Discount Golf clubs

Inside the Mental Mental Game of Golf
By: Randy Friedman

The Power of the Inner Mind

Hypnotherapy is used widely to improve performance in sports. Since the Russians dominated back at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, hypnosis has been a proven method in sport training. The Russian team took over 10 hypnotists to develop mental clarity and visualization. In the 1980 Olympics, 12 out of 20 Australian swimmers named, were using hypnosis tapes for two months beforehand.

Great athletes and the Mind Power of hypnosis

Golf is most likely the most popular sport that applies hypnosis techniques, although has been used with many other individual and team sports including football, tennis and baseball, basketball and even swimming.

Greg Louganis, of the 1988 Seoul Olympics would visualize himself doing the dive perfectly over and over before stepping on the diving board. When he tragically hit his head on the board while performing a complicated dive during the 3 meter final, he didn't panic. While his head injury was being treated he put earphones on to listen to hypnosis tapes. Remarkably, Greg then went out to score a perfect dive the second time, enough to earn him the gold medal!

Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls used daily Self hypnosis to empower themselves to be an unbeatable team. They won 6 NBA Championships using mind power techniques to maintain their focus.

Jack Nicholas went beyond saying that golf is 90% mental. He said golf is a game that required 90% mental Preparation and 10% Skill to be the best. He was the first to describe how he visualized. Jack saw every putt going in, and every blade of grass the ball would land on before getting up to hit the shot. His preparation paved the way for his golf career to win time and time again.

Golf is the game that is 90% mental

Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and even Ernie Els have worked on their mind power through golf hypnosis. You'll often hear Tiger say, "I trust my subconscious". The reason you don't hear many successful golfers talk about their mental training, is because they know how powerful it is! Yes, 90% of the winners on tour have worked at their golf mind power extensively. Now you can too.

I believe one of the greatest shots in golf was Tiger's shot at the 2005 Masters he had hit over the 16th green. It was an incredibly difficult shot that took 100% concentration and complete belief in his internal ability. Watching him take all the elements in, scoping the entire situation and executing with the precision of threading a needle, Tiger holed a shot that was heard around the world. I'm still impressed when I see it! (Watch Tiger in action to the left of this article.)

I've worked with golfers of all abilities, from the first lesson of first gripping the club and addressing the ball, to PGA Tour players of clearing their focus and finding their inner vision. Even though golf is 90% mental, most golfers only practice the physical aspect of the game. Hypnosis is an effective way to connect the mind and body so they work together and improve equally.

So if it is said that golf is 90% mental, then why do most amateur golfers only want to hit balls to improve their game? I'll tell you why. They don't know how to do anything else. Many golf instructors and most books don't emphasize practicing mind power. The big picture is being lost in translation of the essence of the game.

Golf is not just about chasing a ball all over the course; it is profoundly much larger than that. Golf is life! (okay so that's for another article) Like life, golf has many games within the game. And like life, there are ups and downs to the game. The better you manage the downs, the better you will likely score. Mind power and developing the mental game is a huge game within itself. All top athletes know this, most amateurs haven't a clue.