Fighting A Mental Battle With Your Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
Fighting A Mental Battle With Your Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

I think for a lot of golfers, they appreciate the importance of how the hands and arms should work through the impact zone. They understand that the arms and elbows should be straight and should be together through this phase. But a lot of golfers still find that really difficult to do. And I think the major focus here or the major difference here is probably the mental aspects of what they're trying to do and what their brain is trying to tell them to do are often two completely different things. So as a golfer, we would want to stand with good confidence over the golf ball and straight arms, and just say, well, let’s try and get back to this impact position up to the top drive to the left, let the arms extend but instinctively not subconsciously, the body is saying let’s help the ball in the air, let’s try and lean back and scoop this thing skywards. And often golfers get tense at this point as well. They’re so keen to try and hit a good shot up into the air that they get really tight and really tense which again initiates this bending of the arms and pulling the arms into the body, and with that in mind, they’re going to hit bad shots.

And often when we see a golfer hit a bad shot, they get more frustrated. So the arms and hands pulling even more and the problem exacerbates and the problem gets worse. When we can make a golfer swing with a little bit more confidence and they get a little bit more freedom and fluidity in the golf swing, we’ll often see that the hands and arms that started in the right place will then be able to come down into the right place and extend through the ball really nicely. So, a key focus for yourself if you’re trying to work on extending these arms is actually just a sort of park the subconscious part of the brain if you can and try and let the hands and arms do what they want to do or do what you’re trying to tell them to do without this subconscious hit the ball up in the air and hit the ball hard idea and particularly try and avoid getting too nervous. So we’ve done these drills and exercises of extending through here and extending through here. Now, we’re going to visualize keeping the hands and arms straight as we hit the golf shot and not let the hands and arms bend in too much. And the motion through the ball really helps me focus on the good quality extension, good reaching out and a nice golf shot but flies high with a little [touch] of draw and that goes against the tight pulling in, old swing habits that you might have had in the past. 2016-05-13

I think for a lot of golfers, they appreciate the importance of how the hands and arms should work through the impact zone. They understand that the arms and elbows should be straight and should be together through this phase. But a lot of golfers still find that really difficult to do. And I think the major focus here or the major difference here is probably the mental aspects of what they're trying to do and what their brain is trying to tell them to do are often two completely different things. So as a golfer, we would want to stand with good confidence over the golf ball and straight arms, and just say, well, let’s try and get back to this impact position up to the top drive to the left, let the arms extend but instinctively not subconsciously, the body is saying let’s help the ball in the air, let’s try and lean back and scoop this thing skywards. And often golfers get tense at this point as well. They’re so keen to try and hit a good shot up into the air that they get really tight and really tense which again initiates this bending of the arms and pulling the arms into the body, and with that in mind, they’re going to hit bad shots.

And often when we see a golfer hit a bad shot, they get more frustrated. So the arms and hands pulling even more and the problem exacerbates and the problem gets worse. When we can make a golfer swing with a little bit more confidence and they get a little bit more freedom and fluidity in the golf swing, we’ll often see that the hands and arms that started in the right place will then be able to come down into the right place and extend through the ball really nicely. So, a key focus for yourself if you’re trying to work on extending these arms is actually just a sort of park the subconscious part of the brain if you can and try and let the hands and arms do what they want to do or do what you’re trying to tell them to do without this subconscious hit the ball up in the air and hit the ball hard idea and particularly try and avoid getting too nervous. So we’ve done these drills and exercises of extending through here and extending through here. Now, we’re going to visualize keeping the hands and arms straight as we hit the golf shot and not let the hands and arms bend in too much. And the motion through the ball really helps me focus on the good quality extension, good reaching out and a nice golf shot but flies high with a little [touch] of draw and that goes against the tight pulling in, old swing habits that you might have had in the past.