Golf Tips Archives - Page 7 of 7

Losing Your Golf Swing Is frustrating but easy to fix It happens to the best of us. You're standing on the fairway with an iron in one hand, and determination on the other. When for some strange reason you can't hit a golf ball all of a sudden! If you've ever asked yourself why you can't hit a golf ball consistently, let me help you right now. The reason you lost your golf swing is because you've temporarily lost your mind. Fortunately you can regain your golf swing by repetitive training drills, and by combining visualization techniques. How To Regain Confidence And Your Golf Swing I remember the first time I had lost my golfing mojo. I went from consistently swinging a score of 80-85, to being well into the triple digits. At the time, I couldn't work out what was wrong with my golf swing. It felt like I went back in time, back to when I was a beginner. I want to let you know that losing your confidence is completely normal. In fact it still happens to me occasionally. The only difference is I now understand how to fix this problem. Over the years I have tried various tricks and techniques in order to improve my swing. I have compiled my favorite methods in order to help you. How I fixed My Golf Swing I decided to do 3 simple things each day for a total of 30 days. Once my own experiment was complete, I completely regained my swing and was chipping consistently. I'm happy to report that I was playing my best golf ever! Experience amazing results by combining visualization with practice 1. Practice One Drill 100 times I made a promise to myself that I would practice hitting irons over and over again. In fact I chose to do the drill 100 times per day. I knew there wasn't much point performing my normal golf routine. Instead I focused on the problem, and practiced consistently. It's important to keep something mind. I already knew how to hit an iron well. I didn't forget how to do it! I just had a mental slump and lost my confidence. While losing your swing all of a sudden is frustrating, don't let it get you down. Put your pride aside and just get to the drills. Performing the same technique repeatedly will activate your muscle memory, and unleash your swing once again. Build up your confidence by swinging from shorter distances Remember To Start Small: I found it very useful to start small and not bite off more than I can chew. This is important when your start attempting to recover your swing. When you visit the golf range, grab a 6 or 7 iron and take shorter shots then you normally would. It's better to make easier swings and do them well, then it is to continually shank. If you're really struggling here it's time to cut back further. It's completely fine to begin with short wedges and build you way back up to irons. 2. Meditate and Visualize Your Best Shots Aside from repeatedly practicing I also incorporated 20 straight days of visualizing and meditation. The results are undeniable. This is when I saw a huge improvement in my golf swing! In fact after only 1 day of doing this I noticed a small but noticeable boost in my swinging technique. I'm happy to say that over the next 20 days, I had not only regained my iron swing, I now had the best swinging technique in my life. How To Visualize and Meditate For Golf Meditation is something most people are not quick to try, but I assure you it's worth it. If you don't know how to meditate, I'm going to show you right now. Preparation: Find a dark and quiet place for 30 minutes. You can sit up right or lay down on a bed. (Choose whichever is more comfortable) You can choose to meditate in silence, or listen to an audio track. You can find free songs on Youtube by searching for "meditation beats". Remember to select a video that contains music only. We don't want to hear anybody talking in this technique. Meditation: Follow these simple steps once you've found a meditation track and a quiet place to meditate: Close your eyes Take a slow deep breath in with your nose. Hold for 5 seconds Slowly breathe out through your mouth Repeat the above breathing technique 5 times. Begin focusing on your natural breathing. Every time your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the breath. Breathe naturally for 5 minutes. Once you feel relaxed it's time to move on to the final step - visualization Visualization: Visualizing your golf swing is where the magic happens. Here we are going to take your mind back to the times you have made excellent shots. All you need to do is go back to your memory bank over the years and visualize all the best golf shots you made. I want you to imagine yourself when you were at your best. Visualize in a first person view and really feel like you're on the green playing. Recount as many wonderful strokes as you can remember. Do this exercise for 20 minutes straight. Once this exercise is complete, you'll feel very relaxed and in a zen like state. Go Back To The Green: Return to your golf course as soon as you can. Practice the 100 shot routine I discussed earlier. Within no time, your swing should come back and be better than ever. This is because we have now treated both your physical and mental state. If your issue is a driving problem, then I recommend just going to a driving range instead of the course. The Visualization Experiment Make no mistake about it. I have tried dozens of different ways to gain confidence on the golf course. This is why I feel extremely confident sharing my ideas with you. Although everyone's situation is different, I likely know what's going wrong in your game. I'm sure by now you've at least heard about meditation. Well several studies have proven something very interesting. Studies show that imagining yourself doing something, is almost as effective as practicing it for real. When you combine the two, unbelievable results starts to happen! The first study by Australian Psychologist Alan Richardson, discovered the power of visualization. Alan performed a unique experiment not on golfers, but on basketball players. The Experiment This experiment involved separating the players into 3 different groups. The players performed multiple free throws. Alan had a feeling that by incorporating visualization into the players regiment, that they would perform better at the 3 point line. Group 1 - No Practice: As the title suggests, the first group were given instructions to not practice nor perform any visualization techniques. They would just show up and starting shooting hoops. Results: 0% improvement Group 2 - Practice Only: The second group was instructed to practice free throws every day for 20 minutes. They did this for 20 days in a row. Results: 24% improvement Group 3 - Visualization Only: The 3rd group did no actual practice. All they did was imagine themselves throwing successful free throws over and over again. They did this visualization technique for 20 minutes each session over 20 days. Results: 23% improvement Results Of The Experiment 20 days later the experiment was complete. The results were shocking to say the least! As expected, the group that didn't practice or visualize saw no marked improvement. This of course isn't a surprising result. However what excites me about the results is how the group that only visualized saw a 23% improvement! This result was only 1% lower than the group who actually picked up a ball and practiced. What About Combining Practice and Visualizing? In my opinion there should have been a 4th group in the experiment. It would have been nice to see how well a group performed that combined visualization with practice. Well the good news is I decided to try this myself! As I mentioned in the beginning of this article was my own struggle of suddenly not being able to hit my irons. This is when I decided to put my own spin in the experiment mentioned and make it even better. Summary To conclude this article, I'm very confident that what I have shared with you will get you out of your golfing slump. In fact my technique works every single time for me! I too felt the pain of losing my accuracy, energy and power in my shots. I tried many other recommended methods, but none worked for me. That's why I recommend you go straight my 2 step method. I recommend you practice and visualize for 20 days for your first attempt. Don't skip any days, you must do it for 20 days in a row. I know it may be difficult to visit the green every single day, but doing the daily meditation routine will help you tremendously. Keep in mind that mental blocks will reoccur once in a while. Using my technique consistently will shorten the number of days required. Your first time will take 20 days, but your second round may require only 5 days to get back on track.