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Imagine this all too familiar scenario. You’re staring down the fairway from a few feet behind your ball, trying to figure out where to align yourself before getting ready to shoot. As you walk toward the ball, your mind begins to wander, taking you to a dark place of anxiety and self-doubt.
As you get closer to your ball, you start to think more when you’re standing over it, wondering what you’re doing wrong. You begin to tighten and reset your grip. You are redistributing your weight. You look up, you look down, you look up, you stare at the target, you look back, and you finally swing the club.
fail.
Sure, you may have gotten lucky and hit a good shot, but no matter the outcome, you’ve become a victim of a common golf anxiety that haunts players. In fact, it can spoil them.
It’s well documented how some form of golf anxiety can affect even the best golfers, with pro players like Matthew Wolfe and Aaron Wise (among others) talking about their inner battles over the past few years.
And if you don’t yet understand how this kind of anxiety can negatively affect your game, Dr. Raymond Pryor – Performance Consultant and Owner of RFP Sport & Performance Consulting, Inc. – Recently some much needed information with PGA Golf Professional Brendon R. Elliott. Check it out below!
In addition to being a performance consultant, Dr. Pryor recently released a book titled Golf under the roofwhich addresses the topic of how performance is affected by issues such as anxiety.
The book is the first book on the psychology of performance and the neuroscience of performance for golfers, and is backed by rigorous research in neuroscience and psychology.
Rather than telling people what to think or not to think, Brewer’s book puts the reader’s psychology front and center, helping them understand how brain design affects their performance, how to interact with their thoughts and emotions, and how to understand and change effectively. Unproductive habits and how to form the beliefs that cultivate and support stable confidence.
In his book, Raymond dispels several prominent myths about anxiety, including the myth that a little worry is a good thing. He does so in ways that are accessible and entertaining, challenge the status quo, and provide a long overdue update on modern golf performance psychology.
Understand what anxiety is
Prior says, “By definition, anxiety is anxiety about an uncertain future. Specifically, anxiety comes from our prefrontal cortex playing out all the worst-case scenarios about how uncertainty plays out. When we fill the worst-case uncertainty intensely enough Our brain begins to perceive the future we imagined as threatening enough to try to avoid it.
“Simply put, when we imagine the future in a way that is threatening enough, our brain does what it was designed to do — which is to prefer avoiding that future rather than pursuing the future we actually want.”
How anxiety affects golfers and performance
So how does anxiety occur in golf? Pryor says it has nothing to do with multitasking. Instead, it’s actually the opposite, with golfers focusing too much on one single task: getting the ball to where they want it.
“One of the most notable challenges in golf is to focus individually on the shot at hand, filtering out anything that is irrelevant. In essence, the unique task in golf is to get the golf ball from where it is to the intended target. Focusing on anything beyond that is multitasking.
“On the surface, it may seem that worrying about a bad shot or a poor shot is harmless, but it is not,” he continues. “Instead, it distracts us from the shot task at hand. Research measuring various skill- and performance-based outcomes clearly shows that any additional task is enough to impair performance, regardless of skill level.”
How to deal with golf anxiety
With some background on what anxiety is and how it affects performance, Pryor closed the discussion with some suggestions for those who may be struggling with the feeling.
“When it comes to anxiety, tips just won’t cut it. Our brain is built for tips, tricks, hacks, and other distraction techniques—which is why none of these strategies work for very long or at all.”
The first key to dealing with anxiety is understanding it and facing it head on.
“Anxiety is a survival mechanism that helped us survive a time when the world was a much more dangerous place. Anxiety is a survival tool that seeks to keep us from taking risks. But in performance, where we’re trying to thrive, it’s annoying because it makes us play it safe, as you do.” Most of the strategies we use to combat anxiety.
If you’re interested in reading more from Dr. Pryor, be sure to check it out Pick up a copy of Golf under the roof.
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