Mental Game Questions From The Pros

Bouncing Back Requires Acceptance: A Mental Game Skill

andre@gulfcoastgolfacademy.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:28:23 GMT

Bouncing Back

One of my top amateurs recently had an operation and is back into competition again. Aside from some slight swing adjustments he knows are necessary, he wrote me and stated, “Mentally I need to work on my bounce back ability harder. I still let a bad hole affect me too much.”

How we cope with negative events in our lives makes a big difference in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For instance, we know from other research that people who use certain types of coping with a tragedy feel better about them selves and experience less depression and are more healthy than those who don’t use that type of coping. In the case of golf, research has found that those golfers who can accept their shots (good or bad) and move onto the next one, have lower handicaps than those who tend to focus on their previous shot. Think about it this way, a golfer who realizes that they can’t do anything about their last shot and simply accepts the outcome now has more time to focus on the current shot. Accepting a shot is like taking out the trash. The more we continue to think about shots we took, the more the baggage piles up and the heavier your load becomes.

The issue on the course is that accepting bad shots can be more difficult to do than one might think. The following exercise will help to develop the skill of acceptance for poor golf shots, leading to less blood pressure, better feel, more focus, and ultimately better results.

Acceptance exercise:

For starters, you need to be able to hear your inner voice judge and criticize a person, place, or thing. If you have trouble with knowing your “self-talk”, it might help you to think about a situation where you wanted to say something but you “bit your tongue” and held the words back from coming out. We talk to our selves all day long and are so used to it that often we don’t even know we have an inner dialog.

Make an effort to right down two criticisms that you hear your inner voice speak.

Criticism 1. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Criticism 2. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Make an effort to accept the criticized situations as they are….
1. On a scale from 1-10 (1 being the low end of the scale) rank your ability to accept each criticized situation.

Criticized Situation 1.

My score of accepting the situation as it is, without judgment:________

Criticized Situation 2.

My score of accepting the situation as it is, without judgment:________

Work this mental muscle over and over again.
1. This sort of exercise is not common and it’s likely that you’ve never done it before. Hence, it might be difficult to understand and see how doing such an exercise can help one to become better at acceptance and how that can lead to improved results on the golf course. Regardless, studies have shown the benefits of acceptance and its impact on focus and concentration. As you continue to pay attention to your thoughts about people, places, and things, and choose to accept situations without judgment, your golf game will improve.
2. Acceptance is a skill as much as knowing how to hit a flop shot. It takes repetition, awareness, and needs to become a habitual way of thinking for consistent results. Repetition is the mother of skill. Work the mental muscle.

Q1: Why does my swing feel better on certain days?

andre@gulfcoastgolfacademy.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:49:33 GMT

Great question and surely there's more than one answer. Of the various reasons that come to mind, the most prominent reasons that I suggest you feel your swing better on certain days relate to your energy level, tempo, grip pressure, and presence. Breaking these down respectively, your energy level changes daily based on your thoughts, foods, drinks, and exercise. Your tempo tends to match up with your energy level. Grip pressure impacts the feel of the weighting of the club which can directly impact how your swing feels. And lastly, if you are focused on something pressing such as running behind in your warm up before going to the tee, or personal matters such as an important phone call you need to return, you're out of focus, not present, and distracted from imagery skills, which impact the feeling of your swing. Hence, the first of three recommendations is to develop a daily routine that reinforces quality sleep, food, drink, and exercise. Secondly, use a pre-shot routine that includes the step of checking in with grip pressure. Lastly, learn as much as you can about focus and imagery skills. Develop a schedule/system that has you working those two mental skills. Thanks for your question! Now here's one for you... How do your thoughts impact the way that you feel? Take care.

Q: How do I keep the negative thoughts from popping in during a shot?

andre@gulfcoastgolfacademy.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:40:01 GMT

Five Key Strategies to help you with your question "how" to...

Label the Problem- Negative thinking is the obvious problem and realize that out of the forty to sixty thousand thoughts we have daily, the average person has only ONE positive thought out of every FORTY-TWO thoughts that take place. Astounding numbers to say the least. So don't beat yourself up, you're normal. That being the case, even the most positive of thinkers are likely to have more negative thoughts than positive. Why do people read the newspaper and watch the news? It’s mostly negative information that we attract ourselves to…hence, although that’s the problem, we need to be more specific about the negative thoughts that tend to pop in so that we can focus on what the solution is. A quick example is of my own experience on tight lies. I tended to fear the results because of prior unseccessful experiences, hence, when the shot is needed, (especially in competition) that negative thought had actually grown from a “pop-in” to a lingering nag in the back of my mind. Where ever your negative thought shows up in the spectrum between “pop-in” and “nag”, it doesn’t matter; the solution is the same (discussed next in Embracing the Corrections). Identify where and when those tend to pop in so that the correction is more simple to figure out.

Embracing the Correction- The correction is nothing less than developing the skill that sparks a lack of confidence. The primary reason for the fear that projects the negative image or “pop-in” thought is history of failure which comes from a weakness in the skill. The only way to develop skill is through repetition. In fact, you can develop a negative skill. We all do it. In this case, a repetition of negative outcomes will develop a negative mental skill of doubt and fear, which lead to tension, negative imagery, and hence another muffed shot. So in my case, a tight lie and a fear of not contacting the ball solidly, what skill do I need to develop and repeat over and over again? Chipping, you might guess. Yes, and take it a step further if you’re the competitive player that this blog is designed for. Chip out of a bunker. Make it a challenge to figure out how to chip out of a soft bunker successfully for fifty consecutive shots. Now you understand why the second key strategy is Embrace the Correction! Overcoming conditioned thoughts and memories of failure is not so easy because most often they’ve been anchored, burned, scribed, and stamped into your memory bank due to an emotional reaction during the time of the failed shot. Embracing corrections that are super challenging take commitment, determination, focus, energy, and an incredible will. These are some of the common qualities of the greatest golfers, athletes, businessmen, etc…

Verify Your Understanding of the Correction- Communication from the pro, consultant, coach, teacher, etc…is not always received the way in which it was intended. It is imperative that the correction to the problem is spoken back, reiterated, and if possible, displayed and replayed to the coach who prescribed it. Too often, we hear what we want to hear and it’s what a famous coach calls, “already always listening”. My personal downfall with this verification process has been the fear of repeating what the coach said to get confirmation. I, like many, was afraid that the coach would think that I was slow, or not as intelligent, or whatever my ego would conjure up to appear better than I actually was. I know I’m not alone in this boat and if you are the type of person who tends to “not rock the boat”, then you might take a look at what the big deal is about getting clarity on communication and VERIFY the correction that is to be understood.

Evaluate the Progress- It is always possible to label the wrong problem, prescribe the wrong correction, and misunderstand the solution. If any one of the three happens, the evaluation process will be your catch net and keep you from wasting unnecessary time, frustration, and losing confidence in your coach. Evaluation methods can be made up by you or can administered by a coach who has a thousand ways and ideas on how to measure your progress with a skill that you are developing. An example of an evaluation method relative to the tight lie negative thinking process would be as follows:

Before you take any chips out of the sand, guess how many you will hit within x feet of a target out of twenty attempts.
&/OR how many solid strikes you can make consecutively.
Make twenty shots, tracking your results
Record results.
Now you know where your starting point is and you can evaluate the information you receive/apply to the development of the skill. If the information is helpful, your numbers will get better. Most coaches will recommend that you focus on limited amounts of new information so that it can be distinctly evaluated. Also, give each bit of information that you apply at least 50 attempts before you dismiss it. Most often, new information applied takes time and repetition to perform without added anxiety due to the change of comfort.
Write a goal down as to by when you want to attain a certain result for a specific skill challenge.
Often keep track of your results as suggested. This quantification/ evaluation process is beneficial for many other reasons beyond the purpose suggested in this blog.

Learn What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know- this isn’t made to be a mind bender or a tongue twister. Clearly there are things you know you know. It’s likely that you know something about golf. Clearly you know what you don’t know, perhaps the distance to Mars. These two categories of our knowledge base takes up such a minute percentage of information that is available to us that we’ve never even heard of. If we’ve never heard of the existence of planet Zularia, then obviously, you didn’t know that you didn’t know about it. Hopefully you understand this Key Strategy. It makes for one to be open to learning. If you’re done learning, and already know what you need to do in order to solve the problems that will face you in competition, it’s not likely that you’ll come back to this blog for valuable, information. For those of you who are smart players, you know that there’s always something that can be learned. LEARN through the key strategy process, that information that perhaps no one had to tell you, but you discovered. Perhaps someone did tell you….regardless, once you’re committed to the process; you will gather golden nuggets of information along the road to improvement. Note them down in a special notebook and label it, “What I didn’t know that I didn’t know…and now know is valuable for me”.

Regarding planet Zularia, I had to name a planet that I was certain no person had ever heard of. Hence, it was a fictional name to make a point. I guess I could assign the name Zularia to a planet that is trillions of miles away…. If there is organization in charge of naming planets outside of our galaxy, well then that there is something I didn’t know I didn’t know because I hadn’t thought of it until now. Relating it to golf, any example given was subject to being known by someone. Nonetheless, here’s one for you…. Have you learned yet that hitting a golf ball to a higher elevated green will roll further than if you hit it to a green that is the same elevation from which you hit the ball?