Today’s post is a bit of a follow from yesterdays post and how seeing what you want can help achieve what you want.. The power of visualisation and mental rehearsal has been demonstrated in dozens of research studies. If you take twenty athletes of equal ability and give ten mental training they will outperform the ten who received no mental training every time. This is what’s known as the ‘head edge’. One interesting study involved college basketball players. For three months, one group shot free throws for one hour each day. Another group spent an hour each day thinking about shooting free throws. The third group shot baskets thirty minutes a day and spent thirty minutes visualising the ball going through the hoop from the foul line. Which group, at the end of the study, do you think improved its free-throw shooting the most? The third group did! The imagery had as much impact on accuracy as shooting baskets. In another case study, cited in Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, a sports psychologist worked with the United States Olympic ski team. He divided the team into two groups equally matched for ski-racing ability. One group received imagery training; the other served as a control group. The coach quickly realized that the skiers practicing imagery were improving more rapidly than those in the control group. He called off the experiment and insisted that all his skiers be given the opportunity to train using imagery. So, while these are two different sports to golf, the principle here is what visualising and pre round rehearsal can do help you game… give it a try and see how it impacts your performance!

Most people, not just golfers, underestimate the power of the mind and how the brain can sabotage performance. When a weekend golfer arrives at a water hole what is the second thing he does after fishing an old ball, a water ball-out of his bag? Stepping to the tee he tells himself, "Don't hit it in the water." What we now know in psychology, and particularly golf, is that actions follow our thoughts and images. If you say, "Don't hit it in the water? and you're looking at the water, you have just programmed your mind to send the ball to a watery grave. The law of dominant thought says your mind is going to remember the most dominant thought. Think water, remember water, and water likely is what you will get. So, rather than say "Don't hit it in the water," try another instruction, like "Land the ball ten yards to the right of the pin." You get what your mind sets. The mind works most effectively when you're telling it what to do rather than what not to do. By changing your thinking (and you can choose how you think) you can change your performance. Put another way, if you don't like the program you are watching, switch the channel! Learn to use your mind or your mind will use you. Actions follow our thoughts and images. Don't look where you don't want to go!

One of the most overlooked skills in golf isn’t the swing, it’s what you do after the shot. A good post-shot routine isn’t about pretending every shot was perfect. It’s about controlling your response so one swing doesn’t affect the next. Try this simple process: Accept it. Good or bad, the ball has gone. You can’t change it. Assess it. If needed, make a quick, objective observation. Was it the club? The strike? The decision? Keep it factual, not emotional. Move on. Once you’ve learned what you need to, let it go. Your focus should now be on getting to the next shot with a clear mind. Use a ‘closing’ trigger, such as taking your glove off or hearing the noise of the club landing in your bag, to put closure on the shot ready to move on to the next. The best golfers aren’t mentally strong because they never hit bad shots. They’re mentally strong because they recover from them quickly. Your score isn’t determined by your worst shot… it’s determined by how well you respond to it.

If you can be persistent, you will achieve it If you can be consistent, you will maintain it. PersisTENT and ConsisTENT - The two ‘Tents’ that help improve your game By being Persistent and then Consistent you can achieve and maintain your targets, not just in golf but in all elements of life. For golf specifically, one way to achieve the two 'tents' is through quality and effective practice. Be persistent by planning and structuring your practice, then be consistent by doing this on a regular basis... your golf will only get better. Give me a shout if you’d like some further help building your practice sessions!

1) Interleaved Practice Interleaving means switching between tasks. Switching back and forth between technical work and random practice, or driver and wedges, or draws and fades increases cognitive load (I.e. it forces your brain to work harder). Doing so speeds up the learning process, making you better at each individual task more quickly. 2) Visualisation Picturing a shot before you hit it provides your brain with a clear picture of what you want to the ball to do. This allows your subconscious mind to calculate the precise movements required to produce that shot. 3) Competitive Practice Playing games in practice that mimic pressure situations on the golf course prepares you for the real thing. Compete against others, play games that have a score attached or give yourself a task you have to complete before you can move on. 4) Self Talk You might not have noticed, but during every round there's an ongoing internal conversation you're having with yourselt. How you talk to yourself during this conversation is key to how you feel on the course and how you react to bad shots. There's a lot of nuance here, but a good rule of thumb is to make sure you're talking to yourself like you would a friend in the same situation. 5) Goal Setting Goals provide motivation and something to strive towards. Set Outcome Goals based on events you want to win or a handicap you want to reach. Set Performance Goals that identify key statistical areas you need to improve. And set Process Goals that you can complete every day and every week that form the pathway to where you want to get to.