Improve your golf game with visualization

The XXII Olympic Winter Games in Soshi, Russia will be completed in three more days. For 17 days we have been watching the world’s best winter athletes perform at the highest levels of competition. The participants who qualified for these 2014 Olympic Games have put in years of practice and thousands of hours of mental and physical training.

Visualization for the mind-body connection 

Did you notice the skiers visually going through their gates or aerial acrobatics before they began? Did you see the skaters visualizing their jumps and turns by moving parts of their bodies while they were standing or sitting?

Visualization is a psychological tool that teaches athletes to focus on every aspect of their performance rather than on winning. It is a process of watching themselves experience each nuance of their performance in their minds.

Visualize your way to success 

Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile in 1954 by visualizing himself doing it when it was believed to be impossible.

Arnold Swartzenegger visualized his muscles pumping up from the inside out every time he lifted his weights.

In the 1984 Summer Olympics Mary Lou Retton needed a perfect 10 in her vault routine to win the gold medal. She visualized herself over and over perfectly executing an ultra-difficult full twisting layout and “sticking” her landing.

Mental Rehearsal for Consistency

Another term for visualization is mental rehearsal or imagery where your inner mind uses all of your senses to create the event that you desire.

The first ingredient to become more consistent in your golf game, is perfect practice. Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice does. The best place to practice is in your imagination, mentally rehearsing perfection over and over again, creating a habit. Once you have visualized doing something, it is already done except for the physical execution.

In 1964 Maxwell Malte, the author of Psycho-Psybernetics discovered that your nervous system can’t tell the difference between an imagined and a real experience.  Scientists have found that mentally rehearsing your golf swing will improve your swing because your brain is actually creating stronger neural patterns telling your muscles how to move as you visualize yourself hitting the perfect shot.

At night or in the morning when you are half-awake is the best time to practice your golf swing/game. Rehearse what you want to happen that day. In your mind is the only place you can practice perfectly. Program your mind. All thought originates in the mind.  You are your mind and you are your golf swing.

To prepare mentally to play your best golf, listen to the Positive Mental Imagery guided imagery CDs, available at www.pmi4.com/cart