Do you want to find out how to integrate your mind and body for a better golf swing?

Do you want to find out how to reduce injury?

Are you ready to step up your game to the next level?

GolfintheSpineR integrates what I have learned over the past 30 years into a simple approach that will give you a competitive advantage to successfully accomplish all the swing changes and mental tools that you might have in your bag.

First, let’s looks at swing mechanics. Turn on your TV and watch any professional tour player and see how they finish each shot. Luke Donald, the world’s number 1 player is a great example. He has balance and control. He is standing solid and watching his ball. Unlike the average golfer, he is NOT, falling over, falling backwards, jumping off the ground, nor twisting his feet and spinning left out of control. His balanced and controlled finish tells you a lot about his swing mechanics and the source of real power in a golf swing. Amateur golfers who are trying to get more distance often throw themselves out of position to make perfect contact with a square club face because they have lost all sense of gravity, focus, centered, and balance. They might hit it long, but probably not very straight.

Good golf instruction teachers a player to rotate around their spine and finish standing firm and balanced. Nick Faldo often talks about using the sternum as a focal point to maintain maximum spine angle for distance and accuracy, both for power and the short game. Spine angle is often discussed in reference to a negative pivot where the left shoulder (for right handed players) dips down, resulting in loss of power and a strong slice or fade. Of course we know that there are different styles and methods to swing mechanics. We see the results from Hank Haney, Butch Harmon, and Sean Foley through their tour players. However, they all have these common elements. Every good teacher addresses balance, focus, rhythm, timing, and spine angle.

Once the grip and setup are established, then a player’s ability to rotate and follow through without losing the proper and optimal spine angle becomes very important for a powerful and consistent golf swing. Flexibility is obviously important in the swing. Players with spinal problems often struggle to perform at their best. Freddie Couples received some great treatment for his spine in Germany and a few weeks later won again on the Champion’s Tour. We often hear the phrase, “swing within yourself.” What does this really mean? Many amateur players are not aware of themselves. In my golf coaching, I will always ask, “what were you aware of,” on that last shot. I often hear, “nothing.” “I was not aware of anything.” There was no awareness of body sensation, body position, balance, thoughts, emotions…nothing. With this type of player, it is difficult to accomplish, “swing within yourself,” when there is no recognition or awareness of “self.”

This idea of “self” may seem too abstract or conceptual for the average player without a Ph.D. in psychology. However, awareness, focus and the ability to reflect on what just happened all assumes someone is watching and observing what is happening. Thus, a “self” is there somewhere. The big question is how one develops and matures this sense of self for peak performance on the course. Golf is a great game because it provides an opportunity for a player to learn more about himself/herself if he or she really wants to improve. Just going to the range and pounding balls is not the roadmap for success.

Now, let’s consider the mental game taught by sport’s psychologists and mental coaches everywhere. Everyone talks about focus, concentration, the ability to visualize, the ability to stay in the moment, the ability to manage inner emotional states, the ability to stay positive, and the ability to quiet one’s mind of distracting thoughts. These are among the most important, basic principles for a sound mental game. There are other issues that do get addressed for the serious golfer that have deeper psychological roots, but the above issues are key to any success in golf or life. I have discussed in detail how to address all of these issues in my various books and CD’s. (Find the Zone II: Master the Mental Game of Golf; The Yoga of Golf; Bouncing Back: How to Recover When Life Knocks You Down; Inspiration for Meditation; and Sacred Healing: Integrating Spirituality with Psychotherapy.)

How do we make all this rather complicated and sophisticated information more easily understood and applied? GolfintheSpineR brings both the body and mind together for an integrated approach that makes a lot of sense.

What is GolfintheSpineR ? All tour players know that great golf requires both a physical and mental state of excellence. In a recent interview with David Feherty, Greg Norman told David that if he had to do it all over again, he would get more involved with a sport psychologist. So why do I talk about the spine in relationship to both the physical and mental game?

The Physical Game

The physical aspect of the game is more obvious. Spinal flexibility allows for more rotation, more stability and more fluidity in a golf swing. The spine is in the center of the physical body and is a central point of awareness for advanced players. When the spine shifts, then balance is lost along with power and control. Everything falls apart when the relationship with the spine is lost. The spine becomes to root cause and focal point for balance. The question, what does it take to keep the spine in the right position helps to identify problems with take-away, shoulder turns and follow-through. If any of these things are off, it will throw off the spine angle. It is impossible to self-correct if you are not aware of the problem. Paying attention to the spine provides a way to analyze mechanical problems and find their root cause. The head sits on top of the spine. If one’s spine is stable, then the head is still and a good golf swing results. The head does not pop up or move ahead of the ball when the spine is stable. Spinal health and spinal awareness result in a sense of being “centered.” Access to the zone is related to one’s ability to “be in the spine.” All the golf instruction in the world will not yield the desired result if a player’s sense of balance and conscious connection to the body is not addressed. Being aware of the spine brings a player to a deeper physical connection and awareness that will result in better performance. Years ago I was coaching a young female high school golfer. She wanted to develop a knock-down shot with a three quarter swing. She complained she could not do it.
I asked her what she felt in her backswing and where the club was.
She responded, “I have no idea.”
Now here was a very coordinated, healthy young girl who sure looked like she was more connected to her body than she was able to identify. I asked her if she ever did ballet.
“Sure, I had years of ballet lessons.”
Now we had something to talk about.
I said, “When you were dancing and spinning, didn’t you have a sense of your body and how you were moving?”
She replied, “Sure I did.”
OK, we had just created a realization that she did have a conscious awareness of her body from her dance background that we could bring that memory to her golf game. I asked her to pay attention to her take-away and feel how much she was turning. She quickly became aware of a ¾ turn vs. a full backswing and began to hit the shot she was looking for. This all happened in fifteen minutes. Because of her ballet training, she had body awareness and a sense of her center in the spine. Feeling these sensations from the center of her core, rather than focusing on the hands or arms, resulted in very quick learning and success. She was a much happier player!

Hatha Yoga provides some very easy, yet powerful, poses to help develop a deeper sense of spinal awareness. My book, The Yoga of Golf, has suggestions for standing poses and spinal rotation postures that will achieve this result. For example, the Tree Pose is very easy when you have your awareness centered in the spine. If you don’t, you will fall over when you attempt to stand on one leg. Without proper balance and a sense of your inner core, i.e. spine, you will fall out of balance on side hill, downhill and uphill lies.

The Mental Game

The power of spinal awareness and its relationship to consciousness and the mental game is less known. I have learned some profound things that apply to golf and peak performance as the results of thirty years of meditation and hatha yoga training and practice, a Ph.D. in psychology, and thirty years of practice as a clinical psychologist. Quite honestly, I do not know anyone in the field of golf coaching that understands the hidden potential in the spine. GolfintheSpineR unleashes a powerful energy and level of awareness that changes one’s mental and emotional states. The ancient yoga philosophy of Sankhya and Kriya Yoga explain the hidden reserve of energy that lies deep within the spine.

In normal waking consciousness the life force energy is directed outward through the five senses for hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling. The ancient rishis understood that there are actually two qualities of the mind: one identified with the physical senses and one resulting from a deeper flow of energy within the spine creating a higher level of perception and discrimination. There are three subtle currents of energy the flow along and within the spine: ida, pingula, and the sushumna. When awareness in centered deep within the spine, then the sushumna is more dominate.

When the energy is flowing outward, the left side of the brain is more activated promoting more rational thinking and more reactive responses from the primitive brain stem. The fight or flight mechanism is programed into our primitive brain stem. When the life force energy is consciously internalized in the spine and drawn up to the higher centers of the brain through breath and visualization, then the right side of the brain is more active, resulting in more intuitive knowing, less thinking, more visualization, more focus and less emotional reactivity. All of this is discussed in great detail in my two books, Sacred Healing and The Yoga of Golf.

What does this mean for the mental game? Awareness in the spine with an internalization of consciousness results in a profound shift in mental and emotional states: the bread and butter for sport’s psychology. It is often suggested that a golfer needs to focus better, concentrate better, stop reacting emotionally and visualize every shot, but there is often not much advice or direction given on how to achieve these lofty goals. Most golfers do not even realize the importance of the mental game and the value of a solid pre-shot routine. The average golfer is not even utilizing the profound and powerful techniques that will take many strokes of his/her game. The average golfers keeps doing the same thing, playing the game without any degree of consciousness and just keeps swinging away missing fairways, greens, and putts and feeling frustrated at their lack of improvement. Even with all the improvements in equipment and golf balls, the average index has not gone down. A big reason is that the average golfer is playing from the outside in and is clueless to the deeper techniques that can improve their performance. If you don’t care about your performance or self-improvement, then this information is of no value to you. However, if you have high standards for personal excellence and want to be the best you can be, then this information can be very helpful to you.

GolfintheSpineR address your state while you are playing. The Zone does not have to be a mystical state of pure chance or luck. Learning to internalize your state of awareness into the spine will result in a profound change in your perception, your ability to visualize, your ability to manage your mind and emotions, and your ability to maintain physical balance with enhanced swing mechanics; all together your score will go down and you will have more fun as you explore a new type of game.

The power of consciousness is not widely understood in our culture. All too often I see amateur players going out there without any degree of awareness. They are just swinging at the ball making the same mistakes: little self-awareness, and no self-correction. Peak performance comes from the inside out, not the other way around. If you can ground your awareness in the spine, you will see significant changes in every aspect of your life.

If you would like to know more about how to accomplish this shift, please contact me at mannr@ronmann.com.

In baseball, hitters must keep their eye on the ball to determine its speed, path, and spin so they can find the ball with their bat. In hockey, players must keep their eye on the puck and in badminton, players must keep their eye on a shuttlecock. Let’s combine these other sports and say that great athletes require fantastic hand-eye coordination to locate and hit a “moving object. “

In golf, the ball doesn’t move so do we need to “keep our eye on the ball” to locate and hit it? The answer is no. USGA engineers designed Iron Byron, a mechanical robot to determine if golf balls submitted to the USGA for approval met the appropriate requirements. This robot is capable of hitting the ball 10,000 times in a row perfectly and it was built without eyes. Many blind golfers are capable of hitting the ball better than their sighted counterparts. They can’t see the ball and they don’t have great hand-eye coordination. If Iron Byron and blind golfers are capable of hitting the ball well without great hand-eye-coordination or ever seeing the ball, why are golfers told to keep their eye on the ball?

To use hand-eye coordination like other sports it’s the moving object we’d have to see, not the ball. The ball is not the moving object in golf; the club head is. We have to see the path of the club head, its angle of approach to the ball, and its face angle to determine if anything is amiss prior to impact and then make the necessary corrections so the ball is struck near perfectly. After initiating the swing, the club head leaves our peripheral vision and doesn’t come back into view until it’s about half way down in our forward swing. How much time do we have to make the appropriate corrections before impact once the club head re-enters our peripheral vision? Snap your fingers or blink your eyes. How long did that take? That’s more time than it takes for the club head to hit the ball once it’s re-entered your peripheral vision. You have that amount of time to locate and determine the specifics of the club head’s movements, determine what is wrong, and then correct what your body is doing to get the club head on the right path, approaching the ball at the correct angle, with the clubface square to your target line. Using hand-eye coordination is humanly impossible in golf.

If we develop a fundamentally sound swing, the golf club hits the ball whether our eyes are open or closed. Since blind golfers are capable of developing sound swing fundamentals without the benefit of eyesight so are sighted golfers. Hand-eye coordination in golf is not only not required, but is detrimental to good ball striking.

I know that’s a bold statement, but think about it. We use hand-eye coordination every day, all day, in such as activities as eating, drinking, driving a car, writing, putting our glasses on or contacts in our eyes, and so on. We rely on hand-eye coordination so often and so heavily that its use has become instinctive. That means we use it without trying to or even knowing we’re using it. So when we’re hitting golf balls, our hand-eye coordination is triggered merely by looking at the ball.

I have videotaped hundreds of golfers making practice swings and then hitting balls. I always know when their hand-eye coordination automatically and instinctively kicked in. Their swings change from practice swing to hitting swing. They don’t look like the same golfer. This can’t be a mechanical problem. They can’t make a fundamentally sound or near-sound swing without a ball and lose those fundamentals when hitting balls and attribute it to mechanics. If they have a sound practice swing, it will show up when they hit a ball. If it doesn’t, it’s an attentional problem, not a mechanical one. And so the mere fact that an object must be hit causes the subconscious part of the brain to defer to an extremely well-conditioned response; in this case, its hand-eye coordination.

So simply looking at the ball, whether we’re trying to keep our eyes on it or not, activates our hand-eye coordination unless we have another skill to replace it and activate it before swinging. That skill is Visual Fixation/Attentional Focus Separation and the process to activate it is referred to as Target Orientation.

Scott Stallings, winner of the 2011 Greenbrier Classic, did not accomplish this feat by accident or luck. He did so by maximizing his potential through many, many hours of hard work and sacrifice. For instance, in 2011 alone, he and his wife have only been “home” approximately 17 days.

So, what makes a champion besides the dedication? One facet about champions is that they compete. The book, Mental Toughness Training for Golf, discusses not only the importance of competing, but ways that we can actually create pressure in practice. The following example is how a PGA Tour champion competes.

On the Wednesday morning of the 2011 AT&T National, a day before the start of the tourney, there was mostly fine-tuning of some shots and strategy work being accomplished. One just has to think about the day before a NASCAR event, (the drivers are ready) it’s just refining how the car will handle and team strategy for race-day.

So, on the massive putting green at Aronimink Golf Club, Scott, Josh (his caddy) and I devised a way to capitalize on the putting practice. First, he had to two-putt every single hole on the green (9 total holes) and he had only one (1) opportunity. Next, we increased the pressure of the drill by placing a wager, which included either my doing 100 straight push-ups OR Scott wearing Phillies gear to the Red Sox – Philly game that evening (since he LOVES the BoSox, he had an extra bit of motivation.)

Now, the following is what helped make Scott a champion. There was one brutal putt, which was a downhill, 45-footer. Josh and I had putted to it a few minutes earlier from 15-feet and we couldn’t even get the putt to stop.  The crux was that Scott had NOT PUTTED A SINGLE-PUTT on the green prior to the drill, so he had no accurate gauge of the speed. I figured he would save this putt for the end once he got a better feel of the speed to the other holes.

Scott said aloud “ I want to putt to the hardest hole first.” He lagged it to about six feet, made the two-putt, and was on his way. The picture on the side tells the story about who won the putting challenge.

This is just a snippet of why Scott Stallings is now a PGA Tour champion and how we can help our own game and life. When faced with a difficult challenge, resist the urge to finish the easier part first, and start out with the toughest piece of the task. It’s one of the simplest ways to compete and it will help build mental toughness.

“There is no comfort in sports, only opportunity”

Dr. Rob Bell is the author of Mental Toughness Training for Golf,certified sport psychology consultant, and assistant professor of sport psychology. His website is www.drrobbell.com

Having worked with professional and amateur golfers for many, many years I guarantee you that your mental approach to the game is a point of differentiation between average and great players.

The Sports Psychologist
A friend of mine is a sports psychologist from Arizona State University.  For his master’s thesis he sat off the eighteenth green for two weeks and asked each golfer one question as they walked off the green.

“How was your round?”  His findings are fascinating and provide insight into the mind of the amateur golfer.  The younger the golfer, the more joyous the response to their round.   “I hit my ball into a cactus or my buddy fell backwards into a bunker or I hit the heck out of my seven iron”, typically describing a joyous experience, not having to do with the score.

The older the golfer and the lower the handicap, the more negative the response.
“I can’t believe I missed par by one AGAIN, I stink at this game, I need a new putter”.
Does this resonate with you?  Do you react to adversity by creating more negative self talk or do you accept the score and move on?

Incorporating The Concept Of Acceptance
One thing I notice on the golf course is that the frustrated golfers walk the fairway between shots with their heads down, usually talking to themselves and breathing short, shallow breaths.

Next time you feel frustrated use the opportunity between shots to regroup and shift your thinking from aggravation to acceptance and then to the new opportunity, the next shot.  Lift your head as walk down the fairway, take in the beauty of the course, breathe deeply, focusing on relieving tension from your body and mind.

Once you stand over your next shot, visualize the exact desired outcome.  Be specific. Visualize the trajectory of the ball, exactly where you want it to land and how you want the ball to roll and finally stop.  Take one more long cleansing breath before you begin your takeaway. Focus on the tension leaving your hands, wrist and forearms.

Stuart Cink once said that he is not defined by his score.  He went on to become the number one putter on tour that year. It is hard to argue with that level of success!

Want to learn more from Katherine? Check out her products!

Expectation is a self-created pressure we need to eliminate if we want to become better golfers. It demands that we should play in a certain way, and if we don’t, something is wrong, leading to frustration and self-doubt. The general opinion is that expectation and confidence are one in the same thing. If we expect to win a tournament or expect to hit great golf shots, this will increase our confidence. But in fact the opposite is true. Confidence is how much self belief you have in executing a given shot, not trying to continually meet expectations.

Whether it be your performance relative to your pre-round driving range session, your playing partners or your last round, continuously measuring yourself will you make you frustrated and further remove you from the process needed to execute good golf shots. For example, let’s say your last round was one of your best and you are getting closer to becoming the player you always knew you could be. Then during your next round you find yourself quickly several shots over your new expectation (target) of yourself. Thoughts of “what am I doing wrong?” and “this is not how I know I can play!” will result and you will quickly find yourself becoming frustrated and losing focus over the ball.

The opposite can occur if we are playing better than our expectations. If we go into self-assessment mode and measure our performance vs our expectations, we will feel out of our comfort zone and the result is likely to be a quick retreat back to our usual level of play.

Success in golf is playing each and every shot as best you can. This sounds obvious, but your score is an aggregate of all these individual shots. We need to focus on the execution process of each individual shot (THE PRESENT), not the target of a good score (THE FUTURE). I like to tell my students to focus on the steps of their routine and make that their goal for the round instead of going out there to shoot their best score. As hard as it is to do, mark your score card, but don’t think about your running total. At the end of each hole write down the number of shots that you felt you successfully stuck to your routine. Total these numbers and make this your target for your next round. If you can make this a habit, I’ve no doubt you will start to see the results and get more enjoyment from the game whether you shoot your best score or not.

Believe that your ultimate success in the game relies on being “in the zone” for every shot and making the best decisions you can for the shot at hand. Your best golf will come when you are in the present moment for each shot and truly enjoying the experience of the game.

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Next time you play a round of golf, listen closely to your language and the words you say.  Notice how calmly or harshly your words are spoken.  Observe your tone of voice and how rapidly or slowly you speak.  Pay attention to your body language and sense how happy or tense your words make you feel.  Think of your intention (genuine or sarcastic) and what you really want to say.

For many if not most of us, words are spoken automatically and unconsciously, making the selfberating expletives for which some of us are famous take on a repetitive and addictive life of their own.  While those who seem to complain the loudest often believe that with a few choice words they will “get a bad shot out of their system,” nothing could be further from the truth. On a purely physiological level, our angry words become toxic and raw, sending stress chemicals coursing into every cell of the body which translates into states of tension, resistance and “dis-ease.” Conversely, kind, respectful words have a very different energy and feel, releasing into our bodies instructions which allow our movements to be in a peaceful and powerful Flow. On an esoteric level, which we are now looking at through the eyes of an invisible energy field that is being explored through the relatively new field of Quantum Physics, the positive or negative energy behind our words becomes a match to the golf shots we see.  Every word we speak is like a beacon or signal to which the Universe agrees, and what shows up in our golfing experience is simply an energetic match to the intensity and frequency of our thoughts, words, emotions and beliefs.  The issue with our language, however, is not with the language itself – words have no power in and of themselves – but rather with the calming or toxic energy that lies beneath the words. Conscious or unconscious to what we say, every word is immediately and powerfully assimilated in the cells of the mind/body as well as in every particle of the Universe.  Every word either empowers and strengthens our ability to perform or creates more anxiety, tension and fear. The power of the mind/body can no longer be ignored in the fields of peak athletic or human performance.

Optimal results will eventually find a way into our experience whenever we find a way to compliment and praise.  We also can do nothing but push success further away in every moment and with every word through which we are beating up on ourselves or blaming someone else. Gently guide your language and you will gently guide your mind. Change your words and you will literally change your world.

Listen to an excerpt of Tim Kremer’s Practice Music mp3:

1. Observe your environment to be able to make the best decision
2. See the shot you want to play by analyzing what is best for your game
3. Feel the shot you want to play by having a rehearsed practice swing
4. Trust the shot by letting go and focusing on the target

photo credit: jlz