The Challenge
For most golfers, their largest challenge and at the same time most frustrating experience is when their golf skills are brilliant on one day and horrible the next. What makes this even worse is that the reasons for these issues are far from obvious. Blaming the weather, the ball, your flight partner, club, swing or stance cannot be a solution, can it?
Of course, it is a well–known fact that “golf is played between the ears,” as many pros say. Stress is 80% unconscious, and this unconscious stress is the reason for even the most severe of problems like the disastrous putting or driving “yips”.
Mastering the mind-body connection is critical to the success of your golf game, simply because consistent success on the course is determined by two factors: First, the stability that controls the impact of the force and position of the club and second, your inherent stress level, which is inevitably linked to the position of impact.
To explain: The exact point of impact of the club determines the flight path of your ball. All that counts is the split-second of impact at the end of the downswing. If the point of impact is only one millimeter off, the ball’s path can diverge by dozens if not hundreds of yards. Whatever happens inside your head (“between your ears”) during your swing determines if the club head hits at exactly the desired point or if it is just this one millimeter off.
Those dreaded Relaxation Exercises
If you are an enthusiastic golfer, you have probably tried a multitude of “relaxation techniques” to improve your game. Golf beginners often experience good results from using such techniques, but if you play to a handicap of 12* or better, you will notice that the “mental game” becomes more and more important when your handicap gets lower and that simply relaxing doesn’t work any more.
* Our “handicap 12 rule” is a rule of thumb that has been proven true in many cases. While a golfing beginner spends most of his thoughts on his stance and swing, he naturally shifts his focus to the mental game more and more while his swing gets more and more stable.
But what to do if simply relaxing won’t help? The real reasons for inherent stress remain elusive, and even with dozens of books, CDs, DVDs and gadgets on the market, the magic bullet to cure all golfers’ mental ailments has not been found. (Just think about it: If there was such a cure–all, all golfers would play scratch golf.)
The Secret to Relieving Inherent Stress
The secret to solving the riddle of inherent stress is, simply, that treating those conditions is a highly individual process that must be individually tailored to each and every person. This is because unconscious stress is a very complex process that cannot be solved by a “patent medicine” cure–all. Each and every golfer is different, and the individual stress factors must be assessed and treated individually to achieve lasting results.
Introducing HeadProCoaching®
HeadProCoaching® Mental Golf Coaching by Mathias Maul is a proven, individually tailored process that …
- assesses your individual reasons for inherent stress
- offers specifically tailored mental coaching interventions to release this stress
- includes only the most modern and proven approaches to mental coaching