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When’s the last time you practiced standing on one foot and holding your balance?  Probably never.  Yet it’s a key ingredient in our daily lives and that includes playing golf.

Balance is one of those things that we pretty much take for granted.  Not many of us think about it, nor practice it, even though it can keep us from seriously injuring ourselves and help us perform daily tasks better.  How many times have you heard of someone – who was in pretty good shape – fall and break something, and was never really the same again?  For this reason alone, balance is gaining more press these days, and should be practiced on a regular basis.  

Better balance can also impact your performance on the golf course.  Almost every aspect of the game is dependent on the golfer’s ability to maintain good balance while in various positions, and often while explosively swinging a golf club.   

Whether it’s the longer yardage shots, off the tee and in the fairway, or those finesse ones from 100 yards in or around the green, body control is a must.   Altering the stance to accommodate for the type of shot will help the golfer swing the club smoothly and efficiently, resulting in the desired outcome.  

For many this is a tough enough task on level ground, but often times these array of golf shots have to be accomplished from uneven lies such as uphill and downhill, or when the ball’s above or below your feet.  This demands even a greater need for swing stability as both ground and gravitational forces impact an additional set of circumstances to the golfer, which he now needs to compensate for.   

Throw in a little wind, one foot in the bunker, and/or a little fatigue on the back nine and that changes the affect on the body.  That’s the beauty or frustration about golf, you really never have the same shot twice.  There’s always something different requiring you to alter something to make the shot, and in every situation, stabilization or balance plays a part.  

Age may have something to do with lack of balance, but I’ve seen a lot of young players have trouble with the simplest of balance assessments.  Yes, there are physiological changes that occur as we age that will impact balance, but for the most part, we can prevent that from occurring.    

Lower body strength, for example, plays a key role in balance.  Improving strength and coordination in all three planes of movement, side-to-side, front-to-back, and rotationally, can enhance balance.  A good start is with the quadriceps (front thigh), glutes (buttocks), calves, and abductors and adductors (inner and outer thigh).  These will also help you better control the lower body during the golf swing.

Practicing balance is also something that you can do to improve balance.  Get into your golf stance (as if you were standing at address over the ball, but with your hands folded across your chest instead of out in front of you) and then shift the weight over to one foot while you lift the other foot off the ground.  Work up to a solid 10 seconds on each foot without losing your balance.  It’ll take time, be patient and it will get better.  If you have extreme difficulty with this, you may want to check with your physician, as there are other factors that can influence balance.      

Once this is accomplished, to make the exercise more golf specific, as golf is not a static sport, balance on one foot and then slowly rotate your shoulders back and forth as if swinging a golf club.  Practice that till you can do 5 to 10 rotations to each side, and with each leg, without losing your balance.

Don’t take balance for granted.  Take steps to improve your balance and you’ll improve not only the quality of life, but the quality of your golf game as well.

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How many times have you heard a particular tune and found yourself humming it the next day? Do you remember how at school you learnt lots of things by hearing or seeing them and then repeating them? How did you learn to walk? Did you see someone else walking and then copy them? If you set out to learn a second language now, today, would you see the words and try to say them, hear the phrases and try to imitate them? How did you learn to play golf? Why do you speak in the accent that you do?

 

We learn through our senses. We take in information via our senses and then our minds compute that information and make sense of it all. We are, all of us, inherently “suggestible”. We learn through mimicking, copying and suggestion. Things seem to “rub off” onto us.

 

The ability we human beings have to learn in this way is amazing; it is fantastic…so long as we are mimicking, copying and responding to the right suggestions. If we hear something a few times, whether we like it or not, we will tend to find ourselves repeating it; hence sometimes hearing an “annoying” tune in your head. If we do something several times we tend to keep doing that thing, whether we really consciously want to or not; it becomes a habit, smoking, for example, or buying a snickers bar every time you fill up with gas.

 

Our minds work by generalizing patterns of thought and behavior over context. For example, as a child you learned to recognize a glass as a glass. And then every time you see any type of glass it is recognizable to you as a glass – it has been generalized in your mind over context. Where the generalization is accurate, this ability we have is supremely beneficial; when it is flawed, it can have an extremely debilitating effect…

 

How many times have you heard yourself say “I can’t putt”, “I can’t get off the tee”, or some variation of this theme? Is this generalization accurate? The reality of the situation is that on this particular putt, or this particular tee shot, you used your club to hit the ball and the ball went wherever it went. Full stop! That is what happened; nothing more, nothing less. Why should that mean that you CANT putt (ever) or get off the tee (ever)?

 

The problem here is that you aren’t looking at the reality of the situation, you aren’t focusing on the present, you have switched your awareness into a “generalization” mode, and you are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. You end up not being able to putt or get off the tee because this is what you have suggested to yourself. In the words of Henry Ford “If you think you can you can; and if you think you can’t you’re right”.

 

If someone else was as critical about your golf as you are, how would you react? If your “mates” stood there saying “you can’t putt” would you just stand by and take it? Or would you get a bit defensive and feel that the comment was “unfair” or “unnecessary” to say the very least? It pays to remember that we humans respond to suggestions, be it consciously or subconsciously, and that we can choose to accept or to reject those suggestions. Would you be as critical about your playing partner’s swing as you are about your own? Why be so hard on yourself? Why be so very negative and destructive? Why do you actually consciously choose to do something which will destroy your golf game? You know that you are telling yourself you can’t do it, so why not change the language you use?

 

You can use golf hypnosis downloads to stop generalizing and to enjoy your golf a whole lot more than before.

 

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in golf hypnosis cds and hypnosis mp3 downloads.

Tags: Golf Tips by admin
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If you were standing with a bucket of balls on the range and you were aware that they were all going off to the right of your target, would you not try to correct that by aiming further left, altering your grip or whatever else, so as to give the ball a chance of reaching the correct target? And this, in essence, is all you have to do with your thoughts, all you have to do with your suggestions to yourself – just be mindful of the language you use.

This brings me to the fact that people are always happy to attempt to correct something physical, but where it is something mental, they often just give up and say “this is how I am”. Our minds aren’t static; they aren’t unchangeable, any more than your swing is. You can CHOOSE TO CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS.

And as I have said on many earlier occasions, your thoughts create your emotions and direct your actions. Witness your body language when you say “I can’t…”, the way your body tenses up and you get jerky; whereas when you say to yourself “I can do this”, it is noticeable how fluid and rhythmic your body language is.

Which do you think would be the easier way of shaving 6 shots off your handicap? Spending an hour or so each day practicing you’re putting or choosing to believe that you can putt instead of suggesting to yourself that you can’t?

And then, once you have chosen to suggest to yourself that you can putt, you could decide to take the natural power of suggestion one step further, and shave even more shots off your handicap…Studies have decisively shown that the use of visualization in putting is actually more effective than real practice. This is FACT. And you have no doubt read the following Jack Nicklaus quote.

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I see the ball going there: its path, trajectory and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is a sort of fade out and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.”

This is a perfect example of how you could choose to use suggestion on yourself. Jack clearly allows himself to see, hear and feel the shot he’s going to play before he plays it. He suggests to himself what he’s going to do, precisely and clearly, and then follows that suggestion. In effect, he allows himself the best opportunity to get the ball where he wants it to be. You’ll have noticed as well that this routine is one Jack employs both in competitions AND in practice. He wants to give EVERY shot the best chance of success, and so isn’t recording “misses” or “miss-hits” whilst in practice.

In the words of James Braid, “For practice to have full value make each swing with the care of a stroke from a tee on medal day”. In this way you are giving yourself the best opportunity to hit an optimal number of great shots and thus your mind is recording these “optimal” shots, thereby reinforcing your belief that you can hit that shot the way you want to.

So next time you are tempted to go to the range and hit 100 balls in quick succession, ask yourself will this be productive? Remember that your mind gathers information via your senses, and the senses used in playing golf are those of hearing, seeing and feeling. As you mind your language, you are hearing what you want to hear – “I can” rather than “I can’t”. As you practice productively, taking “the care of a stroke from a tee on medal day” you will be seeing what you want to see more often – great shots, and you will be feeling more consistently what a great shot feels like. And feel is so very important in golf.

In addition to having greater feel in the mechanics of your shots, you will be feeling more positive in yourself and having more fun. This, of course, is the aim of the game of golf. Having fun. To quote Tiger, “If you are not having fun playing this great game, do something to change your perspective. Having fun leads to great golf and vice versa. And don’t forget to take time to smell the roses along the way”.

As I asked in PART 1 of this article, why not change the suggestions which you are giving to yourself? You can learn how to change your habitual internal language with the help of hypnosis downloads. Why do you think the professionals use golf hypnosis? They use golf hypnosis because it works; hypnosis downloads can be used to get you to focus, to stay in the now, to see what you really want to see. With hypnosis downloads you can learn to access the more creative part of your mind and visualize your shots better. You can use golf hypnosis downloads to stop generalizing and to enjoy your golf a whole lot more than before, to have fun and to smell the roses along the way.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in golf hypnosis cds and hypnosis mp3 downloads.

 

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