Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [3]
I asked him, “Have you ever in your life hit a ninety-yard pitch shot well?” Of course, he had.
I told him to recreate that beautifully played shot in as much detail as possible. Was the day pleasant or overcast? How did the swing look and feel? Could he recall the sound of the click as he connected with the ball? Then I put him through a series of exercises, on the practice range and on the course, designed to train his unconscious mind to perform automatically.
Ted had known all along how to hit that shot. I was helping him realize that—and also never again to misplace it. I find that once a skill is locked in the mind, it can be retrieved, appropriately enough, with a key. Ted found that key rather quickly, and now uses it before routinely hitting splendid pitch shots.
Ted’s key was a metaphor, the thought—of all the craziest things—of a flying red goose. It was a metaphor that integrated his thoughts and body and allowed his unconscious mind to swing the club so that the ball would consistently plop close to the flagstick.
How Ted created his metaphor will be fully explained in a subsequent chapter. For now, it’s only important to realize that all the mind games in this book reflect Ted’s experience. They are unusual and fun; and they work.
They’re based on a couple of very simple and basic ideas: the unity of mind and body and the power of the unconscious mind.
Mind-Body Unity
The fundamental principle underlying my perspective of human behavior in general, and athletic performance in particular, is that mind, body, and emotion are integrated—inextricably interwoven. It’s sort of like having your two hands pressed together as one, gripping the club.
Thought influences feelings and performance; feelings affect thought and performance; and performance affects thought and feelings. Specifically, the quality and consistency of an athlete’s performance depends upon how he thinks and how he feels emotionally.
The metaskills techniques presented in this book are designed to affect your thought processes and emotional states, with only minimal attention to the content of your thoughts.
The Unconscious Mind in Sports
Think about thinking. It’s usually detrimental in sports because it destroys concentration, a goal of most golfers. As in Zen meditation, the ideal state of concentration is to pay attention to nothing. This is also true when swinging a golf club. But this is an extremely difficult task. The next best way of thinking is to pay attention to only one thing. It might be watching the ball, feeling your grip, hearing a phrase in your head, or seeing an image in your mind’s eye, whatever works for you.
For instance, if airborne Mary Lou Retton had to mentally process every bit of information necessary to execute that perfect-vaulting ten in the 1984 Olympics—feet together at takeoff … hands exactly so to get into the twist … knees bent at a precise moment in the air—she would never have landed on a Wheaties box.
Instead, Mary Lou tied every bit of complex movement into a single anchor. That anchor was one word: stick. She knew unconsciously what was necessary, in the air, to achieve perfection, to “stick” a ten and to “stick” to the mat after a flawless trip. That word triggered her unconscious mind, which automatically guided her body to achieve Olympian power and grace.
I know the paramount role the unconscious mind has in affecting human behavior. Superb athletic performance is regulated with little or no conscious thought given to purpose and mechanics. The clichés that reinforce this are numerous: “paralysis by analysis,” “playing in the zone,” and “It’s like I wasn’t there. ”
Conscious processing is entirely too slow and results in confusion. You don’t think about hitting a baseball; you just do it. If you thought about how to connect with a slider, low and outside, the umpire would have his thumb jerked in the air for strike three before the bat got off your shoulder.
The more refined the athlete’s performance, the more the unconscious mind is in control. While