Learning how to improve your concentration and focus will no doubt help your golf, but it will also provide you with a personal development skill that will transcend your golf scores into your daily life.

Daily practice of even a minute or two will train your brain to focus automatically and you will see better results in everything you do. To execute every golf shot as best you can, you need to be in the “NOW”, solely in the present moment. The intensity of your focus on your objective is not clouded by thinking about what has happened, or what might happen.

To get into “the zone” for your best golf, you need to learn the art of relaxed concentration. That is, your focus becomes more intense but requires less and less effort. It becomes a subconscious process. The good news, is that it does not take much practice to see results…

A good technique to stay in the present, and one that is used for exactly the same purpose in meditation, is to focus on breathing. When you feel your focus drifting to the past or future, notice your breathing and focus on what you see (the ball and the target). This clears the mind of negative chatter, reduces stress and allows you to be completely focused on your objective. You are living ONLY in the present moment and acting only with your subconscious mind. By learning to be more aware of your senses, you will learn the power of being more connected with reality.

Try another exercise to practice staying in the present:

Ask yourself: “I wonder what my next thought will be?” and notice how long it is before a thought comes in. Practice this, trying to extend the time before a new thought comes in. This improves your ability to stay in the NOW. Another way would be to focus on an object e.g. a golf ball and then notice when your mind drifts away from it. When it does, gently bring it back. Try to practice this daily, each time trying to increase your focus time.

A good pre-shot routine and focus on the process of executing a good golf shot, is the best way to eliminate negative thoughts and stay in the present. You can start by introducing breathing into your pre-shot routine. When you are picking your target, visualizing the shot and making your practice swings, be conscious of your breathing. This will take your mind away from the “what ifs” and the “unknowns” and get you working towards playing with your senses and becoming more connected with want you want the ball to do. Your target and shot shape will become more vivid and self doubt will start to disappear.

Look at this tee shot and ask yourself why you would want to be anywhere but the present…

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The Power of Visualization: do you see yourself becoming a very good golfer?

Good golf is about visualization and feel

How many of us can say with conviction that we ALWAYS have a target in mind when we address the golf ball?

Instead, as we approach the ball, negative chatter starts to fill our heads and our minds wander from the job at hand. Whether it be technical thoughts, fear of embarrassment or dwelling on a recent mistake, we are distracted from our objective.

To play our best golf, it is imperative we are completely in the present moment and immersed in the shot we are about to hit. More specifically, our target. Everything else is secondary. Clear your head and have nothing but the target in mind, and be as precise as you can be. Pick small trees for long shots and the hole for short shots. Never hit to a general area. Greats like Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller actually saw the ball bounce when it landed before playing a shot. This is the level of focus on our target we need to have to discover our true potential. Ask youself this question ahead of EVERY shot: “Where is my target?” If we can discipline ourselves with this practice, we will start to increase our focus and commitment, which will lead to better execution and better scores.

Do you have a clear target in mind before EVERY shot?

For more about how to learn a better mental game and score better, please visit www.golfstateofmind.com

The optimal way to practice golf for lower scores, is to get as close to course conditions as possible when you are on the driving range. In other words, standing there for half an hour or so hitting to the same target, is not going to help you score better. Anyone of any level of technical ability can learn to hit the ball straight at the same target after they’ve repeatedly hit that same shot over and again. Your body learns that same repetitive movement very quickly. You have not, as you might start to think, mastered the game of golf and be ready to hand in your resignation and play on the PGA Tour. Most of the golfers who say, “If only I could take my range game to the course”, have experienced exactly this on the range, and in actual fact, have not really been improving their chances of scoring on the course.

When Ben Hogan practiced on the the driving range, he would play holes in his mind. You would see him frequently switching clubs as he played tee shots, approaches and chips. Every shot would involve him having a clear picture of the hole he was playing and the shape of the shot he was going to hit.

Once on the range, pick a fundamental to work on and make that your only technical thought. Now “play” a few holes! Play which ever course you like, but be sure to not hit the same shot twice, like you wouldn’t on a real golf course. On the course you do not have the luxury of playing a shot over, so train your mind with this practice and it will increase your focus on the shot. If you hit the ball left of your target , imagine that you have hit the ball left on your virtual hole and picture that next shot you need to hit to get the ball to the green. This exercise teaches you to synchronize your body and mind to produce the shots that you are visualizing and make the most of every opportunity you have to hit the ball to the target.

The driving range is a place where it is easy to get on auto-pilot, thinking that you are improving by hitting the same target again and again, but in reality, you have not learned a better scoring game. Use this valuable time to practice playing and I’ve no doubt you will see the results on the course.

Use this time wisely and you will definitely score better on the golf course.

In life, we generally become, or “live into” what we visualize for ourselves in the future. The same happens in golf. If we focus on what we don’t want to happen in the future, we have a tendency to fulfill that image. Since the body responds far greater to images than it does to words, positive visualization becomes a key factor in our success in golf.

For example, imagine yourself standing on the tee with out of bounds on one side of the fairway. If you let your mind focus on not hitting it out of bounds, rather than on your target and the shot you WANT to hit, you will invariably produce the shot you fear. Such thinking causes the body to try and steer the ball away from the danger, resulting in a bad swing and the ball going exactly where you didn’t want it to.

We need to learn how to replace these negative images with positive ones. The focus always needs to be on a precise target with a desired shot shape.

A good practice regime involving visualization and feel exercises (which you can find in my audio teaching the Golf State of Mind), will teach you how to you can eliminate focus on negative outcomes and synchronize your body and mind with a clearly defined positive goal.

On the driving range, get into the habit of using your imagination and visualizing shots before you hit them. Develop a routine of hitting a complete variety including fades, draws, low and high shots. This will not only increase your awareness and feel for those shots, but it will get you into the habit of positively visualizing shots before you hit them.

The first step towards better golf is improving your state of mind for golf. It’s really the only thing holding you back. I’m convinced that whatever your handicap, you have the ability to become completely absorbed in a positive process for every shot and live into your future as a very good golfer.

Where do you see the ball going on this hole?