course.

Or, that they do well on the front and then blow it on the back 9 or
vice versa.

Or, they do well in fun rounds but seize up and choke under pressure.

Their golf nerves get the best of them.

These problems all stem from the word “expectations.”

At the heart of what I do for golfers and athletes is to give them
PERSPECTIVE and then help them replace those old programs in their
unconscious minds.

The perspective is the antidote to expectations and calming those golf nerves.

What is perspective anyway?

First of all, there’s no wrong or right about it. Have no judgement
about the way you should or shouldn’t think about anything! One
person’s worst idea is another person’s gold mine.

If you’ve been reading my work for any amount of time, you realize by
now that there is no one way to swing or one way to think in order
for all golfers to play their best.

If those scenarios above are causing you to get nervous or get tense, or
get the yips, then it’s likely that you have created a program that
says this is one of the most important things in life that I can do
and therefore, the feelings of stress come up in order to “prepare”
you to do battle.

You see the problem now? Your body goes into a mode that is no
different than if you were fighting for your life.

Having said all that, let me give you some general principles to
bounce off of that can help you to gain a perspective that can sink
into your unconscious mind.

Here’s some
suggestions to help counteract this response right when it’s
happening at the course.

1. It’s not your life, it’s not your wife, it’s just a game

2. We are fragile beings and can die tomorrow. How does this putt
compare to that?

3. What if you were able to float your body out in space and watch
the spot on the earth where you are golfing…while connecting to
your higher belief systems…up there, at that moment

4. Will the legacy you want to leave your loved ones be affected by
this shot?

5. Does this round have any relevance to your overall purpose/mission
for being alive on the planet right now?

6. Wow, this tension, stress, tightness feels a lot like being
excited and energized doesn’t it?

Those thoughts kind of make the next shot pretty insignificant now
don’t they? How does that change your response? Your state?

Maybe you can pre-live these pressure situations and give yourself
those 6 thoughts and then experience a calmness that follows before
you ever go out for your next round…

Golf is supposed to be fun!! Decide that that is your main objective
and then you will just naturally play to your potential. And then
when you get up to that pressure putt or back 9, then you can be calm
as a monk. That’s how it works….

Greens and fairways,

Craig