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2 Oct 2018 admin

Truths Your Students Need To Hear

Golf breeds a certain amount of optimism in just about everyone who plays it, from the junior player who aspires to be a world-famous professional to the everyday golfer dreaming of shooting in the 70s. Some of this optimism is deserved; for others, it’s nothing more than a fantasy when you consider other realities.

If you’ve taught golf for a certain length of time, you will run across students who have certain goals and expectations for themselves that may or may not be realistic. They also might have certain expectations of their teacher or coach that also may or may not be realistic. Here are some things that students need to hear and understand, not only about the teaching and learning process but about themselves and how the game actually works:

Realistic expectations

If you work on what you were taught, you will improve. It might take some time, but you will improve. A lot of students seem to have this notion that they are in complete control of their bodies, and that if they are told and shown what to do, they will automatically be able to do it with no adjustment period. The fact is, it takes most people a lot of correct repetitions over several weeks, at minimum, in order to effect a change. Professional golfers who have made changes, such as Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods, have been known to not see any improvement for 18-24months while they were working to fully implement the changes. Patience is the key.

You should be clear on what your plan of action is. Proper communication is definitely something you should expect from your teacher or coach. There should be no questions in your mind about the proper course of action laid out for you when you leave the lesson tee. If there is anything you are unclear on, ask! The teacher will not take offense, and instead will be glad that you are interested enough to make sure what needs to be done.

Your teacher or coach should be well-trained. Prior to the existence of the USGTF, apprentice professionals would be charged with giving lessons, even though they never received any formal training. They were expected to learn through experience with some input from the head professional. Thankfully, those days are for the most part over. Although everyone has to start somewhere and by definition there are inexperienced instructors, if they are well trained, such as through the USGTF program, they are qualified to give instruction. Prior to the existence of the USGTF, apprentice professionals would be charged with giving lessons, even though they never received any formal training. They were expected to learn through experience with some input from the head professional. Thankfully, those days are for the most part over. Although everyone has to start somewhere and by definition there are inexperienced instructors, if they are well trained, such as through the USGTF program, they are qualified to give instruction.

Unrealistic expectations

Your teacher, not your effort, is mainly responsible for any improvement. Nothing is more frustrating to a golf teaching professional to hear that the student practiced either sparingly or not at all since the last lesson. As mentioned in the previous section, it takes a lot of correct repetitions before a change becomes automatic. A belief that still exists among some is that it takes 60 correct repetitions for 21 days to create a new habit, but the fact is these are made-up numbers that haven’t held up to the scrutiny of motor-learning studies. Factors such as inherent talent, work ethic and complexity of the change all play a role in how long it takes to change or develop a new habit.

One lesson is all you need to fix your problems. Just as one chiropractic adjustment won’t permanently fix whatever your problem is, one lesson is probably not enough to fix whatever ails your golf game. Most people need to take a series of lessons or a golf school to see some lasting change.

You’re going to play the tour one day. Virtually everyone who has played the game has had this fantasy, and for a select few, it becomes reality. Then, there are those who are actually serious about his goal. But even for them, the odds are greatly against this happening. For the PGATour, there theoretically can be a maximum of 50 rookies a year, but in actuality the number is far fewer, because many of these 50 spots are taken up by former players returning to the Tour. If you aren’t one of the very best players in your state, you have no chance. As for PGA Tour Champions (for the 50-and-over set), it’s even worse. There are only five new fully-exempt members of that tour each year with another seven conditional spots.

You can learn to be as good as you can without the benefit of instruction. For some reason, golf seems to be one sport that has a fair share of participants who take great pride in being a “self-taught” player. Most people wouldn’t think of learning to play a musical instrument without a competent teacher, or playing in a team sport where there is no coaching, but in golf, this is unfortunately commonplace. If you want to get good as good as you want, you need to get instruction from a competent teacher and/or coach.

Golf is a great game, as we all know, and is the reason we came to the game in the first place. It’s also fun, but challenging, and to attain a certain level of competency requires a certain amount of effort. It also helps greatly to have a mentor in the form of a well-qualified teacher or coach, and combined with realistic expectations, a golfer will get the most out of the game that they can.

24 Sep 2018 admin

Nerves Exist But…Anxiety Doesn’t Have To

Can butterflies really turn into full-blown anxiety and create worry, doubt and fear? Years ago, I’d get ready to give a presentation and my nerves would pop up. For me, the nerves start with the physical manifestation and then move to my brain. It would start with butterflies in my stomach and an increase in heart rate. Then it would lead to me thinking all kinds of negative, irrational stuff.

What was the outcome? Inevitably I’d get on stage and feel nervous. I’d stumble through the first five minutes stuttering. Yes, stuttering.

Recognize Anxiety

When I realized what was going on (after much insight gained through my M.A. in sport psychology), I knew I needed to change what was happening prior to my presentations. It was time to develop a pre-presentation routine. I tried several things – music, movies and meditation. They all helped to a degree, but I still wasn’t feeling as confident as I would like.

My next step was to develop a mantra, something short and sweet that would calm the nerves and get me feeling excited about presenting. My mantra was and still is, “I am so excited.” I sometimes add, “I can’t wait to do this!” My nerves start the night before a presentation. As soon as I start to feel the nerves, I say my mantra, out loud (if I am alone) or in my head. Two seconds later, when the nerves pop up again, I say my mantra. Two seconds after that, when they are still there, I say my mantra again. It takes some persistence.

Reality of Anxiety

Anxiety is something everyone deals with at some level. There are three important things to understand about anxiety:

1. Nerves, which we often interpret as anxiety, don’t have to get that big. Learn to let the nervous thoughts flow in and flow out. If you add to those thoughts, you make them bigger, and that’s when the thoughts grow and become full-blown anxiety. 2. Nerves will always exist. They are the way our brain tells our body that something big or important is about to happen. 3. You do have a choice how you deal with them.

Anxiety is a negative emotional state often characterized by worry, doubt, fear and nervousness. Anxiety appears cognitively through worry and fear. It also appears somatically through things like butterflies and increased heart rate.

There are many theories on anxiety. One is called catastrophe theory. Catastrophe theory states that low worry, increased arousal, and somatic anxiety are related to performance in an inverted U-way. With a lot of worry, the increases in arousal improve performance to a person’s optimal zone. If arousal continues beyond the zone, there is a rapid and dramatic decline in performance. Once a person’s performance has rapidly declined due to increased arousal levels, they would need to greatly decrease their physiological arousal before being able to regain previous performance levels.

Key Considerations of Anxiety

There are four key considerations to think about when it comes to anxiety:

1. Identify your optimal arousal-related emotions. Think of arousal as an emotional temperature and arousal regulation skills as a thermostat. Your goal is to find your optimal emotional temperature (under what conditions you perform optimally) and then learn how to regulate your thermostat. Regulating your thermostat is done by either psyching up or psyching down. 2. Recognize how your personal and situational factors interact. It’s important to understand the interaction of personal factors (self-esteem, state, and trait anxiety) and situational factors (event importance and uncertainty) to get the best predictor of arousal, state anxiety and performance. 3. Recognize your signs of arousal and anxiety. You can better understand your anxiety level when you become familiar with the signs and symptoms of increased stress and anxiety. Learn how to regulate the levels of symptoms based on your optimal performance level. The quantity of symptoms depends on the individual. It’s the quality that’s important to keep in mind. Try to notice changes in these variables between low-and high-stress environments and learn to make changes when necessary. Here are some of them:

Signs of Anxiety Cold, clammy hands, Butterflies, Feeling ill Frequent urination, Profuse sweating, Headache Negative self-talk, Cotton mouth, Increased muscle tension, Difficulty sleeping, Inability to concentrate

4. Develop your confidence and perceptions of control. You can develop confidence by being positive and putting yourself in positive situations/environments. When you are positive, you surround yourself with other positive people and positive situations/environments. One other way to develop confidence is by learning to feel okay about mistakes.

Deal With Anxiety

Self-reflection is a critical component of being a consistent athlete. After a performance, write down how you felt before, during and afterwards (positive and negative). Keep track of your thoughts, feelings, physiological symptoms, your perception about whether the performance was easy, moderate or hard; what importance did you place on it, etc. You can use this information to become aware of what helps you play well and what gets in the way of your performance. Self-reflection allows you to see the patterns and adjust the negatives to make a more positive change.

Other techniques to deal with anxiety:

•Smile when you feel the anxiety. It’s difficult to be mad when you are smiling, and it takes the edge off anxiety-producing situations. •Think fun. Highly skilled athletes have a sense of enjoyment and fun while they are performing. Most of them look forward to the challenge of pressure situations. This does not mean they don’t get nervous. •Breathe. Breath control and focus produce energy and reduce tension. •Use a mantra. Saying and thinking personally-generated positive words or phrases can be energizing and activating. Some examples are: I can do it, push to the top, I can present this material as well as anyone else, etc. •Build confidence with a pre-performance routine. Once you perfect some of the techniques for dealing with your anxiety, you can incorporate these into a pre-performance routine. A pre- performance routine is a systematic sequence of preparatory thoughts and activities you use to concentrate effectively before performing. These routines help train your mind to focus on what’s important versus focus on the anxiety. By concentrating on each step of a well-thought-out routine, you learn to focus on what is in your control.

Don’t try these for the first time the day of your performance. All the above techniques for dealing with anxiety take practice. It’s something that you want to get in the habit of developing during less-pressure training sessions, so you have a fully developed, personalized plan for the big game day, just as you would do for the physical aspects of your performance.

Transform Your Anxiety Into Your Zone

Your performance can be hindered significantly by how far your anxiety pushes your level of arousal. At the lower end of the arousal scale, an athlete is not aroused enough to perform optimally. With a little psyching up, you can find your zone or optimal performance level. This zone is very small as compared to the lower and upper ends of the arousal scale. That is why it takes a lot of awareness, understanding and refinement to stay in that zone and not drop off the other side into the psyched-out zone, where performance drastically declines.

Remember, you aren’t going to change your anxiety levels overnight, but the great news is you can immediately begin to become aware of what your anxiety levels are and almost immediately figure out how to work on regulating your anxiety for optimal performance.

Dr. Cleere is an Elite Performance Expert and can be reached through her website www.DrMichelleCleere.com. She can also be accessed on Facebook and Twitter.