Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [54]
I know we can tap into our past memories of having overcome fatigue as a way to deal with present tiredness. Consequently, I developed one simple anchoring technique that has proven to be effective in overcoming fatigue and maintaining a high-energy state for a short period of time.
Energy Anchor
The essence of the Energy Anchor is to remember a time when you overcame intense fatigue in the past—seeing, hearing, and feeling again, in specific detail, what you saw, heard, and felt then. Consider the following kinds of past experiences: (1) after a tedious day at work you engaged in an enjoyable physical activity and then felt renewed; (2) after a hard stint of labor that left you exhausted, you realized that with one last, big push you could finish the task at hand; and when you finished, you felt a sense of relief, satisfaction, and restored vigor; (3) having taken a break from a laborious task you returned to it enlivened; (4) you felt renewed and excited upon hearing a piece of good news.
After you access a renewed-energy experience, anchor the vigorous feeling when it’s at its most intense level. Anchor it with a single image of that past experience, a sound that occurred then, or with some natural physical gesture. Practice firing the anchor three or four times a day for a week or two until the anchor is thoroughly established. In the future, when fatigue sets in and you want to feel restored, fire the anchor.
Energy Visualization
Energy can be produced by visualizing metaphorically the processes that are necessary to bring the body from a fatigued state to a vigorous one. Without going into the details of physiology the visualization consists of imagining: (1) the distribution of oxygen, stored chemicals, and nutriments to the muscles, (2) the chemical activity that occurs within muscle cells, and (3) the elimination of waste products from the body.
The following is a metaphor of the activity of the human body that a number of athletes have found useful to maintain their energy levels, as in running long-distance races.
As if from a point up in space they watch tankers (red blood cells) pick up oxygen gas from two storage depots (the lungs); seeing this they feel their bodies becoming lighter as they breathe in. They watch the tankers travel upriver (the bloodstream) to a factory in which there is a storage tank (nutriments) and a central workroom full of machines (the muscles). They watch the tankers unload the oxygen where it combines with the stored nutriments to become fuel for the muscles.
As the fuel is fed to the factory machines (the muscles), they see the levers working faster and smoother; while watching this they imagine their muscles working more energetically. They also see smoke (expired air) coming out of the factory chimney and imagine getting rid of waste products from their body as they exhale.
Whenever you feel sluggish on the golf course—when your swing lacks zip or your play is lethargic—just run the tanker movie in your mind, feel yourself becoming lighter as you inhale, feel more energetic while you swing, and, finally, imagine that you’re blowing away the tiredness when you exhale. This metaphor is effective because it combines pictures of internal bodily activity with attention to breathing. One of the quickest ways to change your state of consciousness is to change your breathing—to increase its depth and to slow down its rate.
Kristin Larkin, one of my graduate students at Columbia University and a personal fitness trainer in New York City, developed a rather interesting metaphorical movie for maintaining her energy level during workouts. The elements of her metaphor parallel the physiological action that goes on in active muscle cells. She uses the movie in her mind while doing heavy exercise. After practicing it several times while working out, she noticed that her energy increased; as a result she gained more confidence in the worth of the visualization process.
This is her metaphor:
I see a picture of myself working out on