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Golf Monthly - Team Agran - Article
#3
Reviewing some of Clive's more stubborn limiting self-talk and
self-beliefs, enhancing his preshot visualisation skills, and making
playing partner choices, besides various on-going mental game playing
performance improvement work, were the three main areas we covered
in this session.
By listening attentively to Clive's playing fables, of; "tee
shots are tough . . . ", I can't face that . . .", "horrible
shot . . . ." reveals a great deal about how he still thinks
about his game. Common limiting beliefs like these go to the very
heart of why most players seriously underperform, relative to their
potential, including Clive's. If you verbally beat yourself-up,
you are doing a lot more than merely playing with semantics, language
or words. You are unwittingly, successfully reinforcing your brain
and body programming at a deep level, to guarantee repeat poor
performances in those areas of your game where you talk to yourself,
or express these ideas to others, in this manner. Players get precisely
what they pay attention to - of whatever it is they want, or don't
want (poor play, hazards, past memories, etc.).
I have encouraged Clive to write down his most common negative
'what he doesn't want but expects to get' phrases, and choose a
new 'what he wants' vocabulary. Practising these words will rapidly
lower his, and your scores.
Clive, in common with most players, is sceptical and unconvinced
of the value of creating high quality preshot pictures of the flight
trajectory, and other aspects of the desired shot, in their minds-eye.
This is extraordinary good fortune for those few players who bother
to take the small amount of time and effort to learn a robust preshot
visualisation protocol properly, since in my experience power,
accuracy and consistency improvements in their game are typically
spectacular when they do. At whatever level they play. In my professional
opinion a focus on; 'seeing's the thing" NOT the 'swing's
the thing', is well proven to deliver great results. In goal setting
Clive is convinced that "you have to visualise, to actualise".
By applying these same visualisation skills to his preshot routine,
will handsomely reward Clive by rapidly improving his shot making
ability.
Choosing playing partners of different levels enables anyone to
deliberately learn, hone and enhance their mental mastery: 1. More
skilled than self - you can unconsciously 'rob' of some aspect
of superior form. 2. About same - build competitive edge, by concentrating
on the psychological side of game - not on their skills. 3. Lesser
level. Use winning situations to build confidence, and a memory
bank of positive emotions and feelings.
Performance Coaching Review
This is the transcript of a summary progress report written for
Clive after a joint working session with Nick Wright, covering
a range of mind game topics, and in no particular order:
Limiting self-beliefs
It would be my impression, that by listening carefully from time-to-time
to your language you still unconsciously run many, in playing
terms, dysfunctional linguistic patterns that are absolutely
guaranteed to unfavourably influence the outcome of many aspects
of your games. These self-limiting ('I told you so' self-judgement
of the expectation of a negative result) and ultimately self-fulfilling
beliefs noticed during conversation, included; viz;. Tee shots "are
tough", "Horrible shot", "I can't face that",
etc. These words, phrases and vocabulary are so common and so
deeply ingrained in our psyche, upbringing and culture, we just
don't notice them, nor even the behavioural sabotage they unwittingly
unleash in blocking achievements and progress, in golf, careers
and life itself.
I was wondering whether it would be a good idea for you should
take some quality time out and reflect on your vocabulary of common
words and phrases you apply to your game. Write them down, find
positive equivalents (or precisely 'what you want statements',
or 'how do you want to be different') expressions and then mentally
sub-vocalise them and adjust them as to how you want them to look,
sound and feel. If you do this you might like to share your thoughts
for comment and positive feedback. Can you not?
'Seeing's the thing' NOT the 'swing's the thing' - Pre-shot Visualisation
Protocol
The widespread misunderstanding amongst players at all levels
of the critical importance of visualisation seriously hampers rapid
scoring improvement. This is extremely good news for those few
players that invest in learning how to do it properly. It offers
a very high return on time spent. According to Jack Nicklaus, "Precise
shot placement is 50% mental picture + 40% set-up + 10% swing".
This process is only valid if you attempting to hit the perfect
shot for each particular situation. If you are unconcerned with
accuracy and distance, then there is no need to do this work.
In my opinion it is one of the very fast tracks to rapid and sustained
success. It is difficult for most players to make a connection
between 'pictures in their mind' being the most important influence
in 'hitting balls'. It is widely believed that all you need is
accurate club alignment, followed by the right clubhead angle and
speed through impact. Whilst technically correct of 'what's' required
to accomplish your goal. It obscures the less obvious, 'how to'
and highly complex body movement required to learn and master this.
I am aware of a number of simple and quick methods however, which
guarantee power, accuracy and mastery.
I sensed that in common with most players you are unconvinced
or sceptical of the value or relevance of these steps in the 'preshot
routine'. I fully understand this, since I am constantly challenged
to easily prove its relevance and effectiveness. Whilst many players
don't consciously visualise and are able to play excellent golf,
purporting to rely entirely on the swing feel, they absolutely
do visualise to some degree. Otherwise they would be unable to
remember their way to work, home, pub or the shops, just for starters.
Everybody does, though they might swear otherwise.
For example imagining in your 'minds-eye' the beginning flight
trajectory (common amongst players seeking to get the line) is
just one small part of what needs to be done for visualisation
to be truly effective. eg. you may imagine the start of the flight
off the clubhead, and the direction of the ball down the fairway,
and then fade out - that's effectively the only target instructions
you are giving your brain to instruct your body and aim the club
at.
You mentioned that you found looking down a tunnel as a constriction
for your ball off the tee. The issue of selecting a small target
may be counterproductive by having a tendency to put pressure on
yourself - small target/accuracy/achievement/failure? We will need
to do some more work on this, especially deepening your understanding
and experience. We need also to explore your contrastive and subjective
'visual' experience of good vs bad shots. This is vast field and
I will bring a few books with me for you to peruse.
You also estimated that you have had about a 1% experience of
being in 'in the zone'. This is a glimpse of your true potential.
Though there are other 'mental game fundamentals’ that we
need to concentrate on which will give higher performance leverage
at present. We also used a technique called deep trance
identification for you to experience the tee shot swing of Ernie Els. These techniques
are part of the journey in becoming a composite player. Tiger Woods
is a composite player in technical terms, ie he has modelled and
emulated the best players for each part of the game.
We also covered, and need to explore in more detail, your Recovery
strategy where you make several good shots and then a bad one and
you find recovery difficult. We will develop an approach to enable
you to recover quickly? Need firstly to elicit how you do what
you do now? Also waiting to experience Flotation and use for the
next photo shoot experience. Might consider a Board break for a
future article as a metaphor for the swing thought and the importance
of building a synesthesia between the visual image of the target
target and the right feeling to go. There may be other approaches
like the 'Old golf club technique' whilst different, may be considered.
We will do some preliminary work on that this at our next session.
- Choosing playing partners where you can deliberately learn,
hone and build mastery:
- More skilled than self - unconsciously 'rob'
of some of aspect of superior form.
- About same - to build competitive edge. Concentrate
on psychological side of game - not their skills.
- Lesser level. Use winning situations
to build confidence, and memory bank of positive emotions
and feelings. Turn-off your visual input
and mentally dissolve opponent as if does not exist. Besides
mostly being in highly suggestible state (relaxed, fixation
of attention,
etc.) on these occasions you are a primary target to model
imperfection, bad habits and mediocrity. Beware!
Golf Monthly - Team Agran - Article #1
Golf Monthly - Team Agran - Article #2
Golf Monthly - Team Agran - Article #4
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