Today we are dressing something that every single one of us deals with no exceptions from a 25 handicapper to Tiger Woods, it's swing thoughts. There's something that is going on. In our brains only, spend a golf club. There's something that we have to focus on and those have an impact on our performance. And today, we're sitting down with a few different guests to
talk about this topic. One of those is going to be mark zimmelman back in 2008 when I was Upping my brother Trevor at the Masters. He was hitting the golf ball beautifully and we arrived in Augusta. Georgia. And he was battling with his puting. In fact, it missed the cut at the Houston, open the week prior and and was just a function of the ball not going into the hole and and I'd seen some footage and I thought the stroke was okay.
But the problem with the golfer always is that when things are going awry, the informed golfer, I should say, they'll typically look upon themselves and trying to adjust something. So I went to Augusta and I I just had to go and I said to him let's just check it out in the morning. So we got together and and I just gave him the simple image of hitting putts in a yes and no formats.
And the main goal being to try and start the ball on the intended line, we used a ball marker and put that a couple feet out in front of the golf ball about a foot and a half on the intended line and the goal was to roll the ball over the marker. And if You struck the putt well
and it rolled over that marker. It was a yes, but if you struggled poorly and you miss the marker, it was a no putts and what he quickly realized when we had done this for about 10-15 minutes was that some of his no pipes went in the hole and some of these. Yes, pets didn't and so it sort of freed him up a little bit. And so the idea there was okay, the thought here is to roll a ball over that targets.
The rest of this is out of my I have control and so that to me was sort of the ultimate swing thought, and that it was somewhat mechanical it was somewhat actionable and there certainly was a meaningful feedback from from the swing thought. You know, others? I've seen were Gary Player who've mentioned to me about when he hits Fairway bunker shots, how he focuses on a dimple on the front side of the golf ball Ting ensure clean
contact another good swing. We thought I've heard was something Bubba, Watson shared where when he said he tried to hit a drive a little longer and a little harder. The key was to complete the backswing. So he's thought was to try and kiss his shoulder at the top of the Swing which would ensure that the body pivot was completed and the the mechanism was wound up a little bit more.
So there are various ways that it can take it on but I think the ones that stand out to me the most were definitely those three with obviously the 2008 March. Has being extra special, you are listening to the gulf Science Lab podcast. My name is Corey Walker, and I'm on a mission to figure out how to improve the way that we learn
and get better at golf. I've been able to travel all over the world talking to the leaders in the industry from instructors, to researchers, to Golfers themselves learning how they're getting better at golf and what that means for you. So today we are looking at swing thoughts and we're going to do it in a few different ways. Our first way is from kind of This research idea what's been done on that and we have dr.
No Russo, who's coming on. He has this great perspective, he's an instructor, a coach of a player and he's done. A lot of work to try to figure this out. He's been a contributor on the site before I really enjoy his perspective and so he's gonna be on bringing that number two. To we have kind of the story of anecdotes from that party Ali play, everyone. The u.s. Madam in 2017 and he's actually back at the US, Open this
weekend. He went made it through sectionals and everything, which is amazing. He's on the podcast a little bit ago, telling his story, how he got so good. And then, finally, we have Mark immelman, he has a brilliant podcast on the Mark. He's an instructor a coach to Monk's a number of different things in the industry. Great perspective as well. I'm excited. Let's get to it this Cast is sponsored by gravity fit we all want to swing it like at your pro, right? So we're working on our golf
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Learn more at gravity fit.com, golf use the coupon code GSL gravity, fit, stronger longer. Sweeter. To me. Swing thoughts are a call to action. Honestly, I think oftentimes, when a goal is to find a when a mission is objectified, it helps the individual focus a little bit more intently.
And so the swing thought to me is a call to action and so instead of just getting over the golf ball and having a happy Hitchin sort of hoping for the best, having a swing thought is The key to making sure that the necessary is taken care of. And I think having a swing thought, as far as I'm concerned, as an integral part of success. I'd rather have one the nun, and I'd certainly have rather have one been plenty. I think plenty can throw the cat amongst the pigeons now, not all swing.
Thoughts are created equal. We all can relate. You have that one feel which works really well. You have another feel you just juggle with and you're trying to find a new one. Matt talks about what a good swing thought is for him in his game. I would say it's half feelings, it's half what you're thinking and it could be, it could be none of those. It's what works for you on the course, to perform at your best and I want to try it lightly in this because if people hear
this, they're going to think. Oh, I have to have this swing van. I have to do this, the second, you try to force something, you create tension. So, whatever it is that you do to have no tension and be free, which Greg and I talked about all the time. Free. We don't like the word, but it's kind of the word you have to use whatever creates that. That's that's what you do it. If that's what you want to go down and depressed stuff, you don't want to change last
minute. So let's take a look at the research side here. Research has put swing thoughts in a few different groups, categories of how we can label these. So, let's have null explain those. Now, one, swing thought is not the same as, you know, as another from a whole number of perspectives. So, if you look at the different time to swing thoughts, you've obviously got in the way that
you've alluded to there. The internal external focus of attention, which is I'm sure most of your listeners will be fairly aware of that, which is a brilliant line of research. So internal Focus being on your body and how you kind of control that and external being on more the effect of the movement.
So in the golf swing that's going to be predominantly the club and the club face the idea there being that your You know, if you're focusing on the external factors, IE the club face, then you are just then allowing your body to in your brain to self organize the movement in order to coordinate the club face. In that way, you're going to be much more automatic. The research, which suggests a lot less prone to her to Breaking Down Under Pressure as
well. So in this huge advantages of that external Focus well as internal Focus, you know, you've got to really think about how the body moves and that may not be in a way. That relates to the to the task. Now you might be thinking a lot about your backswing when you're chipping and that may give you a fantastic backswing but not necessarily the right distance on the shot or the strike Etc. So that's yeah, that's the internal external Focus but there's lots of other categories as well.
So then you've got the kind of part movement or holistic movement so you know how much you break great the movement down is, you know, it's significant as well, isn't it? I mean if I'm just thinking on the course about like that Turn turn back, turn through. I mean, that's that's that that's thought pretty much covers the whole the whole
swing. But in very broad terms where as you know, if I broke in my swing down into where my elbow points at the top of the backswing, and maybe another checkpoint two, well, yeah, that they are two very precise and distinct my lineman's. I'm trying to create, I mean, that is going to break down the fluidity of the motion, but that's not to say it's, you know, it's completely wrong if you've practiced while thinking about those two.
Those two swing thoughts and it and that that thought process has been chunked in is something that you can now deal with quite easily than that may work for you very nicely but certainly not you know as a new swing thought on the day I would I would keep it very Broad and ideally her, a whole movement, Focus would be a lot better under pressure. I do like the external where you're thinking of the call hack. You're thinking of like you said, maybe it's Target the ball flight.
I bounced around. And I remember playing before the Masters last year, a swing thought I had it was then a four ball event down in Florida. And I had a I had a great one that was on the club head and I hit really well that day. The next day it was completely different and I do remember that Bentley. Even though the wall ball which is finite And I move on, I don't try to force it, to get it back.
And I mean, I move on kind of find the next little thought or feeling that the feels right at the time are two big categories. We have external and internal swing thoughts and if you go back, you can hear an interview with dr. Gabrielle wolf on external Focus. She's a researcher who has done a bunch of work on it.
This was probably a couple years ago on the podcast and she was talking about the benefits of external Focus meaning that you're About something outside of your body, that could be the flag off in the distance, or the ball flight, or even the ground under your feet. It's anything outside of you. And that opening story, Mark told about helping his brother, Trevor putting at the Masters, right?
And he was moving to more of an external focus and saw obvious improvements from going in that direction. I do feel like too many golfers at times if they swing thoughts based. If that's their approach, that, at times, it can get A bit to internal and a bit too cerebral. And, you know, at times you can think about trying to, you know, shoot the ball into the basket and then you get to as Gary Player would say Paralyzed by analysis.
So yeah, there are times I think it's the art of good golf instruction has to find a way to move the golfer out of his or her head and more into the athletic response of things. Here's another example of internal and external thoughts from Matt and listen and see if you can identify if this is this is an internal or external swing thought. I had a thought of like just the club being in front of me.
I mean, everyone gets stuck in underneath, it's just that every but I just had the feeling of this is two weeks ago of the club being in front of me as much as possible ahead of me head of the body. I would say clubhead matched up with the hands, grab that trailing, which it never is. But I thought you Have. And that's not that I've tried to work on my whole, my whole life and the more you get that feeling, I feel like that's where you get the most control.
So I would say that that's probably an external thought if you're focusing on the club or the way to the club, that's something away from the body, it's not as distal or distant. As you know spotting on the ground in front of a pot like Mark talked about but it's more distal or external than thinking about your shoulders or your wrists or something like that completely. Internal.
All right, so this kind of thought leads me to a premise that I hold true and it's not what we are thinking, it's not the swing thought itself, but it's how it helps us. Think it's a state of mind. Hit the shot. You want to hit. In other words, it's the state that you are in over that shot, this leads me to dr.
Debbie Crews, research on performance States shoes on the podcast in the past as well, and her research shows that there's a particular State that is most conducive for good performance in that second before you start your golf swing. So before you bring the club back the second before that she's found a particular brain State and that's being something that's kind of level. So we're looking at the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain.
You know, you kind of have your Analytical in your creative sides. And those are kind of leveled out, and she has some really compelling research.
He also some training on this is called Opti, and I don't know if you've seen videos or we've talked about the past, but there's this head Band The Muse headband and she has some software for it. You can kind of train the state and my promise to you is that you can feel the difference when you get in that state when you don't and you can recognize that state is probably the state when you played good golf. And it's definitely not what you're thinking, it's how you're
thinking it takes work. It takes practice, and it Ebbs and flows. What we have this week as a swing thought probably isn't the one that's going to. Be working next week back even into college. I remember tournaments where I wanted and had success that I got a thought, maybe the first day or the second day and kept you going and sure enough the next week, it's a different dot. So I try to move on from them, try to stay fresh because in all honesty I need my swing doesn't really change.
Most people swings don't really change but feelings change of what you trying to do. It's such a Mercurial game, we play and we live in and play in such a variable environment that having one thing and expecting it to last for a long time. I think this an unfair approach to it because we just changed like you might wake up in the morning and you might feel a little tighter in your right shoulder and let's say you've been trying to get your right shoulder rotated behind you.
Well you just can't do that on the day because of circumstance. So Yeah, I think that's why circum swing thoughts very and but often times, I guess if you look from the 36 thousand foot view, the swing thought will sort of come out of the same environment or the same family, you know, like a golfer working on a Glitz, I got off his shorts, his or her pivots, you know, the swing thought, this week might be, let's rotate the trail hip behind us more the next week would be.
Well, let's try and get the lead shoulder more under the chin the next week, maybe we'll Feel the pressure shift between the feet, you know, those are different thoughts, but in the end, they all trying to achieve the same goal. If you look at it from that sort of ethereal sort of a vantage point, I'm always the key to doing me.
Well, as a teacher, is finding a way to communicate with you, so that the message resonates, you know, my message is only as good as what it's received, and I might have the best stuff in the world, but if it's not received and understood it, I won't be applied. And so in terms of giving swing thoughts, again, I may be changing coming from different angles all the time and highlighting different things. Do you sense this? Do you feel that what are you
thinking about? You know, all with the objective of getting the golfer to a place, where they doing the right thing or the appropriate thing? So I feel like it's an interesting subject and there's so many ways that it can be approached. The key for the gotha do is to take ownership of whatever the thought is and Realize that it may be fleeting and it might just last for only around. But again, that's what we about because golf is about the next shot and the round with
currently play. Let's talk ideas, Let's test out some Concepts and see if you can go out and find some different swing thoughts and start to think more intentionally about this. I think that's the biggest thing is, I hope this conversation brings awareness to you about what you are thinking in the golf swing. I'm going to turn here to my friends at Vision 54, Lynn Marriott and Pia Nielsen because they are excellent at this. I have they're booked here on the bookshelf.
Next me, I just grabbed it be a player. One of my favorite golf books out there. They have a concept called the play box and that is related to this conversation about swing thoughts. If you're not familiar, they have this concept called the think box, then we have the decision line, then we have the play box. So in the think box are going to do all the processing, we're going to pick the club and do all of that kind of work. Then we're going to make the
decision. Line of we're committed is what we're doing. We don't need to think about that anymore. Then we're going to get into that play box. And the goal is to create this athletic state that we can hit the best shot possible and there's a lot of different ways to do this. You know, we think about Jack Nicklaus talked about how he always visualized, or saw the shot. I don't know if you've heard that you hear the same Snead
practice Barefoot? He potentially, you know, as feeling the ground or maybe use that as an anchor tiger talks about, feeling the shot in his hands that could have been, you know, kind of his swing thought. So, everyone approaches it a little differently. You're different than me. You're different than the person next to you. So the question is how do we figure this out? Well one is obviously a golf instructor can help you try some different things, but here is a few Concepts to go try.
So have you swing thought be visualizing the ball flight, right? Pretend that there's a trace like a top Trace around it, right? And visualize that as you swing the club, as you take it back, maybe you focus on the pressure and your hands on your grip, right? Kind of your anchor, maybe it's not feeling the pressure in the bottom of your feet and how you kind of want it to go, you know to the right and the left and
how you want that to feel. Maybe it's a relaxed, your shoulders, what about feeling and engaged core that's kind of your swing thought. There could be a full turn, you into feel a full, turn back and then through or maybe it's you know feeling the weight of the club. You want to focus on the the weight of that club as you swing and all these are different ideas. It one of them might work, one of the might not none of them might work and you find thing else.
But it's this idea of gaining awareness of these different things. What's going to work for you and what's not not getting attached to anything. Because what works for you today, might not work next week. So you need to be, you know, a bit fluid in that again, it's not what you think. It's how you are thinking and test some things out. We are such a big fan. I'm such a big fan of testing, right? We don't do enough testing and golf we don't experiment. There's nothing to hold onto here.
You don't have to, you don't have to grip on to what you have because there's, you know, the best place in the world. Don't, you know, they're changing a few things here. So we don't either and a post along with this website, I'll have the link to this book and vision for, they have an app as well. Which helps you practice these have a few Concepts. I would highly recommend picking that up. Probably the biggest One external. It's always always going to be
helpful. I would suggest not For long time learning. But I mean if your ball is going offline, focusing on on controlling the clubface and how
you deliver that? I mean that will almost guarantee a significant Improvement without thinking about how your, how you're having to deal with it and deliver it on a more technical manner just that focus on delivering a square clubface in the same way that you know when you're playing in the wind you know good players report of of having far less swing thoughts, but they just can't deal with all the all the complexities of the Swing.
They just focus on what is absolutely critical to the shop. Shot which is is going to be clubface. Delivery in terms of obviously Loft in the wind and also face a got. So so that's one. I mean, focus on the things that really matter. So externally that would be that would be clubface, balance fluidity, big, big holistic thoughts like, you know, turn back, turn through. Stay in Balance, would always Trump smaller detailed elements of the swing.
What I will say is, you know, the trends, I've seen our high handicap players are far more ball focused than light handicap players. I mean, most professionals would report not really looking at the ball and certainly, not thinking about it, a great deal, which is, in massive, contrast to know to weekend golfers who have a strong bull focus. And you can see in the movement, which case, I mean, the thought to just turn through an end. Good balance, I think is
brilliant. I mean, having any thoughts that are Beyond impact? I think I generally very good and far more helpful than the positioning of the of the club at the top of the backswing, ETC, try and trying to get to a good finish is always a good thought to have. If you've been listening to this whole episode in your like Cordy, I just want to be in the zone the whole time and have no swing thoughts at all, right? Isn't that the best way? No, swing thoughts. Don't be thinking, don't think
that's how you play Rask off. You know, this kind of urban legends passed down from generation to generation of golfers. Well that was Knowles. You know, he had heard that growing up is you know a player you being told just don't think about it, you know, don't think about your swing when you play right? Well I think we've all heard that and so he studied at he created a study to figure this out and he it started with this
exercise. This drill to help people minimize those swing thoughts and to swing without thought it was called the flow drill. And the aim is Is that, you know, you're standing behind the ball. I've no say, three three paces, and you do all your thinking in
your preparation there. So you're not being mindless, you're doing your shot planning, you're picking your Target, have your practice swing there and you know, in your practice, swing have a maybe to swing thoughts, but then align yourself behind the behind, the, the line of the ball and the Target. And then once you commit to to walking in, it's like putting your lead foot on a conveyor
belt. It did the thing is moving Irving and there's nothing's going to stop you now other than putting your feet in and setting the club moving. So the big thing is they're not to worry too much about where you're aiming and your ball position Etc. Because that's that's now you know, creating all that internal checking and self-referencing, put your feet down, get reasonably comfortable, and the moment that club touches the ground near the ball, you take it away and begin to swim.
So he went out and tested this drill, he you know, he got people to do it and create a formal study. And figure it out. Would this help people play better golf. Oh, my stomach to that, with that. As a fairly analytic or Chap. And as a young player I would, it's I would choke something
horribly in competition. I mean, I could show shoot 20 shots more than I did in the practice round, I mean properly choking and when that when that would happen, I would be, you know, absolutely riddled with swing thoughts. Some trying to control every aspect of the movement.
And that's, you know, that's something that pressure does to talk to a lot of us. It makes us Once a kind of control and make sure that we don't, we don't mess up, and I'm sure a lot of your, a lot of your listeners will relate to that. And then, you know, and as things progressed and I became a coach, I got involved in a brilliant Academy, and their whole kind of philosophy was about, you know, moving fluidly and not. Not thinking too much about about the technique.
And as much as, you know, I would say that's that's fairly limited. It does have huge benefits. So the research was had this fantastic Intervention, which Basically stop people think about their swing other than a few very basic holistic thoughts. And the idea was you would you get yourself focused behind the ball? Have your practice swing? You'd walk into the ball, plant your feet and hit it.
I mean not not in there. Completely Happy Gilmore way but you know, you've got enough time to set yourself and then get moving. But what you don't have enough time to do is to stand over the ball. Stop think, worried and engaging. All the kind of self instruction that would typically go on when you're when you're standing on the First Tee that intervention.
I used to use a lot and I still use it, but I mean, I used to use a lot when used with the right person at the right time, which is unbelievably transformational. I mean, I've seen people who are at their wit's end with the game. All of a sudden, move fluidly and balance powerfully, and the strike is entirely different to what they would have expected previously, just by being forced into that state of of automaticity and low swings for.
So those results were undeniable and I've seen them time Time again. But I was also seeing golfers who I would I would I had used the same kind of intervention with and it just didn't work. I mean, in fact, it made it made them worse and I've had to kind of back out very quickly. So now after a few years of doing this, I mean I could see
there was something with them. So I wanted to, I wanted to really pursue that and get some get some research done and there wasn't much research done on it at the time, I mean, any research done on automaticity. So that's that, you know, not thinking about your swing in golf. Is all done on cutting and putting is so it is a, you know, completely different task mechanically and obviously. So we were going into new territory really with the full swing that they've been no, no, no studies.
On the full swing and swing thoughts previously. So, there we go. I'm in. The aim was really, if I'm honest for me to find out why this works and how I can make it work with more people and then revolutionize the way that we learn and play golf. But as the study panned out, it turned out to be a lot more
complicated than that. The first of five studies was on, I mean, we looked, we looked at the we looked at that that intervention under pressure, non-pressure and compared the two and then what we found initially and bear in mind, this
is with fairly good players. I mean, these were all six handicap and below and we found that there as a group there wasn't any any difference as to when they were, you know, using the intervention or not using intervention but you know, and incidentally we were, we were monitoring and checking whether it had reduced their swing for which was Affirmed.
I mean, the intervention worked on that front but their performance hadn't hadn't changed which was, you know, somewhat disappointing because I really thought I was onto something with this drill. So you know over the next few years we did lots of variations of the drill. We gave people time to go away and practice it and get used to it because it was slightly harsh, being forced to stand the stand on the tea quickly and hit it.
But even after practice, so there was no groupwise groupwise some results from a performance standpoint. So, you know, it's actually not heads. We looked further through the data and I mean, it was pretty clear that some people were getting better when they were forced to not think about their swing and they were getting better in a Obvious. And you know, impressive way some people's performance got a bit worse. So that's that's why the whole kind of groupwise average never
improved. So then we had to start digging around as to try and find out why some people are getting better and why some people aren't and that took us down that route of looking at personality traits, But we did find then was that people with a larger working memory capacity. So basically, the ability to hold onto information in their head and process at the same time which is what we're doing when we're swinging with swing thoughts.
These people did a lot better with the intervention, so these people were able to walk up to the ball, put their feet in and hit it fairly quickly. Those people tended to get better with the intervention, those with a small working memory capacity or smaller didn't do so well, we also Look that other cognitive traits such as whether people were predominantly had a processing style of being auditory or more
visuals her. So the Oddity people will be thinking more kind of verbal terms, lots of self talk anyway, and the visual people would obviously thinking more in pictures and again there was quite a big difference there. The the order of the the verbalizes of that were called The Odyssey people found that found the intervention. Again a lot more a lot more helpful. I hope that you have come a long way. Here in your conversation in your awareness of Swing
thoughts. The impact that they have and how to potentially think about them. Here's the truth that playbox your swing thoughts. The feels that you have the state that you're in all of those words before you hit a golf shot are very, very
important. So don't tread lightly when it comes to what you're thinking over the golf ball, be intentional about how you approach that space and have a plan Tas. Stout some of these ideas that I talked about earlier in the round, test out Knowles flow, drill that he described here, go try different things and see what works for you. A few things that I think you should do. One pick up the be a player book by Pia Nielsen and Lynn Marriott.
It's in the post. Along with this podcast, I think you should pick that up and read that read about the think, box, decision, line and play box and start to be very intentional about how you treat that space to I think you need to. To the golf course and the driving range in. Try out different ideas and see what works for you.
And three I think before you go play golf and you're trying to perform at your best, you need to write down whether that's in the notes app on your, on your phone or that's on the scorecard that you have. What that playbox what that swing thought for the day is going to be for you. So that you intentionally get in that state and you focus on getting in that state every time because otherwise you know how
around goes you. I mean you make a bogey of double Gee, you know, you get frustrated and then you're just trying right? Or you let's say you make a birdie, make a couple birdies and then you're kind of like oh man, this is you know, I got to keep making birdies blah blah blah and you get out of that state that help you get there in the goal is not to be reactive, you know? Because golf is a variable game, there's going to be ups and downs highs and lows and that's understandable.
We don't need to react to that. We need to. We need to stay aware of what we're doing, because swing thoughts and all these things are normal. The doubts that you have. Have the, you know, the thoughts that you have are normal and you don't need to get freaked out and go down this reactionary path. So anyways those are my thoughts. We've learned a lot here today. We've gotten some different perspectives. We've heard some good stories. We've gotten some understanding. I enjoyed this.
If you want to learn more mark, immelman his podcast on the Mark, I was actually just on it. He had me on his show, which was amazing. We had this conversation about practice and learning, it's really fun. Go subscribe to his podcast, listening, Knoll we have links to some coaching that he has created. He has some great online education that you should go
check out. He's a great coach, he has this great perspective with this research background, his understanding of learning his understanding of how, the, you know, how are the brain works and all that stuff. F is really, really good. I recommend that you check out what he's doing. I have some links on the post long. At this podcast you should go check out what he's up to and then Matt Matt I hope you play awesome at the US, Open this weekend.
We're all cheering for you here at the golf Science Lab podcast, all the listeners. I hope that you go at Star him on the leaderboards. You can keep track of how he's doing this week play. Well, if you missed it, we told his story on the podcast a little bit ago, go listen to that. I also on the post along with this link up a bunch of current podcast that we've done in the past that relate to this kind of about external focus and just so you can think about that as well.
Thanks so much for listening. I enjoyed this. Make sure to subscribe for what's coming here down the line. This episode was hosted written and directed by me. Corey Walker. You can follow me on Twitter at corty Walker and was edited mixed, and produced by just hit publish Productions.