Dr Sasho MacKenzie, sports biomechanist, has spent years studying why and what takes place in the golf swing.

In this first episode of the Golf Science Lab we’ll talk all about his opinions, research, and what it means for you, the golfer. It’s a candid look into golf biomechanics (Dr MacKenzie’s speciality) and the implications of the research he’s been doing.

Listen to the conversation below and browse the story to view some insights into golf science whatever way you’d like.

  Golf science is simply the study of things related to golf.

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Check out some education on golf science with biomechanics expert Dr Sasho MacKenzie
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It could have anything to do with the best way to grow grass on the green to the best way to swing a club. I think that’s at least what it is in my head and that probably primarily stems from the world scientific congresses of golf which has covered all things related to golf science for the past few decades. Where I would like to see it go is maybe more on the direction of say track and field. If you look at all the track and field coaches, they are coaching long jumps. I am a university track coach and I go to professional development stuff with my track coach hat on and I listen to Olympic coaches talk about the best way to coach long jump. What’s interesting is that 99% of Olympic long jump coaches all understand the biomechanics. So if you polled a whole bunch of Olympic long jump coaches and you said what would be the ideal knee angle that take off for an athlete that has a hundred meter sprint time of this. They would be able to give you a good example. Or if you ask a question what would the idea take off angle or what is the best mechanics to jump this far? They will have the same answers. All that they are going to be different on is how you coach the athlete to improve upon those things. The mechanics of it is all pretty much send down and decided upon we are all working from virtually the same model and I really like to see golf instruction get there or at least try to move in that same direction. Right now, I think the average golf instructor doesn’t even realize that it’s helpful to have a model of the cause and effect factors in the golf swing. They do in some extent in their head and they think these are important but very few people in my mind have a clear picture of what that is or how it should be organized in their head; let alone everybody having the single model to work from.

  I think there is a natural tendency to want to have golf swings to look aesthetic. There also seems to be this overriding desire to want to have stuff move on the back swing and the down swing in the same way.  We hear it constantly with most logic being that the golfer doesn’t have to reroute it or make a compensation. It’s not like we’re tracing out a path through the snow and therefore it’s going to be easier to follow that path back to where you started. There is absolutely no reason in my mind scientifically why you want to move things in the same way in the back swing and down swing.

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There is absolutely no reason in my mind scientifically why you want to move things in the same way…
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There is definitely no cause and effect link there. But I think 50 years ago 3D measurements were very challenging and you just look at 2D videos and say “that looked pretty plane” or “some of the better golfers look like they are moving their club in the same back swing and down swing plane and with the hands moving in the same plane.” It maybe was a bit intuitive to think that was a good thing; moving on the same plane and that meant less error. I don’t really know. But really it’s not about just what the club is dong or just with the hands doing, it’s the relationship between the two that actually matters. So saying you want to see the club dissect the forearm or you want to see this club line up at a certain line on the screen in a down the line view, really it doesn’t involve much wider in my opinion.

There are a couple of words that I will bring up—scientific terms—internal validity and external validity.

External validity is kind of a measure of how closely it represents what’s actually happening in the real world.

Internal validity means the result you get is exactly due to the things you have manipulated in your experiment.

So forward dynamics has really high internal validity. I know that any change that I get in club head speeds say with my model was due to whatever change I made with my model.

If I change the timing of the wrist torque and I see a club head speed change I know it was exactly due to the wrist torque because everything else stayed the same.

I can’t take a real golfer and say change your wrist toque by this much I want to see the change in club head speed. I have no idea how the other stuff changed.

But to Nick’s point, how well does your model actually represent what a real person can do? And there is a whole lot of ways you can try to check that off.

There had been a bunch of studies before the forward dynamic model that have tried to represent say the way muscles work. So my equations for the way the muscles work are based on all of those other studies. So hopefully the representation of the models are accurate.

And then there are ways to check whether the math is correct.

So there are little checking functions built in to make sure that the amount of work the golfer does in the club actually equals how much energy the club change by.

Then you just have common sense things like, what’s the club head speed, what’s the path, does it look like a golf swing—for me those were the biggest things.

And then maybe the more technical to do it in a paper would be to say can I make my model swing like a real golfer. So I would get a real golfer in the lab, I would hook him up with all the markers all over them to an inverse dynamics assessment and say here is the force and torques they applied to the club, here is the way they move their segments, can I make my model do that?

The answer is yes and therefore you can say it’s pretty representative of a real golfer.

Dr. MacKenzie completed a PhD in Sports Biomechanics at the University of Saskatchewan, which focused on 3D forward dynamics simulation of the golf swing.

He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Human Kinetics at St. FrancisXavierUniversity and his research interests lie in the optimization of human movement with a strong emphasis on sport performance.

His research encompasses both optimal sport movement patterns as well as the most advantageous training techniques. He has conducted, presented, and published research on putting, shaft dynamics, 3D mechanics of the swing, shoe fitting, and the role of center of pressure in the golf swing.

My research interests are centered on the optimization of human movement in sport. My current research endeavors range from optimizing the biomechanics of athlete training techniques to customizing the properties of the golf club to a player’s swing.

My approach to solving problems on the optimization of human movement is founded on the development of forward dynamic models. Recently I have been programming genetic algorithm routines to determine the optimal timing of muscle activation patterns in my human models.

Guest Commentary from Nick Chertock

Nick is an avid student of golf and is known as an organizer of Golf Fitness Professionals, Biomechanists, and Golf Teaching Pros.

You can learn more about him by listening to this interview or check out his mission and site below.

The average handicap in the U.S. has been 16-20 for fifty years. Even with better clubs, balls, yardage information, and improved course conditions, most players are still not breaking 90, even those who’ve played hundreds of rounds of golf. GolfProgress is focused on the intermediate player (8-30 index) who has reached a plateau and wants badly to make drastic improvement in their game, despite the many pressures of life that restrict our time, money, and energy.

The post Understanding the “why” Behind Your Golf Swing with Golf Biomechanics Expert Dr Sasho MacKenzie appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Trillium Rose is the head director of instruction of Woodmont Country Club. She also has a Masters Degree in Motor Learning and Control which has “really helped shape my perspective and how I approach people’s learning, how they change their habits, and how improve their habits or learn new ones.”

Today we’re talking about what golf research is and how we’ve become a little confused with the role research vs inferences and observations plays in the growth of golf.

What I’m referring to by the scientific process, is the ongoing conversation among investigators who publish their experiments and findings in peer-reviewed journals. When I use the word, “science”, I am thinking of a systematic approach to asking a question.

I love the fact that people are folding science into the conversation about golf and I think that science has been an incredible way for people to learn more about their practice.

Sometimes though I wonder whether we are not mixing up observation, inferences, or generalizations with actual science and research that has been put through the scientific process.

When I think of research, you might have a hypothesis and you prepare a very rigorous, organized approach to testing a hypothesis. It’s not just collecting a pool of a hundred or a thousand participants.

I get a little uneasy when we use the word “research” if it is not actually from a scientific perspective. We’re looking for something that is peer reviewed, from a journal, that has been part of the scientific conversation.

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Sometimes I wonder whether we are not mixing up observation or inferences with actual science…
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One study within a peer reviewed journal is like one little stone, and you can’t make a huge conclusion from one little stone.

You have to acquire lots of different pieces of an issue. Science moves very slowly and very rarely are there silver bullets that explain everything. It’s not like wow, ta-da I decided this because I looked at 150 people hitting wedge shots.

#1 – Don’t think you’re doing scientific research if you’re just making observations.

#2 – Don’t think because you read one journal article that journal article explains everything.

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One study within a peer reviewed journal is like one piece of the puzzle. Keep searching and…
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Golf pros have an unregulated space, so anyone can make any claim, and who is to say that they right are wrong.

We are surrounded by best practices models “I like that person and I think they are successful as a teacher, therefore I am going to assume that everything they say is right“.

With the start of science becoming more common in the conversation we have to understand how the scientific process works before we give too much credence to it.

Academics, that are attached to universities don’t necessarily have the access to as many golfers as we do as instructors. I think we are in an incredible position to work as coordinators and facilitators.

We know the right questions to ask because our boots are on the ground. And we do have really valid experiences that have pushed golf instructions.

I think we have done incredible jobs to get us this far but we could actually push it even farther if we were working with academics hand and hand. Not trying to do what they do but working with them.

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It’s time that golf instructors start working with academics to advance golf science
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Trillium is the Head Director of Instruction at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland. With over a decade of experience as a golf instructor, Trillium’s knowledge of teacher effectiveness, mechanics and practice training have proven highly successful. On one side of the spectrum, she has taken single digit handicaps down to scratch and on the other side she has guided novices through their first experiences on the golf course. She was recognized as one of “America’s Best Young Teachers” by Golf Digest (2012 and 2014) followed by a “Best Teacher in State” by Golf Digest (2012).

Trillium works with and enjoys golfers of all ages and skill levels. Her passion for teaching young players has been honored with a distinction as a US Kids Master Teacher (2013) and US Kids Top 50 Teacher (2009, 2010, 2012).

Trillium credits her five seasons working for and training under Jim McLean at the Jim McLean Golf School at Doral for her technical background in teaching. She also credits Dr. Rob Neal, Karen Harrison, Dr. Debbie Crews, Dr. Tim Lee, Dr. Richard Magill, Dr. Steve Silverman, Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, Dr. Rick Jensen and Bob Toski as influences in her teaching approach.

A graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University with a master’s degree in Motor Learning and Control, she also has a formal education in the science behind how people acquire and adapt skills. Her area of expertise is in designing and implementing curriculums that develop the golf athlete specifically with targeted practice plans. Her passion is developing golfers with maximum efficiency.

She has lectured on motor learning and control, been on numerous radio shows, appeared on television and has published been in top golf periodicals. She is an active member of the community and contributes her time to the First Tee to help provide access to golf to those who would otherwise not have the opportunity.

Trillium’s Website
Trillium on Twitter

The post 1.1 – Interpreting Golf Research with Trillium Rose appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Dr Tim Lee is one of the experts in motor learning and he’s giving us an introductory look at how we’ve been falling short in our golf practice and learning environments.

In this episode you’ll learn the nature of golf, what you need to know about random and block practice, and the actions you should start taking to create a better learning environment.

I would think you have to be courageous to say “my current way of practice isn’t working and I need to try something different“.

I am not going to beat balls or as Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson say; scrape and hit, where I just pull a ball in, hit it and then pull another ball in and hit it again. Some people don’t even change their grip, just pull the ball in and hit it.

I think it takes courage and conviction to say okay this isn’t working for me, I need to try something different.

Hitting ball after ball is actually easy. But as we all know golf is not a particularly easy game. If you try to make it easy on the range you might be fooling yourself.

Something that adds a little bit more difficulty to practice may end up benefiting you in the long run by being able to take that skill to the course.

During the initial stage of practice; block practice results in better performance. So if you can imagine doing something 18 times in a row, you get better doing that much quicker than you do random practice.

If your goal is to make a quick adjustment to the task then block practice would have an advantage.

The block practice test group does very well during the initial assessment, but when they came back they did very, very poorly. In fact, they performed as if they had not ever practiced the task before.

The random group on the other hand, even though they had not improved as much during the initial stage of testing they seem to retain what they have improved very well.

The point is that block practice is good if you want to show some temporary effects but if you want long-terms benefits and transfer ability you are better off with random practice.

That analogy would be studying for an exam, if you want to retain information long enough to be relatively successful on a test and an examination, cramming is not a bad strategy. But the retention of that information will be very low.

My ideal driving range would have the kinds of things that you find on a golf course like sidehill lies, rough, like bunkers, and objects that you have to hit around.

Those are not typically the things you find on a driving range and yet those are things that you encounter on the golf course. But when you do encounter them you’re unaware of how to deal with them because you’ve never “practiced” that type of shot.

I never had this problem on the range before, how am I going to deal with it now?

I guess one of the things that I have been most proud over the years was a little book that I wrote a few years ago that came out of the course that I taught at McMaster and it’s called Motor Control in Everyday Actions which is my attempt to bring the research out into—how the research help to explain things that we do every day or things that we encounter every day.

Get your copy of Motor Control in Everyday Actions

Timothy D. Lee, PhD, is a professor in the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has published extensively in motor behavior and psychology journals since 1979. More recently, he has contributed as an editor to Journal of Motor Behavior and Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport and as an editorial board member for Psychological Review. Since 1984 his research has been supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Lee is a member and past president of the Canadian Society for Psychomotor Learning and Sport Psychology (SCAPPS) and a member of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA), the Psychonomic Society, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. In 1980 Dr. Lee received the inaugural Young Scientist Award from SCAPPS; in 1991-92 he received a Senior Research Fellowship by the Dienst Onderzoekscoordinatie, Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium; and in 2005 he presented a prestigious Senior Scientist Lecture at NASPSPA.

In his leisure time, Dr. Lee enjoys playing hockey and golf. He has maintained a lifelong fascination with blues music and would one day love to put years of motor learning study into practice by learning to play blues guitar.

The post 1.2 Stop Wasting Time on the Driving Range with Dr Tim Lee appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Today’s episode is all about learning and performance in golf and how this understanding should affect the way you practice and learn golf. Our two guests for today’s episode are Dr Robert Bjork, Distinguished Research Professor, and Adam Young, golf coach and author of The Practice Manual

We’re answering questions like “Do we trick ourselves into thinking we’re improving, learning, and actually getting better?” and “What should we be going for in our learning environment?”. Start listening below!

It’s very easy for people to think that are current performance during the training and learning process is an accurate index of learning. Often it’s not only not accurate, it’s very, very misleading. That’s because conditions that can lead to rapid improvement in performance don’t support learning on long-term.

When most people think about practice it simply means how well they’re hitting the ball right then and how they feel about their swing.

Primarily they take one club, hit balls in rapid succession, hitting one then raking a ball over and hitting another, admire the ball against the sky, never having actually aimed at anything.

That will lead to good performance because in part if you hit a good shot, you’ll drag a ball over and do what you just did. Very little learning happens with that kind of blocked mass practice.

Most people instinctively feel that if they are performing well, then they are learning and so changing that mindset is going to be the biggest battle for the industry.

Conditions that appear to create challenges for the learner often appear to be slowing down the learning process. We’ve come to label those desirable difficulties and they can actually enhance long-term learning.

So it’s a major factor and it’s one basic reason why people do not practice in an optimal and why instructors often don’t choose optimal conditions of instruction.

We can fake learning during a lesson.

If we make a pupil stand there with a 7-iron, hitting to the same target over and over again, then they are going to be performing pretty well.

But is that actually going to be transferable? Is that going to retain?

And the answer to that is often not.

It’s going to be a much lower rate of retention. But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t do that; as instructors, we have to balance out the expectation levels of the pupils as well as what is good for them.

If we just did what was good for a pupil, we’d have them all random practicing most of the time. It’s not always the case.

Some examples where that’s not true maybe if we are new to a person, then we might want them to stay in block practice mode just until they get accustomed to it. So in the early stages of learning that’s okay and it builds confidence too, which is important for a person to feel like they are learning at least.

But once they get to a certain level, then we want to switch over to a more random practice. So once the mode of program is there, or built, we want to start improving our access to it and that’s when random practice comes in.

One concept to improve your practice is varying the conditions of practice rather than keeping them constant and predictable. Simply introducing variations whether it’s clubs, targets, anything.

I mean you go somewhere to learn tennis say, they will work you on your forehand and then they will work you on your backend and on the serve, it will virtually always be this notion we’ll work on one thing at the time.

But what research is you are ought to interleave the practice of those things.

You won’t look like you are making as much progress but your longterm learning and retention will be much better.

That’s all related to what’s one of the most reliable effects on all of work on learning which is called the spacing effect that said if you are going to study something twice or practice something twice, and you could do those two sessions right in a row, or you could do one session, go on to do other things and then come back and then do another session. Long-term learning is much better when you space those practice or study sessions.

Dr Robert Bjork

Robert A. Bjork (Ph.D., Stanford University; B.A., Minnesota) is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training.

He has served as Editor of Memory & Cognition (1981-85) and Psychological Review (1995-2000), Co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (1998-2004), and Chair of a National Research Council Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance (1988-1994).

He is a past president or chair of the American Psychological Society (APS); the Western Psychological Association; the Psychonomic Society; the Society of Experimental Psychologists; the Council of Editors of the American Psychological Association (APA); and the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology. He is a recipient of UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award; the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientist Lecturer and Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Awards; the American Physiological Society’s Claude Bernard Distinguished Lectureship Award, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists’ Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Adam Young

Adam has studied everything from motor learning research to brain function. He combines knowledge in many different fields to make a more coherent picture of the golfer. Adam possesses a sound understanding of the technical elements of the swing, yet understands that great golf is much more than just the way you swing the club.

Adam currently teaches golfers the importance of developing skill as well as technique, and builds their games as a whole – including strategic and psychological strength. Adam’s theories are cutting edge, utilizing much of the newest research in the field of learning. He presents them in an easy to understand way that will make you revolutionize how you learn the game.

Adam has worked at some of the top facilities in the world, including the Leadbetter Academies and the World famous Turnberry Resort. He currently teaches at one of Europe’s most prestigious resorts in La Manga Club, Spain. He is also Author of “The Practice Manual: The Ultimate Guide for Golfers”, a bestselling Golf book on Amazon.

Adam Young’s Website and Blog
Adam on Twitter

The post 1.3 Performance and Learning with Dr Robert Bjork and Adam Young appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

How do we explain great players? And what can we discover when we ask questions like. “How do PGA tour players become PGA tour players?”

We’re sitting down with two guys, Graeme McDowall and Peter Arnott, who have some interesting concepts that might explain away a lot of “luck” and “mystery”

Ecological psychology is really the study of how organisms act in their environment, how they adapt and how they become functional in their environments.

One of the key concepts explains we are able to directly perceive our environment and we are able to scale movement solutions to that environemnt.

So it reverses the paradigm.
It says that first of all you’ve got to find the problem and come up with a solution.

With ecological dynamics approach don’t give the organism any solutions just give it appropriate problems and let the organism (golfer) come up with the solution.

Because we are all different in the sense that we are unique, we act with creativity and novelty and you see all these guys in the PGA Tour with different movement patterns but they are effectively doing the same thing and that is behaving functionally in the environment.  Each of them has come up a unique solution to a problem.

The human system is very smart. It has evolved to adapt to the demands of his environment and see these are empirical chase-able theories and facts that you put down that we can present a lot of literature to support these in motions

We just need to provide it with an appropriate environment and an appropriate environment and an appropriate level of development and the whole organism is capable of whacking a whole things out and you’ll have such as self-organization.

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Approriately challenging environments = Better golfers
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One of the great examples is from Padraig Harrington when he talks about his junior golf development.

He talks about being a part of a group of players who used to play games for money every day and quite simply, if you couldn’t hole a putt for money, you had to leave the group. If you couldn’t develop that competency, if your skill couldn’t emerge to a high enough level you would have to leave the group because you couldn’t afford to be a part of this group.

Padraig talks about never ever being concerned with technique but only that they knew how to get the ball in the hole.

We talk about this certain illusion form following function.

Typically when you look at the PGA tour and you see all of these different golf swings, grips, and techniques.  Different techniques you wouldn’t necessarily want to teach someone to do. What you are seeing there is people who have learned to do something so that’s function.

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Function > Form = Better results on the golf course
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Learn to get the ball in the hole, “This is the way I get the ball in the hole, my technique has just emerged”. It doesn’t look necessarily particularly standard.

It doesn’t always look optimal but I am going to get this ball in the hole because those are the demands of the environment placed on me.

That’s what Harrington is describing here. He is saying that the environment was such growing up that if you couldn’t learn to hole puts for money then you have to leave our group.

You see a skill being emergent; they didn’t really concentrate on the technique they were just figuring out a way of getting that ball in the hole because of the constraints that were part of the environment

About Graeme McDowall

Graeme has an MPhil in Sports coaching from the University of Birmingham and is a full time Golf and Sports coaching lecturer at the SRUC in Scotland. He is also an associate lecturer and a PhD researcher at the University of Abertay Dundee. His main area of research is skill acquisition in sport and as well as being a practitioner in this area with the high-performance golf programme at the SRUC, he has worked with coaches in rugby and football.

Graeme is currently involved with some of the world’s leading experts in non-linear pedagogy, in a project aimed to bring coaches, academics and education professionals together to raise standards in player development.

Follow Graeme on Twitter Here

About Peter Arnott

Pete Arnott is the Teaching Professional at Craigmillar Park Golf Course.

Pete is currently studying a MRes in skill acquisition and has worked with all levels of golfers using a constraints-led approach from novice to European Tour Player.

Indeed, recently one of his Star pupils, Nastja Banovec won a very prestigious Professional Tournament (The Paul Lawrie Invitational) whilst still an Amateur.

Peter has also just recently returned from talking to over one hundred delegates from all sports at the English Institute of Sport on how he puts ‘science’ into practice and has been asked to talk at several high-profile institutions as a result.

Basically Peter specialises in creating effective practice environments, which enable a greater transfer from practice to play.

Follow Peter on Twitter Here

The post 1.4 How Good Golfers Get Good with Graeme McDowall & Peter Arnott appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

What if tournaments and potentially “stressful” rounds of golf suddenly seemed easy? Well that’s what we’re going to talk about today with a constraint based approach to coaching and learning.

The general tenant we’re going to talk about with Peter Arnott and Graeme McDowall being – Your solution to problems are different from anyone else’s, so let the individual find a way that is fit for them to solve that problem instead of putting them in positions.

Constraint led approach is creating problems and challenging individuals to come up with solutions to those problems.

These solutions could be a change in our motor pattern, change in a strategy, change in a way of thinking.

An example of a constraint based task from Peter Arnott

I gave the student a task, basically to make six pars in a row but he was only allowed to go to for the green if he hit it past 285 yards. If he hit it shorter than 285, he had to miss the green and get up and down for par.

If he had bogey he had to start the task again. So basically I was pushing him towards hitting the ball really hard. If you’re throwing a ball really hard or hitting something hard, you’re not really thinking about it you’re just hitting it hard.

Another Example

If we are doing training with scratch or plus handicap golfers their bad miss off the tee tends to be to the left.

So I few make the task like the six pars, which is very demanding actually and we say well any par four or par five that the left-hand rough is out of bounds.

So all of the sudden they are standing up there knowing that they are misses left and knowing left out of bounds is not pretty much very mess up the whole task but then again it’s forcing them to come up with a solution. That solution might be to change the motor pattern or to it might just be to strategize differently. So I need you to come up with a different strategy here; how I get the most of my game as it come with us.

Aa central concept of the constraints-led approach…

A central concept of the constraints-led approach is that we have been there and become comfortable in what you are doing because as soon as you become comfortable, you are becoming specialize.

You are becoming very prone to not be able to deal with adversity because you are becoming comfortable in that.

That typically happens when we become overspecialize into just playing in an environment that they are comfortable with.

So the constraint led approach in the program is initiated in the college, pretty much based around that concept.

The kind of feedback we have had from players who gone through that program is that when we go away and play tournaments they feel like they have trained beyond the demands of that tournament because the type of training that is done.

They don’t always get a great look at the golf course, but because they philosophically trained in an environment that is very non-stable then we feel this sort of calmness in this environment.

We don’t feel overrun by it and it’s the key attribute that we feel that they need.

The core philosophy of our training program is this a version of this notion to keep them away from stability that too much stability is a bad thing and therefore every time you come up and trained in our environment is going to feel pretty non stable to you because the performance environment is a little bit like that.

Whereas you look at the success that Tiger Woods has had over the last couple of decades. He is the guy who probably had been best at being comfortable when it gets uncomfortable. The guy who can adapt to his environment the best.

Here is another great example of that. You have guys that go through the program and they say that nothing is flustering me anymore and typically the reason they get for that is because they actually feel like their training environment is more difficult than their performance context.

So your solution to problems are different from mine. So it’s letting the individual find a way that is fit for them to solve that problem instead of putting them in positions.

About Graeme McDowall

Graeme has an MPhil in Sports coaching from the University of Birmingham and is a full time Golf and Sports coaching lecturer at the SRUC in Scotland. He is also an associate lecturer and a PhD researcher at the University of Abertay Dundee. His main area of research is skill acquisition in sport and as well as being a practitioner in this area with the high-performance golf programme at the SRUC, he has worked with coaches in rugby and football.

Graeme is currently involved with some of the world’s leading experts in non-linear pedagogy, in a project aimed to bring coaches, academics and education professionals together to raise standards in player development.

Follow Graeme on Twitter Here

About Peter Arnott

Pete Arnott is the Teaching Professional at Craigmillar Park Golf Course.

Pete is currently studying a MRes in skill acquisition and has worked with all levels of golfers using a constraints-led approach from novice to European Tour Player.

Indeed, recently one of his Star pupils, Nastja Banovec won a very prestigious Professional Tournament (The Paul Lawrie Invitational) whilst still an Amateur.

Peter has also just recently returned from talking to over one hundred delegates from all sports at the English Institute of Sport on how he puts ‘science’ into practice and has been asked to talk at several high-profile institutions as a result.

Basically Peter specialises in creating effective practice environments, which enable a greater transfer from practice to play.

Follow Peter on Twitter Here

The post 1.5 Make Golf Feel Easy (Constraint Based Learning) with Graeme McDowall & Peter Arnott appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule, but does it apply to golf? And what do you need to know about it?

Today’s guest Dr Bhrett McCabe a Performance and Sports Psychologist is going to talk all about the 10,000 hour rule and give some actionable advice on what you should be doing to better structure your training and learning.

It’s very easy for us to tell our players “you just got to put in the 10,000 hours and you are going to reach success“. It came about because of this whole belief system that talent is not really a true thing.

I don’t really believe that and I don’t believe that because there are certain people that I see who have just as an inability to put a ball and a club together.

I look at people, for instance, Rookie of the Year last year by the name of Odell Beckham Jr. I went to school with his mom and dad at LSU. I was also at school with Shaquille O’Neal and I played with other guys on the LSU baseball team that are in the hall of fame, baseball hall of fame. They have freaking talent. Odell Beckham’s parents were football players and track athletes. Now, we want to assume that he and I have the same abilities, DNA, we call it talent. The same capacity to perform at that skill.

Where we’re making the mistake is we’re assuming that talent doesn’t matter and it’s all about how hard you work. So the reason the 10,000 hour rule irks me is that sometimes we just have to do with what we have and it’s not about doing more. It’s about doing it better.

It’s not Gladwell who did the research, it was Ericsson—showed that it’s not so much how many hours you should put in but it’s deliberate, purposeful, structured practice.

In other words, you have to have a formula for what you do. But, it’s kind of like saying “Hey we have to lay more myelin for in the motor learning.” We take information, we take it out of the context.

Here’s the thing with the 10,000-hour rule, I don’t think and if there has been please let me know a prospective study that is showing that the 10,000-hour rule works. Everything has been done in retrospect.

In the field of research, human behavior and all the other kinds of research that go on we start with kind of ideas and observation that we move to retrospective analysis then we move to prospective.

People who are better at their craft put in more and better work but to say that it’s just more work. I think it’s where we’re making the mistake.

You have to be structured in the foundations, the core that you build your skill from. It typically comes down to two or three critical components.

When I go out to the golf course, there are two or three things that every swing lesson I ever take come back to.

Those are my foundations. If I can master those two or three things, then the fourth, fifth and sixth problems that usually somebody walking on the range says, “Hey it looks like your hands are getting open on address.” That’s completely irrelevant to my foundation, so you know it’s something not to focus on.

Then, you have to move into structured, kind of simulation practice.

After the foundations we move into performance practice. But within performance there are a couple of theories. You have to have some simulation. You have to on a range and a controlled environment, challenge yourself through performance-based training.

Now within that, there has to be failures and options. But it’s a little bit more of a controlled environment.

Then, we move into simulated style competitions. Not simulations but simulated, so we are going to go on the golf course and practice on variable environment.

On the range, we have a controlled environment. We train too often in a controlled environment but play in a variable. I want to move us to the variable of our environment as soon as possible.

Then, we have to take the learnings of a competitive environment, which is being in the heat of the moment where everything is at risk and we have to vulnerable.

If we don’t have those factors, they are not learning, all we do is rehearsing.

You know I think the other thing too is it’s important that if we don’t induce failure in our practice, then we are not really pushing ourselves to our limits.

Failure is something that is this generation is going through. Failure is tough because we don’t always feel like we have many chances and I know if I have a business opportunity I sit there and say, if I don’t get deal, I don’t know if another one is going to come around.

They always come around if you continue to do good work.

We have to be growth mindset.

What is a growth mindset?

It’s about being open and if we look at it from a mind from this perspective, it’s about being accepting of the outcome.

It’s about learning in everything. We are creatures of learning and engagement.

We’re organisms for growth and that’s what we need to be. So if we don’t fail on our practice, you know we are not training to be and I don’t mean this in a negative way to any figure skaters out there but we are not training to be figure skaters where we rehearse a routine, the environment is the same and it’s who can do that to their best of their ability.

Golf, baseball, basketball—all these competitive sports have for the most part variable environments and it requires us to be able to push through failure on a daily and a minute by minute basis to be accepting of outcomes but instead to be locked in the desires of what we want.

About Dr. Bhrett McCabe, PHD,

Dr. McCabe combines his personal competitive experiences, academic credentials, and collective perspective to serve as a clinical sports psychologist that differentiates his work from the field. Over the past 8 years, he has served as a sports psychologist for athletes looking to improve their performance or overcome an injury, for coaches looking to improve their communication and motivational skills, for teams looking to deliver on expectations, and corporations looking to maximize the effectiveness of their employees. Whether through his One Percent Principle or through his MindSide platform for success that involves attention to details with disciplined execution, Dr. McCabe continually demonstrates his ability to take the difficult and make it easy for clients and coaches alike.

Dr. McCabe is a licensed clinical psychologist, a graduate of Louisiana State University (BA, MA, and PhD), and completed his doctoral internship at the prestigious Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium at the Brown University School of Medicine. With a clinical specialty of Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology that emphasizes the role that psychological factors play in medical conditions, fitness, and health, he understands the physiological basis for performance as well as the psychological factors for success.

The Mindside Podcast
Dr Bhrett McCabe’s Website
Follow Dr Bhrett McCabe on Twitter

The post 1.6 Golf and the 10,000 Hour Rule with Dr Bhrett McCabe appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

There are two critical factors in motivational learning (that most people ignore) which we’ll going to cover in this episode of the Golf Science Lab.

We’re talking with two experts in the field of motor learning Dr Gabriele Wulf and Dr Rebecca Lewthwaite. They both have extensive experience with this topic writing some of the papers that have defined the field of motivational learning. You’re not going to want to miss this!

Anything you can do as an instructor to make people feel more confident, or increase their self-efficacy is beneficial for performance. Many studies have shown that confidence or self-efficacy is critical for optimal performance and learning.

The other motivational variable that is also very powerful is learner autonomy. Practice conditions that involve an opportunity to choose, support people’s need for autonomy.

The choices you give to a learner don’t even have to be related to the task. So, you can give them an unrelated choice such as which picture should we hang in our lab, and they will learn better.

It sounds kind of crazy, but totally unrelated choices support students need for autonomy and enhance their learning.

People like having choices and so there’s also an effective component here that helps people learn. Positive affect turns out to be very important for learning, it tends to release dopamine, which is critical for learning, and so I think it’s two things that play a role here.

One being self-efficacy or confidence being enhanced, and the other being the positive affect, the positive emotions that are associated with having a choice.

When we have three groups, a group that receives negative feedback, no feedback, or positive feedback.  Typically the negative feedback group, who  believe they are doing worse than their peers and the group that gets no information typically look like each other.

Whereas the group that receives a sense of success or confidence tends to look different on those other two.

Studies have shown that the negative doesn’t appear to detract so much that the positive appears to enhance.

How you define success means people derive a sense of success, and has implications for how you learn.

It’s important that you interpret the action, the performance so it could be placed in a positive light.

This has implications for coaches and teachers; if they get too hypercritical too fast, then there is this dampening of the learning effect.

It pays to accentuate the positive.

One is to enhance the sense that one has been successful as you go forward, and the other is to provide people with opportunities to choose or to have autonomy in their actions.

One way you could pair these things is tell people early on, it’s quite good if you can hit this target or be close to it in this way, provide them with positive feedback, you know, “For that early trial, it was excellent.”

And then the next thing you said is, “Let me know when you would like to get some more specific feedback” so it’s an invitation to take a little charge of when you go into further detail.

About Dr Gabriele Wulf

Gabriele Wulf is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences at UNLV. Dr. Wulf studies factors that influence motor skill performance and learning, such as the performer’s focus of attention and motivational variables (e.g., autonomy support, enhanced performance expectancies).

Her research has resulted in 175 journal articles and book chapters, as well as two books. Dr. Wulf has received various awards for her research, including UNLV’s Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award. She served as the founding editor of Frontiers in Movement Science and Sport Psychology (2010-2012) and the Journal of Motor Learning and Development (2012-2015). Currently, she serves as the Past-President of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA).

You can check out Dr Wulf’s book here: Attention and Motor Skill Learning

About Dr Rebecca Lewthwaite

Rebecca Lewthwaite, PhD is Director, Rehabilitation Outcomes Management, and Director of Research and Education in Physical Therapy at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California (USC).

Dr. Lewthwaite has an active research program at the intersection of movement and psychological science, studying motivation and motor learning. She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in (Psychological) Kinesiology. Together with Dr. Carolee Winstein, Dr. Lewthwaite designed the integrated approach to motor learning in clinical practice known as the Accelerated Skill Acquisition Program.

Dr. Lewthwaite is an investigator in the recent Interdisciplinary Comprehensive Arm Rehabilitation Evaluation (ICARE) Phase III RCT examining arm recovery after stroke, where she provided direction to the psychosocial content, measurement, and intervention aspects.

Some Interesting Papers Related to this topic:

Self-Controlled Learning: The Importance of Protecting Perceptions of Competence

Choose to move: The motivational impact of autonomy support on motor learning

Gabriele Wulf on Attentional Focus and Motor Learning

The post 1.7 The Unknown Truth about Learning Golf and Motivation with Dr Gabriele Wulf and Dr Rebecca Lewthwaite appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Where should your focus be in during a shot? Or when you’re learning how should you think about a move to make a change in the most effective way.

We’re going to answer those questions in today’s episode on FOCUS with Dr Gabriele Wulf.

Internal focus is what most people tend to use spontaneously and what most instructors, including golf coaches promote by giving instructions that refer to body movements.

An external focus, is on the intended move and effect on an implement. In golf, there are a variety of things I could focus on externally such as the club, the club face, the target or hole, even the belt buckle or shirt buttons and so forth.

In one of our first studies that was published in 2007, we simply asked novices, to hit golf balls at a target.

We gave them detailed instructions initially, in terms of how to hold the club take a stance, and then we asked one group of these people to focus on the swing of the arms (the internal focus group), and we asked another group of people, the external focus group, to focus on the swing of the club.

Clearly, the external focus group did much better; the advantages were almost immediate and also when they came back the next day, they weren’t given reminders on what to focus on, they did considerably better than people who had been asked to focus on their arms.

We did a very similar study with experts;

we were able to recruit golfers from the UNLV golf team, and they had an average handicap of zero, and we asked them also to hit balls at a target and we gave them very similar instructions: focus on the swing of your arms, focus on the swing of the club, or we just let them do what they normally do. And I was really surprised to see that even these expert golfers did better when they were asked to focus externally on the club motion, compared to both their arms and the control condition.

I think it is really critical that golf instructors try to minimize references to body movements; not just golf instructors but anybody who teaches motor skills.

Any reference to body parts have been shown to be detrimental to performance and learning; it’s as simple as that.

When you focus on body movements, you consciously try to control your movements and the result is that you constrain your motor system, meaning there will be unnecessary co-contractions between agonists and antagonists, and even superfluous contractions in other muscles as well.

That disrupts the fluidity of the movement, and people use more energy than necessary, and accuracy of their movements is degraded and so forth. Now, when you use external focus, you use more automatic control processes which are unconscious, much faster, and as a result, movements are more efficient, more fluid, smoother, and more accurate.

So, performance and learning is facilitated and sped up.

About Dr Gabriele Wulf

Gabriele Wulf is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences at UNLV. Dr. Wulf studies factors that influence motor skill performance and learning, such as the performer’s focus of attention and motivational variables (e.g., autonomy support, enhanced performance expectancies).

Her research has resulted in 175 journal articles and book chapters, as well as two books. Dr. Wulf has received various awards for her research, including UNLV’s Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award. She served as the founding editor of Frontiers in Movement Science and Sport Psychology (2010-2012) and the Journal of Motor Learning and Development (2012-2015). Currently, she serves as the Past-President of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA).

You can check out Dr Wulf’s book here: Attention and Motor Skill Learning

The post 1.8 What Every Golfer Ought to Know About FOCUS with Dr Gabriele Wulf appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Today we’re talking all about finding your optimal challenge point, so that you’re setting yourself up for success during the round, and not success during practice.

We’re hearing from one of the authors of the paper on Challenge Point, Dr Mark Guadagnoli and collegue (and college golf coach) Dr Chris Bertram.

Think about it like lifting weights; if you are lifting weights and it’s easy, you are not improving.

That makes perfectly good sense from a physiological perspective, we don’t think about it from a cognitive perspective, but it’s the same thing.

If you do ten reps of a bench-press and it’s really only the last three or four reps where you are struggling help you grow, and it’s the exact same thing in any kind of learning. In this bench-press example, if you struggle on the very first rep, then that is too much challenge. That’s not a desirable difficulty, that’s a beyond desirable difficulty.

And so we have the sort of goldilocks complex where there is a sweet spot right in the middle; not too much not too little, and really part of the art of teaching I think is finding that sweet spot of difficulty.

How this might look

With a novice player, someone who is just beginning or someone who doesn’t play a lot of golf, struggle for them happens every time they swing the club or swing the putter because they are not very good. And so repetition there in doing the same thing over and over again is a significant amount of struggle for somebody at that skill level.

But for expert level, collegiate level varsity golfers, challenge for them comes in different ways.

What is the best practice for you at one point, may not be the best practice for you at another point. And so one of the things that you see people do a lot of times is they’ll practice the same way over and over and over again, and what challenge point says is that you reach this point of diminishing returns if you are doing that.

And that’s why a lot of people will tend to get better and then level off because they haven’t continued to challenge themselves along the way.

The mistake that people make, or a mistake that people make is to think that when they are practicing on a range that it’s not about their mindset, but if you do it correctly, it is absolutely about your mindset.

You learn how to deal with stress, frustration, success, you learn how to deal with all those if you are practicing correctly, and then you just bring that on to the course. It really should never be something where you decide you are going to create a mindset on the course.

It should be created before you ever get there and it should be practiced, and you should have learned it by the time you get there, and then it’s just a matter of executing it. So yeah, absolutely, there’s frustration that happens, but there’s also – during a round, but there’s also the frustration that can happen during practice and in how you deal with that frustration, you start to demonstrate how you are going to deal with it on the course.

And so, it really becomes a more holistic way of practicing; it’s both the mind and body working together to learn.

About Dr Mark Guadagnoli

Check out Dr Guadagnoli’s book Practice to Learn, Play to Win
Dr. Mark Guadagnoli has worked in industry and academia for over two decades and has taught at several universities including Harvard University, UCLA, UNLV, and USC. He has been featured in the New York Times and other international publications.

Dr. Guadagnoli specializes in optimizing performance, communication, leadership, and learning and has received numerous awards for this work in (multiple time Student of the Year, Teacher of the Year, and Researcher of the Year) and out of the university. In addition to his university work, Dr. Guadagnoli has had an active consulting practice for nearly 20 years. He has worked in the area of corporate optimization with companies such as Zappos.com, where he developed their corporate university, developed and ran executive off sites, and worked on performance optimizations with their executive team.

Dr. Guadagnoli has also worked with companies such as Bose, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Google, Sony, and Panasonic. Dr. Guadagnoli has published more than 100 articles and abstracts and is the author of two books (Human Learning; Biology, Brain, and Neuroscience, and Practice to Learn, Play to Win). Dr. Guadagnoli’s primary line of research is related to the Challenge Point Framework which has been used to teach surgeons, medical professionals, and others who compete in high stress performance situations.

His model of learning shows that appropriate short-term challenges results in long-term and stress resistant learning. He has been invited to present this work around the world including such countries as Canada, China, France, Germany, and Scotland. Dr. Guadagnoli has also worked in performance optimization with athletes in several sports including the USA Olympic Elite Track and Field Coaches and PGA, LPGA, and Nationwide tour winners.

Dr. Guadagnoli is currently a faculty member at UNLV and Senior Scientist at Triad Consulting, Inc.

About Dr Chris Bertram

Dr. Chris Bertram is the head coach of the men’s and women’s golf teams at the University of the Fraser Valley.

In Bertram’s 10 years with the program, the Cascades have never missed the podium in the PacWest conference. The men’s team won back-to-back PacWest championships in 2008 and 2009, and topped that by winning three in a row from 2012 to 2014. The women’s team has also excelled in conference play, winning championships in 2013 and 2014.

At the national level, the Cascades’ crowing achievement came in 2013, when the men’s and women’s teams swept the gold medals at the CCAA national championship. Both teams climbed the CCAA podium again in 2014, with the women winning silver and the men taking bronze. UFV has now recorded podium finishes at the six of the past eight CCAA national championships.

Bertram’s passion for golf goes beyond the course, as he also served for 11 years as Director of the Human Performance Centre and as an Associate Professor of Kinesiology at UFV. His research and teaching focus is in the area of motor skill acquisition with an emphasis on the nature of expertise and elite performance in athletes. Bertram has published numerous scientific articles on the game of golf, and recently published a chapter in Science and Golf V. Bertram also meets regularly with golf teaching professionals to discuss how the science of golf applies directly to the teaching and learning of the game. He currently sits on the editorial board for the Annual Review of Golf Coaching and has been featured on the Golf Channel and in the New York Times.

Bertram has a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University. He was named PacWest golf coach of the year 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014, and was honoured as the CCAA golf coach of the year in 2013 and 2014.

The post 1.9 Find Your Best Challenge Point with Dr Mark Guadagnoli and Dr Chris Bertram appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Let’s get down to it. Most people don’t improve after going to the driving range.

Why else would we call the walk from the range to the golf course is called the “longest walk in golf”. That’s why we need to work on making your practice on the driving range transfer to the golf course.

Let’s get to it. Here are the 6 reasons your practice isn’t working (more details below)…

• Hitting the same club again and again
• Aiming at the same target
• Not going through your pre shot routine
• Thinking about how to change your body movements
• Doing what’s easy
• Actually being on the driving range

#1 – Hitting the same club again and again

When you stand on the range and attempt to hit the perfect 7 iron over and over and over and over… You’re not setting yourself up for better performance on the golf course.

What do I mean?

There have been a number of studies talking about the difference between blocked and random practice.

If you’re not familiar with the concepts… Blocked practice being when you do the same action over and over and random being where you intermix tasks. For instance hitting your 7 iron at the same target in the same way is blocked practice. Random practice would be hitting a 7 iron then a driver then a 3 iron and so on.

Blocked practice helps you get better for immediate performance.
Random practice helps you retain your learning.

So if you’re practicing to play better golf in the future start adding random practice into your practice routine.

#2 – Aiming at the same target

Do you ever hit the same golf shot at the same target in the same lie twice in a row on the golf course? Well maybe you do but that’s only after blasting your first tee shot out of bounds and standing there trying not to repeat it.

So if it’s not something we do on the course why do you hit the same shot to the same target on range?

“The implication of the research is that every effort ought to be made to encourage the golfer to maximize the planning of each shot during practice.

Selecting different targets for each practice shot, choosing a different club, or even keeping the same club and attempting a different flight path (e.g., fade or draw) or type of shot (e.g., full or partial swing), would encourage the learner to abandon the plan developed for the previous shot and plan differently for the “new,” and upcoming shot.”

Take the time to change your target and simulate what you would be doing on the golf course.

#3 – Not going through your pre shot routine

From the above quote in #2 it mentions that each golfer should maximize the planning of each shot during practice.

Why? Because each shot on the golf course is a new problem with new solutions. On the golf course you go through a planning process for each shot.

Maybe it’s something like…

There’s water short, bunker front left, so I need to hit this middle of the green with a fade so if I miss it’s going long right. I should play one club more and hit it high with a fade. You visualize the shot, take some practice swings and hit the shot.

On the course there is a lot you go through… Which should be a part of your practice as well.

So start going through a preshot routine.

Don’t just stand on the range hitting shots pulling over another ball and hitting it again.

#4 – Thinking about how to change your body movements

When you’re on the range trying to make a swing change you’re probably thinking how your wrists should be over here, maybe you’re knee should bend a little differently.

However…

Focusing internally forces you to consciously try to control your movements. This causes you to constrain your motor system, which disrupts overall fluidity.

On the other hand, external focus allows you to take advantage of your body’s unconscious automatic control processes, which lead to movements that are more efficient, fluid, and accurate.

Another one of the key reasons why external focus may be so effective is that it directs your attention away from your body, and reduces distracting self-conscious feelings. As a result, learning and performance are both sped up.

Focusing internally forces you to consciously try to control your movements.

#5 – Doing what’s easy

Performance during practice doesn’t mean better learning. Challenge and struggle is actually a good thing if you’re trying to play your best golf ON THE COURSE.

“Conditions that induce the most errors during acquisition are often the very conditions that lead to the most learning!

Furthermore, that performance is often fleeting and, consequently, a highly imperfect index of learning does not appear to be appreciated by learners or instructors who frequently misinterpret short-term performance as a guide to long-term learning.”

From “LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE “ by Nicholas C. Soderstrom and Robert A. Bjork

Stop practicing what’s easy and set up challenging scenarios. You’re success or lack of during practice is not an indicator if you’re learning or not.

#6 – Actually being on the driving range

That’s right… you should get off the driving range.

On the golf course each shot you face is a new problem. Most likely it’s one that unlike anything else you’ve ever faced. This is completely different from what you’re doing on the range.

Driving range = flat lies on the fairway.

Get real… How often does that happen on the golf course?

This quote from an very good paper PaR (Plan-act-Review) Golf: Motor Learning Research and Improving Golf Skills Timothy D. Lee McMaster University Richard A. Schmidt Human Performance Research sums this up best

“The concept of practice specificity is that what you learn tends to be what you practice.

In our view, an “optimal” driving range would have a number of deliberately nonflat lies, with varying turf, with targets on the range that mimic both greens and nongreen targets (for playing lay-up shots), with objects placed in front of the golfer to encourage shots to be played over, under, and around them, and so on.

The idea is to make the driving range as similar to the actual play-on-course as possible.”

The post 6 Reasons You’re Wasting Time on the Driving Range. appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

You probably know you’re wasting time on the driving range…

Maybe you don’t want to admit it but your practice isn’t translating to the golf course. The time (or lack of) you’ve spent practicing hasn’t been working.

And let’s dig a little deeper…

Maybe you don’t know what you ACTUALLY need to do to improve. What should you work on when you go to the range?

Most would say start with the 7 iron hit some shots and then work through the bag hitting a couple shots with each club until your done… And spend time putting and chipping! We’ve all heard that.

But what kind of plan is that? If it works wouldn’t we all be getting better.

So here are 4 practice hacks to get you on the right path. A path to taking your best game to the course.

*And these aren’t just “idea” we’re basing this off research done on how people effectively learn motor skills

Hack #1 – Practice Like You Play

A critical factor of effective practice is the similarity to the performance environment.  When you go out onto the golf course and actually play golf you face a new problem with each shot.  No two situations are the same.

Yet the typical practice session is composed of practicing the “same problem” (or golf shot) over and over again.  If we want to improve performance we need to practice like we play.

Check out this amazing quote:

“The concept of practice specificity is that what you learn tends to be what you practice.

In our view, an “optimal” driving range would have a number of deliberately nonflat lies, with varying turf, with targets on the range that mimic both greens and nongreen targets (for playing lay-up shots), with objects placed in front of the golfer to encourage shots to be played over, under, and around them, and so on.

The idea is to make the driving range as similar to the actual play-on-course as possible.”

PaR (Plan-act-Review) Golf: Motor Learning Research and Improving Golf Skills by Timothy D. Lee McMaster University Richard A. Schmidt Human Performance Research

So when you go to the range simulate the golf course… Or even better make the golf course your range.  The best place to practice is the course itself.

Hack #2 – Set Appropriate Challenges

To many people practice what’s easy. They assume that if they’re aren’t hitting it well on the range or chipping the ball within a 3 foot circle during their practice they aren’t getting better.

Here’s the reality. Good performance during practice does not mean you are learning. In fact challenging yourself and lowering performance during practice can help you take those skills to the course.

By increasing the difficulty or challenge of your practice you’re increasing your learning potential.

Here’s a quote from two leading experts in the field Nicholas C. Soderstrom and Robert A. Bjork

“Conditions that induce the most errors during acquisition are often the very conditions that lead
to the most learning!”

Next time you’re in practice mode set up a number of desirable difficulties and don’t practice what’s easy.

Hack #3 – Change Your Focus

To many people focus on what they want their body to do in the swing.

“My elbow should be here”
“My hip needs to shift like this”

The problem is that an internal focus reduces fluidity and causes you to actually learn and perform worse.

When talking with Dr Gabrielle Wulf, author of a paper called “Attentional focus and motor learning: a review of 15 years” she said.

“When you focus on body movements, you consciously try to control your movements and the result is that you constrain your motor system, meaning there will be unnecessary co-contractions between agonists and antagonists, and even superfluous contractions in other muscles as well.

That disrupts the fluidity of the movement, and people use more energy than necessary, and accuracy of their movements is degraded and so forth. Now, when you use external focus, you use more automatic control processes which are unconscious, much faster, and as a result, movements are more efficient, more fluid, smoother, and more accurate.

So, performance and learning is facilitated and sped up.”

Hack #4 – Give Yourself a Break

HOW SUCCESS IS DEFINED HAS AN IMPACT ON HOW WE LEARN AND HOW WE PERFORM.”

In golf, the default status is to focus on what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed.

However, there is a lot of research happening (and plenty already out there) on motivational learning, which looks at the factors of motivation that have an impact on how effective an individual’s learning can be.

Let’s assume there are two groups of people and each group is asked to perform a motor task. One group is told their score after the task, while the other group is told their score in addition to some positive feedback such as “you have performed well relative to others.”

The second group — the one that received a second form of positive feedback — will do better, as it appears that this additional sense of success is what potentiates learning. Returning to the scenario a day later, the second group will also retain more of what they learned the first day when asked to perform a similar or somewhat related task. Not only that, but they will once again outperform the group that did not receive the additional sense of success.

In terms of practical applications for improving your game, it looks as though positive thinking is a key player. We all know that a strong mental game is a major component of success in sports, but the glass-half-full mentality really does seem to make a difference in performance and learning retention.

The post 4 Practice Hacks to Get More out of Your Time on the Range. appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

When you walk away from a golf lesson you probably want to feel like you’re “better”.

That’s the point after all… To get that swing fix so you can stop slicing the ball or hit your 7 iron just a little more solidly.

BUT… It’s time for a paradigm shift.

Because although you and your instructor want you to feel like you’re better after a lesson is that actually in your best interest?

After all the goal is lower scores. To finally be able to break 90 or be able to perform under tournament pressure.  To do that you have to be able to take your best game to the course.

One thing you’re instructor probably hasn’t talked to you about is desirable difficulties. It’s one of the key (in fact critical) components of learning and practice.

It brings everything together. Without the proper “desirable difficulties” in your learning you simply won’t be improving your scores… Although you can see short term gains. (maybe by the end of a lesson you can hit your driver a little straighter).

That doesn’t mean you’ve optimized your long term learning. So although you can hit your driver a little straight after the lesson on the range that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to next time you’re out playing on the course.

“Conditions that induce the most errors during acquisition are often the very conditions that lead to the most learning!

Furthermore, that performance is often fleeting and, consequently, a highly imperfect index of learning does not appear to be appreciated by learners or instructors who frequently misinterpret short-term performance as a guide to long-term learning.”

From “LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE “ by Nicholas C. Soderstrom and Robert A. Bjork

This quote says it all.  We often correlate our performance in practice to our learning.  

• If we’re not chipping the ball within 3 feet everytime we must not be getting any better.
• If we’re not making 10 putts in a row we must not be improving

What should you be looking for at the end of a golf lesson then?  A path of learning that isn’t reliant on today’s performance.

You really should have a coach to help you for the long term.  There are a lot of great instructors offering coaching programs that can guarantee lower scores.

How?  They understand the appropriate level of difficulty you need and set up great learning environments.

So the problem is although you can hit the ball a little better by the end of a lesson you’re not going to be scoring better next time you want to take your best game to the course.

Find a coach and don’t settle for short term fixes.

The post What Your Golf Instructor Won’t Tell You and How it Can Save You Shots appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Check out the promo for what’s coming in season 2 and what you can expect to learn.

The post Golf Science Lab Season 2 (coming soon) appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

What’s going on in a players brain during extremely high performance on the golf course? And how do we explain stories of time slowing down, with the mind completely blank or even forgetting entire rounds? Learn from Dr Michael Lardon as he explains what you need to know about the Zone and how to get there more frequently.

The idea is that you are in that place, where you’re not really thinking. There’s this old Zen saying, “You want to be in the gap between two thoughts.”

The Research

Dr Lardon used a technology called ERPs, Event Related Potentials which is similar to an EKG. Just as the EKG allows you to see the electrical current in your heart, you have the same thing in your brain called an ERP, Event Related Potential.

It measures electrical activity in your brain typically showing a spike at 300 milliseconds in, and we know that’s in the cortex, where you are thinking about stuff. For example people with dementia, the spike, and ERP wave is smaller, and comes late, indicating they are not thinking as well and the speed of thought isn’t as good…

“I spent some time with McEnroe and Agassi and what was amazing to me, was how Agassi had this incredible return to serves even though the ball is moving so fast, it’s almost an instinctual reaction. I hypothesized that what’s going on in the brain, is the opposite of dementia perhaps the typical spike at 300 milliseconds comes quicker, with greater amplitude because the brain is more sensitized.

In fact there was a negative wave early at 50 milliseconds and what it showed was that the great athletes were more primed, so they picked up the stimulus earlier.

We made three groups of participants in our study looking at how fast their brain processed information comparing world class athletes like Scott Tinley, Mark Allen (triathletes), Peter Vidmar, Eric Heiden, comparing them to matched controls and another control group, which were people very highly trained, but not elite level athletes.

Through that we published a couple of papers, showing that when you are in better physical shape, as is the great athlete group and the well-trained group, your thought is more efficient, it’s faster.

The other thing we discovered was a trend and, it appeared that my hypothesis wasn’t quite right. In fact there was a negative wave early at 50 milliseconds and what it showed was that the great athletes were more primed, so they picked up the stimulus earlier.

For example, in baseball, if you and I were up there to bat against the best pitchers in the world, that ball would come zipping by and we’d just see a blur. But great hitters are actually picking that ball up as it is released from the pitchers fingertips.

Phil Mickelson, has a wonderful sense of control of where the club-head is.  Whether it’s auditory stimulus, visual stimulus,somatosensory,it appears that the better athletes had an enhanced ability to pick that up before anyone else.”

-Dr. Michael Lardon

Focus on the things that you can control.

That’s why Dr Lardon developed a mental scorecard to help you commit to something you can control and put yourself into the best position possible to be in the zone.

There’s this old Zen saying, “You want to be in the gap between two thoughts.”

It satiates that primal need to rate yourself, to judge yourself, but it does it in the way that you have the capacity to be in 100% control of.

You score yourself on those three phases for every shot you hit during a round, and you end up with a percentage that represents your mental score. If you play a par-4 and make bogey, 5 is your physical score. But if you successfully go through the three phases of your routine for each of the five shots, your mental score is 5/5, or 100 percent. The top Tour players in the world routinely score in the high 90s. The difference between winning a major and keeping your card is about 7 or 8 percentage points—five or six shots per round with less than full concentration. The club champion at your course would probably score in the high 60s or low 70s.

Download the Mental Scorecard Here

Michael Theodore Lardon is considered among the country’s most prominent sport psychiatrists. Lardon is an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, and is the author of two books, “Mastering Golf’s Mental Game” (Random House 2014) and “Finding Your Zone: 10 Core Lessons for Peak Performance in Sports and Life” (Penguin 2008).

In July 1994 Lardon continued his clinical studies in athletic peak performance during his fellowship in Psychobiology and Psychopharmacology at UCSD. After his fellowship he started his career as a sports psychiatrist on the PGA Tour, first helping Kemper Open champion Mike Springer. In 2001, Lardon was contacted by James Bauman, Senior Sports Psychologist at the United States Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA, to evaluate U.S. Olympic skeleton hopeful Jimmy Shea who had been referred to him for the treatment of depression.

Jimmy Shea won the Olympic gold medal in the skeleton in 2001. Immediately after winning Olympic gold medal Shea pulled out a picture card of his grandfather, Jack Shea (two-time Olympic speed skating champion) and held the picture up for the National and International media in celebration of his victory. In Guidepost magazine, Shea credits Dr. Lardon for giving the suggestion of taking his grandfather’s photo and putting it in his helm et on the day of the race. After the 2002 Olympics, Jimmy Shea and Dr. Lardon’s work together was chronicled in an article in Sports Illustrated magazine, they then went on a public relations tour, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth-Ayerst focusing on the destigmatization of depression in men.

Lardon continued to work with a number of Olympic athletes, including the 2004 Olympic Silver medalist in crew, Samantha MaGee; the 2006 Olympic team captain of the men’s four-man bobsled, Steve Holcomb; and the 2004 400-meter hurdler Brenda Taylor. He continued his work with the Olympic athletes while expanding his presence in the golf world.

He has worked with the 2001 British Open champion, David Duval; the 2002 PGA champion, Rich Beem, the 2005 U.S. Open champion, Michael Campbell and five-time major champion Phil Mickelson. Mickelson credits Lardon for helping him win the 2013 British Open.Lardon has also worked with athletes in other sports, including former San Diego Chargers Pro Bowl kicker Nate Kaeding.

David Ogrin

David Ogrin is a three-time PGA TOUR winner (1996 La Cantera Texas Open; 1989 Chrysler Team Championship; and 1987 Deposit Guaranty Classic), making him a Lifetime Member of the PGA TOUR.

David is the director of instruction at Topgolf after serving as the assistant golf coach at Texas Lutheran University and as Director of Instruction at Three Crowns Golf Club in Casper, Wyoming.

Follow David on twitter Here

Sponsored By

Tired of not being able to take your game from the range to the course? Watch the video to see all of the benefits membership to golfscrimmages.com will give you. With currently two dozen games and more added often, you can improve your practice sessions to make them more meaningful and purposeful.

Golfscrimmages.com is a collection of competitive practice games proven to help players feel the on-course elements like pressure, score, consequences, emotions, mental challenges, and more so that you can be better prepared for the course and tournament play. Enter your scores, see how you rank on leaderboards and watch your personal progress in each area of your game.

We also have additional resources and a blog from which you will certainly benefit. Shift away from practice sessions that are overly focused on mechanics and swing thoughts and toward practice that will help you to play better on the course.

The post Understanding the Zone and How to Access it with Dr Michael Lardon appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

What are the yips, where do they come from, and what can we do to fix them? We’ll answer all of those questions and more with sport psychologist Dr Rob Bell, as we cover mental toughness, the importance of toughness, and his research on the yips.

Study : Solution-Focused Guided Imagery for a Golfer Experiencing the Yips: A Case Study

A single-subject across situations design with repeated measures was used to test the efficacy of solution focused guided imagery with a 40 year old golfer suffering from a three year case of the “yips”. Yips are defined as jerks, tremors, or a freezing of the putting stroke which at the very least can add several strokes per round of golf. The current participant was experiencing an average of 9.2 yips per round during the baseline phase of the study and was able to decrease his number of yips to virtually zero, with an average rate of 0.2 yips per round during treatment.

We recruited single-digit handicap golfers that had the yips or thought they had the yips. We would film them playing golf, specifically putting with a single subject design and introduced an intervention, which was structured visualization. The program that they ran through and helped them to be solution focused instead of problem focused.

After we introduced the intervention, they all showed a decrease in the actual yips which was independently observed and recorded. It didn’t 100% eliminate the yips as there were times where an individual would go two or three rounds without a yip, and it would show up for later on.

Even though everybody decreased their yip occurrences, once we stopped the intervention and came back, weeks later, they were back to their baseline.

To see consistent results they would have had to continue the visualization program (which none did).

Why Does it work?

I think it focuses on, the positive, the solution and not dwelling so much on the negative of what we don’t want to have happened, and that’s what happens in sports and in life.

We have an avoidance mentality.

We don’t think about making it, we think about not missing it. You have to focus on seeing yourself improving and getting better, that was the imagery part, and that had the biggest impact.

Study : Solution-Focused Guided Imagery for a Golfer Experiencing the Yips: A Case Study

It’s a whole lot simpler if we focus on the process and let the outcome take care of itself.
All we are trying to do is commit to the shot when it comes to golf.

Example from Camillo Villegas

When he played at University of Florida and won national championship there were a lot of great players on the team, so what was different about Camillo as opposed to other players?

He had said, ‘Look, when I played a bad round of golf, which we all do, I just went back to the fundamentals and practiced what I needed to practice. What other guys would do start to focus on tweaking things, or searching for something and when we start searching, we get off the path pretty quickly”

That’s what he did, focus on the fundamentals, focus on the process that we can control.

Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. He has PGA Tour credentials as a Sport Psychology consultant, has coached winners on the PGA Tour and caddied on Tour. He is the author of four books on mental toughness: The Hinge: The Importance of Mental Toughness , Mental Toughness Training for Golf, NO FEAR: A Simple Guide to Mental Toughness, & Don’t “Should” on Your Kids: Build Their Mental Toughness

He was the mental coach for the 2013 USTA National Champion and has spoken and coached extensively to businesses, universities, and corporate athletes including, Marriott, Walgreens, University of Notre Dame, Morgan Stanley, among many others. Dr. Rob Bell is certified consultant of the Association for Applied Sport psychology. DRB and associates deliver mental toughness training through a combination of research and over 10+ years of applied experience with hundreds of athletes, coaches, and teams. He has been featured on ESPN, FOX NEWS, The Golf Channel, New York Times, Runner’s World, & Stack Magazine.

Dr. Bell was an assistant professor of Sport Psychology for six years, publishing over a dozen research articles on the “Yips” in Golf, and effectiveness of sport psychology interventions. He has been published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Journal of Athletic Insight, Journal of Sport Behavior, and The Sport Journal. Dr. Rob Bell is a husband and father of two and has completed two marathons in a personal best of 3:23, numerous other road races, and has a hole-in-one. He has participated in triathlons and Master’s Swimming Events. He enjoys golf, swimming, skiing, reading, running, and chess.

Thanks to Scott Hogan and Tom Cavicchi for sharing their stores about the yips for this episode.

Sponsored By

Tired of not being able to take your game from the range to the course? Watch the video to see all of the benefits membership to golfscrimmages.com will give you. With currently two dozen games and more added often, you can improve your practice sessions to make them more meaningful and purposeful.

Golfscrimmages.com is a collection of competitive practice games proven to help players feel the on-course elements like pressure, score, consequences, emotions, mental challenges, and more so that you can be better prepared for the course and tournament play. Enter your scores, see how you rank on leaderboards and watch your personal progress in each area of your game.

We also have additional resources and a blog from which you will certainly benefit. Shift away from practice sessions that are overly focused on mechanics and swing thoughts and toward practice that will help you to play better on the course.

The post The Reality of the Yips & How to Fix Them with Dr Rob Bell appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

We’ll talk about how to be more productive so you can get more done during your day. Techniques and systems to use to keep structure and everything you need to be moving forward.

Get a calendar and make sure you have all of your students and/or employees scheduled out. Make sure to stay organized so you know where each one is at most of the time. Whether they should be practicing for a big tournament or are in their off season.

If you have a lot of students its important to make sure you know where each one is at so they aren’t getting half of what they should be and are getting the right coaching at the right time.

Take 10 mins out first thing in the morning for yourself – whether you are exercising, writing or just drinking a cup of coffee. Take that time to just think about what it is you want and need to accomplish TODAY.

Then make a list one item at a time of everything that you need to accomplish so you can reference it throughout your busy day.

Nutrition

It’s great to impart your own diet on others when – you are eating clean and giving your family that same good nutrition of vegetables, protein (not fried fish sticks or chicken fingers every night for dinner)

You can not let your family dictate your diet. Kids do not have the same knowledge that adults do about their diet and what is best for them and their health.

Don’t take things too far by throwing everything away all at once just because you have decided to choose an extreme diet for the week.

The post Productivity and Nutrition appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

We’ll talk about creating better youth development structures and what you need to know about plyometrics in this episode of Yo Jay.

QUESTION #1 – With the “Win Now” culture that parents and coaches have created. What is your approach to educate parents, youth and coaches that hurrying up the process, specialize too early, and games to early are not the best why to develop a child?

This conversation boils down to where are the elite kids going to come from and what is the best plan to develop these kids in place.

Taking a 5 year old (plan for the 13 years of their life – playing as many sports as possible that are a rotational sports i.e. baseball, soccer, tennis)

Its so important for young athletes to get a broad spectrum of sports to learn things like leadership, team building skills, and for most sports you won’t really know what kind of athlete they have the potential to be until they are 15, 16, 17 and 18.

From research that was done they found that putting your child into Marital Arts really was very helpful to learn self-worth, honor, and how to protect themselves. Soccer – is the best team sport to put your child in at a young age. Gymnastics is great as they will learn how to move their body.

QUESTION #2 – What’s one of your favorite plyometric exercises for golfer?

Any kind of plyometric exercise will make your body more explosive. Teach those muscles the game of golf. Sprints, bounding, forward and back bounding – all of those exercises will aid your athlete more.

Rotational Plyometric Exercise – see at the 9:30 min mark.

With the 180 or 360 degree jumps you are bounding, rotating, loading.

With Plyometrics make sure the time from landing and moving into the opposite direction is very quick – taking time in between the landing and take off is NOT plyometrics.

We are training that elastic component of your muscle and that is what plyometrics will do for you.

The post Early Specialization & Plyometrics appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

Learn from Coach Glass as we go through a dynamic warm up so you can move better, feel better and play better golf?

You need to properly prepare your body for the round of your life! Most of you consider pulling into the parking lot and pulling out your sticks on the way to the 1st tee, a warm up. This is a recipe for a disaster.

Get to the course early, perform the Coach Glass Dynamic Warm Up on the range. Your warm up should be easily repeatable and performed every time you play and practice. Routine breads success.

The Coach Glass Dynamic Warm Up for Golf will:

• Elevate your body temperature.
• Maximize muscle length and suppleness.
• Stimulate your nervous system.
• Hit all the golf muscles and take your joints through the optimal range of motion required to play your best!
• Leave you feeling like you already hit a bucket of balls!

Its so easy – all you need is a club and time to do 5 easy warmup moves with 8 set reps each to work out any kinks and sore muscles in your lower body and upper body.

The post Dynamic Warm Up by Jason Glass appeared first on Golf Science Lab.

We’re looking at mindfulness, awareness, and changing habits with Dr Joseph Parent who combines eastern wisdom and western psychology in a unique and effective style.

Instead, we need to do less and remove the interference, remove the complications, get out of our own way, and produce the best swing that we can possibly make.

There was a young man who had a statue that he believed was clay, and his grandfather pointed out to him that he doesn’t need to gold plate the statue for it to be a gold statue.

He just has to gently remove the clay and reveal the solid gold statue that is underneath it. Often we think that there’s something wrong with us and we need to add things on.

I call that “more on golf”.

We add “more on golf”, and we just get more and more turned into a pretzel and confused.

Instead, we need to do less and remove the interference, remove the complications, get out of our own way, and produce the best swing that we can possibly make. And that is the attitude that I think is more helpful for golfers.

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you’re mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience.

Mindfulness is being completely awake to the present moment of what you are experiencing, while you are experiencing it and being aware of what you are doing while you are doing it; being mindful of that or paying attention.

Awareness is a bigger sense or panoramic view of your place in the environment, what all the relationships that you have are, (mentally, emotionally, physically and communication) and also an internal awareness of ‘Am I present or is my mind someplace else?’.

The practice of mindfulness, is using your breathing and your posture as an anchor in the present moment, so that when your mind wanders to the past or the future or elsewhere in the present, you can say, ‘Oh, I was someplace else, now I am back to here and now.’

And there’s only one time you can play a golf shot, and that is now, and there is only one place you can play, it’s not in the next hole, and it’s not on the last hole. It’s where you are right now; here and now.

My system for instruction and for helping people play golf, I call it the PAR system or par approach. PAR = Preparation, Action, Response to Results.

If our intention is to avoid something, we’ll either go towards it or very far away from it. Your intention needs to be is to take the hazards into account and then have a clear picture of where we do want to go.

The ‘Preparation’ consists of the three Cs: Clarity, Commitment and Composure. Clarity is a clear picture of where you do want to go. The clearer image you have of the shot that you want to hit, the better your body will produce it.

If you have an image in your mind of something you are trying to avoid, let’s say you are thinking about a lake on the left side of the fairway, your brain may get a mixed-up message and send word to the muscles saying, ‘Well, I see a picture of a lake, I think that’s where we want to go.’

Or, the opposite, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go in the lake’ and you’ll end up hitting it miles to the right. I was working with David Thomas at Riviera at the LA Open, and there’s one hole with a huge grove of Eucalyptus trees on the left.

David hit it down the fairway and we watched his amateur playing partner hit next, just keep aiming further and further away from the trees, but he still looked over his shoulder at the trees and then he hit it across the next fairway and into the tenth fairway.

David shook his head and said, ‘Terrible shot’ and I said, ‘No, it was a good shot.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, his goal was to avoid those trees and he missed them by about 200 yards, so it wasn’t just a good shot, it was an especially good shot.’

If our intention is to avoid something, we’ll either go towards it or very far away from it. Your intention needs to be is to take the hazards into account and then have a clear picture of where we do want to go.

Dr Joseph Parent

Dr. Joe Parent has coached the mental game in business, life and golf for over 30 years. A distinguished PGA TOUR Instructor, he has attracted such clients as major champions Vijay Singh, David Toms, Juli Inkster and Cristie Kerr.

He also coaches many top level amateurs and juniors, and is the mental game coach for the men’s and women’s golf teams at Pepperdine University. About his first book, the bestselling ZEN GOLF: Mastering the Mental Game, Golf Digest reviewers say, “Here is a book that is highly original and exciting, destined to become a classic. Dr. Parent is a groundbreaking writer.”

Now in its seventeenth printing, there are over a quarter-million copies in print world-wide, including foreign editions in seven languages.

GOLF: The Art of the Mental Game pairs Zen Golf lessons with the timeless drawings of Anthony Ravielli, illustrator of Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. and is published by the incomparable Rizzoli.

As a result of his writing and his instruction of PGA TOUR players, Golf Digest named Dr. Joe to each of their lists of “Top Ten Mental Game Experts” in the world, and made him a featured instructor in their popular instructional section: “Breaking 100-90-80 and 70.” His work was also highlighted in GOLF Magazine, in an eight page spread entitled “Come On, Get Happy,” where Dr. Joe helped two editors at the magazine shoot their best rounds ever!
In the early 1970’s, Dr. Joe encountered the mindful awareness practices of Buddhism that explained self-defeating patterns of behavior and provided profound methods to transform them. After completing his Ph.D. in psychology, he began bringing his insights to golf and business. Since then he has become a renowned and sought-after instructor of the mental game in all aspects of life; teaching the path to success to hundreds of professionals and amateurs in golf and other sports, as well as to top executives seeking cutting-edge business insights.

He is a highly regarded keynote speaker at corporate, celebrity and charity events hosted by companies such as Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Pimco, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Dreyfus, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Salomon Brothers, Transamerica, Fidelity, AIG, CBRE, the World Presidents Organization, PGA of America, the Tiger Woods Foundation, the First Tee Foundation and many others.

Dr. Joe has been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today in New York, HBO Sports, ESPN, and many appearances on The Golf Channel. The ZEN GOLF book is featured in a widely circulated MasterCard “Priceless” ad, and had its own cameo appearance being read by Ray Romano on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and HOW TO MAKE EVERY PUTT was read by Malcolm McDowell on “Franklin & Bash.” Dr. Joe has coached Ray, Malcolm, Michael Bolton, Kevin James, Anthony Anderson, George Lopez, Bernie Mac, Michael O’Keefe (Danny Noonan in Caddyshack), Richard Schiff, Robby Krieger (The Doors), Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen, world champion boxer Oscar de la Hoya, and many other elite athletes and celebrity golfers.

Dr. Joe Parent teaches at the Los Angeles Country Club and at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa Resort, Ojai, California.

Sponsored By

Tired of not being able to take your game from the range to the course? Watch the video to see all of the benefits membership to golfscrimmages.com will give you. With currently two dozen games and more added often, you can improve your practice sessions to make them more meaningful and purposeful.

Golfscrimmages.com is a collection of competitive practice games proven to help players feel the on-course elements like pressure, score, consequences, emotions, mental challenges, and more so that you can be better prepared for the course and tournament play. Enter your scores, see how you rank on leaderboards and watch your personal progress in each area of your game.

We also have additional resources and a blog from which you will certainly benefit. Shift away from practice sessions that are overly focused on mechanics and swing thoughts and toward practice that will help you to play better on the course.

The post How Mindfulness Could Help Your Golf Game with Dr Joseph Parent appeared first on Golf Science Lab.